I used to be fit. I worked out most days. I lived in a
fifth-floor walk-up. I walked everywhere. I biked on the weekends all over NYC.
Now, I drive my car, sit at my desk, play with my kids and collapse into bed by
9:45 p.m.
Since having kids, my free time has diminished to the hours
between 8 and almost 10 p.m., precious “me-time" that I spend cooking and
eating dinner, doing a mountain of dishes, talking to my husband for 10 minutes
and getting in bed.
No one would really say I’m fat, but I’m fatty or fat-ish and also flabby. And this feels,
well, kinda yucky. For many reasons -- health, vanity and mostly for my
children -- I decided I had to put the brakes on my downward spiral and expanding
waistline before it was too late. On a whim at the end of last year, I signed
up to do this fitness/lifestyle thing
called the Whole Life Challenge.
If you go onto the Whole Life Challenge website, it sounds kind
of mysterious and vague, but here’s the deal: It’s an 8-week program in which
you forgo sugar, wheat, soy, most dairy and any unnatural ingredients; also you
work out 10 minutes a day and stretch 10 minutes a day. You pay $50, log your
points, get inspiration from the thousands of other people doing it, and for
eight weeks live a highly conscious existence in which you pay attention to
ingredient labels and start to realize just how many opportunities there are in
every day to each chocolate.
I wish I was the kind of person who didn't need to join a program to make myself stop eating so much pasta and cheese, but I’m
not. So, on Saturday, I’m going to start the Whole Life Challenge for a second
time. I hope I’m not being preachy, but I just wanted to put it out there that this
has helped me feel like myself again. I am not perfect, and the challenge is not about perfection, it’s
about awareness. I say have no time to exercise, but I do have 10 minutes a day--and I found that 10
minutes can make a difference.
Happy 2014.
