Find Yourself a Workout Buddy or Buddies!

If I didn't have them, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed at 5:35am on this frigid and windy morning.

I'm talking about my My Body My Home Boot Camp buddies. Three women in my apartment building meet me for a workout every weekday morning from 5:45am-6:30am, and have been since mid-September. When we began, I didn't think it was going to continue. It's cold. It's dark. It's really easy to hit snooze. But I underestimated them. Everyone has remained committed to this now cherished 45 minutes of peace and sweat before the crazy and lazy ones (we have seven children and four husbands between us) even begin to stir.

As mentioned in previous posts, I quit my corporate job back in early October. It seems a little odd to, well, everyone, that I now get up earlier than I did when I worked full time. But I do it because my Boot Camp buddies need to be on the subway by 7:30am, so if we started Boot Camp any later, it wouldn't work for them. They rely on me, so if it doesn't work for them, it doesn't work for me. But here's what I realized a couple of weeks ago: I rely on them too.

Throughout high school and college, I played organized sports. After graduating, I had to find the self-discipline to keep in shape on my own, and I've done a pretty good job over the past 17 years. I worked out in the morning because I could never guarantee I'd get out of work in time to do so in the evening (or that I'd have the willpower to say no to after-work drinks!) And then the babies came. I couldn't have my boobs at the gym if the 6-month-old needed to eat. And what warm-hearted first-time mom can roll out of bed for spin class when her 18-month-old is cuddled up against her? And then we moved from being a couple blocks away from Central Park to across from Prospect Park. A "run around the park" went from being 6.2 miles to 3.3 miles. It's still a run around the park, right?! Needless to say, things became a little lax. If I let all that happen, it would have been easy to work out after the kids were at school once I quit my job: more sleep + warmer + lighter. Oh so appealing! But without even realizing what they were doing, Olivia, Jessica and Christina didn't let that happen. The Sunday night they first asked me if they could join me for my workout the following morning, they changed my everything for the better:

1. They force me out of bed. On time. Every weekday morning for the past 10 weeks.
2. They have me back to my apartment before anyone gets up, so I don't miss a minute with my family.
3. They've given me the gift of an extra hour to focus on growing my new business when the kids are in school.
4. They make me look forward to every workout I do, because I truly love their company. 
5. They make me look forward to every workout I do, because I make it different each time to keep it interesting. 
6. They've made me more creative. I've devised three different Boot Camp workouts we rotate through addition to running and yoga. And I'm in the middle of creating a fourth. 
7. They've forced me to cross-train rather than run every morning. This is better on my nearing-40 bones and joints, and it's made me stronger and my muscles more defined.

I could think of three more to make this a perfect ten, but seven happens to be my lucky number so I'll leave it there.

I think they think I'm doing them a favor by donating my workout time to helping them get and stay in shape. But they've done me an even bigger one. And the benefits of exercise go far beyond the obvious physical ones: better sleep, better mood, better sex to name a few. Those sound kinda nice, huh?

As winter descends upon us, I highly recommend you find yourself a buddy (or buddies) too.

Let's Get Kids To Encourage Kids To "Eat Your Veggies!"

I used to work in advertising. And some day, I'll probably go back. But I got bit by the nutrition bug about a year and a half ago and decided a few months ago I needed to pursue it whole hog for at least a little while. So that's what I'm doing. But I love it when my old world and my new world collide, as they did in this recent NYT article: Broccoli's Extreme Makeover.

I often felt bad about working in advertising because doing a good job typically meant I was helping sell products that people either didn't need (or worse, were actually bad for them) or couldn't afford. In fact, no product or service I ever marketed was one that people BOTH needed AND could afford.

But maybe if I'd been hired to market broccoli?

These are the kinds of assignments advertising agencies rarely get to work on because, as this article describes, there's little money in real food. Government subsidies go to the likes of corn and soy - not the corn on the cob you eat at a summer barbecue, or the edamame you munch on before your sushi - but the kind you find hidden in strange ingredient names in the majority of processed food and animal feed, which is the far bigger business. And while this unfortunate reality is getting more and more publicity as of late, I don't expect anything to change any time soon.

That said, three years ago a bunch of carrot growers got together and pitched in what amounted to millions to market baby carrots via Bolthouse Farms, the second largest supplier of carrots in the country. Bolthouse Farms' CEO is an ex-Coke exec so knows a thing or two about how to market snacks. They hired one of the best agencies in the business to come up with the campaign and it was a great success. So... it is possible to get people to eat better. But their approach, which was to market baby carrots as if it were junk food rather than a healthy alternative to junk food (a brilliant flip), tells us a lot about the American consumer.

Unfortunately, these success stories are few and far between. And it all goes back to my earlier point that there is little money in the real food business and therefore little incentive for anyone to put much energy (financial or otherwise) behind it. But the broccoli makeover article inspired me...

I am co-chair of the Green & Healthy committee at Frank's elementary school. It is a year-long initiative but there is a special focus on it in January, for obvious reasons. As such, my co-chair and I are encouraging teachers to incorporate Green & Healthy activities into their January curriculum, and are providing some suggestions to get them thinking. Suggestion #1:

Have your students pick a vegetable and then create an advertising campaign (depending on the grade, that could mean just a print ad or a bigger campaign) for that vegetable that would get kids their age to want to eat it. 

A few years ago, I balked at the crowdsourcing agencies popping up everywhere taking revenue from the traditional agencies. But when I realized they weren't going away, I found ways to use them that strengthened my client offering vs threatened it. And now, I'm embracing the crowdsourcing model even further. If every teacher chooses to do this activity with their students, we will have 1500 ideas on how to get kids to "eat their veggies!"

I've been in the business for too long to believe even 1500 5-10 year olds will come up with something as good as Crispin did for baby carrots, but if this exercise can at least change the way some of the kids at PS321 feel about a few different vegetables, I'll call that success!

(If you're feeling inspired yourself, the NYT blog has a call for entries for new slogans to sell beets, cabbage cauliflower, turnips or peas.)