A wise piece of chocolate once told me...

Any self-respecting follower of the Feel Good Lifestyle knows well the burden of a sudden and intense need for chocolate. In adherence to my “listen to your body” challenge of last week, I clearly had no choice but to venture to Walgreen’s on Saturday night to find a suitable answer to my body’s demands.

To pretend chocolate isn’t holy is blasphemous, but pretending moderation is unnecessary is just as big of a lie, so I confess it was a small box of a new line of bite-sized Dove “Beautiful” Chocolates that made their way home with me that night. I didn’t realize until I got home that in an attempt at targeted marketing, the chocolates actually boasted ingredients beneficial for healthy skin. How lame—as if I needed an excuse for chocolate. Chocolate needs no justification.

When I unwrapped my first little treat, I was delighted to find that the aluminum wrappers had little messages on the inside—how exciting! What a disappointment when the messages turned out to be cheesier than Seventh Heaven in syndication. My first wrapper proclaimed “You are beautiful!” Psssh—I already knew that. Dove needs to hire some new writers or get a new gimmick.

Now I know a disciplined, hard-bodied trainer would confidently state her complete satisfaction at a single ounce of dark chocolate and announce her cheerful anticipation of next month’s 100-calorie indulgence. But, let’s face it, I’m not that disciplined and I’m definitely not a hard body…so I went in for seconds. Good thing, too, because chocolate number two’s message completely redeemed the first:

“Happiness is a state of health.”

For serious? Dove, have you been reading my blog? How fitting that the essence of my program would be encompassed in a quotation found in a chocolate wrapper. That’s right, folks, the ideas that I’ve been trying to put into words for over a year are printed on tin foil and can be found at your local drugstore.

So take a hint from Dove (and me!). Stop for a moment and think about the people you admire for their healthy lifestyles. Most of them have found ways to be active and healthy in ways that truly make them happy. They enjoy the food they eat and look forward to their chosen modes of exercise. On the flip side, think about the people you know who are overweight and unhealthy—they are typically unhappy or discontent with some aspect of their lives. It’s no secret: happiness breeds health.

My challenge for the week is this: instead of planning to be happy once you are healthy/skinny/fit/etc., resolve to become happy as a means to that same goal. Identify those issues which are keeping you from a state of happiness and make a commitment to confront those issues first. “Happiness is a state of health,” and health is a state of feeling good.