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.

Here at That's Fit, we don't just talk about our subject matter. While we're not posting, most of us are out there "living our content," as we like to say. If you have been following Larissa Brown's Road to Fitville posts or Sarah Gilbert's recent posts, you might recall that today and tomorrow, they're participating in Portland's Hood To Coast relay, North America's largest relay race.

Along with 10 other women on their team, Larissa and Sarah are running a total of 197 miles from the top of Oregon's majestic Mt. Hood down to the beautiful Pacific Ocean in Seaside, Oregon. They're going to try to check in with us via cell phone to pass along updates (our best attempt at live-blogging the event), but in case of technical difficulties Sarah and Larissa will be back to blog about their adventures and other That's Fit topics early next week.

Let's wish them luck! They've trained hard to make this goal a reality.

Source

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:

Stop taking food to go.

I was on my way home from an errand (walking, naturally), and noticed that new, funky coffee shop on 28th. I'd run for a few miles and needed a cup of water and was entranced with the vegan cupcakes in the pastry case. "I'll take one to go," I said.

A few minutes later, I was walking down Holgate, holding an empty paper bag with a few traces of vegan chocolate frosting (awesome, by the way) and an empty plastic water cup. Suddenly I realized how much waste such a small decision -- to take my food and drink to go -- had generated. Had I stayed at the coffee shop for five minutes, I could have foregone the paper bag altogether and drunk deeply from a real glass, creating far less waste, saving money for the business owner, and even better: enjoying the ambiance for a little while.

I committed then to change my ways, and get it for here whenever possible. Maybe I'll see you at the Funky Door sometime ... the cupcakes are on me!