Blog post provided by BetterU Challenger JAIME BUTLER!
This is our first week of being a part of the American Heart Association Better U Makeover Challenge and it has started with a bang. The kickoff event on July 27th was such an uplifting experience that energized all of the 2018 participants to get up and go! A huge thanks to our sponsors: Gold’s Gym, Central Hudson, Q92 & HealthQuest Medical Practice for making all this possible for us. Then the weekend started and I started to try and absorb all the information that I had been given and make sense of how I was going to fit in all of the to-do’s with my already very lengthy to-do list from being a full-time working Wife/Mom of two young boys. I’m not going to lie, I started to feel some anxiety creep up on Sunday morning about how I was going to make all this work. And then, I went to Gold’s for my first solo workout and while I was using one of their newer elliptical type machines (sorry Phil, I can’t for the life of me remember what you called it but I know “lateral” was in there somewhere!) I started to think about various way I could move and bend my schedule to get this in, or make that, or keep track of this and make sense of that. And there it was, right there in front of me. I have already been doing things and moving in the right direction. Although it seemed sort of overwhelming, I had made small changes here and there to get me towards my goal of being overall healthier. The right food choice here, the additional movement there, the choosing water over a diet soda, the serving size of something instead of going wild. I didn’t even know I was doing it at the time, but it was all happening and it was all for better health. All those small changes are more points in the positive column of effects on my health and those around me. So, yes, it may have seemed daunting at first, but if I just give myself a little time and a little breathing room I will find that I’ll take stock of those positive changes and realize I’ve already accomplished more than I thought I could so I just need to keep on goin’!