Wellness Committee Takes Resolutions Remote
While 2020 forced us to connect virtually and minimized our in-office time, the IN Food
Wellness Committee worked to find ways to keep each other accountable and healthy and have
some fun while doing it!
As we all remember, back in mid-March 2020, no one really knew how long we would be
working remotely. (We naively planned for 2 months!) The movement that had seemed
somewhat endless in our large North Loop office and the beautiful surrounding neighborhood
had now become confined to our apartments or houses.
The Wellness Committee jumped at the opportunity to start challenging the team to daily
activities of small exercises. We put together a “key” that consisted of a variety of movements
associated with every letter and number (A=10 jumping jacks, B=5 push-ups, 4=6 plank dips for
example) and provided the team with the challenge of doing a workout every day based on a
provided prompt (mother’s maiden name and year she was born for example). Everyone was all
over this and it turned into us learning even more about each other through the activity
prompts (like how my mother’s very German maiden name, Pulvermacher, led to me doing a
bit of a longer exercise than most others).
When the plan of being home for a few weeks turned into months, the committee transitioned
our daily challenges into weekly challenges to allow us a bit more time to concentrate on a
specific aspect of our own wellness. These challenges ranged from drinking 100 oz of water
each day, to swapping salty snacks like chips for nutritious nuts, to doing a random act of
kindness each day between Christmas and New Year’s. We maintained accountability via Slack
channels and consistent reminders and encouragements (and perhaps a few competitive jabs
here and there). The whole IN Food Crew embraced these challenges and contributed ideas
they wanted to focus on to incorporate into the group challenges.
As a team, we started 2021 with 9+ months of resolutions already under our belt and that
makes for a very happy, healthy and proud IN Food Crew. We’re excited to see what 2021
brings and hopefully that means being able to gather together to support each other and
celebrate our successes again (and ideally bring some friendly in-person competitiveness back
to our morning meetings ).