My Soapbox

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.