The First Week

Today is day five of the 100 day heart challenge and the end of the first work week/beginning of the first weekend.

If you are wondering, here is what the 100 day heart challenge is all about:

"A 100-day competition sponsored by Utah Valley Regional Medical Center to see which woman in Utah County can make the most improvement in her heart health. Women are consulted by highly skilled heart physicians at the onset of the contest, then throughout the 100-day challenge. A number of tests are performed at the beginning and conclusion of the challenge to gauge the success and improvement of participants. The woman showing the greatest improvement wins the challenge."

This competition has been open to the community for a couple of years. This year, Intermountain decided to not only do the "community" challenge, where any woman in the county (meeting the criteria) can apply to participate, but also to do an "employee" challenge that, as you might guess, is only employess of Intermountain Urban South Region. I am so thankful to have been chosen as one of the fifteen women to participate in this employee challenge.

On Monday of this week, we all presented to the Wellness Center here on our hospital campus and had the following tested/checked: blood pressure, pulse, cholesterol, Glucose, waist circumfrence, height and yes...the dreaded...weight. After that, we met with Janet Frank, Media Manager for the Urban South Region, who explained all we will be doing during the next 100 days. We also heard from Traci Heiner, who works in Cardiac Rehab at our facility and Jessica Campbell, a Registered Dietician who works in Clinical Nutrition at our facility. We also met two of the trainers, young women who have accomplished all they need for their degree in Exercise Science from BYU, except for an internship...enter 100 day heart challenge!

We had a delicious breakfast and signed up for a time to meet with our trainer to establish an exercise regimen.

I am really looking forward to learning about nutrition at our weekly classes on Wednesdays and to getting a good workout six days a week, but especially on Thursday, when I get to work out with my trainer, Heidi!