Finish It Monday: Star System Chart Gets Fancy And Eat Smart Joins The Crew!

Click on image to view/print Week #3 Chart

I trust that you’ve put on your big girl panties by now (or your big boy jock strap?) and are settling into some improved food and fitness habits. You are officially in week #3 of the Finish What You Started Challenge (yay-zers!) are you’re on your way to the October 31st finish line!

I know some of you have been enjoying your vacations and this caused your Star System to somewhat collapse. I was on Staycation all of last week, complete with food indulgence (Oooo!) and a bit of lazy dazing (Ahhh!) so there was definitely some star implosion going on over here. I earned 23 out of 30 possible stars. Darn. But thank God its a new week with a clean slate!

EatSmart Joins Our Crew!

Go on and print out the pimped-out Star System Chart for this week. I revamped it to be real fancy for your eyeballs, and you can see that EatSmart Products has joined us as a Challenge sponsor! They’ve empowered me to spread the love onto you with some fabulous giveaways coming soon, so be sure to browse the land of food, bathroom and kitchen scales at EatSmartProducts.com.

Close to one year ago now, I surrendered my former bathroom scale in favor of an EatSmart. Best decision ever. It’s sleek, lightweight and easy to use. Not only that, but EatSmart stands behind their scales with a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee pledge AND they have fantastic customer service.

Follow @EatSmartScales on Twitter and Like them on Facebook.

This Week’s Bonus Stars Challenge

This and every week you have the chance to earn a perfect count of 28 stars for consistency with your food and fitness activities. So what’s this week’s challenge to earn 2 bonus stars?

It’s a double-doozie, my people.

Earn one bonus star for continuing with your minimum of 3 salads for the week.Earn a second bonus star for working on your push-up activities.

**More about the push-up activities: I keep hearing people say, “I wish I could do push-ups”. Well it’s time to stop wishing!! By the time October 31st rolls around, you’re going to be a BEAST at push-ups. When I started out doing push-ups, I could only do one. O-N-E. It really sucked and I was very discouraged. But I worked at it…consistently, and experienced fast gains in my progress. I can now do 75-100 in a workout circuit.

You’re going to experience fast gains, too.

Work on your push-ups 3-4 times this week, but definitely no less than 3 times. Whether you’re doing the girlie ones your knees or the full body version (my tutorial is here), earn the push-ups bonus star by doing this:

1) Make time to actually do the push-ups, and

2) By the end of the week, attempt achieve 1 or more reps than you did on your first day of push-ups. Do you feel the burn, baby!?

Have a great week everybody. And don’t forget to shout out your earned stars for last week in the comments section and link up to your blog posts!

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Finish It Monday: Getting Started And The Star System Tracking Chart

So here we are at the beginning of it all. Yeah baby!

Today is a week to get organized, start planning and get into the habit of doing something each and EVERY DAY that will keep your progress moving forward so you can finally reach your goals. So are you ready? Close to 100 people have already made the decision to join the Finish What You Started Challenge, and if you’re one of them, you’ve already written down your goals.

As you head into your chosen healthy eating and fitness activities for this week, here are some things to consider:

Don’t overwhelm yourself with the pressure of an “all or nothing” approach. It doesn’t work.Work on becoming awesome at one or two small changes at a time, and don’t beat yourself up for the areas you’re still struggling in.Get strong and consistent in the changes you’re focusing on, then build on that by adding more positive changes.If you mess up and need a do-over, you canNOT quit. Finishers don’t quit. They get up and keep going. That’s the kind of person you are.

A word on Planning: Anything less than a plan is a hit or miss situation. Planning creates a sense of urgency and expectation. It encourages you to be disciplined and consistent so you actually follow through. Your plans will tell you ahead of time what must be done, how it will be done and when you will do it. Planning sets you up for action. And then you take those actions. Each day this week and every day throughout the Challenge, plan to have a daily plan. That’s how stuff gets done.

THE STAR SYSTEM

It’s time to get familiar with the Star System Tracking Chart, a personal system to rate your daily progress and achievements. Each day you will award yourself zero, one or two stars in each category for food and fitness (two stars being the best). This means you can earn up to 2 stars in the Food Category and 2 stars in the Fitness Category for a total of 4 stars in a given day.

Here’s how the ratings translate in each category:

Two stars = Great day!One star = Meh, but still decent.Zero stars = You need a do-over.

You have the opportunity to earn up to 28 stars during a stellar week (4 Stars x 7 Days = 28 stars), plus extra stars in the “other” category of the Star System Tracking Chart for any mini-challenges I dish out to you that you complete successfully.

The star system is for YOU to analyze your progress and pinpoint where you are excelling or need to improve. It’s for you to see just how much work you’re putting in (or lack thereof) that’s either keeping you stagnant or propelling to you the finish.

Here are some “gray area factors” to consider when rating yourself:

A scheduled fitness rest day counts as 2 stars, because rest and recovery is vital to your fitness.Occasional indulgence on sweets, high carbs or fatty foods also counts as 2 stars (what!?), but only when you gnaw in moderation. The key here is “occasional indulgence”. If indulgence turns into an overeating-fest, that would not be 2 stars.Be honest in your ratings. You know without anyone telling you whether you’ve done well or not. If you don’t rate yourself honestly you cannot expect to improve.

Bonus Star activity for this week, August 1 – August 7th: Give yourself 1 bonus star on the Star System Tracking Chart if at the end of this week (on Sunday, August 7th), you consistently logged your stars on the chart each and every day. And yes, I will be nosy and wanna know how many stars you earned. That’s called accountability.

Okay! There ya have it. Let’s get it STARted!

On “Finish It Mondays”, please link up in the comments to any posts/vlogs that document your journey during this Challenge.

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