I won 3rd place in the Biggest Loser Contest with Family and Friends!!

When I started the Biggest Loser competition with my family and friends I really had no intention of winning. I knew I wouldn't get a lot of time for exercise and I knew I wasn't very competitive. I also knew I wanted to support my brother, Matthew, who started it and I knew it would help me as far as accountability went.

I would have to pay if I gained weight during the week between weighing in. It was $10 to start with and so even that small investment made me stick to it and follow through. For 7 weeks we did this. (The rules we used are at the end of this post.)

I was truly shocked when I found out I won a place! There were 10 people in total and I was in 5th place the week before. I was pretty pleased with taking a place...it was fun to get the call from my brother informing me. :) AND Very fun that my investment more than doubled!! :) AND I lost 22 pounds! I only need to do that 8.5 more times to reach my goal of 150. It may take awhile. But I'm in. :) I will keep plugging away at this.

My highest weight ever was 408. I am at 338 now.

I know that this can be done...but it will be only by His grace! Linda

2 Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

PS If you want to start your own competition, here are the rules we used:

We will start Sunday, February 27th. At some point during the afternoon or evening, everyone should come to Mariya's parents house for weigh-in. This way we are all using the same scale. Mariya will be the official weight keeper and log all our weights on http://www.corporatefitnessleague.com/ web site so we can see who is winning. I was thinking about trusting everyone to weigh themselves, but then if we got one dishonest person, they could take all our money. :-) What do you guys think? If everyone would rather go with weighing themselves, I'm up for that, too.

Here are the rules:

1. HAVE FUN! Eat healthy, and exercise.

2. The first weigh in will be February 27th at Mariya's parents house. If you can't make it that day, please arrange with Mariya for another time.

3. The final weigh in will be April 17th, during the afternoon or evening at Mariya's parents house.

4. Unofficial weigh ins will be every Sunday at your own house. E-mail Mariya your weight and she will enter it in thehttp://www.corporatefitnessleague.com/ web site so we can see who is winning. (They didn't really do this link because people didn't want everyone to know what they weighed..instead Mariya figured the percentage each person lost and posted it to us each week in a group on facebook.)

5. There is a $10 registration fee which must be paid during your first weigh in. All fees will go towards winners prizes. We may try to open a Chase bank account to earn a $100 bonus to go towards the prize as well.

6. (You can join at any time during the first two weeks, but the longer you wait the harder it will be to win.)

7. There will be a penalty fee of $1 if your weight stays the same and $1 for each pound your weight goes up during one week.

8. There will be a penalty fee of $1 if you fail to weigh in and e-mail to Mariya by each Monday.

9. Each contestant must share two healthy recipes during the contest via the Facebook group, for the benefit of others. One recipe should be submitted in March, and one in April. Failure to do so will result in a $5 penalty per missing recipe.

10. The winners will be the people who lose the largest percentage of body weight. (start at 200 pounds and lose 10 pounds you have lost 5%). [ Weight Loss / Start Weight = Percentage Loss). The first and final weigh ins will be the only official weights and will be done on a digital scale at Mariya's parents house.

11. 1st place gets 50% of the fees collected. 2nd place gets 30%. 3rd place gets 20%.

12. No cheating allowed!!!!