…and we’re off!  The challenge officially started on Monday 7th January, however we understand that some of you were so ready for the challenge that you polished off your mince pies, hastily chomped through the Christmas chocolate and started on 1st January.  This is fine too, just remember to count 8 weeks from when you started… unless of course you wanted to do a few more days!  The important thing is to start.  That’s often the hardest part, so you’re already winning!

So, scores on the doors so far.  We have around 100 colleagues taking part in the challenge across 19 teams, which is brilliant!  So thank you all for stepping up to the challenge.

We will use a mix of Facebook and this website to publish stories and share ideas and progress so please do come and visit to see what everyone else is up to.  Please also send us your photos and stories as you have been doing so far.  Thank you to the team captains for allowing us to nominate you!  Your help relaying messages, stories and photos is much appreciated.  Just a quick reminder for anyone who still wishes to return their photographic consent form, please do so, so you can join in the fun sharing!

So let’s meet some of the teams and see what they have been up to already…

These lovely ladies are Heart and Sole and have been putting their hearts and souls into their work outs.  Go team Heart and Sole!  Based in Somerville (Westbury Fields), they have been hard at work in the gym, they’ve also been making sensible food and drink choices as you can see to the right.

Good work ladies, that lunch looks delicious!  Heart and Sole have been very active in sharing what they have been doing with each other via a message group and have really worked hard to keep each other motivated.  They may well be a hard team to beat!  Who’s up for the challenge?

Maybe team Zumbalicious from Head Office?  At the top of this post, you can see them during their Zumba class.  They certainly have been working up a sweat!  But you know what, it looks like they’ve had a really great time taking part in the challenge and doing the class.  Go team Zumbalicious!

We’ve had some really interesting and thoughtful pledges and it’s really encouraging to see the positive changes that people are looking to make to their well-being.  The most popular ones are:

Exercise more

Drink more water

Eat more of the recommended 5 a day (fruit and veg)

Lose weight

Stop or reduce the amount of sweet treats (easier said than done at work!)

We’ve had some that were amusing such as to stop swearing!  And some really lovely ones:

Read the book I borrowed in September!

Meet new people

Have some more “me” time

It has been good to see the variety in the pledges; to improve our well-being will mean something different to each of us.  Once we have received all the pledges (please don’t forget to send them to us!), we will be posting more information about things you can do, so please do visit again.

When the 8 weeks are up (around 3rd March) make sure that you re-do the quiz and send us your answers promptly so that we can announce the winners shortly after.  Remember there is up to £200 (based on a team of 6 people) at stake!!!

As an aside, whilst looking for something in the HR office, I stumbled across this in a cupboard:

I was reliably informed by the HR team Cupcakes Anonymous that the skipping rope was indeed for skipping and the Prosecco bottles were being used as weights… I’ll let you make your own minds up about this one…

Good luck to all taking part in the challenge!  Come and visit this site for more information about how we can support you during the challenge.