Hey there! Happy Monday to all.

Today I wanted to a recap of my New Year’s Nutrition Boot Camp. This was a 6-week program that involved working on 1 weekly nutrition-related challenge. Here were our weekly challenges:

• Week 1: drink 8 cups of water per day
• Week 2: get enough fiber!
• Week 3: meet recommended fruit servings
• Week 4: eat enough vegetables
• Week 5: pump up that protein at breakfast
• Week 6: keep track of your added sugar

The purpose of these challenges was to build a foundation for healthy eating. Because if you are doing all of these ^^^^^^ then you’re probably going to be less likely to mindlessly snack, eat a ton of desserts or drink calorie-filled, sugary beverages.

Feedback from Challenges

Big changes with water intake

Many people felt that they saw big changes when they increased their water intake to 8 cups daily. I heard everything from feeling better, not as hungry and an increase in weight loss. This makes perfect sense because adequate hydration lays the groundwork for healthy eating.

Hard to Meet Protein at Breakfast

This did not surprise me at all. It’s exactly why we don’t eat enough protein at breakfast to begin with. You definitely need to plan in advance and strategically pick food if you’d like to meet protein goals.

Participation Dwindled Towards the end

Just as many New Year’s goals, people started out strong and then dropped off at the end. I completely expected this.

Added Sugar

The very last challenge was just to keep track of added sugar. Many participants said they never thought to pay attention to this. Checking out the added sugar in a product can tell you a lot about the healthfulness. Manufacturers are sneaky!

What I Learned

I have always wanted to lead some sort of challenge like this and it was definitely a learning experience! A few things I wasn’t anticipating but definitely learned from:

Motivation– Helping people find something from within that keeps them sticking to their goals is a big part of being a dietitian. And it can be hard! I’d definitely like to learn more about motivational interviewing and goal setting.

Challenges are a lot of work– Okay, I should have known this going into it, but there were A LOT of moving pieces to creating weekly challenges, from drafting emails in Mailchimp to creating worksheets to writing out the actual challenges.

6 weeks is too long- I think 4 weeks would probably be better next time for a New Year’s Challenge!

Quality over Quantity- I really wanted to have at least 100 people in this challenge. I don’t know why I arbitrarily picked 100 but it sounded like a good number. It turned out that 75 people signed up. In the end, I mostly appreciated the small handful of people who really engaged and participated in the challenge. Knowing that my advice could help them in some way was awesome! It really had nothing to do with the numbers.

Challenge Winner

Congrats to Heather for winning the challenge with the most points. Please email me so I can send you your gift card!!!

Question for you

Did you make a health or fitness related New Year’s Resolution? If so, have you kept it so far?

Have a good day!!