Weight slump over for most community teams

For most people, pants falling down is the stuff of nightmares. The Community Challenge teams see it as tangible proof that they are making a real change. A member of the Wood Dale Warriors is down from a size 13 jean to a size nine, and is not stopping there: she is using her recent success as motivation to increase her workout schedule to twice per day. Both the Itasca iFit Buddies and Team Carol Stream also reported losing their pants, in a good way.

It seems the mid-challenge slump is ending, and the teams are back on track with meeting their goals. Kathy Wasicki, captain of Hoffman Estates’ Witness the Fitness, described one of her team member’s emotional triumph as she weighed in under 200 pounds. Lisa Bradley, of the Warrenville Lollapalosers, finally reached her goal of taking 10,000 steps in a single day, and Penny Thrawl reached her goal of taking 70,000 steps in a week.

It might have been a bit of St. Patrick’s Day luck, or maybe the ubiquitous green decorations kept the teams thinking about vegetables, but the teams checked in this past week in much higher spirits than in previous weeks. The temptations of greasy bar food and green-tinted alcohol did not have much power over the Community Challenge teams.

Instead of partaking in unhealthy traditions, the teams kept pushing forward with their routines. The Des Plaines Bruisers continue to read up on health and wellness, taking turns finding a health-focused article to share with the team each week.

This week they found inspiration from an article on a somewhat unlikely healthy hero: Nicole Polizzi, famous as “Snooki” on the television show “Jersey Shore.”

Mundelein’s Park View Fittest team meets for a healthy lunch on Fridays and the Schaumburg Shedders’ cardio workouts with their trainer, Gina Phillips, get a little more intense every week with names like Body Attack and Body Combat.