Every point counts

The county office of education in my county is holding something called a fitness challenge this month. How it works is that businesses and other organizations sign up in teams of five or more. Then each member of the team keeps track of points assigned for healthy habits, such as exercise, eating fruits and vegetables, drinking water etc. For instance, eating five servings of fruits and vegetables is one point, running one mile is one point, eating 25 grams of fiber is one point.

Every week we turn in our points from the week and the team captain averages them.

So we got a team together at my paper. Last week was the first week, and we turned our points in on Monday. Somehow by default I ended up as the captain of our team. At first I just saw it as a kind of fun way to motivate myself to get a little healthier. Then I saw the point totals of the other teams. We are in the top 25 percent would guess - high enough where we could maybe come close to the top, but low enough we would really need to work to do it. Nothing like a little competition to get me in gear. Now I'm drinking water like a drain and eating 10 servings of vegetables so I can get bonus points.

Lesson learned: When you eat 10 servings of vegetables and drink 96 oz of water in a day, there isn't room for much else. Maybe I should just stick to racking up points through ridiculous amounts of exercise.