The 2012 John P. Health Challenge Begins April 2!

Are you ready for the winter to be over? And by that, I mean are you ready to don a bathing suit and show your almost naked body to the world this summer? Me neither. So that means its time for another John P. Health Challenge!

Next Monday we’ll begin and this year the challenge is only 30 days. In the past we tried 2 or 3 months, but that was just too hard to stick with for a lot of people (including me). Besides, all of the behavior modification occurs in the first 30 days, so if you can stick with it for 4 short weeks, you’ll be golden!

How to Join In

I’ve started a Google+ Circle for Health Challenge participants. So if you’re going to join in let me know and I’ll add you to the Circle. Make sure you also add the circle yourself as this is going to allow us to ONLY share our updates with other people who are in the Health Challenge.

I’m going to give a lot of updates on how I’m doing, and I hope you all will too. But again, you’ll only see this if I add you – and I’ll only add you if you tell me too. So you can drop a comment below with your Google+ link if you want to be added, or send an email from my Google+ page and I’ll add you that way too.

Here are the Rules

1. You have to nearly eliminate sugar from your diet. No more candy, Coke, or other sugary drinks. In fact, nothing but water! One Coke and one candy bar per week are allowed.
2. Decrease food portions by 40-50% for all meals. Instead of eating whatever looks good, stop eating after you feel full. (Overall, I want to consume half the calories I used to.)
3. Snack all you want, but only fruit, veggies or nuts are allowed!
4. Exercise every single day. This doesn’t mean long exercise daily. It means frequent bursts of exercise. Pushups and situps as many times a day as you can squeeze them in. Whatever you are capable of, just lots of it!
5. If you are a big beer drinker, you are going to have to treat it the way I treat Coke. Cut it out! Only one or two per week!
6. If you are a smoker, I would prefer to see you quit altogether, but at a minimum you must cut down by 50% during the Health Challenge.

That’s about it! This really works, so if you join in you’ll see and feel a noticable improvement in the 30 days we do it together. And being able to now use Google+ to keep our discussions about it within the group of participants is really nice as well.

Let me know if you are in!