Each week during the challenge, I’ll outline 5 different mini-challenges. Your job is to choose 1-2 of them to fully commit to for the week, and you may choose to continue that practice for the remainder of the challenge. You may wish to do more than 2 of the challenges, and you are welcome to do so, but be sure to fully commit to 1 or 2 so that you don’t get overwhelmed too quickly. You’ll select your challenge in the weekly check in, but I provide a bit more explanation for each of them here.

1. Eat breakfast every day. 

Unless you’re practising intermittent fasting, you should be eating breakfast within an hour of waking up. If you consider coffee your breakfast, this is the challenge for you! You may just be out of the habit of eating breakfast, or you may find that you aren’t hungry in the morning; either way, your body is missing out on key nutrition and a chance to refuel after hours of sleep. Take a vow to eat a healthy breakfast for the next 7 days, whether it be a piece of fruit on your way out the door, a smoothie, oats, or even a salad (hey, we’ve seen it done before!).

2. Eat at least 6 servings of fruit & veggies each day.

Every single one of you should be eating this many already, but there’s a good chance you’re not. Get more veggies and fruit in by starting your day with a smoothie (1 serving of spinach, 1 banana, and mixed frozen berries knocks out 3 servings at breakfast!), snacking on fruits and veggies, adding them to your soups or stews, enjoying a stir fry for lunch or dinner, or just committing to more veggies with your meals. We don’t care how you make it happen, just do it!

3. Cut out soda (including diet soda).

This can be a tough habit to crack, but if you’re still on the soda train, it’s time to quit it! Regular and diet soda are equally as harmful, so don’t assume one is better than the other. You can switch right to plain water, or ease into it with sparkling water flavoured with lemon, lime, or berries.

4. No fried food.

For some, this one is tricky! This includes obvious offenders like chicken wings and french fries, as well as less obvious ones like donuts, potato chips and corn tortilla chips, frozen fries that you bake at home (have been flash-fried), etc. No matter how busy you get or what craving hits, avoid all fried food!

5. Try a new workout.

We want to get you out of your comfort zone so that you can switch up your exercise routine. There’s no better way to learn! The options are endless, and YouTube is a great resource to get started. If you haven’t been jogging in years and want to get back to it, start with a walk-jog or search online for a 5km training guide! For others, weight lifting is a new workout and a great thing to try. A few others to consider are kickboxing, yoga/pilates, HIIT, tennis, Zumba, skating, cycling, or any gym with classes nearby. Have fun and be creative with this one!