So I’ve taken up the challenge to try and earn the 45 000 points necessary to get me from Discovery’s Blue Vitality status (entry level) to Gold status in just one week. Seems like a long shot, but I’ve been told it’s achievable. What the hell, let’s put it to the test.  Step one seems to be the easiest of the four initial steps. Simply complete the online health assessments via Discovery’s website and score 12 000 points immediately – sounds easy enough. It’s Sunday afternoon the 13th March 2011, my wife’s watching re-runs of “The Good Wife” on series channel, so let’s get this challenge started.

First things first, you need to join Vitality and register online at www.discovery.co.za. Each member of Vitality needs to register separately with their own username and password. The online assessments took me about an hour to complete. You could get through it in less time, but in my opinion you wouldn’t be doing yourself any favours . The whole idea of the online assessment is to determine exactly where you are in terms of your health and fitness so you can actually identify the areas that you need to work on. So do it properly, you might actually get something out of it.

I’ve got to be honest, the website is cool and the health assessments are pretty straight forward. The navigation really is a  breeze, so kudos to Discovery for that. There is a great points bar visible at the top of the site (reminds me of old arcade game credits) that starts moving from Blue to Diamond status as you start racking up the points.

This is the break-down of the points you can earn by just hopping online and completing the assessments.

So I got all the assessments completed and I need to wait 24 hours for the website to update my points. The only bummer is that I’ve only recently quit smoking and I can’t sign off on the “non- smoker” declaration just yet. You need to have been off the smokes for a minimum of 2 ½ months.  So that’s an immediate 5000 point deduction for me! Best I can do now is 7000 points.

Another really cool reason why you should look at doing the online assessment is because if you complete your children’s assessments, you earn 2000 points per child (ages 2-18) and they go to movies for free for the rest of the year. Wel, almost for free… you will need to activate a Ster-Kinekor card at R39 (once off) each before your kids can catch fliks  for gratis.

So that’s step one completed. The online health assessment is done. The next step is getting the Preventative Screening Test completed and this involves needles and blood. I’ve got a Vitality nurse booked, who is popping around this week to get these tests completed so look out for my next blog post as I take on the Vitality Gold Challenge!

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Until next time.

The InsuranceFundi Team