Challenge

The last five years of my life have been full of extraordinary upheaval. In the last 5 years, I have gotten  engaged. I have gotten married. I have lost my father. I have endured a job change (am now working  from home after a high-stress office), two cross-country moves, the births of my two children, and the  deployment of my husband. Twice. It became increasingly obvious that I had not been taking care of  myself, as I had quite simply just been taking care of others, and surviving day to day. I had gained an  intense amount of weight, wasn’t sleeping well, and just felt miserable. After the untimely death of a  young friend due to health complications, I made the decision to address my own personal health and  wellness.

Selection  I did a great deal of self-reflection and many conversations with my spouse and my closest friends. It  would have been easy to say “I’m unhappy because I’m fat.” But I came to realize upon deep reflection,  that instead I was fat because I was unhappy. After many conversations with my husband, and several  with close friends, I started to unpack this idea—what were the types of things I was doing and saying  and participating in when I was feeling the healthiest. Not necessary the thinnest—it became clear this  wasn’t really about weight-- But rather it was about finding a place where I was healthy, where my own  personal wellness was at the center of my activities. It was after this intense personal inventory and  consultation with trusted friends and family that I identified the 10-15 traits that had made me feel  happiest and healthiest in the past: Those things that brought me the greatest of joys and that made me  feel mentally, physically, and emotionally well, with the hope that addressing these behaviors would  allow me to lose weight. Not weight loss as the ultimate outcome as I had originally thought was the  struggle, but rather as a side-effect of happiness.

After this intense research of the “what is” and the “what if” I was ready to do a learning launch—test  some small hypotheses and see what seemed most effective. This paper is about that learning launch.

Application

I decided to implement the following “changes” to my every day routine, to see how it affected my  overall wellness:

1) Eat something small immediately upon waking in the morning. Don’t put off eating until I get so

hungry I want to eat everything on Earth.

2) Replace one (of my many) morning cups of coffee with at least one hot water with honey and

lemon.

3) Count calories. Even if it’s ugly. Keep track.   4) I love sunshine. Make it outside for at least 10 minutes of fresh air/ sunshine each day.   5) I love how I feel when I’m doing yoga. Take 20 minutes on my lunch hour each day just to

stretch.

6) As often as possible, go for a walk. It doesn’t have to be intense exercise. Just get outside and

walk.

7) Only one glass of wine with dinner each night (Love red wine too much to give up completely.

But in moderation to exploit the health benefits.)

8) Read for pleasure at least 15 minutes each day.

9) Enroll in some classes so that my brain is engaged and I’m doing something for pure pleasure of

learning (enter…this class.)

10) A cup of green tea at night before I go to bed  11) Take the extra few minutes each night to do things to make me feel better about myself (long

shower, good soaps and lotions, etc.)

12) 15 minutes before bed, meditate. Clear the brain. Practice gratitude.   13) At least every other week, implement “date night” with my husband just to enjoy each other’s

company

None of these things, in and of themselves were time consuming or drastically different than what I had  been doing. They all centered on mindfulness. Just being aware of my life, what makes me happy, and  taking the steps to make small, incremental changes.

Insight

Obviously, not all of these were sustainable. Some proved really important. Others didn’t pan out as  being as important as I thought they might.

I don’t make it outside to exercise every day. But I do it more than I used to. I still love coffee. The honey  lemon thing didn’t seem to make me feel better or worse. I don’t always get my 15 minutes of pleasure  reading in every day. But I do it more than I used to. Yoga and logging calories has helped me feel so  much better. Date night with my husband has been invaluable. Meditation clears my mind. I’ve been  sleeping better. I’ve started skipping the wine most nights.

And over the last 8 weeks, I’ve lost 20 pounds.

I’ve learned that it’s about taking care of me, not about losing weight. I’ve learned that engaging my  mind (learning, reading, meditating) and engaging my body (yoga, getting outside) are what it actually  takes to make me feel healthy and well. Laughing with my husband, and taking the time to take care of  my body and mind—these are the things that ultimately matter. And they make me a better wife, a  better mother, and a better employee.

I think one of the most valuable tools I’ve acquired from this exercise (and this class) is that there are  often ways to approach a problem that aren’t the obvious ones. If I had just gone at this forcing myself  to just “exercise more and go on a diet” then I likely wouldn’t have the results I have had so far, and  more importantly, the lifestyle change I am beginning to implement.

Approach

I think that this approach only worked for me because I’m self-aware. I think that if I wasn’t willing to dig  deep, and ask some tough questions, this wouldn’t have been an appropriate method. After I go through  a few more months, I will reassess—has something fallen away that I think should really be important?  Have other things surfaced as important? I will likely use a similar approach again with new data gained  from the insights of these experiments. In the purest terms, these experiments may be taking a longer  time than what a Learning Launch would entail in a business situation.

