I have been poring over article after article, looking for something to jump out at me to share with you guys in regards to fitness. I am so tired- it is midnight and I just want to crawl into bed. Nothing I read appealed to me or those things that did had already been written about here before. I contemplated just throwing in the towel and saying “screw it”, but then I knew that I would still have to come up with something tomorrow morning.
So I bring to you my thoughts on fitness (for the two pennies it’s worth). Hopefully, there will be something useful or that you can identify with in my ramblings……
- Make exercise a priority. Ahhhh friends, this is such a hard one for me. With so many demands on my time every single day, I find that if I don’t make exercising a priority, then it quickly gets shoved to the wayside and forgotten until 3 months later.
- Make exercise part of your daily routine. This goes hand in hand with the first one. About 6 months after baby #2, I was the heaviest I had ever been and hating the way I looked. I made a conscious decision to make exercise part of my daily routine and a #1 priority. It was one of the FIRST things I did five days a week, sometimes six days.
- Stick with it. Results will not happen overnight.
- If your body hits a plateau, then change up the exercise routine. Over time, your body becomes accustomed to whatever exercises you are doing. You need to change it up from time to time, “surprise” your body from the same-o, same-o routine.
- Find a workout partner. I found that having a buddy helped eliminate the monotony of working out- I had someone to chat with, I had someone to push me to “do just one more”, I had someone to push myself against while doing cardio exercise. I was also less likely to bail on exercise if I was meeting a friend.
- Invest in a good heart rate monitor. The one I purchased cost about $100 but once I figured out how to use it, it was well worth it. It told me how many calories I burned, what my heart rate was, if I was within my target heart rate and for how long, and of course, there were a million additional features for me to play around with. I became addicted to wearing my heart rate monitor and knowing how hard my body was working (or not).
- Find the exercise regimen that works BEST for you. What may have worked for someone else doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. You have to find the right balance for YOU.
- Workout music. I didn’t always have a friend to exercise with. When I was alone, I made sure to have heart pumping, GOOD music to keep me motivated. Check out this post for ideas.
- Identify your fitness goal. Why are you exercising? What is your goal- to be fit, to be healthier, to lose dress sizes? Quantify it, break it down, map it out. My fitness goal this time around, now that baby #3 is nearing the 1 year mark, to to get BACK to how FIT I was right before I got pregnant. I want to lose a minimum of one dress size and preferably two, I want to be able to make my heart pump good and hard. I want to SWEAT. My goal is banish the flab, tone up the muscles, and lose the baby gut.
- On those days where you just don’t feel like it, just put on your exercise clothes and DO IT. I promise, you well feel better after exercising. Some of my BEST workouts have been the ones I didn’t want to do in the first place. If you need some support or motivation, come here and comment about it on the latest post- believe me, at the minimum, you’ll have the Shrinking Jeans editors pushing you all the way!
As I was typing this list, I was envisioning the FIT woman I was from Oct 2006-Dec 2007. I was one H-A-W-T mama. I loved the way I looked, I loved the energy I had, I loved the FIT lifestyle I lived. And that my friends, is my goal, my motivation. This entire list came from that time period of my life.
I want to be there again. And I will.
Please feel free to add your own thoughts, ramblings, motivations, goals, etc!
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I’m a runner, on my way to becoming a marathoner. I am 42 years old and have found a peaceful acceptance of my body. Through running, I have discovered who I am, besides a mom to three kids and a wife to one. I truly enjoy sharing my love of fitness with others while empowering and motivating women to conquer their fear of the unknown. In my spare time, I manage the Run with the Sisterhood Facebook page, work here and there for Zooma Women’s Race Series, and work part-time at our local YMCA.