Amy Burk, Director, Service Delivery:

The term "wellness champion" is a popular term among advocates for healthy worksites. Recently I was talking with a group of co-workers about what it actually means to be a wellness champion. The one thing that we kept coming back to was the idea that a champion is someone that is trained and has struggled to reach a certain goal or level of achievement.

When I looked up “champion” online I found two definitions: 1) a person who has defeated all opponents in a competition or series of competitions, so as to hold first place; and 2) a person who fights for or defends any person or cause.

I love the idea that a wellness champion is both of these but the opponent that we face is unhealthy behaviors. Every day we are faced with decisions about food, movement/exercise and how we deal with stressful situations. I think that a wellness champion isn’t just someone whom this comes naturally to, but someone that makes conscious decisions while in the process of creating new healthy habits and facing the struggles involved in creating them.

By this definition, I like the idea that I am a wellness champion because my health is very important to me and wellness is something that I love learning and talking about with others. I want to set an example, “walk the walk,” and let people around me know that even though it can be hard, and that I sometimes struggle, I never give up. There have been times in my life where this has been easier than others and I’ve found that for me, making huge dramatic changes are hard and intimidating. What isn’t hard and intimidating is loving myself enough to make that first change, which is invariably followed by another.

Setting mini-health goals each week keeps me motivated and in the wellness champion mindset. I try to keep my goals very attainable so that they become consistent behaviors and have found that writing them down is a very effective way to visualize my week. This also makes it really easy to check off and give myself credit for those that I accomplished. The key to giving credit is to not focus on the goals that I didn’t achieve but to acknowledge what I did get done.  I try to say nice things and encourage myself the way that I would to a dear friend and always remember that tomorrow is another opportunity for success!