Yesterday we started our preparation week for the 2012 “10 in 10 Weight Loss Challenge” by going through the registration process. You can read that by going here. Remember, the 10 in 10 Challenge begins on January 9th with the first of ten weekly weigh-ins.

To give yourself the best opportunity for success, we’re spending this week or Week 0 preparing ourselves and our environment for success.

With the holidays behind us, undoubtedly there are Sees Candy boxes, cookies, ice cream, chocolate covered raisins and gift baskets filled with a variety of sweets laying around your home. Today is the day to THROW THE CRAP OUT!

I know that you feel compelled to finish it all off because there are children starving in Africa, but they’d prefer for the US to have money that can be spent on entrepreneurial efforts like Toby Tanser’s Shoe4Africa than by you eating the extra five thousand calories that are laying around tempting you.

It’s time. Your body will thank you, your mind will thank you, your heart will thank you and at the end of the ten week challenge, you will thank you for setting yourself up for success. Go through your refrigerator and cupboards, and pull out anything that isn’t “healthy”. Look for hidden gems. For me, it’s chocolate. Anything chocolate has to go. I’ve learned this from experience that there are some people that can do things in moderation and there are others who are straight up sugar addicts – I’m the latter.

For everything there is a time and as “Uncle Bob” would say “Time’s up!” when it comes to the crap lying around your home. Think of it like the common ceremony of supporting your child as he or she throws their binky into a fire signifying that they are no longer a baby. It’s pretty much the same. For some of you, this will be tough to do, and I can only tell you that simply by doing this one act (and of course by not refilling the coffers with crap) you will avoid putting on 7-15 pounds of fat next year. That’s just grazing fat because the stuff is there.

So enjoy your Tuesday, grab a trash bag and strip your kitchen and your life of anything that is unnecessary and bad for you. Uh oh, I think I hear Cindy calling with a man-sized trash bag of her own. Hope it isn’t meant for me. See you tomorrow!

What if I lost weight and got healthy? What if I stopped making excuses and started making progress? ~ Charles Barkley

First let me be the thousandth person to wish you a very Happy New Year; more importantly, let me wish you a Healthy New Year. And this year, I’ve committed myself to helping any of my friends who want to “lose weight/get healthy and stop making excuses/start making progress” to do so.

Thanks to our friend Nigel, I’ll be helping to support all of our friends in this year’s 10 in 10 Challenge. I participated in this last year and lost a lot more than ten pounds in the first ten weeks of 2011, so I know this is very possible to do.

The key to the success of the folks who participate in this challenge is in its community support. We’re all in this together and through Facebook and Twitter we can support others and in doing so support ourselves.

The 10 in 10 Challenge begins on January 9th, that’s when we’ll all do our first weigh-in, and that means that you can use this week to set yourself up for success beginning from day #1.

Each day this week, I’ll post a quick entry giving you something simple that you can do to start off 2012 and the 10 in 10 Challenge on the right foot.

What do I do today?

Today you only have to do two things, you have to commit to your goal of losing a few pounds and starting off the year by getting healthy, and you have to register for the Challenge. Don’t worry, it’s free, we don’t collect e-mails, there’s nothing nefarious about any of this – just a group of everyday people wanting to improve their lives by starting the year off adopting good habits while they have other friends there to support them doing it.

How do I register?

We use two free primary tools to administer the 10 in 10 Challenge:

Facebook:

Go to https://www.facebook.com/10in10Challenge and “Like” this page. Read through the info page and through the Notes page. When you complete your weigh-ins, post your progress to the wall on this page on facebook so we can all celebrate your progress however small or large that might be! (Trust me, I had a few weeks last year when I gained, but still came out far ahead of my goal.)

Buckeye Outdoors:

Go to http://buckeyeoutdoors.com and create an account. It’s super quick and easy.

Go to http://buckeyeoutdoors.com/training/challenges and join the “10in10 2012″ Challenge

This is where we will record our actual weight loss. The Challenge is set up to begin on January 9th and last 10 weeks.

We’ll show you how to enter your weight in a separate post or you can check out the facebook page to see where we’ve already described how to do this.)

Lastly, if you are a Twitter user, go to https://twitter.com/10_in_10 and “follow” 10_in_10 to keep up to date and engage in the banter there.

You won’t lose 10 pounds or become a healthier person just by registering, but you will have taken the first steps to making this commitment real. I promise you that if you do commit to this, and see it through, the benefits will last long after the ten weeks are over. The little secret is that while the first ten weeks will help you to lose a few extra holiday pounds, by doing so you will adopt better habits and behaviors that will give you more energy, better health and make you feel a whole lot better about what you can accomplish in 2012.

Say hi when yo get onto Buckeye or Twitter, will ya? You can find me as @CoachAdam on the latter. Happy New Year!