A game-day approach to healthier habits, football, and having a little fun along the way
I've tried enough approaches to health and weight loss over the years to know one thing about myself: I'm much more likely to stick with something if I can turn it into a game. Preferably a football game.
That's the idea behind Football Fan's Diet, another independent web project developed through Scratch Writing Studio. At its heart, it's a simple framework for taking whatever health goal matters to you and turning it into your own football season.
You make the rules. You keep score. You play one week at a time.
And if everything goes right, you eventually get a shot at winning your own Super Bowl of Health.
Write Your Own Playbook
The system starts with what I call a Daily Gameday Objective, or DGO.
Your DGO is the fundamental thing you're trying to accomplish every day. Maybe that's staying under a calorie target. Maybe it's following a particular way of eating. It could be getting enough steps, avoiding cigarettes, or another measurable habit you're trying to establish.
There isn't one universal Football Fan's Diet. You write your own playbook.
Those are your personal X's and O's of health.
Meet your DGO for the day and you score a touchdown.
Then there are field goals.
Do something above and beyond your basic objective—perhaps spending 30 minutes in the gym—and you can award yourself an additional field goal.
Field goals can work against you too. Some choices may not be complete game-day disasters, but they're certainly not helping. In my own playbook, for example, a beer day means giving up a field goal.
The idea isn't to create an elaborate system for punishing yourself. It's simply to make your progress visible—and make keeping track of it a little more fun.
Every Week Is a Game
At the end of the week, total both sides of the scoreboard.
Maybe Healthy You wins:
Healthy You 38 — Chicago Beer Bellies 24
That's a win.
Or maybe the Cleveland Brownies stage a fourth-quarter comeback and beat you 31–28.
That's a loss.
Put it on the record and move on to next week.
And that's one of my favorite things about the whole concept. One bad day doesn't ruin your season. It means the other team scored a touchdown.
Fine.
Get the ball back.
There's still time on the clock.
Play the Season
Where Football Fan's Diet really becomes fun is when those individual weeks become a season.
You can begin with a preseason and make your DGO relatively achievable while you get used to your playbook and start developing better habits.
Then comes the 16-game regular season.
For 16 weeks, you play against yourself, building a win-loss record one week at a time.
Finish the regular season with a winning record and congratulations:
You're going to the playoffs.
That's also when things get harder.
Welcome to the Postseason
For the playoffs, you tighten the playbook.
Whatever your regular-season DGO was, make it more challenging. Maybe the calorie target drops. Maybe exercise becomes part of the daily requirement. Maybe you eliminate something you've been allowing yourself during the regular season.
The exact rules remain yours.
But now it's win or go home.
Survive the Wild Card, Divisional, and Conference Championship rounds and you've earned your shot at the big one.
For the final two weeks, create the toughest version of your playbook that is still reasonable for you.
Win that challenge and you've done it.
You've won your Super Bowl of Health.
And if your season ends earlier? No worries. There is always another season.
Reset the record. Adjust the playbook. Kick off again.
Football Is Supposed to Be Fun
That's probably the most important part of Football Fan's Diet.
This is supposed to be fun.
I don't want it to become another place where somebody tells you that you've failed because you ate the wrong thing on Wednesday. The whole football metaphor gives us a different way to think about progress. Teams give up points. Quarterbacks throw interceptions. Great teams lose games.
They keep playing.
Along the way, Football Fan's Diet can also be a place to share healthier recipes, useful tips, personal experiments, game-day food ideas and, naturally, talk about NFL football.
It may have some of the personality of a men's lifestyle site, but the idea certainly isn't limited to men. It's for football fans—anyone who enjoys the game, wants to have some fun with their health goals, and maybe lose a few pounds or build some better habits in the process.
Built in Scratch Writing Studio
From the Studio perspective, Football Fan's Diet is another example of what interests me about building websites.
It's not merely a collection of articles. The website itself supports an idea—a little system for approaching health differently.
Scratch Writing Studio is where I can develop that concept, build the site around it, experiment with the scoring system, create its visual identity, and figure out where the project goes next.
Football Fan's Diet gets to be its own thing.
Studio is where I build the stadium.
Write your playbook. Keep score. Enjoy the season. And count touchdowns, not calories.