Hi, I’m Colin.

Wow, I have been chomping at the bit to tell all of you what has been going on, and now I finally can. When the-diet started it received an overwhelming amount of response. Family, friends, and then strangers started to join in to get fit. There was no plan for this diet, no one had to follow any strict rules, no promises of certain weight or inch losses were given - yet people were very excited to join us as a group. So, once I saw this response I told myself that I wanted to be responsible for trying to make everyone that joined successful, and to achieve their goals. This entry gets a bit long, so stay with me for a minute.

Hopefully today’s announcement will be seen as a big step in the right direction. One of the challenges that faces us all is the motivation to continue on a strict course towards our goals. I’ve failed at dieting on more than one occasion, and so I was hoping that each of us could provide each other with the motivation to continue. Some of us have stronger wills than others, since this past weekend I didn’t do so well, while others like James Mathias are thriving on the diet.

Still going strong, super proud of myself I’ve made it two weeks and one day without cheating on my diet, and since I got the [basketball] hoop I haven’t missed my exercise either. — James Mathias

As with all things though, this diet of ours could get stale - people could move on and some have yet to really participate. (I’m looking at Bryan Veloso here). So I thought, what could I do to keep everyone involved? How could I build incentive to stick with the weigh-ins, the updates, the overall participation each and every week? That is where our first official sponsor of the diet, The Diet Channel, comes in. After a little noodling, Brad Prescott (General Manager for The Diet Channel, you can read his personal letter to all of you) and I were able to put together a program that I think will help to keep everyone involved with the diet.

We’re going to start “a contest” of sorts. Not necessarily a weight-loss challenge because our goal is not to shed as many pounds as possible, but rather to stick with our diets to reach our goals and maintain a healthy weight far into the future. This takes time, discipline, and support. So, how do you participate in this contest? We’ve put together a simple set of instructions on how to be eligible for this contest. Simply put, you need to weigh-in each and every Tuesday, and link to both The Diet Channel’s web site, and the diet’s web site. Quick and easy.

But what do you win? Well, we thought about this for awhile, and rather than give away traditional prizes we’d rather give all of you something useful - that would help you succeed on your respective diets. Remember, this isn’t “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, this is Colin’s diet. So bear that in mind.

We’ve put together a list of “prizes” which are diets that you can choose from that The Diet Channel will sponsor you to do. In effect, if you’ve ever wanted to try out the South Beach Diet (as an example), we’ll fit the bill. For each month that you continue to use that diet, let The Diet Channel know about your progress, and they will continue to sponsor you. It really is a win win, and hopefully everyone will find a diet that fits their needs.

So, as a recap - each Wednesday (since our weigh-ins are on Tuesdays) we will pick two “winners” by reading all of the entries written on your blogs. We’ll notify the winner, and The Diet Channel, and you can choose if you want to get involved with any of the specific diets on the list. But there’s something more… Each month, we’ll pick one winner for another prize. This prize will be some sort of tangible product, though we’re not releasing any information about that prize just yet.

If you have any questions about this contest, please feel free to email me and hopefully I can help you out.

We also have a few new dieters that were added to the all new dieter listing page. It is absolutely crucial that this list remain as up to date as possible. So if you are on this list, and you have a web site that I did not link to, please send me a quick note. If you are not even on this list, send me a note right now! And, if you have not given me your full name - please do so - as we’re all friends here.

The entire diet page has been updated with tons of information and I ask that each of you participating in this diet take a few minutes to review the new information. If I missed something, it probably means I forgot about it and so you’d do well to inform me. I’m really hoping that these moves will really help everyone stay involved, keep dieting, and ultimately remain healthy.

Buttons for your site - So, Ana thought it’d be cool to have some buttons. I couldn’t agree more. If you would like to put some buttons on your site, linking to either the diet page or The Diet Channel (as Ana has done) - you can use these graphics. If you need any specific sizes, just ask.

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[tags]diet, the-diet, sponsorship, the diet channel, contest[/tags]