PruHealth Vitality Experience - month 1 feedback thread with WEEKLY prizes for non participants.....

[AnnMumsnet]

You may recall we have recruited 10 willing volunteers to take part in the Mumsnet PruHealth Vitality Experience - this is running until mid March. This is the feedback thread for the participants to share their feedback with you all.

As PruHealth are so very keen for as many MNers as possible to experience the benefits offered by their Vitality programme each week there will be an incentive (see below for chance to win a £50 Nectar card) offered to non participants to read how the volunteers are getting on and to share your own tips, experiences and opinions. Bookmark this thread and keep an eye out for updates across the next few weeks....

PruHealth say "We believe the more you look after yourself, the healthier you feel. That's why we offer our customers Vitality when they buy our health insurance. Vitality is the world's largest incentive-based wellness programme and can make getting and staying healthy both easier and cheaper, but also reward you for all of your hard work!"

The Vitality Experience kicked off in style at PruHealth HQ in London on Friday 17th January. Here participants were given everything they need for the experience - including a Vitality Healthcheck, advice on healthy eating from a qualified nutritionist and an exercise plan designed by a personal trainer.

Each week participants will be presented with a new Vitality benefit - from earning additional Nectar points when you buy healthy foods at Sainsbury's, taking advantage of discounts at Virgin Active or treating the family to a trip to the cinema! Vitality aims to make healthy living fun, easy and rewarding.

Here's the full schedule of the Vitality Experience:

Week 1 - Get Gyming - Kick start your January resolutions with a free 2-month pass to a Virgin Active gym and £50 to spend on new gym gear at Sweatshop.
Week 2 - 5-a-Day - Get £50 worth of Nectar points to spend on healthy food choices at Sainsbury's.
Week 3 - Step It Up - Get motivated to increase your daily step count with your new FitBug pedometer.
Week 4 - Family Treat - Take the family out on a trip to the cinema with £40 worth of vouchers to either Cineworld or Vue cinemas.
Week 5 - Half-Term & Half-Time - Check in with your personal trainer for a free 1hr session to boost your gym routine.
Week 6 - Discounts Dispensed - Get £25 worth of vouchers to test drive our up to 50% cashback at Lloyds Pharmacy benefit.
Week 7 - Choose Your Reward - Take your pick between discounts to Merlin attractions, National Trust parks or travel with Eurostar, Mark Warner or Mr & Mrs Smith getaways.
Week 8 - Wrap Up - Finish the Vitality Experience with a day of pampering at Champney's spa.

Week 1 - Get Gyming
Vitality Experience Participants: please share on this thread:
How you found the welcome day - what did you enjoy, what worried you, how did you find meeting other MNers? Why did you want to take part? Pick three words to sum up the day.

Please share how you're getting on with the gym: have you been before? What did your family think / say? What did you buy with your Sweatshop voucher? How did you feel the next day? Do you think it's given you the push to start going regularly? How do you fit it into your schedule?

Non Participants - gyms and you - discuss!
Now that we're in the middle of January, how are your resolutions for a fitter 2014? Share your stories and thoughts about gyming and you and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £50 pre-loaded Nectar card (prize draw Monday 27th at 9am) NOW CLOSED

Week 2: - is all about healthy food choices (w/c 27-1). PruHealth with Vitality members can earn five times the amount of Nectar points they normally would by buying certain foods. As well they earn 1 Vitality point for each £2 is spent on healthy foods once they have linked their nectar card to their account.

Vitality Experience Participants - please share on this thread: At the welcome day you had a presentation from Sally Nash, the nutritionist with EnergiseYou -

~ What would you say was the key message you took away from her presentation and what did you learn?
~ What healthy foods have found their way into your trolley since then and what are you planning to buy this week with your Nectar card?
~ How's the rest of the programme going - we'd love to hear what you've done!

Non Participants - what's your best tip for including your 5-a-day in family meals? NOW CLOSED
~ Share your best tips for getting the 5-a-day into family meals or share a fruit or veg packed recipe on this thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £50 pre-loaded Nectar card NOW CLOSED

Week 3
The third week is about increasing the number of steps you take every day and finding ways to fit 'steps' around your lifestyle. PruHealth with Vitality members can earn points for the number of steps they take each day. Start earning once you've taken over 7,000 a day - the more steps, the more points.

Vitality Experience Participants: please share on this thread:

~ How are you getting on with your new FitBug pedometer?
~ How many steps are you taking each day? Does this surprise you? Disappoint you?
~ What tips can you share for increasing your steps per day.

Non Participants - what's your best tip for increasing the steps you take each day? Add your comment below to be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £50 pre-loaded Nectar card! Share your top tips for making it easy to get more steps into your daily life on this thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £50 pre-loaded Nectar card (prize draw Monday 10th Feb at 9am). NOW CLOSED

Week 4
Family Treat Week
PruHealth say "The very heart of Vitality is focussed on wellness and making healthy choices cheaper, easier and well-rewarding for our members. The weekly cinema ticket incentive is one of our most popular as it gives members the opportunity to treat themselves to a night at the cinema as a reward for their efforts to lead a healthier lifestyle. Small changes, big rewards."

Participants please share what film you are seeing or have seen with your Cineworld/ Vue voucher and what treats you like to enjoy generally with your family. How do you think the treat and reward element of the PruHealth with Vitality plan works?

Non participants...with half term coming up what treats do you have in store for your family? What are your families fav films?
~ Add your comment and you will be entered into a prize draw where one person will win a £50 preloaded Nectar card. Prize draw Monday 17 Feb at 9am. NOW CLOSED

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Many thanks for my nectar card -it has arrived already - fantastically efficient!

Non participants
Hi I have a few ideas for increasing steps like getting onyour stepper while watching tv and marching on the spot when cooking dinner or washing dishes.
When the kids come home from school have a game of football or tag that should do the trick

Non-participant -

Ways to increase my steps: we live out in the sticks so pretty much have to drive to most places, so the best tip I have is when we do park somewhere, if it's the shops, supermarket, school, park, cinema, to park not as close so we have to walk a little bit to get to where we need to be. So for the supermarket, park at the furthest away space and walk to the shop. Fortunately you can wheel your shopping back in the trolley!!

not a participant.

I try to keep separate money I would have spent on buses/tubes/petrol/car parking when I walk instead. I then put the money towards treats as an incentive to keep me walking!

I have been fitbugging since week one & it's been a bit if a love/hate thing really. Some days I can find it really motivating, others quite the opposite!
It has made me realise how sedentary my job is, so I try a lot harder now to have a couple of minutes moving around from my desk. On work days I'm doing well if I get over 5,000 steps though it is creeping up as I am putting the effort in. Ironically it's gym days that I get the most steps in as I have to walk a fair distance to get to it as it is nowhere near public transport.
I don't think I am getting the most from my fitbug as there are so many more bits to it, but as Willem said there are only so many hours in a day. It would be good if you did MFP or the like.

Does anyone think that those negative heel shoes help in increasing the 'quality' of the step (given that mine are a little few and far between). I have heard they do, but wonder if it is all nonsense.

Can I sound a bit ungrateful and say I don't like my fitbug much? I've got a fitbit flex, which I wear on my wrist and don't have to remember to put it on and off each morning! I understand there is a fitbug that does the same, and I think give the choice I'd go for that! I'm also paranoid about putting it through the washing machine!

Since using it regularly though, I've found it really interesting to see how my daily activity varies. Since going on maternity leave, with a small baby it's very easy to do not much activity at all - I used to walk a minimum of an hour a day to and from tube stations/home/office! I do try and get out most days for a walk with E and have been checking to see how many steps it is to the various places we go - sainsburys is further away then Tescos and waitrose so added incentive to go! We don't have a car, and now I don't have a travel card, each journey costs me actual money as well, which is a pretty good incentive to walk!

If E stays asleep once we're out, I do try and keep walking, often round the park close to my house so that when she decides she needs feeding, we can get home quickly! I also find with the pram that it's often easier to walk to and from town, rather than try and get on a bus. This also involves a lot of up and down hills!

Of course, I then end up with days like the last couple where she has a rotten cold and we've basically hibernated on the sofa, cuddling, feeding and dozing, so my step counts have been shocking!

I now have a good few days-worth of Fitbug stuff to upload, which I shall do tonight, then I'll have a look and see how I've been getting on. I keep forgetting to look at it before midnight, when it resets to zero.

You must have a different Fitbug to me, GwenStacy. I think mine is a Fitbug Go.

Interesting about wearing it on your wrist - I spent a good ten minutes scouring the instruction booklet, the website and the FAQs, but nowhere did it tell me where you are actually supposed to attach the bloody thing! Waist? Wrist? Leg?? I also couldn't work out how to use the strap and clear clip (how small is the print in that instruction book??!), so I just clipped it to my waistband and hoped for the best. It seems to pick up most steps, but not all - sometimes I can walk across the room and the display doesn't change.

Yay I uploaded my fitbug! Most days I get over 10,000 - but almost 20,000?Wow that's good going Williamdefoe!
Cointreau there is quite a delay I've found in it registering the steps, so if you just walk across the room nothing changes. I've just had it clipped to my waistband all this time.
took my kids swimming at the gym on Sunday and they loved it and declared it was the best swimming pool ever! I was meant to be going today but a broken filling, broken dishwasher and lots of work have put paid to that. That's what I find so difficult, making time to go there, whereas walking can be fitted in so much more easily!

CointreauVersial - sorry if I was confusing! I've got a pedometer called a Fitbit which I have had for a while, previous to this. There's a FitBuh (I think it's the Orb?) that can go on your wrist. I've got the same one as all you guys as far as j know!

Non- participant

Walk the school run if its doable for you instead of driving. I don't drive and have to walk 20 mins each way everyday, twice a day. I moan inwardly when the weather is bad but am the fittest I have ever been. It seems to be only short bursts but really makes a huge difference. 20 month old dd has the walking bug- she walked all the way home the other day! I was amazed as my other children would hitch a ride in the buggy any day!

Non tester

Leave the car at home at walk the school run
Park at work as far away from your desk as possible
Use the stairs at all times
Use the ladies that are the furthest away from your desk

I also find that just wearing a pedometer and having an awareness of how many steps I am doing helps me to up my step count.

Non participant

Every time my son needs a nappy change, instead of having a mat downstairs, I take him up to the nursery to change. Up & down the stairs plenty of times a day gets me moving more!

Non participant.

Every time we go out I consider if we could walk if possible. I try to use stair and not lifts if I don't have the pushchair with us. And I chase round after DD a lot!

This fitbug is hilarious. I put it on at lunchtime and it already reckons I've done 11,000 steps. With school run in one direction and nursery drop in the other, and no car, maybe not a surprise. What is funny is that DD1 is crazy about it. She has been marching up and down at bus stops, practising twirls (which register as 10 steps apparently) and went on a huge walk (fopr a 6 year old) after school voluntarily in excitement about getting the figure past the next 1000.
So if you have a non-energetic but but competitive, curious and technology obsessed child, this fitbug is just the ticket.

William I am so impressed with your step count! And if I'm honest, a little bit jealous, as I love to walk. I simply cannot get mine over 10-12,000 and that includes a 5k walk in the evening if I can fit it in.

The problems are that I live very close to the school, so the school run is v short (2 mins) and as I compress my hours I have a nonexistent lunch break, so no walking then, and no time to park further away and walk. I also have a sedentary and v busy job, so am mostly tied to a desk all day.
On my days off, I am trying to get to the gym, but as someone up thread mentioned, this seems to have a negative effect on the the step count.

I am generally not enjoying the gym either (no Morton brown toiletries, cafe, or child-friendly pool for me), and am really resentful of the time it seems to take up, and of being trapped indoors. So I think I'll swap the gym time for a really long walk, and maybe even jog a little.

On the healthy eating note, we had a major fruit breakthrough ths evening when my son discovered he loves oranges! I have never been able to get him to try one, even as a baby. But the last few weeks, instead of pudding, I have been putting a plate of fruit on the table for everyone to eat if they like. He just declared he was going to try some... and ate 2 whole oranges!!

Hi Everyone

Well done with the breakthro' on oranges with your DS, Stripytop - there was a time when DS (when he was a toddler) wouldn't eat any fruit or veggies - seriously (despite being weaned on home-made purees etc....). Now he easily eats enough to get his five-a-day (but upping it to 8 - 10 as suggested at the Vitality Day would, I think, be a challenge too far) quota.....Little by little...

My two tucked into wholemeal pasta without batting an eyelid....So the wholegrain challenge has been a success and we're definitely loving black/red and wild rice - yum! Although I would observe none of these healthier options come as cheap as their less healthy 'white' alternatives...

The walking thing is easy for me because I have no choice, although I do actually love walking. However, this Fitbug challenge is making me realise that although weekdays are easily 'good enough' in terms of steps done, the weekends can be an entirely different story....The weather has been so grotty that the last thing I want to do is opt to go for a walk in the lashing rain etc.....Why would you? And as I said my feet get quite a pounding from all the walking I do and sometimes they need to rest...

And yes, I wonder how many parents, and Mums in particular, do have time enough to do everything else and fit in going to the gym regularly too? The ones I know who do a) live virtually on top of school and the gym (so their school run is seconds rather than minutes even) and or have older children so don't lose precious time doing the school run anyway.... I can easily see that in child-free days going would easily fit into the day either en route to or from work....but it's not so easy when factoring in children too old to be put in the creche but not old enough to be entirely self-sufficient.....

I guess it all evens out.....If you could fit in a super-walk once a week (to get up to 20,000 steps - but note to reach that I did 3 hours - not all in one go though - walking on Monday) that will help you for the days when couch-potatodom is the only sensible and desirable option - grin!

PS Does anyone know very many people who do hit 10,000 - 12,000 footsteps a day without having extreme school runs to do? When talking about it with friends and considering commuting life-styles, the general consensus seems to be that most people would be hard-pushed to get anywhere near that.....

Stripytop - I have the problem of living very close to the school too. In fact, I can get there in 7 minutes so doesn't add up to many steps!

Willemdefoeismine - would love to not have a car (imagine the money i would save!) however I think it would be impossible for me to get to work without one. And the ferrying around of children to all their after-school activities means I couldn't live without one.

Managed the gym again last night - after an hour of cycling, walking, running and sit ups, I feel like my legs are going to drop off today...

My problem is I live too FAR from school (4 and 7 miles away), so I always have to drive! The only option to extend my walking day-to-day is to park further from the office and walk in, but I'm always so tight for time (I work 9-3) that I barely have time to slow the car to a crawl at the school gate and boot the DCs out; certainly no spare minutes to walk to and from the office. My family also hate recreational walks, and we've no handy dog, so really the only option for me is actually a session of exercise i.e. running, to get the step count up.

I still haven't uploaded my Fitbug data (no time!!). Yesterday I had a flying visit to the gym - I couldn't leave the house until 6.30pm, because I had to pick DS up from football, so I only managed 10 minutes on the treadmill before the Aqua Aerobics class. Hmmm....definitely one for the blue-rinse brigade - it was a reasonably workout but I found it very dull, and felt faintly ridiculous bouncing about in the water. I was the youngest by some margin...... And I had forgotten how much I hate the whole faff about swimming; the whole "wet hair, squelchy feet, clammy clothes, hairy floor" horror of getting changed afterwards.

I have decided that unless there is a sun-lounger and large cocktail and bronzed pool-boy holding a fluffy white towel waiting for me poolside, I shall give swimming a miss from now on.

OK I'm back...

You didn;t miss me did you

NIghtmare at work (tax returns and VAT returns due) and I have to go down to Torquay now cancelled because of weather but probably will need to go Monday.

Because of work I haven't done much - haven't got to gym and haven't been walking much.

If we walk to school then I just about get to 4000 steps a day and if not then I hardly top 2000 some days But this is unusual in that I am tied to my desk at home a lot at the moment. I'm probably underestimating my steps because I clip it to my coast which of course doesn't measure steps inside. I don;t think there's is any way as a single paretn I can get above 10,000 steps a day and work all day (at home) maybe I'm wrong and I need to rethink.

Vitality Experience Participants: please share on this thread:

~ How are you getting on with your new FitBug pedometer? OK
~ How many steps are you taking each day? Does this surprise you? Disappoint you? I'm doing between 2000 - 9000 though to be honest more like 2-4000 at the moment. No I wasn;t surprised though I bit disappointed on teh days when I felt like I'd walked loads that I still didn;t hit 9,000. The fitbug website has sugegsted that I aim for 5000 based on my current usage! But I think thats a better aim for a few weeks than 10,000 as it will be an overall increase. then perhaps aim to get it up 1000 per week until I'm more reliably doing 5-10k
~ What tips can you share for increasing your steps per day.don't work at home as an accountant or sell your car

One thing I've discovered from "having" to do some exercise is that it works best when I can slot it in to my day quickly! I'm considering getting a couple of the shorter length DVDs (people have been very complimentary about the new Davina one, and I feel like the only person who hasn't done the 30 day shred, which is only 20mins a session) I'm loving the gym, but I could never afford a membership, and it is a bit of a faff to get there - Tuesday, my little girl was unwell, and there was no way I could spare the 2.5 hours getting there and back takes up. I could have probably squeezed in a run or a DVD though!

Oh and it was my birthday this week so I had two very lovely and very fattening lunches and a big pile of chocolate brownies

Oh and my Pru Vitality angel has agreed to arrange the [ersonal training next week and cinema vouchers for half term if anyone wants to contact their's.

Hi Kewcumber...had registered that you were 'off-piste' - glad to see that the tax returns haven't got the better of you! And happy birthday albeit belated.......! :-)

I started really well with the altered diet and although I've been good on cutting carbs (particularly bread-based ones) I have to say with the grim weather it's been hard. I had a delish macrobiotic lunch t'other day but really it's fine for LA hot climes but less so in the grim conditions we have to live in most of the time......Who would eat a salad, however yummy, when it's wet and cold outside????

Definitely eating better but I find myself in 'revolt'.....

I love my Fitbug (despite two near-miisses with the washing machine and one with the loo) -but with the Tube strikes my DH has taken time off and I found today, having handed over school-run duties to him, I've walked less than 1,000 paces (yikes ). As I said you have to take an average - just as well......So that will be another 20,000 steps tomorrow to up my average.......

I'm not shining my halo about all the walking I do .....if I had a school run that was only 5 minutes away I would be dancing with joy.....BUT I do appreciate that it keeps me relatively fit. I think we are lucky not to need a car - we are really well positioned for all transport links - but can easily see why you others may not be.... I certainly couldn't be doing with a 2 1/2 hour round trip to the gym! And we do waste a lot of time getting from A-B (and back again)....

We're nearly half-way thro'.....and will consider the 'swap' on gym session and cinema trip, Kewcumber (thanks for the advice) - it makes total sense....DH and DD are pitching to see the Mr Peabody.....film - I'm not convinced. We're such cheapskates we seldom ever see full-price films - the last time was 2nd part of The Hunger Games - so I don't want to 'blow' our £40 voucher on 'any old film....' Incidentally has anyone received their voucher yet????