And the Losers are…

…BACON LOVERS (anonymous)!!!

And we won all on our own merit – exercise and weight loss.

We brought in about 5 lbs less food than the group who brought in the most. Thanks to all who donated! Our team alone took over 447 lbs of food to the food pantry. And when you add that to what all the other teams took – there was food everywhere!

Our Pay it Forward didn’t win, and that was fine with us. The Yellow Team has a GREAT Pay it Forward plan for their charity and totally deserved to win.

We knew we had a good chance to win when we walked into the meeting last night, but we were all very nervous. There were a couple of other teams that had their eyes on the prize as well. But when they read our name as the winners, there was screaming, there were tears, and there was excitement. We won $1500 for our charity, Bond Christian Service Camp. What a gift we have given to them! And what a gift we have given to ourselves – bodies that are improving daily. We also have over $500 in pledges for the 1/2 marathon as well, and anticipate more coming in over the next two months. (If you would like to pledge, you can get a form here.

Our Most Valuable Bacon Lover (MVBL) came in second for the overall Biggest Loser of the competition. We all wanted her to win, but to say she lost over 19% of her body weight in the last three months is nothing to be ashamed of! You can read more about Angie’s journey here.

To celebrate, we took the $50 that we won at the egg hunt a few weeks back and went to Bobby’s. If you aren’t from around here, Bobby’s is a frozen custard place in Maryville, IL. It is AMAZING. We spent $41 of the $50 on ice cream. We put bacon on it, we ate it, we took pictures of it, we loved every second of it. And we were all on an extreme sugar high and calling attention to ourselves as we laughed and acted quite obnoxious for a bunch of 35+ year-old women. It was wonderful. And then we spent the last of our money on french fries from Burger King. And then we all felt sick all the way home. The problem with eating healthy is that your body gets used to it and when you try to put junk in it again, it rebels. I had to chew a gas pill and a Tums last night – something I haven’t had to do in months!

But we had fun. And this morning, we are all back on the bandwagon, because we are not done yet.

We are all setting our next goal today – where we want to be by the 1/2 marathon on October 23 and will be sharing our goals with one another. We will also continue to have weigh-ins and measurement updates every other week. We aren’t stopping until we all hit our goals. And when we hit our 1/2 marathon goals as well as finish the race, we’re all going to get pedicures. And as we all hit our weight loss goals, we’re going shopping together to buy new clothes, because we are giving away anything that doesn’t fit – we will NOT keep it in our closet “just in case.”

I think we all have learned something over the last three months – if you get the right group together to encourage and challenge one another, there’s no stopping what you can do together!

Who do you have to encourage you to meet your goals?

UPDATE: I got this message this week: “because of us, Bond Camp is 1.2 Acres bigger than it used to be. He was able to get 2 parcels at $752 each at a tax auction. Paid them right off because he got the check from church already.” Hopefully we can add to this with our pledges for the 1/2 marathon!