Tag Archives: the-diet-channel

The state of the diet

December 1st, 2006

I’ve been asked in many ways about the state of the-diet. I’ve put off an update until I had chosen a direction to go with it since I’m now in a different stage of the diet than I was before.

It took me about 20 weeks to get close to my goal. I never actually reached the numerical goal I had set (180 pounds), but I was happy to have gotten where I did (185 pounds). Then we moved which made my dieting posts screech to a halt.

Since then I have gotten settled into our new home and dealing with everything that brings. On November 1st I joined the gym for the first time in my life. Eliza and I got 1-year memberships and since then we have been getting to the gym on a regular basis (except this week since I’ve been sick).

I suppose the gym, and those that joined with us, have been my support system rather than the Web, and so I was not keeping up with updates. However I feel as though I might have been leaving all of you in the dark when you were just getting started on your journey, and so I’m sorry about that.

When we started the diet, it was all of you that really helped me to be successful. My wife and my friends played large roles in my losing weight, but those of you that joined the diet had a profound effect on me. A sense of not being alone in my plight nor my delight of incremental loses. Every-time I had a failure on my diet I was picked up by nice comments about how all of you have had similar hardships. Or, when I did really well I was congratulated. This was vital to my success.

So, to pick up the ball once again, I’ve decided to start cataloging the process that happens after you “reach” your goal. The process of maintenance and making sure that the same thing that happened before (to get me as fat as I was) does not happen again. And since I’ve joined the gym, I’ll throw in an update on that front too. I will start keeping a catalog of my progress of cardio, lifting weights, and general activity through the winter months.

To help keep this thing growing a little I will try to keep up my evangelical work on how the diet has succeeded for me – but for those of you still trying to lose weight I asked that you also keep everyone else involved in your progress. This ship has far more than one captain. Every single one of us has made a decision to be on the diet and as such we should all try our best to keep each other on point with that decision.

I sincerely appreciate all of you that have “called me out” on not keeping up-to-date with this. Hopefully I can do a much better job in the near, and distant future. I’ll start by updating the diet pages over the weekend with the latest information. If you have changed your URL, gotten a Flickr account, or anything else – send me an email and I’ll get it updated for you.

I really need all of you who have participated on the diet to help me out. Help me to get this thing going again and really to keep it going. If I miss a week or two (or if any of us do) let us all try to pick up the slack where we can. This diet is not something that stops just because the scale reads a certain number, this will continue for our entire lives. Thanks in advance for anything you can do.

A note about prizes since I was asked where all the prizes are. The diet pages, as I said before, are grossly out-of-date. The Diet Channel has decided to give anyone that wants a diet a diet if they will take their posts and put them on their site. So, no contest really – but they would like you to tell you story on their site. If you want more information on this let me know and I will provide it as best as I can. They also made the diet a success and we don’t want to forget about them.

Oh! Don’t forget to join the Flickr group, if you have not already. It is free, and if you don’t have a blog it is a quick way to post your progress. If you are reading about the diet for the first time, and want to join, send me an email and I will put you on the list of dieters.

[tags]the-diet, diet, gym, flickr, dieting, the diet channel[/tags]
[slug]dec06-diet-update[/slug]

A sponsor, a contest, and new dieters

June 15th, 2006

Wow, I have been chomping at the bit to tell all of you what has been going on, and now I finally can. When 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

The diet channel logo

Official sponsor: The Diet Channel
Learn more about them, and the sponsorship.

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.

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