Community
Electrical generating plant located in Chehalis Washington
My success story isn't directed to one person, it is directed to our plant. We are an electrical generating plant located in Chehalis Washington, which last September was purchased by Pacificorp. It was through Pacificorp that we found out about the 100 day challenge and we took to it right away. All 17 employees here at the time decided to get involved, we divided into four separate teams (which allowed for some "internal" competition), and we set about changing the way we lived. We have five two-man operational teams which rotate between days and nights, and the rest of our personnel are Monday - Friday dayshift people.
Let me run you through a typical day at Chehalis Power (prior to the challenge):
- At 7:00 am, we all meet in the Control Room for our morning meeting.
- Around 9:00 am, we usually have a vendor come in with doughnuts, cookies, or whatever else a vendor would bring in OR we would send someone into town for doughnuts, bagels, or whatever else sounded good for the day (chips, etc.)
- At 11:30 am, we have lunch where you would be able to see "fast food" bags from the local establishments. Occasionally we would all order pizza or have a bar-b-que lunch where we usually would deep fry up 5 to 10 lbs of french fries.
- At 2:30 pm, we would meet in the lunch room for our afternoon break which would often include root beer floats or something one of our wives would make (cake, brownies, "pudding surprise", etc.).
- At 6:30 pm, the night shift would come in and finish off the goodies that the day shift left.
- The next day we would start over and do it all again.
Now we didn't do this every day, but as I look back it did happen a lot and by looking at our work force, there were visual reminders of how we were eating.
Once the challenge started, we started holding each other accountable (especially the people on your own team). Our internal competition was that the losing team (one with the lowest percentage of weight loss) would have to provide lunch to the other teams. We tried to come up with funny team names, the competition was fun, and the camaraderie was great. We would weigh ourselves in the Control Room (so everyone else could see) every Wednesday and we had a weekly update showing individual % weight loss as well as each teams % weight loss. It was fun following each others progress and I believe there were several people who attained weights that they hadn't seen for along time (myself included).
Some of the things that happened as a result of the challenge:
- We would have a daily fitness challenge (push-ups, pull-ups, walk the plant stairs, etc.).
- Our snacks were now "healthy". We even made this challenging. We put the letters of the alphabet into a bowl, and if you were going to town to get snacks, you would pick a letter and your snack would have to start with that letter. If you pulled the letter "F", you might bring Fuji Apples. I picked the letter "U" and checked every store in the area until I found one who would order Ugli fruit for me (it took me a week and a half).
- We conditioned our vendors into bringing in different things (vegetable trays, fruit, etc.).
- There were several "side bets" going between the guys, in fact this Friday one of the payoffs is $100 worth of sushi.
- As a plant we lost 318 lbs total or 8.47% per person (we had 5 of 17 people lose >10% each)
- We are having another weigh in 100 days AFTER the challenge ended (July 31) to see how we are doing. I don't know of any side wagers going on just yet, but I am sure there will be some!
Overall, if I may be so bold to talk for our plant, the challenge was a great thing to do. I know I feel better, less nagging aches and pains, and I don't hear as many complaints of similar things. We look forward to next years challenge however we are a bit concerned. For some of us we don't have much more to lose and we certainly don't want to get back to where we were "pre-challenge". We don't know what kind of bets we can make (but I am sure we will come up with something)!
Anyway, that is OUR success and I really do consider it a success.
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