Hi friends! Welcome to Women Who Inspire Wellness – the August Edition! Today, I’d like to introduce you to Jenn Uren, an inspiring mother of 5 who’s been on a healthy living journey to care for herself in addition to her beautiful family.
S.E.L.F Care
Jenn recently incorporated self-care into her life, as in the past it always seemed selfish and expensive. After adopting her two youngest children, she learned more about how trauma can impact the entire body and began to think differently about self-care.
As she learned more, she broke it down into doing things for herself regularly that fit into one of 4 categories:
Spiritual
Educational
Life-giving
Fitness
Together, these four areas all contribute to her emotional well-being. You can learn more about this method here.
Exercise Avoidance
When I asked Jenn what her regular exercise routine looks like, I knew we were meant to be friends. She sheepishly admitted that since kindergarten she has gone to extreme lengths to avoid gym class or exercise of any kind. However, she also knows that when exercise “happens,” she feels better and thinks more clearly. She still tries to avoid traditional exercise and working out, but she enjoys morning yoga with her daughters and going on a brisk, daily walk with her husband.
Losing Weight as a Couple
The Uren family follows Bright Line Eating, which is designed to help food addicts overcome their addiction and have a healthy relationship with food. Her husband actually found the program as a way to help himself and they decided to do it as a family, resulting in tremendous impact. He lost over 150 pounds and Jenn lost 50.
The premise is this: There are 4 Bright Lines – No added sugar of any kind, no flour (not to be confused with gluten, whole grains are fine), no snacking, weigh and measure your food. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the program can visit Jenn’s husband’s website, www.nolongerchunky.com.
Choose Your Hard
Okay, I loved this.
Jenn let me know that her favorite inspirational quote is “Choose your hard.” She first heard it from Susan Peirce Thompson, but she’s not sure if she was quoting someone else or not.
Essentially though, everything we choose is going to have an upside and a downside, so which do we want to choose? For example, eating whatever you want makes other things hard like health, relationships, clothes shopping and energy. Eating the right things feels hard but also addresses most of those other challenges. So, choose your hard.
Healthy Living
If she could start her journey with wellness over again, Jenn would start earlier. It would have made her pregnancies easier and her kids would have had healthy behavior modeled to them from the beginning.
She says taking baby steps has been the most important lesson she’s learned. Making small changes and taking one thing at a time will all add up together to much bigger changes. She got stuck in the past looking at the huge amount of weight she wanted to lose that she froze and did nothing. But it took less than a year (a year that passed regardless of choices) to lose the weight. By applying this concept to other areas of her life, she is seeing great impact.
Reminds me of the Slight Edge.
Doing it All Together
Jenn and her husband, Jim are true inspirations who set a positive example of health for their 5 children. She reminds us that “health isn’t a fad. (Diets are.) Health doesn’t have to be an obsession. It’s not a negative label, it’s a foundation to living life. It’s sustainable. And it can be scary. So find a good community (virtual or face-to-face) to support you.” Be sure to say hello to Jenn over at www.moremommymoments.com.
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