Game On

Late last December, I realized that my favorite holiday, Halloween, had been extra cruel to my waistline. I had put on 15 pounds since last Halloween. Yikes! A friend who knows my competitive tendencies suggested The Game On! Diet. I found the book online and loosely followed the diet during the holiday break. Five pounds lighter, I asked our studio head if we could do it as a competition within Raven. And that’s how we brought Game On! to Raven.

The book is written by Krista Vernoff, Grey’s Anatomy executive producer, and Az Ferguson, Body-for-Life, and is available for about $10 on Amazon. It’s a pretty simple diet really; essentially, you receive points for doing the right things, instead of being punished for doing the wrong things. You get points for drinking 100oz of water a day – you don’t drink the water, no points. You get points for eating sanctioned meals – no sugar, no soda, no butter, no alcohol, but the right portions of carbs, protein and fat 5 times a day. Screw up your meal, no points. Exercise 20 minutes every day to get points. You also had to commit to a transformation – like add something positive to your day AND take something negative away - everyday. A lot of people picked up flossing, others read more or treated their wives better, and on the flip side the snooze button was given up, along with swearing, and mindless internet browsing. Swearing – are you kidding me Brian!

You also do this as a team so you have support. We did this with 9 Teams of 2 or 3. Some teams wanted to lose weight and a few wanted to push for a fitness goal like running farther distances or lifting more. This part was only worth 20 points a week out of the 700 possible. More important was how you ate, if you exercised, and so on.

As the weeks wore on (four of them), I was really impressed with this group. Most of them stuck to their transformation promises and got 20 points daily for it, they ate the right meals, they exercised when they didn’t think they had time, and they lost weight (or ran farther or lifted more). I interacted with and poked fun at a lot of folks I didn’t usually have a reason to – and it was fun.  While the competitive side of me never let up – doing Pilates at 11:30 at night is not fun, and my team and another did win – I think the camaraderie of this game is what made it really worth my time.

Thanks for a super fun time guys!