#thewhy

My lifestyle choices and habits before joining my Herbalife team were at an all-time low. My eating habits were obsessive and lacked most nutrients. I didn’t exercise at all unless you count walking around 15 miles a day at my warehouse job! I was a WRECK!

Doing anything about my well-being was the farthest from my mind. Why is that, you ask? I was still grieving for the prior year of 2017. The breadth of my waistline was all that I had left of where my daughter had rested within me. She is my WHY!

Before taking the Herbalife Nutrition products, I continuously felt fatigue, sore all the time, and anxious or depressed.

After starting the Herbalife Nutrition products, I felt an immediate shift in my energy. Based on my own routine, I lost 5 lbs from the 172 lbs I began with by the end of my three-day trail! How you may ask? Now, I do NOT and will NOT promote rapid weight loss. This is only how it worked for me!

Since I was going to be off for three days, I felt it was the most appropriate time to begin. My distributor was with me every step of the way! She gave me a model of various types of snacks. If I have those items, that’s what I have twice a day. That’s just one of the many she proves me with. Kaydee is just an incredible coach and person. I can not express just how ecstatic I am to have met her!

Kaydee, being a part of the whole process for me, even helped in the decision of something as simple as the flavor of my next shakes. I have one shake for breakfast and one shake for dinner or lunch. Considering prior Herbalife I loved to wolf out on some food, you may imagine having that one healthy meal is EVERYTHING!

Aside from the nutrition aspects, the way I lose weight is by doing daily low impact cardio and nightly yoga. I do this regularly 5-7 times per week after having a shake and one of the metabolism. These products have drastically changed me for the better! I feel more energetic, young, and motivated, like I can and will accomplish ANYTHING!!!

Let me be your guide and I know, with all of us working together, we can conquer anything life may throw at us!

My results are not typical. Results will vary from person to person. Let’s help each other create a healthier world!

Warning: This is a tad longer of a post.

If you spoke with me for more than an hour last year, you probably heard me reference my favorite TED Talk: “Start with Why”, by Simon Sinek. Here, I’ll save you the search:

So if we’ve never met, this may not be a question you’re pondering. But it might be helpful to know that I haven’t always done triathlons. Last year in Chicago was my very first official one. (I don’t count the one time I did Sprint distance with a coworker before driving into work…) In fact I ran my first ever mile in 2014. Before then I couldn’t really go 800m without needing to walk. But see until this point in my life I’ve mostly gravitated towards things I already had a natural gifting for (we’re also not counting beach volleyball here, that’s just fun!) And while this list isn’t exactly small, I have always been a “Jack of all trades, Master of none.” Growing up I never really considered myself an athlete, let alone one “capable” of completing a triathlon. Psshhh I didn’t even know triathlons existed!! I won a backstroke sprint once in high school, and I’ve always played sports recreationally. But racing the Chicago Tri last year was a very different animal And the speeds I will have to hit and maintain throughout the duration of my Chicago race this year exceed any I’ve ever done! So I guess the heart of it is to find an arena to perform and excel in.

Like a number of the things I’ve come to appreciate in life, this sport is one I stumbled into. In the late summer of 2015, I succeeded in snapping my right ACL in two on my third attempt (two soccer injuries, and finally a volleyball injuy that tore the last string). After the surgery that November, I was banished to a life without soccer or basketball or volleyball for a full year. It sucked. I had spent most of my free time the summer before out on the volleyball courts of North Avenue beach. As it turned out, about the only activities the doc and PT permitted were swimming, biking, and running. That’s when I first had the idea of a triathlon (leading to that fateful pre-work, Sprint triathlon I referred to earlier) but it wouldn’t be for another 2 years until my friend David Hall dragged me along for the crazy ride that is swimming and biking and running with 7,500 of my favorite strangers and friends across the city!

Here’s the thing: I am convinced - thoroughly convinced - that anyone can do a triathlon. Maybe not an Ironman, but at least a Sprint distance. What I’m excited about is to apply myself to something that while many people do every year, but in such a way that most people simply won’t. I’m excited to push my boundaries and see, maybe for the first time in my life, what I REALLY am capable of! No, I won’t be competing for an age group podium. At least not yet. Others in the sport have the advantage of years of training and discipline and teaching and gear; but breaking 2:30 is still a feat, personally and in the world of triathlon.

So…why even tri? Because finishing a triathlon - hitting ANY crazy goal you set for yourself - makes you feel like this:

When TinyHuman was much younger, 4 or 5, my friend M was visiting for a casual social chat. As we talked, TinyHuman approached a few stargazer lilies (one of my favourite flowers) that I had in a vase and was lightly playing with them. She wasn’t hurting them, but she was disturbing the anther - the pollen-coated bits at the ends of the filament.

I asked her to stop, then went over to show her: the pollen is dark orange, and if she touched it, it would get on her fingers and could be spread to her clothes, or the white walls of our rented flat. And if they fell off, or the pollen was knocked off, it would stain the light-coloured carpet. I grabbed a tissue and explained that we could pull off the anther bits, and then not only would they not be in danger of dying things orange, but the flowers would last longer so we could enjoy them more.

We looked at how orange the tissue was in the places that had touched the pollen, tossed it in the trash, and she went back to smelling the lilies and I went back to my friend.

I found my friend in tears. She explained that she had never been parented the way that I had just interacted with TinyHuman, and it wasn’t until she saw it modeled that she realized that it could have been different, and she was both sad for her younger self and happy for TinyHuman and me, that we could have that sort of loving and nurturing experience together.