“Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over the timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease.  This often exists in a man of sixty more than boy of twenty.  Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.”  – Samuel Ullman

So goes the start of my favorite poem (an excellent one page read if you choose to look this up!).  It is so easy to get “caught up” in the day to day life of going to work, raising children, taking care of aging parents, worrying about our spouses, friends, family, & coworkers, that we forget about taking care of ourselves and give up the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.

At age 56, married to or dating my high school sweetheart for 40 years, raising 3 children and now a grandfather, I found myself taking the “love of ease” too many times.  It is so easy to eat out meal after meal, it is so easy to not go to the gym – or if you do, simply go through the motions, it is so easy to grab the dessert, candy or anything that simply tastes good, it is easy to use excuse after excuse as to why I’m 30 – 40 pounds overweight the past 30 years.

As a member of Life Time since 2002, I have regularly come to the club – sometimes work out hard, sometimes not.  Even when I did work out hard, that would be my excuse to eat more or make bad food choices since I’ll just “burn it off at the club.”  But that never seemed to work (duh!).

Like many Life Time embers I have heard of the 60-Day Challenge, but never really paid attention to it.  This past summer, my wife expressed an interest and asked me if I have seen the results that trainer Nicki Wrass-Cross has been getting from her recent classes.  I simply said “No, I haven’t.”  She was convinced that she wanted to do it and wanted me as a partner.  Well, we had 3 weddings to attend and 2 vacations planned in August and September and I once again took the “love of ease” route and told her I wouldn’t do it at that time.  With her determination, she did it without me!  She learned to prepare meals, plan ahead, use the supplements, schedule work-outs and did this all while staying up with our social life over that time.  Her results were amazing!  She lost over 41% of her body fat and looks like she did in her 20’s!

When the Holiday 60-Day Challenge was announced, I thought “I can’t do this over the holidays with all the parties, goodies at the office, not drinking alcohol over that time, I have client lunches, etc.