Happy Spring! (well if you live in Chicago, at least Happy Sunny Monday at a nice 37 degrees) To celebrate the sun and the oncoming warmer months, I'm reliving my old days in Miami when I could stop by the campus Starbucks and buy my favorite drink, a Green Tea no-whip Frapuccino.
Seeing that I work in a health/fitness profession every day of the week, I decided that Mondays should be devoted to inspirational stories and advice that may help the week flow more easily. I love this story that was featured in the HungryGirl newsletter this morning. Residents of the itty-bitty town of Fossil, OR, have joined forces to help each other lose weight in what they're calling the "Biggest Loser" campaign, despite facing a whole lot of obstacles. With no fitness centers for miles, participants gather at the local grade-school gym for workouts, where their "equipment" is as bare bones as it gets. Before ordering cheapie resistance bands off the Internet, they improvised by using water bottles filled with sand for hand weights. Instead of hopping on stair-climbers, they climb actual stairs. A local restaurant offers lightened up versions of its usual menu items and provides calorie counts, and the only grocery store in town is adding healthier stuff to its shelves. At weekly weigh-ins, everyone cheers each other on. And unlike the $250, 000 grand prize offered by TV's The Biggest Loser, these people are competing for six hundred bucks and a fake pound of fat to signify the accomplishment. Residents are shedding pounds, getting healthier, and coming together as a community. How awesome and inspirational are they?!
In terms of relating this to the economy and hearing things like "I can't afford a gym" or "I need a good excuse to warrant buying a membership." Consider this: "We started out the first week or two with my husband buying 500 pounds of sand, and people brought water bottles," Boettner explains. "We filled them up with sand … and depending on the size of the water bottles, you had either a 2- or a 3- or a 4-pound weight."
Boettner also notes that the group has no stationary bikes, treadmills, elliptical machines or stair-climbers.
"When we climb stairs, they're actual stairs and we climb them," she says, laughing. "We do it the old-fashioned way."
This story brings inspiration and hope to my often thought about topic of what brings people together.
Maybe the rest of the week I can find out what, besides calorie-counting and sweating, brings people together.
P.S. A much lighter and calorie-friendly version of my favorite Green Tea Frapuccino can bemade using this recipe. Come over for my birthday this month and we'll have pitchers upon
pitchers of them!!
And remember....Happy Monday!!
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