Taking Control

When I talk about the Whole Life Challenge, the first thing people typically ask is how much weight I lost while doing it. It’s a valid question. I mean, weight loss was definitely one of my goals when I signed up back in January—and it will be one of my goals when I do the challenge again (because although I dropped about 8 or 10 pounds last time, I’ve still got quite a few more to lose). But there’s so much more to the Whole Life Challenge than losing weight, and there are so many reasons I decided to do it before…and I’ve decided to do it again.

Here’s the deal: I was not in a good place at the beginning of this year. I’d spent at least two months in what I considered to be a pretty deep depression. I had my good days and my bad days, and I was still functioning for the most part—but the truth is that I felt like my life had spun completely out of control (which is not a good thing for a control freak). I felt like a failure in almost every way and was walking a dangerous, self-sabotaging path that included eating all the worst kinds of foods, drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, abandoning all efforts to be physically active, and allowing a defeatist attitude to completely overtake me.