ABOUT

What is Clean for a Day? It's a concept (and blog!) inspired by The Whole Life Challenge, based on the idea that fitness is an ongoing struggle—er, goal—that we all need to focus on, and re-commit to, daily. It's about living our lives, one choice at a time, and discovering how this has a cumulative effect that can make us feel a whole lot better...or like complete crap.

Do I always make the best choices? Hardly! I've spent an entire magazine career specializing in women's health and fitness, but the truth is that being healthy and fit has never come easily for me. I guess that's why I've written so many articles about the fact that dieting makes me mad and, in spite of my best efforts, I'm still not losing weight.

The good news is that the more time I spend researching this stuff, the closer I believe I'm getting to figuring out what works—at least for me. First and foremost is cleaning up my diet, and there's a lot more to that than I realized. For instance, I've discovered that food manufacturers put artificial ingredients, not to mention sugar, in everything. I thought I already knew this but boy was I wrong. (Seriously, have you looked at what's in that supposedly healthy almond or coconut milk, your kid's organic snack bars, your favorite vegetable broth or even the vanilla extract you use when you bake? Check it out. It's pretty annoying.) The second thing is making exercise a priority, and that's a whole lot easier when I expect less of myself. (I'm serious! It's really not a bad thing to aim for the bare minimum. When I set a goal of just 10 minutes a day, I can easily hit—and often surpass—that.) Finally, it's about keeping track of the little things that have a big impact on how I feel, from drinking enough water to stretching to getting enough sleep. I know I need to put those on my to-do list each and every day. Otherwise, they're just not going to happen.

Sure, these are things that we're told to do all the time (especially by many of the magazines for whom I write!), things that I already knew I needed to do to feel my best. But The Whole Life Challenge is what's helped me to focus on them. Of course, it can be tough to keep the momentum going after the challenge is over, which is partly why I started this blog—in the hopes of keeping my health and fitness top of mind, as much as I possibly can.

Thanks for visiting, and please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email if you have questions or suggestions. (I'm especially open to trying out new recipes for clean cuisine, so please share 'em if you've got 'em!)