Health

Nine months ago, I decided I would like to train and compete in a triathlon. And in a couple weeks, I will stand trembling at the start of my first triathlon: ready to swim 1500 metres, cycle forty kilometres, and end with a ten kilometre run to the finish line. If you've been following my journey so far, you'll know that I am a) an amateur b) the mother of four young children and c) have never attempted anything like this in my entire life. So maybe you're wondering: Why a triathlon?

After my son was born three years ago, I had a serious bout of what I'll lightly refer to as the baby blues. Still new into my parenting career, I felt very alone, incompetent and struggled often with tears. There were times I felt like I was just barely making it in caring for two small children on my second maternity leave.

I’ll be honest: Inner peace, or even increased flexibility, wasn't high on my agenda when I signed up for my first Bikram yoga class. I was looking for some heat. It was February, and I was living in England. It had snowed 15 centimetres one night, and I was a scruffy student who refused to run up my own heating bill. The thought of sitting in a yoga studio, heated to 40 degrees Celsius, sounded like heaven.

Michelle Obama and the USDA unveiled the new My Plate icon last week to show Americans how to eat, replacing the food pyramid. "We have time to take a look at our kids’ plates. As long as they’re half full of fruits and vegetables, and paired with lean proteins, whole grains and low-fat dairy, we’re golden. That’s how easy it is,” Obama said in a press release.

You might know pomegranates as one of the world's most delicious and least accessible fruits. I have a friend who was once on a date, one summer day, with a man who bought and ate a pomegranate while they were walking down the street, resulting in one of the messiest, most awkward and least charming seduction attempts she has ever experienced. But I digress. Pomegranates might be messy, but according to a recent study — reported by the Guardian ("Can pomegranate juice lower stress levels at work?") — they might also be the remedy for all kinds of life-shortening ailments, especially stress.