We were scared, this thing was erupting around us, and we read. We read and we searched and we read and we read.

How to beat Covid-19. How to stay healthy during Covid-19. How to build your immune system. How to prevent complications.

As we learned more, certain best practices emerged from a health and wellness perspective–not magic bullets, not cure-alls, but best practices. And they sounded an awful lot like things our grandparents might have just called ‘Wednesday’:

Get some fresh air.
Eat healthy food.
Go for walks or bike rides.
Do some hard stuff intermittently.
Spend time with your families.
Get enough sleep.
Don’t beat yourself to a pulp.
Don’t starve yourself.

But while our grandparents and great-grandparents might have done this stuff as a matter of course, today it doesn’t come nearly as naturally. We need reminders. We need encouragement. And I think we probably need more people around us saying these things.

As a health and wellness provider, I have two ardent hopes for this new landscape:
1) We all emerge healthy and happy. Every last one of us.
2) We stop debasing fitness with punishment architecture.

No more earning your calories with cardio, or making up for a bad decision with exercise, or pushing past failure because your food log wasn’t perfect.

No more using the gym to cudgel and punish.

Fitness is wellness, now more than ever.

Build. Nourish. Strengthen. Encourage. Provide. Empower.

Now more than ever.