I moved my family of four from Connecticut to Spain in August 2025. Since then, I’ve lost more than 15 pounds.
I didn’t go on a diet. I didn’t start a workout plan. I didn’t give up bread, beer, or pastries.
I simply changed where I lived.
I drove almost everywhere in the US
Before we moved, my husband, our boys, and I lived in a town where you needed a car to get almost anywhere. I worked from home as a copywriter, and on a typical day, I averaged about 3,000 steps.
For years, I tried to change that. Every few months, I’d start a new fitness plan or decide to eat differently. I bought a Peloton. I even got an under-the-desk walking pad so I could get steps in while I worked. At one point, I added a weighted vest.
I was constantly trying to fit healthy habits into a life that left little room. I’d stick with something for a while, fall off track, and then get frustrated with myself for not being disciplined enough.
Courtesy of the author
It wasn’t just exercise. Most days, I felt like I was racing something. There was always another email, deadline, or thing I should have been doing. I was running a business, taking care of kids, managing a household, and trying to squeeze my own health somewhere into the margins.
I was also taking medication for anxiety. I’d been on it for a couple of years, and questioned if it was helping at all. I constantly felt on edge. Like I was never doing enough, I couldn’t relax.
Then we moved to Las Rozas de Madrid.
I walk 12,000 steps in Madrid
For the first time in my adult life, I don’t have a car. Our boys’ school is in another town, so we walk to the train, then switch to a bus, for drop-off and pickup.
Our neighborhood is walkable — the grocery store, pharmacy, library, and hair salon are all within about 10 minutes of our flat.
These days, I average around 12,000 steps a day without even trying. That’s four times what I was doing back in Connecticut. We live at the top of a hill, so I walk up it sometimes several times a day. I carry groceries home. I walk to appointments. I walk because I need to get somewhere, not because I scheduled it.
In Connecticut, exercise was something I had to make happen. I had to find the time, put on workout clothes, get on the Peloton or the walking pad, and convince myself that this was the part of my day when I was supposed to be active. Here, movement is just part of getting through a day, and I’ve come to genuinely enjoy it.
Most mornings, I walk through Calle Real, the pedestrian street running through the center of town. Elderly men sit together on benches talking. People connect over coffee or a beer in cafés. Kids weave through on scooters or kick a fútbol against the edge of the amphitheater. I love being one more person in the middle of it all. The sun is out most days, and it lifts my mood almost instantly.
I still eat all the things I love
My relationship with food has changed, too, though probably not in the way you’d expect. I still eat pastries. I still drink beer. And I eat more bread than ever.
But the food I eat is fresher, made with fewer ingredients, and less processed. And I’m not sitting at my desk all day, grazing between meetings. I’m moving throughout the day instead of spending most of it in one place.
Courtesy of the author
I wasn’t consciously trying to lose weight, but this lifestyle change made it nearly effortless.
Somewhere along the way, I realized something else had changed. I wasn’t anxious all the time anymore. That heavy feeling, like an anvil on my chest, was gone. I no longer take medication for anxiety.
Spain isn’t some magic place that takes away all of life’s stresses. I still have work. I still have two kids. I still have bills, deadlines, and frustrating days. But the pace of ordinary life is different.
Shops close in the middle of the day. If you’re sitting in a restaurant, the check doesn’t arrive until you ask for it. If you need a bus or train, you wait for it, because there’s no faster option.
There are more pauses in the day. And somewhere in those pauses, I stopped feeling like I needed to constantly chase the next thing.
For years, I thought taking care of myself meant finding the discipline to exercise, eat better, slow down, and make time for myself. I kept trying to become the kind of person who “does it all.”
It turns out, discipline was never really the problem. I needed a life that asked less of me.
