Recently I got hooked by a Netflix documentary called Tour de France: Unchained. It struck me as I watched it that the Tour de France is a great analogy for habit change. Analogies resonate with people. That’s why I used the analogy of climbing Everest in my post Sliding Down a Sugary, Slippery Slope.
The only thing I knew about the Tour de France beforehand was that the winner got to wear the famous yellow jersey. What I didn’t know was that different cyclists don the yellow jersey after each of the 21 stages in the Tour. The winner of the first stage dons the yellow jersey to wear in the next day’s stage. At the end of the second stage, the yellow jersey goes to the cyclist with the fastest time over the two stages. And then over three stages and so on, until, at the end of the 21st stage, it goes to the overall winner, the rider with the fastest cumulative time over all 21 stages. You might say they use a combination of strategy, strength and steely resolve to develop a yellow jersey-wearing habit.
So I thought it would be fun to apply some of the learnings from the Tour de France to habit change. Then why not think of something you want to change in your life and make it into your own 21-day personal Tour de France to win?
In my former career, I worked in companies that managed investments for institutional pension funds. So I’m well aware of the importance of investing for retirement. It’s something I’m sure we all agree on. The idea is to save money (making wise investments to grow that money) so, when the time comes to retire, you have enough invested that you can live the way you want. Save money now so you have the money you want in retirement. Simple. Well, the same is true for your health. Invest in your health now, so you have the health you want in retirement.
If you’re expecting this post to reveal a raft of diet and exercise tips to give you the hot bod of a swimsuit model, then you’ll be disappointed. Besides, most of them are digitally altered anyway (at least it certainly makes me feel better to think that). What I’m really on about is what you can do when your bod gets too hot since, as I write this, the temperature outside is a sweltering 31 degrees Celsius.
There’s no denying that maintaining balance is important for health. And balance comes in many forms. All this week during my 
This may seem oxymoronic on what is traditionally a heavy drinking day but one of the best ways to ring in a happy and healthy new year is to stop drinking alcohol, or certainly to drink less. Personally, I find it easier to not drink at all than to stop at one. So, to use an apt holiday metaphor, I advocate quitting cold turkey* with Dry January.
Sometimes I have to think hard to come up with topics for my blog posts. Other times they come to me organically, through a confluence of events. In this case, it was a movie, a comment from a friend, two books and my birthday bucket list item that led me to this one: It’s Never Too Late…to Exercise.
Winter “frostrates” me. I have to work at not letting it get me down. I was thinking recently that this coming winter might be even more challenging with the pandemic and all basically putting a chill, so to speak, on my usual ways to keep my spirits up. My Finnish grandmother, who embodied sisu, came to mind and I said to myself “C’mon Laurie, tap into some of that sisu that Grammy Saimi passed on to you!” Then, lo and behold, I was perusing Overdrive and 
This is the story of how Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST) saved me. Certainly Fascial Stretch Therapy saved my ability to run. I love running outdoors! I love the freedom of it and the exhilaration of all that oxygen flooding my body. But it seemed for a time that running didn’t love me back.