Krista’s top ten tips for making the most out of working with your team!

1. Meet with all your players (teammates and opponents) every weekend for a weigh in/discourse/day off meal.  The meeting keeps everyone involved and the weigh in keeps everyone honest!   Even if you don’t want a group weigh-in, have the meeting. It gives everyone a chance to ask questions, share strategies,  recipes, successes and challenges. It’s invaluable.

2. You get your communication points for an email or a text message, but try actually getting on the phone with a teammate once a day. It’s great to actually talk it out – to celebrate your successes, and vent your frustrations in a more personal way than typing allows.

3. Have a night out or a meal off with your team. Again, the more cohesive you are as a team, the more responsible you will feel for your scores (and the more driven to kick the opposing team’s collective ass!)

4. If you’re a wiz in the kitchen, share recipes with your team. (And if you want some really good karma, share them with your opponents as well.)

5. Meet a teammate at the gym or park each day (or even one day a week) for a shared workout. It’s always a great way to keep each other accountable and motivated.  Better yet, meet an opponent and race them on the treadmill!

6. When you are considering losing snacking points – say, you’re overcome with an urge for one of the fresh donuts someone just brought to work – call a teammate! Tell them you’re desperate for a donut! It will do three things. Firstly, it’ll create a pause which may be enough to give the craving time to subside. Second, it’ll give you an opportunity to talk about whatever it is that’s driving you toward that donut. Sure, it could just be a physical craving,  but more often, it’s a mood or a feeling you’re looking to avoid. Talking it out will help. Third, it’ll give your teammate a chance to talk you through all the reasons you don’t need the donut and shouldn’t waste the points (and this may help him or her as much as he or she’s helping you.)

7. Get together with a teammate each Sunday night and do your cooking for the week. It makes the cooking a social event and that way it doesn’t feel like a chore.

8. Write a motivational email to your whole team once a day.

9. Write a funny smacktalking email to your opponents once a day and cc your whole team. There is nothing to keep everyone going like funny, healthy competitive ranting.

10. Share your successes with your team each day. If you have a perfect or near perfect day, write or call and brag about it! And even more important, if you have a slip and lose points, write your whole team on the day it happened and explain what happened and why and how. It keeps you accountable and you will be far less likely to do the same thing tomorrow!