I worked out for 100 days straight and here's what happened..

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYnt-SunXw8&w=854&h=480]

When you think of an exercise challenge what comes to mind? 6 week belly fat shredder? Get you ready for the beach in no time? But what if the challenge didn't have to be about shrinking your body or transforming the way you look?

When Ammar, one of the founders of Yes Theory, launched 100 Days of Sweat last summer one of the things that drew me to this challenge was the fact that it was intended to be a catalyst for us to make time for ourselves and our health every single day. Even if it was just 10 minutes of pushups or a quick one-mile jog, that was enough. Yes Theory has an amazing Youtube channel that is all about getting out of your comfort zone and this challenge definitely did that for me and Lou!

I started looking into the real benefits of exercise for this challenge. Obviously the normal things like how it's great for your heart, your lung capacity, circulation, came up. But what surprised me was how research is proving that exercise is actually an incredible tool for us to improve our mental health. In fact, Wendy Suzuki explores in this TedTalk how breaking a sweat can transform our entire mental state.

So when Lou and I decided to commit to 100 Days of Sweat, we were choosing this challenge because we finally wanted to prioritize quality self-care. It had been part of our 2019 resolutions, but by summertime, we knew this was our last chance to make it a reality.

During the challenge we were living in our 40-year-old van, traveling Europe, making weekly videos, and it turns out that our lack of routine was making keeping up with regular exercise extremely difficult. We might stick with an exercise plan for a few weeks but then something would always derail us. Maybe it was extreme heat, the lack of showers, wishing we had access to a gym, work, long drive days, or who knows what, but every time before we knew it the dream of being a consistent exerciser would come crashing down.

So I figured 100 Days of Sweat would be the perfect commitment to end this cycle. We would have to stop making excuses and for over 3 months we would build the habit of daily exercise. My hope was that this would launch us into regular exercisers for the rest of our future, but I guess you'll have to watch the video to find out!

Also, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Ammar and Yes Theory for launching 100 Days of Sweat. It was a really amazing and challenging experience that taught Lou and me so much about what it means to commit to your health. We learned about finding balance, what role we want exercise to play in our life going forward, and the importance of setting goals we can work towards together.