Sunday, April 11, 2010

Reward Points for Motivation

I developed a point system to earn rewards as I go. I am not going to share exactly what they are because some are quite personal, but all are related to my health, both mental and physical. I can earn points for positive behaviors and lose points for negative ones. Every day, I will post the percentage of points earned (based on how many I could have earned). There are penalties and rewards based on those percentages.


Daily penalties:
below 50% - no computer except for posting my fitness blog update
below 60% - 30 extra push ups

Weekly penalties:
below 50% - yard work
below 60% - extra cardio on rest day

Weekly rewards:
above 70% - extra coffee on Sunday
above 80% - a few hours to myself to read a book & listen to music

I want to have a different reward for each month, if I reach 70% or better.

April - $20 gift card at Kitchen Collection
May - buy new dress for step-daughter's graduation
June - pair of 25 pound weight plates
July - something related to my trip to see  my friend Jenn
August - go see Eclipse
September - Richmond Science Museum
October - My Chemical Romance album

If I get 70% or better for the whole shebang, I can buy my Turbo Fire program.

4 comments:

Melty said...

Are you sure you're not being too strict with yourself with the food? Not taking AP for the weight workouts and subsequently restricting your intake to FF sounds like it's one of those things that makes the whole thing harder on you. I know you've said in the past when you restrict too much you lose control. I took 2 AP for yesterday. I think it's an accurate number. I looked up some calorie expenditure stuff online for weight training and it came to 200-something calories. Just around where I thought it would be. I'd say three or four depending on longer workout days.

I'm glad you called this phase a break-in. Makes me feel better because I was thinking it was way to easy and that I was never going to progress and maybe regress with a workout like this. Even though I've seen the whole schedule, I wasn't thinking ahead. But when you phrased it like that, it clicked and I feel better about it.

I have been thinking about your reward system. I was thinking of doing something similar but I need mine to be much more basic. I don't think I'll continue to follow through or find it motivating if I build one like yours. I'm still thinking about it though.

Becky said...

I'm not restricting myself. I have APs and my weeklies but not as many. And I use those as an excuse to eat things I shouldn't eat anyway. There's nothing wrong with eating only filling foods - there are a LOT of things on that list. Just not junky things.

I don't know why they don't call it the break in phase in the women's book. That is exactly how it's termed in the original. I think we could have skipped it, really. This is not new to us LOL

Becky said...

There is no way that I burn around 200 calories in 30 minutes of weight training. I have to bust my ass to burn that many doing cardio, and ST burns less than that. There are just too many variables for me to trust any calculators for strength training.

Melty said...

You should check the settings on your HRM. I wonder if it's just because you don't weigh much. I did Bosu today for 45 minutes and I burned 433 cals. I do trust it too because I compared it to the calcultor on exrx.net and it was around the same area. 400-something. Maybe you are just THAT fit!