#50DayWellnessChallenge. Start Now. Fall off the wagon. Begin again.

Turkey hangover, ColdFront and opening day on the mountain got you thinking about starting a new fitness program?

Try this. A 50 Day Wellness Challenge. All you have to do is say yes, and then tell someone.

Yep. I make it sound easy in the columns and blog posts that I’ve been putting out there, as part of a community-wide countdown to the Winds of Change’s 5th annual Wellness Gathering on November 22.

Gym workouts and rainy bike rides, yoga sessions, delicious meals, garden harvests and gratitude journals are just some of the things people are doing. But more than that, they’ve been putting themselves out there to seed a wellness uprising with a little hashtag that delivers a boost of vitality and inspiration when resolve is flagging, and that reminds us that wellness, and the Winds of Change, is essentially just this: each of us looking out for one another.

Of course, despite the noble cause and the inspired prose and the profilerating hashtags, I fell off the wagon.

At the outset, I had considered gaming the entire thing by choosing something that offered wellness without too much challenge, like breathing deeply for five minutes every day, or savouring a poem or visiting my favourite dock, or exploring the proven health benefits of chocolate every single day. But I didn’t want to squander the opportunity to try and be a better version of myself.

With a 40th birthday around the corner and a friend’s #100daysofswimming challenge (which culminated in a five and a half hour open water swim from Europe to Africa) fresh in my memory, I set the clock on Oct. 3 and began counting down.