One Small Step: get local. No, really local.
One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. This week, I've finally agreed to listen to my husband and:
Get ultra-local.
Yes, I love the concept of the Eat Local Challenge, but this isn't just eating -- it's drinking coffee, and going to the dentist, and buying my favorite books. I guess you could call it "shop local." So today, when I went to get my hair cut, I didn't go downtown to the chic Aveda stylist where I got my hair done for my wedding (and the one who usually cuts my hair oh so well). Instead, I went to the corner barbershop -- literally, on the corner two blocks from my house. No energy was expended in getting there, and Tammy (along with "Bip", her partner) lives in the neighborhood. She gets her coffee at my favorite coffee shop -- she's about as local as you can get.
It was my husband's idea. I'd been encouraging him to go to the dentist about a mile up the street, instead of the one several miles away we'd been seeing; we've heard such great things. He went even further.
Continue reading One Small Step: get local. No, really local.
I ran a half-marathon last October, and I think I slept the whole day afterward, and didn't run for at least three weeks following the race. You deserve it, I told myself. You need to rest, recover.
My tongue is dry. My brain is buzzing. My stomach, hollow; my shoulders, tense. It's less than 24 hours until I'll take the baton in my first 6.2-mile leg of the Hood-to-Coast relay, only 14 hours until I'll hit the road with five other mamas, headed to the starting gun at Timberline Lodge.
I'm fascinated with the idea of the detox, as it seems a concept rooted deeply in the human psyche. My four-year-old, Everett, has been periodically detoxing since he could reach the carrots at our local organic produce store. When he's feeling badly, he'll eat nothing but oranges, bananas, carrots and water -- a sharp detour from his usual diet of toast, hot dogs, ketchup and potato chips.
One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. This week, I'm thinking about my prodigious waste generation and commiting to:
I'm training
I was never really a party animal, but in my early 20s, I would fall into the same trap with every high-powered business trip. When we visited that temporary staffing company in Dallas, I overindulged on black martinis and was oh-so-thankful for the noon start time of the meeting. In New York for the billion-dollar hospital deal, I remember dimly sleeping a few hours after a bottle of amazing French white wine and a few pints of Guinness. In San Diego, it was Scotch; in Cleveland, margaritas. Every time I promised to never drink so much again.
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I know that I breathed a huge sigh of relief this weekend. Phew. My kids have lost their last icons of bad behavior! I thought. Tom and Jerry, that eponymous animated cat and mouse duo, are destined never to smoke again.
One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. This week, I'm taking a cue from my four-year-old and commiting to:
When the distance exceeds 200 meters, I've always been a good runner. Notice I didn't say "great" or "fabulous" or even "award-winning." Well, there was that one time when my age group ... anyway. My modus operandi in races is that I start out fast fast fast, I feel great, I run a mile or two at a blinding pace. I can't even believe how well I'm doing. And then, well, it all drops off from there.
One Small Step is our attempt to show you all how easy it can be to improve your health, and the health of the planet. Each week, we'll take one more little step and encourage you to take it with us. In honor of this first week, I'll be oh-so-literal and commit to:
I'm training for the the 












