One of the main reasons why I wanted to really push ahead with this health journey is because

I thought to myself, if my daddy had been healthier, would my daddy still be here?

Would he have been able to protect himself more?

CNN senior writer and my friend, Lisa Resper's France, lost her father, Gary Resper senior,

this past February.

Now even before COVID, he did suffer from a lot of health issues, obesity, diabetes.

He was a cancer survivor.

Those pre-existing conditions put him at higher risk.

It had a huge influence on me because I thought to myself, I've got to lose weight.

I've got to lose weight because that's going to help me to not end up on a ventilator

or potentially die.

All of a sudden, I knew in my mind, and growing up, all these years, I knew that obesity

put me at risk, but with the pandemic, it put me at risk in a way that was so in my face

every day that it scared me to death, though I like to tell people it scared me to life.

Scared me to life, I love that.

You know, whether it's from contracting the coronavirus, losing loved ones unexpectedly,

or just from the stress of social isolation, there's no question this pandemic has taken

the humongous toll on our bodies, in ways big and small.

For some of us, the pandemic has made us start thinking seriously about our physical

health.

We've become more aware that we rely on our bodies working as well as they can, and

many of us have decided we'd like them to work even better.

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