Andy Hough

The $100 Weight Loss Challenge

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I set a goal of losing 50 pounds this year and have made almost no progress towards that goal. To provide myself with some more motivation I am launching the $100 weight loss challenge. If you have been reading this blog for a while you may remember the $500 weight loss challenge, which was a complete failure. I think the reasons that I failed at that challenge was because the goal was too big and the end of the challenge was too far off. This allowed me to keep procrastinating until it was too late to meet the challenge.

The $100 challenge will be a short term challenge. My goal is to lose 5 pounds by August 15, 2012 or I’ll pay $100 to the readers. This deadline is soon enough that I should realize I need to start working on it immediately. My current weight is 217.8 pounds. My goal weight will be 212.8 pounds. This should be easily doable.

My weight is down from 220.4 pounds on Sunday. It seems that having a slow carb breakfast is leading to weight loss. It is hard to believe that having bacon and eggs for breakfast would cause me to lose weight but I haven’t otherwise changed my diet or exercise habits. For the challenge I’ll be making a second meal a day slow-carb and doing my version of the kettlebell swings from The 4-Hour Body. I might also try cold showers and ice packs.

To participate in the challenge leave a comment on this post. The first 20 people to leave a comment will receive a $5 Amazon gift card or $5 PayPal cash if I don’t meet my weight loss goal. That is the stick approach. For the carrot I’ll be allowing myself to spend $100 on something for myself guilt-free if I meet the goal.

I won’t have an extra $100 on August 15th unless I earn some more money before then so the challenge should also motivate me to make more money.

The Minimum Effective Dose and Blogging

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I recently read The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris and it had several ideas in it that I found interesting. One of them is the minimum effective dose. The book explains that the minimum effective dose is the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. Applying the MED to exercise Ferris determines the least necessary to maximize size gain. According to him less than 30 minutes of gym time per week is needed. I’m more concerned with weight loss than size gain so I will test that at a later time.

For weight loss the book tells how a woman was able to lose 100 pounds with 20 minutes of exercise twice a week. The MED for weight loss is just 40 minutes of exercise a week. That seems easily achievable sounds so I’m going to do it and see how it works. She also had a slow carb breakfast. I’ve been doing that since I haven’t been able to stay on a complete slow carb diet, but just having a slow carb breakfast is easy. I’m not sure that will be enough for me and am thinking of switching to two slow carb and one carb meal a day. That will depend on my results with the current setup.

If the MED actually works it would mean I could achieve one of my major goals without too much effort. Since I like the idea of doing the minimum I’m trying to think of how to apply the MED to blogging. I’m not sure if the MED applies to blogging since you can do a lot of work before it ceases to be effective. Currently I’m not even doing the minimum so I need to determine what the minimum is. I’m thinking of setting a goal of writing one post a day. I have three blogs this is a minimal amount of writing for them. I’m still thinking of other ways to apply the MED to blogging. How would you apply the MED to blogging?

June Income – $843.99

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Here is a breakdown of my income for May.

Online Income

 $497.67

Interest

$0.08

Stock Dividends

$55.10

Cash Back

$33.64

Bank Bonus

 $25

Mystery Shopping

$232.50

Total

$843.99

My income continues to decline. My online income is still down and will probably be even lower this month.  I’m hoping it will rebound after this month.  Luckily I have some passive and alternative streams of income to help make up for the reduced online income.   I didn’t sell anything in June and have only sold one thing so far in July.  I need to get busy selling stuff the rest of the month.  My interest income has declined to the point that it doesn’t really deserve it’s own category any more.  I’m scaling back on mystery shopping this month but most shops pay the month after you do them so it will be a month before the decline shows up.  I will have some job income this month but I need to find some more ways to increase my income.  This level of income will not pay my bills and pay off my debts.

June Expenses – $1300.56

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for June.

Household

$35.68
Entertainment

$58.59

Transportation

 $847.53

Food

$135.19
Legal $93.60
Travel $47.03
Phone

$26.81
Health

$56.13

Total

 $1300.56

 

My expenses were still higher than I like in June. The biggest expense was for transportation.  It will likely be my biggest expense for quite a while but I’d like to get it down.  I spent almost $500 on gas in June. I’d like to reduce that this month.  I thought I’d reduce it in June, but I ended up taking another long trip at the end of the month.  I thought I could keep my expenses at about $700 for June, but that turned out to not be realistic.  I’m hoping I can at least get my expenses under $1000 this month.  That will be difficult because I’ve got to spend quite a bit of money in order to make a little money working as an extra.  I’ll get my expenses under control eventually.

 

Last Minute Road Trip Changes

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I was looking forward to going to the blogger meetup in St. Louis today to begin my latest road trip. My plans changed after receiving an email Thursday afternoon offering me a chance to be a movie extra for a couple weeks. The only catch was that I had to be in Atlanta by 11am the next day. It is a 12 hour drive to Atlanta from where I live. I decided it was doable, tied up a few loose ends, and hit the road.

I did manage to make it there on time. If everything goes right I should be working four days next week and another four days the week after that. The movie I’m going to be working in is “Devil’s Knot” and stars Reese Witherspoon. It is based on a true story and looks like it should be a good movie.

I was extremely tired by the time I was done with the 11am meeting. Since temperatures were over 100 degrees sleeping in the back of my van wasn’t much of an option. My brother lives just 2 1/2 hours away, but as tired as I was I didn’t think it was smart to drive even that far. I broke down and got a motel room for the night. I will be staying at my brother’s this weekend at least. I’m not sure where I’ll stay while doing the movie. If I have to add lodging expenses to my gas expense working on the movie won’t be a very profitable venture. It should be a fun experience at least.