Healthy Living with Blue: Getting Off the Couch

Getting Off the Couch in 2010: Incorporating Fitness into an Over-Busy Life, Part I
Hi, I’m Blue, one of the newest members of the NOCO writing staff. Thanks to Shannon, NOCO has become the most widely read authority about North County and I’m excited to contribute to this effort.

I’ll be writing articles about living healthy and green in North County. This first article is part I of a series I’ll be submitting about my quest to stay active and fit as a very busy North County resident and business owner.

Everybody I know is too busy. It’s just the way we live these days, packing as much stuff as we can into our days. Multitasking is no longer a skill, it’s a cultural requirement.

My own plate is quite full as the owner of a website development company, a performing singer/musician, a stepmom to four fantastic kids, a worship leader at my church, a very active member of the Ferguson Cycling Club, co-leader with my husband of the Live Well Ferguson Running Club, and a participant in many other Live Well Ferguson projects.

Throw in several get togethers with friends and family every month; sprinkle in petcare, housework, daily gardening, keeping my ever hungry growing hummingbird population happy with full feeders; add a weekend bicycle camping trip every six weeks or so plus building a deck in my backyard this month and that all adds up to quite a heaping plateful. It’s hard to keep up!

Over the past year I’ve tried my best to skim off any unnecessary time consuming tasks. But keeping a clear schedule is a nearly impossible goal. Empty slots on the calendar are like black holes… any new task remotely in my vicinity gets sucked in by the intense gravitational pull. Besides, I’m involved in a lot of great projects; I really would hate to cut anything out. I’ve concluded that I just have to learn how to be a successful busy person. This is just the way it’s going to be and I can complain about it or I can make it work.

One of the greatest temptations for us busy folks is to skimp on fitness. As our culture has gotten busier and busier we’ve also continued to invent new ways to make our lives physically easier. Remote controls keep us on our couches. Vast internet resources keep us sitting in front of our computers and out of libraries and stores. Our comfy climate-controlled cars whisk us here and there with only the slightest effort of our right foot.

Is it any coincidence that as our personal comforts have risen, so have our waistlines at an enormously (pun intended) alarming rate? We’ve all heard the sobering statistics about obesity and health in our country. We might be rich, but we’re also unhealthy and unhappy. I’m a great believer in balance – everything’s connected. If our bodies aren’t in good condition then our minds and spirits are going to have problems too. I’m determined not to let my over-busyness crowd healthiness out of my life.

So how to solve the dilemma of fitting fitness time into a crazy schedule? Get a gym membership? When do I have time to go to the gym?

Next month I’ll tell you about how a walk to Walgreens was the epiphany moment that solved my fitness quandary and changed my life forever.

ABOUT BLUE: Blue Tapp Scheffer has been a North County resident most of the past 31 years. She began her own website development and commercial graphics company, Blue’s ArtHouse Graphics & Web Design, in 1998, which has since successfully weathered two recessions and continues to thrive. She is a solo acoustic musician/singer and performs around the St. Louis area 3-5 times a month.

Blue and her husband, Craig, live in Ferguson with a dog and a cat and are heavily involved in LiveWell Ferguson They are both bicycle commuters, bicycle tourists, bicycle advocates as well as long distance runners. They are active members of the Ferguson Cycling Club and team leaders for the LiveWell Ferguson Running Club. Blue also enjoys home gardening, green living and loves to cook healthy fresh food!

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