Participants have reached the half way point this past week, losing a total of 164.8 pounds after the weigh-ins on Thursday and Friday. During the weekly workouts many of the instructors saw all of the ellipticals being used by ‘Fit for Lifers’ and were doing the workout together. Week six’s cardiovascular workout was intervals on the elliptical. Instructors noticed there was one person watching the time, and the other three were following. The person watching the time would tell everyone when to go at their maximum effort and when to slow it down for recovery. This is a great thing to see because they are all pushing each other to do the intervals and go as hard as they can.

As participants weigh in each week they are looking at the scale wondering how much fat they have lost, and how much muscle they have gained. The scale the participants weigh in on every week is able to tell us what the participants body weight is, body mass index, percent of body fat, visceral fat level, percent of skeletal muscle, and body age. Many of these numbers may mean nothing to a person, but each of the participants looks at each one of these. The main measurements/numbers that we track are the participant’s body weight, percent of body fat, visceral fat levels, and the percent of skeletal muscle. When participants first weighed in they were very curious to find out what each of these meant. Now that they are aware of these, they are curious if any have changed, which is normal and may possibly drive them to work harder. These numbers may vary from scale to scale and test to test, and have a rate of error for each measurement. ‘Fit for Life’ uses these numbers as a beginning base, and keep measuring the participants each week with the same scale on the same type of surface. When the program is complete, we will be able to measure the change that they have made, and show each participant the changes that have occurred.

There is a mentality a person has to have when doing the weekly challenges, especially when it is something they do not like. This was noticed this week. There are some participants that did not do this week’s challenge, and some who were not looking forward to the challenge but pushed through and got it done. Week six’s challenge was to see how many times they could get onto the box by doing lateral jumps or step ups in 90 seconds. One of the participants did not think she was able to do more than 10 of them, but when she put her mind to it she more than tripled the number she thought she could do. Many participants are very driven, and for those who cannot get the motivation to do all they are capable of, they have a team standing behind them pushing them to succeed.