What happened to Jan and Craig?

Meet Jan and Craig. They are married, both in their 40’s. They’ve got two teenage children.

A few months ago:

Craig is a top manager in finance. He’s got a very stressful job. He only works out occasionally. When he gets home he sits down trying to unwind, eats his big dinner (mostly the only meal of the day). He feels tired constantly. He thinks it’s because of the lack of sleep and the long working hours. He doesn’t sleep well, takes ages to fall asleep and it is extremely hard to get up in the morning. Especially in the winter when it’s so dark in the morning. He just can’t find the time to work out either because when he finishes work he rather goes home to his family and it’s late anyway plus he’s exhausted. A lovely large dinner is also more attractive than sweating in the gym. No way he could get up even earlier in the morning to work out either. As a result, he’s put on some weight. Not too bad but he realised it’s gradually adding up. The worst is though that he’s impatient with his children and his wife despite of not seeing them much. He also seems to have hay fever all the time. He’s fed up with his constantly running nose. Kind of spoils the fun.

Jan is a typical modern 3-in-1 woman; mum, wife and hard worker. She works at a bank, she worked hard to get to mid-management level. She juggles with keeping the house tidy, looking after the kids, doing her best at work, make sure the family is fed and the list goes on. She’s tired all the time. She joined the gym but keeps missing those Pilates classes. She has a quick bowl of cereals for breakfast, grabs an even quicker lunch and eats it at her desk at work in front of the computer. She tends to make one of the same 5 meals for dinner because she hasn’t got the time to research and then source properly healthy meal recipes. She often feels bloated and she wishes she could find the time to work out because she thinks that would help. Her patience level is not great either, she’s often stressed and feeling down, just seeing every problem bigger than they actually are.

Meet Jan and Craig now

They both sleep well at night and jump out of bed in the morning. 3 times a week they start the day at the gym or just go for a half an hour run in the neighbourhood. They smile much more and have patience with each other and with their children which means more quality family time. Craig’s hay fever drastically improved, no running nose anymore! They both are more efficient at work. It probably helps that they are more balanced, more open to their colleagues and just simply get more done as a team. Craig helps out more at home which makes Jan very happy. They have big plans, the fog lifted now they are looking forward to the future as a family. They both lost a few pounds, while not starving at all. Jan’s got a flat tummy first time since she had the kids. That horrible painful bloated feeling is gone. She feels sexy and that didn’t go unnoticed by Craig either.