Oct 22, 201204:11 PMDSM Lifestyle Challenge

Getting Fit BEFORE the New Year

Welcome to the Jungle

Not long ago at our weekly staff meeting, one of our salespeople, Toni Piazza, proposed an idea. What if we all took the next three months to focus on our health and fitness? And what if we blogged about it on our website, sharing with readers our struggles and challenges, triumphs and tribulations along the way, culminating with an article about our results in the February issue of DSM?

Seeing the holidays looming ahead of us, we all agreed it was a great time to make some healthy changes. And so, we as a staff embarked on the DSM Lifestyle Challenge. Working with Anytime Fitness, we’ve all committed to weekly sessions with personal trainers who are advising us on exercise and nutrition programs. We’re working out at least three days in the gym doing both strength training and cardio and watching what we eat. And we’re consciously trying to de-stress, whether its with yoga, meditation or just a hot bath with a good book (readers of the magazine’s books column know which one of us is going to be doing that one!).

What will we find at the end of three months? It’s an interesting experiment, because all of us have slightly different goals — weight loss, building lean muscle, running a half marathon, creating a habit of getting to the gym five days per week, dropping blood pressure, focusing on heart health or simply reaping whatever benefits come from regular exercise and healthy eating.

In this blog, we’ll be sharing our thoughts with you weekly about this journey we’re on as a staff. We encourage you to comment — and to take the Lifestyle Challenge with us! Any healthy change you make is fair game, and we’d love to hear about it.

Here’s who is doing the Challenge from our staff, and what sorts of results they want to see after three months:

David Hileman (Publisher)

After losing almost 30 pounds on the ViSalus 90 day challenge earlier this year, I want to build muscle and tone up. So my wife Kim and I are hitting the gym at least three days per week lifting weights and doing cardio. I’ve been at this a couple of weeks now, and it’s going great. I haven’t felt this good in 25 years! Not only does it feel great physically, but it’s a fabulous stress relief, too.

Wendy Webb (Editor-in-Chief)

My dad has a pacemaker. His parents both died young of heart attacks. My cousin Sandy had a heart stent put in recently. And I’m older now than my brother was when he died of a heart attack seven years ago this month. I’ll bet you’ve guessed my goal by now. I’m focusing on heart health. I want to lower my blood pressure, which has been normal all my life and recently shot up (thank you, middle age!), get to the gym five days per week for a mixture of cardio, fitness classes and strength training, and maintain a heart-healthy diet. (That includes red wine, right?) And if these extra 20-plus pounds I’m carrying around melt away because of my efforts, that’ll just be a bonus.

Matt Pawlak (Art Director)

I have three goals. Weight loss, core strengthing, and losing inches. So I’m working with a personal trainer, Megan, at the Anytime Fitess facility in Siren, Wisconsin, where I live. I’m lifting weights and training for a 5K run. I’m on the treadmill 4 to 5 days per week and weight lifting 3 days per week. I’m also taking a nutrition class, which advises to follow the 40-30-30 Diet, in which you eat 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, 30 percent good fats at every meal. This diet is easier to follow than it sounds. I’ve been doing the program for 10 days now and I’ve already lost 10 pounds!

Toni Piazza (Ad Representative)

I have two very important reasons for starting this Lifestyle Challenge. First, I want my “exterior” to reflect the happiness I feel on my “interior” for the first time in a very, very long time. And the second, and equally important to me, is for my only daughter Katelyn’s upcoming wedding in February. I also have a personal goal to run a half marathon within the year, and I’ve never been a runner so we’ll see how that goes! At the end of three months, I want to have lost these last 35 pounds and/or 3 dress sizes. I’m doing incline training on the treadmill, taking classes at Anytime Fitness with Wendy, and we’re working together with a personal trainer, so I’m counting on this being fun as well as healthy!

Robert Lillegard (Web and Calendar Editor)

Although my towering height of 5'7 and massive weight of 165 pounds made me a formidable figure when I lived in Central America, it turns out I'm a little small for the Duluth~Superior men's rugby team. Accordingly, I'd like to bulk up for the spring season without sacrificing too much endurance or speed. Will the ace trainers at Anytime Fitness be able to make a mountain out of a molehill? Only time will tell.

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