Living healthy...

It would seem that I haven't been blogging nearly as much as I had been in the recent past. Apparently my plan to live life in the present moment has cut into my computer time.

Is this such a bad thing?

Nope.

I've been busy with being busy - especially with the "getting healthier" part of being busy. My commitment to be a good example for our Little One seems to be getting stronger everyday.

Spent quality time at the gym everyday this last week - even when I had two 8:00 a.m. meetings. I hauled my butt (all of it! although there is a little less of it now...) out of bed at 4:45 a.m. to get myself to the gym.

Not that I'm bragging.

Oh hell yeah, I'm bragging!

But seriously, it's all been good and surely as I get more efficient at the gym I'll be able to get back to blogging a bit more regularly, although not too much because I want to keep moving more than I'm sitting still.

(Even the New York Times, bastion of all knowledge and all things written, writes that sitting around too much is a bad thing.)

The next part of my living in the present moment and getting healthy plan is to join my colleagues and thousands of others in the 5th Annual Shape Up Campaign.

Now, if you're not from Rhode Island, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

Shape Up RI is a program that was started 5 years ago by a brilliant young Brown Medical student, Rajiv Kumar, to get Rhode Islanders (who, at the time, were apparently some of the most unhealthy and overweight folks in the U.S.) off of their big flabby keesters and into some kind of exercise program from February through May.

In the first year, there were 1,738 Shape Up participants who lost a total of 5,911 pounds during the 12 week program. Last year, 13,071 participants shed an amazing 45,106 pounds. The program has become so popular that it's expanded to include a summer challenge as well.

To join Shape Up you need to be part of a team. Businesses around the state usually put together teams. The non-profit where I work has taken something of a movie/movie star approach to our team names: The Lethal Weapons, Chuck Norris, and Kat's Karate Kids.

I'm one of the Karate Kids.

I must admit to being just the tiniest bit nervous about the team competition aspect of Shape Up because the teams at my workplace last year were... hmmm....how to say this?...uh...

Vicious.

There were teams who purposely brought in cookies, donuts and other revoltingly sweet and fattening goodies to tempt opposing teams to fall off the healthy eating wagon. A paper image of Chuck Norris was - er - "fed" in effigy with a giant cookie by one of the opposing teams. Chuck Norris retaliated with anti-other team signage all over the building.

It was wicked insane.

But I'm looking forward to all of it even if I am a bit nervous. If the wicked insanity motivates me and my colleagues to eat better and to get to the gym and be healthy then...

Bring it on Chuck Norris!