Getting Your Body Back After Pregnancy: What not to do
See – she’s fine now! Check out that core strength!! Compare Jelly Bean’s fab plank to this woman’s – this has got to be the worst “fitness” photo I’ve ever seen! (And no comment about the two binkies. We’re working on it!)
“Huh, we never really figured out what happened with that blip,” the doctor said lightly as she traced her finger over Jelly Bean’s growth chart at her recent 2-year checkup. She didn’t even notice my uncomfortable fidgeting as she continued, “Ah well, no matter. She’s all caught up now.” By the time we got Jelly Bean’s shots – little sweetie was such a trouper, didn’t make a peep – and got out to the car I was so overcome I had to call my sister to talk me down before I could drive home. Attack of the mother guilt! Hello, darkness my old friend…
That “blip” where Jelly Bean dropped from the chunky-monkey 86th percentile in which she was born down to the 20th percentile where she stayed for 9 months? My fault. Probably. I say this because after her well-baby checkup at 10 months where the doctor was very concerned that she’d lost half a pound between months 9 and 10, I finally gave up breast-feeding her and switched to formula. She bounced back up to the 80th percentile within two months. I wasn’t trying to starve my poor sweetheart but if you recall I had a hard time breastfeeding her. She had a milk protein intolerance and I was a vegetarian at the time so I ended up basically being a vegan. I’m not saying that vegans can’t make great breast milk but for me, combined with going back to heavy exercise a wee bit too early, it didn’t work. Plus you know I was really worried about losing the rest of my baby weight as fast as possible. Gym Buddy Krista, a doula, made me feel a little better when she told me that the growth charts are designed for fast-gaining formula-fed babies and not for exclusively breastfed infants.
Anyhow, I’m not trying to make excuses – I admitted then that the worst resurgences of my eating disorder (and also my anxiety disorder) happen after I have a baby, thank you hormone hell – but rather trying to explain my state of mind when Gym Buddy Daria, who six weeks ago gave birth to the cutest little boy ever, asked me to write a post about how to get your body back after pregnancy. I think she was a little startled when I immediately yelled “Don’t do what I did!”
Sadly I can’t write the post that she asked for. But I can write the post about what not to do to get your body back after having a baby.
Don’t jump back into exercise too soon. Sure you know this already but for those of us that really like our exercise – and especially those of us who rely on it to keep us mentally sane – the temptation is very real. I was back in the gym walking the track with Jelly Bean in a carrier when she was a week old. I was back to kickboxing by four weeks and full workouts by six weeks. If you remember, my first Great Fitness Experiment after Jelly Bean was born was P90X in January. She was born in November. Not smart. If I had it to do over again I would start with something more gentle like walking and yoga and work up to more hardcore workouts over time. You can work out every day if it feels good but don’t push it past the feeling good stage.
Don’t do ab exercises until your stomach is totally healed. Part of P90X is a workout called “The Ab Ripper.” It’s a great core strengthener but unfortunately I still had my diastasis (the separation between the ab muscles that many women get during pregnancy) and so it literally ripped my abs apart. The problem showed up in my left hip flexor which had taken over for my ineffective abs. Eventually it became so painful that I couldn’t lift my leg to put it into my pants without using my hands. I thought that the pain would go away eventually on its own but it didn’t. Instead I ended up needing to quit all ab exercises for about 6 months until it healed. Thankfully I discovered the Tupler technique – a series of rehab exercises designed to heal a diastasis – which also helped a lot.
Don’t underestimate the effects of exhaustion. Everyone knows new babies don’t sleep much. Even the ones who are great sleepers still wake up before you do. (And that nonsense about “sleep when your baby sleeps” a) only works for your first kid and b) doesn’t really work at all unless you are a narcoleptic who can sleep on command. “And… drop!”) If you have the choice between exercise and sleep, choose sleep. Especially in those first few months.
Don’t have an all-or-nothing attitude. I am admittedly one of those people who fears that if I miss a single workout then it will become a habit and I’ll never make it back to the gym. This isn’t true. (And it also has the unfortunate corollary of making some people quit working out entirely because they think if they can’t workout every day then what’s the point?) Thankfully I’ve gotten much, much better about this over the past year.
Don’t cut calories. Unless you are under a doctor-ordered diet plan then just eat to your hunger. Some women lose weight effortlessly while breastfeeding. My body naturally likes to carry an extra 10 pounds as butterball backup when I’m nursing. Trying to lose those last 10 pounds before I wean is an exercise in futility, frustration and – most heartbreaking – growth chart blips.
Don’t compare yourself to other moms. Yes Dara Torres, Paula Radcliffe and some other moms like the woman who ran the Chicago marathon and then gave birth hours later will be able to pull off superhuman athletic feats with the umbilical cord still dangling between your legs. But they are not you. (They’re not me either.) If you can easily jump back into your old routines then that is wonderful but if you can’t – and for the record, most of us can’t – don’t feel bad.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. …says the girl who is right now being really hard on herself. Seriously though, if it’s one thing I’ve learned from having 5 kids it’s that there will always be something to feel guilty about. Whether it’s using jelly beans as a self-bribe to get up 10 times at night with the baby (true story: that and late-night infomercials was how I survived #3′s infancy) or buying new sweat pants so you can go another day without doing laundry, try and remember how short this time really is. “This too shall pass” is a gift, not a threat.
What to do
And since I didn’t do everything wrong – not even I’m that perfect! – here are a few tips of things that worked for me:
- Wear a belly wrap. Jelly Bean (my fifth) was the first kid that I used a wrap after their birth and I swear it really helped my organs realign (oh yes they move to weird places during pregnancy!), supported my back and, yes, helped my tummy get flat quicker.
- Find a great support system. I was so incredibly blessed to not only have 3 Gym Buddies (Megan, Allison and Daria) who had babies within just a few months of Jelly Bean but to also have my sister have a baby then. Having these other new moms around me was often the difference between sanity and the crisis line some days.
- Focus on quality of workouts, not quantity. This is not the time to get stuck in the endless cardio loop. If you have 15 minutes do a short-but-intense (and I mean “intense” for someone who has just had a baby, not your usual level of intensity) circuit that combines some strength and some cardio. You don’t even need to worry about weights if you don’t want to as your body weight alone will provide plenty of resistance. Repeat after me: more is not more.
Your advice
What would you guys tell Daria? Did you check out that worst fitness photo I linked to up top (sorry couldn’t embed it as it’s copyrighted) – what is that chick doing?!
Finally. I Could be BACK.
Happy Sunday Kittens and I must grovel. I have sinned as a blogger but – I think you’ll see in my vlog below, I explain a wee bit about how OVERWHELMINGLY SWAMPED the past week has been. I’ve been working until 1am so many nights, I can’t count. It’s just life in start-up land when you have a start-up that is exploding like my baby, FitFluential, you just kinda ROLL WITH IT and be grateful, knowing that someday soon…you will get some sleep.
Here is the said Ramble-On-A-Thon:
As I mentioned in the vlog, I leave for NYC with my Fitfluential crew on Thursday, back on Monday afternoon. And then it’s Christmas right? And then I have to freaking MOVE!! Hello!! I was so not ready to move in December and what a gargantuan PITA!!!
A lot of you have been asking about my physical therapy progress. I am probably the most impatient person on the planet and thus, hearing that it will probably take 3 full months of strengthening kind of pissed me off. What are ya gonna do? Keep at it. She’s working hard on strengthening my upper back because all the time that I’ve been injured I wasn’t working my back, and then when I DID go back to do UPPER BODY work, what did I do? Shoulders- with HEAVY WEIGHTS and likely poor form, because I was rushing.
Do you see how important 1) correct form is and 2) not rushing? I’ve learned enough lessons this year to make me shutup and slow down in 2012. I’m just SAYING.
How has your December been thus far? Now it’s time to be back at it. I did conquer a mountain of urgent work the past week so I can really do what I said and PUT MYSELF FIRST, put my health and wellbeing first. That means, working on my START NOW goals.
They are:
- Drink more water daily. Use my Brita pitcher at home and chug from my bottle on the road.
- 5-6 Meals throughout the day. No more 1-2 meals a day at 9am and 10pm. BALONEY.
- Protein at every meal. I’ve been crappy on protein. I’ll be in GNC a LOT. (#client)
- Workouts 6x a week. Period. Consistency.
- Sleep. Get enough.
- Make time for ME. Make time for down time–time to enjoy life, not just work all the time.
- Overall Healthy Focus: Vitamins, Supplements. I used to religously take my vitamins and supplements. I stopped because a moron doctor told me to when he couldn’t figure out I had started perimenopause….he thought my vitamins were making my skin freak out. #fail. I’m adding back in GNC Vita-Paks (takes away the hassle of figuring it out each morning, let’s be honest), Fish Oil, Glutamine, Glucosamine, L-Carnitine, etc. I’ll do a detailed post later.
Question: What are your goals that you want to START NOW on, and focus on in the new year?? What didn’t you accomplish this year, and what will you change to make it happen in the new year?
*Disclosure: GNC is a client of my company, FitFluential LLC. Although they are a paid partner of my company, my opinions are my own.*
Wednesday WOOT- back next week! PROMISE! {Day 10 1KO21}
Happy Wednesday Kittens! How’s your week going? Mine is going great! I’m on “day 10″ of my first 21-Day Challenge where I am focusing first and foremost on CONSISTENCY. Working out every day- 6x a week, no matter what. I won’t stop this focus but consistency has NOT been my boyfriend for a while and we totally need to get back together and like GO STEADY.
I feel good about the physical therapy thing too and my shoulder. She nudged me last night in that teres minor/major area and said, “You might be really sore when you get home” and I chuckled as I walked out. HOLY CRAP later on I was diving into some ice like it was Huge Jackman. Seriously.
NOT my idea of what I want to cuddle up with but it worked. I go back tomorrow and Friday and next week I do three days. SO looking forward to being able to LIFT again. And Kettlebells. And TRX, and you know!! Being a badass again. ;-0 Such as…
So, in the mean time, cheers to my new good habits that are sticking:
- The Brita Challenge has been a fun and competitive way to get myself back into drinking water all day long. I love me some Diet Coke but I’m now drinking a TON more water every day. I just get out the purple pitcher when I’m home and that whole pitcher must be done by the end of the day. On the road, I take that awesome water bottle with a filter in it with me. NICE>
- The 1KO21 challenge is working. I’m getting the HABIT thing where my workouts are starting to feel again like brushing my teeth or getting the mail or showering or thinking about Huge Jackman – it’s what I do EVERY DAY.
hehehohoh - No Excuses. There is always something we CAN do. No excuses. This mantra is working.
Here’s my ramble-on-a-thon from yesterday:
Blah blah blah. I swear I could make my vlogs into a CD and it could replace Excedrin PM as a way for me to fall asleep. LOL
Gotta run.
Question of the day: If you could only do ONE “kind” of workout~ what would it be? Cardio? A certain type of cardio? Weights? Crossfit? Yoga?
I just got my WOOT! Back. I Think!
Hey Kittens! Thanks SO much for being SO patient with your Aunt Kelly while she had a meltdown took some well-needed time-off.
Even tonight, I’m here at 9pm writing my dang blog post! I’m trying to transition my schedule during the day so I force myself to NOT START WORKING in the morning until I do my workouts…..the FitFluential stuff is soooooo busy and soooo addicting too it’s hard once I come in here to stop. Then it’s 7pm and I haven’t worked out and so on and so forth. #fail
Tonight I did my old fav – Ilaria’s kickboxing, plus 150 walking lunges and some core work. Burned 650 calories total. I’m trying to shoot for burning 3500 calories a week = 1 lb. Diet is ON, spot on.
I REALLY went rambling in today’s vlog, since I hadn’t blogged or vlogged in a while:
How do I do it? Never shutup I mean? I have no idea. It’s a gift. And then, I shot another vlog after my workout. Stay tuned for that sweaty mess. I also talk about the Turkey Meatloaf Muffins from Bodybuilding.com- you can CLICK HERE for that recipe. I made them today. I will say, I want to add something as they were a bit dry. I might add ketchup like my other recipe calls for- this will increase calories slightly but not fat.
Oh here’s my 2nd vlog- TWO IN A DAY!! now you can really fall asleep!
Now I must leave you because I’M FLIPPING TIRED. Hopefully this week is my transition back to a normal schedule and avoiding BURNOUT!!!
Miss you all!!
I Need My WOOT Back!!
I know how she feels. Guys- are you not so sick of hearing me say, “I’m so swamped!” but I am. There is no way to say it, I have never in my life been so buried. That’s life in a busy startup especially when you are the head honcho- meaning the person that everyone goes to for decision making. HOLY COW. Give me peace. I kid you not. I’m SO tired today and drained I found myself saying, “I don’t have time or energy to go get a MASSAGE!”
That ain’t right. THAT AIN’T RIGHT!!!!!!!!!
hehehehe This is new meaning to the phrase “CRASH AND BURN” right?
Now, I really must run because I have a Twitter chat tonight at 8pm with OMRON– they have a very cool pedometer out and Bob Greene (he works with some chick called Oprah..) is hosting the chat…! Fun. Now I must go get 8 hours of sleep in before that time. Wish me luck.
Here’s my ramble-on-a-thon from yesterday. Pull up a pillow and fall asleep!
QUESTION OF THE DAY: How many hours of sleep a night do you get?
Foods and Supplements For Back Pain Relief
I’ve never had problems with back pain so I was not happy when my lower back starting hurting all at once with no warning. I admit I do a lot of lifting since my part time job is in a freight department. I guess that’s why the lower back pain even happened.
I’m not one to take OTC pain meds and I had to find relief so I could do my job (more lifting!!!) without complaining about “my back hurting.” I thought back to what I did to help my frozen shoulder a while back. I increased my cod liver oil to boost the Omega 3 fatty acids in my body. I also ate more flax seeds (buy whole and grind them at home) in salads, on yogurt or in breakfast drinks. This worked for my shoulder in few months. I gained full range of motion so I hoped the back pain would go away with diet.
What is inflammation? The online Medical Dictionary defines inflammation as: a protective tissue response to injury or destruction of tissues, which serves to destroy, dilute, or wall off both the injurious agent and the injured tissues. The classical signs of acute inflammation are pain, heat, redness, swelling and loss of function. In other words, inflammation can be experienced as painful joints and/or muscles, loss of ability to move freely, and painful swelling.
Gladly I did find relief for my sudden back pain with diet and supplements! No pain pills, no medicine patches, no stinky rubs and no doctors. I used a drug-free pain patch that stimulated my back the way acupuncture does but without the needles. Worked up to 3 tablespoons cod liver oil a day. Ate 4-5 tablespoons flax seeds daily. Supplemented with a whole food multivitamin, vitamin E, CoQ10, Krill oil, and Big B, a stabilized rice bran vitamin B complex.
Here are some foods that are known anti-inflammatory or have helped me with my back pain and shoulder.
Whole fresh fruits, especially blueberries
Bright colored and dark green leafy vegetables
Coconut oil, Olive oil, grape seed oil or walnut oil
Nuts, legumes and seeds
Turmeric and ginger
Omega-3 essential fatty acids – Fish, walnuts, flax and pumpkin seeds
Pastured chicken, grass fed beef, wild caught salmon
Drink plenty of water daily
Here are some good resources for you to learn more about natural back pain relief.
I only use supplements from whole food sources. Some I get from www.iherb.com, or Whole Food Nation or Vitacost.com. The cod liver oil I use is Carlson’s lemon flavor (no fishy taste) Best price I’ve found for cod liver oil is from www.iherb.com and if you use the code OBI850 you save $5 on your first order.
It is possible to control or get rid of lower back pain with food, herbs and supplements. I had fast results but your results might take a bit of time so hang in there.
Does fitness have to be sexy? [I'm Not Bringing Sexy Back. Or Forward. Or Sideways.]
Not a temptation for me…
I am not a sexy person. Please don’t argue that with me in the comments. I am outgoing, funny, cheerfully serious, pretty-when-caught-off-guard and occasionally entertaining. But sexy? Nope. Some girls ooze sex appeal even in a floor-length prairie dress but I could be wearing a gold mini, a massively padded bra and leopard platform heels (true story, Halloween dance 2000) and still manage to make it look prudish. Those of you who know me in real life can vouch for this. And nowhere is this (missing) quality more on display than when I dance. (Lie. Nowhere was this more obvious than when I was dating and I thank Gym Hubby every day for thinking smart is sexy or I’d still be single. Love that man!)
Here’s the problem: I love to dance. I do it every opportunity I get from the grocery store to the kitchen. I’ve taken lots of lessons. I was even on a dance team. Twice. And if you know anything about dancing, you know that sexiness and dancing go together like public toilets and hand sanitizer, you just can’t have one without the other. (See? Even my analogies are unsexy!)
In the past I’ve taken care of this problem by choosing dances that are on the less-sexy end of the spectrum. When I did ballroom dancing, my specialty was the Lindy Hop - a form of swing dancing known for intricate footwork, aerial steps and its athleticism. Sure some of the girls on my team made it look incredibly hot. I just went for campy. Then one day, a gorgeous fellow ballroom dancer told me he was going to “fix” my salsa – life, it IS just like the movies! (Center Stage, anyone?) – by teaching me how to find my “latin hips.” Fast forward several months of practicing and after my gorgeous partner had introduced to me to his boyfriend – while I could do the motions (I finally got the mambo figure 8 action by listening to The Spice Girls “Spice Up Your Life” until my roommates wanted to drop-kick me. And then do a shuffle ball-change.) I had no spark behind it. One night he threw up his hands in disgust. “You know what you need? Sex. You will never know how to be sexy until have done the sexy.”
Well guess what? Five kids later and my dancing has not improved at all. I showed him.
But my love for dancing hasn’t decreased at all. I tried ignoring it for a while but it came out in other avenues like an embarrassing obsession with dance movies. (I saw Step Up 3-D on opening night. And I had to scream and clap my hands and bounce up and down in my seat. Me and all the 12-year-olds.) So I decided to go back to dance class. Lots of grown-ups do it, right? My first choice would have been to go back to swing dancing but that’s a partner sport and Gym Hubby hates swing dancing with me (in his defense I get super bossy and back-lead like nobody’s business). Ditto for the rest of my beloved ballroom. But that still left me with everything from jazz to tap to ballet! Well childcare being my main issue, I had to find a dance class that would also offer to watch my kidlets while I did it. That left me with exactly one choice: Hip Hop.
When I said I loved dancing, what I meant was I love all kinds of dancing except for Hip Hop. Zumba? Ay yi yi mamacita! Folk Dancing? I’ll bring my daisy chain! I even adore the much-maligned polka. (Contrary to popular belief the polka is awesome and fun and one of the best dance workouts you can get. You should totally try it.) But Hip Hop? I’d never liked the music, the clothes are either missing or crazy unflattering and, frankly, it’s one of the sexiest dance forms out there. You’ve seen Beyonce, right?
Nevertheless I showed up for class and, true to Turbo Jennie form, she hooked me from the beginning. That was 3 years ago and I love it now. I still completely suck at it. Oh I can get the choreography just fine but it’s my Latin hips issue all over again. I can’t commit to any of the sexy moves because I just don’t have it. Sometimes I wish I had it. Like tonight – watching all the other girls shake it made me envious that they could be so uninhibited. Seriously, you should see Gym Buddy Allison. I’ve had two separate people come up to me in the past two days to tell me how naturally gorgeous and photogenic she is. (And they’re right of course!)
And it isn’t just dance fitness that’s all about the sexy. I’d say it’s the majority of fitness whether it’s the ladies with the glistening cleavage in the Body Pump posters to the fact that magazines simply cannot dress their fitness models in anything offering more coverage than a sports bra and booty shorts. So every once in a while, worried that I’m missing out on some important facet of my fitness, I try and all my best efforts end in “duck face.” (Do not click that link or you won’t be able to stop doing it!!) So then I think “Eh, the world is not lacking for sexy women. They don’t need me.” Plus I still have issues with the whole women-must-be-sexy-before-anything-else thing. I’d rather be powerful. Is it worth trying for something that is so not me?
In the meantime, I have daydreams about starting a swing dance based fitness class. (Think I could talk Jennie into swing dance hip hop?)
How do you feel about combining sexy and fitness? Anyone else have a hard time tapping into their inner sexpot? Can you be powerful and sexy? Should I just stick to the polka??
Ellen, a sweet lady in the Silver Sneakers program at our gym, offered to teach us a French folk dance. Crazy fun! This is why I love my Y! (And we’d just gotten out of the pool, hence the wet hair etc.)
No Looking Back. Only Ahead.
This has ALWAYS been one of my favorite quotes of all time. And it is SOOO true. What’s going on in our minds is so critically important and will – IT WILL- determine our success or failure. I’m going to vlog about this later this week but two people approached me this past week asking about “diets” and it got me thinking about exactly this point. One friend of mine said that her mom was asking about Trendy Diet 101 and “did it work?”. Then my other friend told me that she was fed up with not losing weight and was going on a psycho diet that her trainer told her to do– NO CARBS (of course!) and a whole bunch of other “No’s”.
Both of these people were in the same mindset of “I CAN’T DO THIS ON MY OWN. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME, I HAVE TO FIND THE RIGHT DIET TO FIX ME.”. (And y’all know, I’ve told you that in MY past, during the past two years, I had this very very wrong mindset for too long!).
Preach it Oprah. Let me say that I dig Oprah. I never watched the show, but I do subscribe to her magazine and I love that woman. I think she is GORGEOUS. So, what I’m about to say is NOT in any way a “dog” on her. It’s a factual observation. Quite often, people that haven’t reached their weight loss goal will say, “Well if I had all the time in the world and unlimited wealth to pay a personal trainer and a chef, I’d be buff too.” THAT IS NOT TRUTH AT ALL. Oprah’s weight battle has been witnessed in the public eye and clearly, she is a more curvy Oprah now than in her Medifast (is that the diet she went on way back when?) days. This woman is one of the wealthiest persons in the world. And she has not been able to get her weight demons addressed.
It’s not about money. It’s not about the right “diet”. It’s not about lap-band surgery or liposuction. If you want to be successful in this weight loss journey- YOU HAVE TO GET YOUR MIND RIGHT. I have personally – FINALLY– learned this lesson earlier this year. I had that bad mindset. Ask some of my friends- Amy or Carla or Jennifer or Sarah — at some point, as late as January of this year, I was asking them what THEY ate, so I could copy it letter for letter, because clearly there was some magic diet pill that I was missing….NOT. NOT TRUTH.
When I started reading these great books and had several “A-HA!” moments of awakening, I finally started moving toward inner peace, toward acceptance of myself and my body, and what it has been through, what my mind and my heart have been through the past several years. I stopped listening to all the panicked thoughts, the negative self-talk, the fear– all that was just NOISE that was distracting me and pushing me in a direction, a new direction, every other day. The more I began to CALM DOWN, RELAX and start (Yes, I’m going to say it…) loving myself, and treating myself with respect and encouragement, the more my life began to change.
This photo expresses how inside, I began to feel– like I was breaking FREE finally of these horrible, limiting thoughts and attitudes that had kept me down……THIS is my success for the first part of 2011. It’s been very recent, and this will be an ongoing journey for me…like I have shared in the past, one of my other favorite quotes is, “A Garden is never finished…”. I’m never FINISHED.
Because I finally SAW what I needed to see about myself and within myself, I could finally start changing. I have this fantastic therapist now that helps me see things in a better light– wow, if I would have had any idea a shrink could do so much with me, I would have started going YEARS AGO, probably right when my divorce stormed into my life. I thank God that I can see her every week, and I’m grateful for the books filled with wisdom that are helping me change my life — change parts of myself, for the better. It’s all FINALLY GOOD.
I had the desire to change before, but I didn’t believe in myself. I certainly wasn’t loving myself, I was beating myself up mentally every single day. When I look back at that now, I am horrified, and I’m not shocked at all as to why the past two years were so so hard for me…why I didn’t really get anywhere in my fitness journey and really in many areas in my life, professionally and personally.
NOW, it’s all changing. And wow. The second half of 2011 is so exciting to me. My inner peace is having an effect on every part of my life. I’m enjoying my workouts again. I have a healthy relationship with food again. I don’t DOUBT my abilities to succeed anymore. I love who I am now and who I am BECOMING.
This is my mantra (or well, one of them!) for the rest of this year. That which I have accomplished, is only the beginning. Just because I’ve conquered my food demons doesn’t mean I am “fixed”– you always have to work at a healthy mindset….and I don’t plan on ever stopping the reading, the talking with my therapist, the taking time out for prayer and meditation….this is all what I do to feed my heart and mind, while my workouts and “diet” feed my body.
If you are still in any way thinking you need a perfect “DIET” or surgery or to starve yourself or punish yourself to get thin, and that getting thin will fix everything— KNOW THAT THIS IS WRONG. Know that the concept of “you have to love yourself” is not just a bunch of hokey BS. It is so true. It WILL change your future.
Tomorrow is hot yoga. I can’t wait. And next week I’m going to be in Miami, my favorite place, for 9 glorious days. I’m staying with my BFF Kelly down there, she’s a yoga instructor….so you KNOW (and this time I WILL DO IT) I’m getting her on some vlogs. I’m getting my NAMASTE on while I’m down there and doing NOTHING but baking in the sun and drinking some Mojito’s. This vacation will be the beginning of the rest of this year. And this year is the beginning of the rest of my life. Amen.
Here’s the vloggy randomness I shot earlier this weekend. Until tomorrow- have a great weekend!
Looking Back, Looking Forward.
Happy Sunday Kittens!! How is your weekend going? Mine is GREAT. I’m telling you, I needed this weekend of no plans….things have been going SOOOO nutty (BUSY) that I almost feel like I’m forgetting to breathe lately! LOL But- it’s all good. Today I started off with some church and then discovered a Hot Yoga Studio NEAR MY HOUSE!! BONUS!! Y’all know I loved going to Hot Yoga with Amykins but that studio is like 45 minutes away- so 90 minutes there and back plus 90 minutes of Hot Yoga = a whole lotta time out of a day. Now this place is about 15 minutes from my house and it got GREAT reviews on Yelp. So I headed over and got my Hot Sweaty Yoga on— Heaven.
NOT quite there yet! One thing I liked about this studio compared to the one down by Amy’s house is that they have the lights dimmed really low the whole time. For me, this removes that temptation to look at everyone else and compare yourself with them. Or to (this would be an insecure Kelly thing but just being honest) look in the mirror and think “Oh Heavens I am so fat looking, I want to leave”….(yes, these are thought patterns I’m working on changing but some still linger.) They also play music which I really like – and this is NOT a traditional Bikram class. They have all kinds of yoga postures and they hold them much longer. I was DRIPPING.
Tree pose is one of my favorite poses and I can rock it. I find yoga to be so interesting in that we all are SO unique in being able to be really flexible or strong in one area but a bumbling mess in another….and yet you just keep growing.
Oddly enough- and Danielle tells me this is likely because that douchebag Aunt Flo is gonna be at my door on Tuesday- after I LEFT hot yoga, I started to feel really queasy like if I didn’t eat something — and I was “needing” beef in a big way– right away, I would throw up. I’d had my breakfast at about 9am, and Hot Yoga was at 11:30-1pm. So, although during class I remember thinking “Wow when you do yoga, you just FEEL SO HEALTHY all you want to do is eat quinoa and vegetables!!”~ I hauled a** to Burger King across the street for a plain Whopper with ketchup.
Are you thinking: Kelly! A cheeseburger doesn’t belong here in this Zen moment! Normally- you are right. And I wasn’t getting one in any bad mindset- I was listening to my body….this wasn’t me thinking, “Oh I’ve burned tons of calories, now I can eat a big cheeseburger!” Not at all. One of the most interesting books I read a couple of years ago was Eat Right For Your Blood Type. Not a “diet” book but more a book about understanding your unique metabolism and how certain foods are better for digestion and feeling good– it was this book that confirmed a lot about what I had learned. I don’t tolerate dairy well and I don’t like pork or poultry. But, I will have certain times that I literally feel a complete NEED for beef, like if I don’t have a burger, I will be sick. And that book said that red meat and seafood are best for blood type O Pos like I have. I find that really interesting. Sure, I LOVE a cheeseburger, but this has been something all my life– it’s like if I don’t eat enough red meat, I am literally weak.
So who knows if it was doing Hot Yoga + just that time of the month arriving or if it also just coincided with me having an “I need red meat” moment, but I ate that hamburger on the way home and it helped me feel about 80% better but I was still queasy (note; didn’t feel this way when I’ve done hot yoga before) so when I got home I took an Excedrin and went to lie down on my couch. I slept for an hour or so and then felt totally normal.
It’s all good. I’m planning to go back for another class tomorrow….I flipping love Hot Yoga. So thankful to have found this studio.
That said, kittens, it is the HALF YEAR POINT. Time to look back at what we’ve done so far and decide what we will do for the rest of the year.
This is my mantra for 2011. The first half of this year marked some SERIOUS CHANGES in my life. I read some books that changed my thinking, about EVERYTHING. I experienced a series of awakenings, of clarity, of understanding. I made decisions to CHANGE. To step out of my comfort zone, to do things that scared me, to let go of what’s been holding me back, to LIVE THE REST OF MY LIFE HOW I WANT TO, not how someone else thinks I should. I saw the self-sabotage in my life and how to begin to stop it. I started seeing a therapist who has helped me beyond words. Facing my fears, facing my bad habits and hurt…..it’s all very Oprah but it’s all making me SHINE. I’m HAPPY AGAIN. I am more excited NOW than I have been in YEARS AND YEARS. And although I’ve had the DESIRE to reach goals in my fitness journey in the past, I no longer have the doubt and insecurity that impeded my progress. I no longer have that overwhelming sense of panic about trying to “fix” myself. I am treating my body like a temple and loving myself along the way. And I can finally say it and really mean it and BELIEVE IT that this is my year. This is the year I will do MORE than I’ve ever done before.
That is truth. I’m not obsessing about my rear view mirror anymore. I’m looking FORWARD and driving toward the future. And it looks AMAZING.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: Are you happy with what you’ve done so far this year? What do you want to focus on for the rest of the year?
Who Told You You Were Less Than? [Cruelty, Forgiveness and Why I wouldn't go back to middle school if you paid me.]
Image Source: Imaginary Foundation
Do you remember the first time you were made to feel less than? You aren’t born knowing that. It was because somebody told you. As a mother, once of the first things I noticed about my tiny children is how everything they do, everything they are, is the most wonderful magic to them. Toes wiggling? Magnificent! Ears hearing? Miraculous! Chubby tummies gurgling? Delicious! Eyelashes? So spectacular that they must pull one out to get a better look at it. (And then they cry as one is wont to do when one discovers that plucking your own hair is a painful pastime.) This knowledge isn’t individual; every child has it – it’s what makes childhood so special. Don’t believe me? Watch a baby toot bubbles in the bathtub and I guarantee you will both laugh until you cry. Even gas is magical.
But of course you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. This stripping down is a gradual – and likely necessary, no use bemoaning the inevitable – process. It is the pain of a thousand paper cuts, as they say. It is the pain of a thousand cardboard paper cuts, as I say. (Have you ever had a cardboard paper cut? Toe-curling pain. Just worse than biting your tongue but not quite as bad as falling out of a hammock and landing face first on a concrete driveway. And now you know how I got the bump in my nose.)
I remember a time, certainly not the first time, when I was diminished. Blind as a bat, I finally got glasses in the 5th grade – about 3 years later than I needed them, so astonished was I when I put them on and discovered that all those squiggles on signs were actually words. They were giant clear plastic frames with neon pink and blue racing stripes. It was the 80′s. My first day wearing them (and my first day being able to read all the cuss words inked onto Jessie Gilman’s jean jacket), a girl came up to me in the lunch room. “Those are the ugliest glasses I have ever seen,” she declared. “But I guess they fit since you are the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen.” With that she laughed loudly, tossed her poodle-permed hair over her shoulder and for her final act, dumped her lunch tray complete with sloppy joe and open pudding cup into the top of my Esprit bag. Everyone laughed as I tried frantically to scrape the muck off of my carefully completed homework.
I remember a time, certainly not the first time, when I did the diminishing. As if the first year of middle school isn’t awkward enough, the powers that be decreed that our mixed gender gym class do a unit on swimming. Whether to even the playing field or to provide years of entertainment for our P.E. teacher I’ll never know but we all had to wear dingy blue polyester swimsuits from the ’60′s. Inexplicably the girls’ suits had a weird double layer on the front that made an open pocket you could stick your arm all the way through. They were sorted by size. Then we had to suffer the indignity as our teacher sized us up in front of everyone else and handed us a suit that would inevitably be as loose as Shar-pei skin as soon as they got wet. Paul, for reasons I cannot remember but I’m sure were spurious, was not well liked. So when he went up to claim his trunks I stage whispered that he should have to wear a girl’s suit since he had more boobs than most of us. It was not at all clever. And yet everyone laughed. I was so proud of myself for making everyone laugh that I didn’t even notice as he hid away, not to be coaxed into the pool that day by even the meanest threat to his grade.
Since then I have been laid low by far worse than Bill Cosby’s favorite dessert and, even more sadly, I have taken others down with far more cruelty than ill-fitting polyester. So what is the point of recounting two stories that to this day make me cringe so badly I can barely type them? This week I had two interesting conversations. One was about this article “Stop that Sh*t” by Fat Heffalump, sent to me by Reader Ruth. The other was “The Complete Guide to Not Giving a F*ck” by Julien Smith. Both have profanities in the titles and both are excellent reads but other than that at first glance they seem to be complete opposites.
The first article talks about why snarking about other people is harmful. Sure it can hurt the other person – if they hear it – but even more it hurts the person saying it. She quotes Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby’s book Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere
The second article is about how to stop caring about what other people think of you. Julien lists four salient facts: 1) People are judging you right now, 2) You don’t need everyone to like you, 3) It’s your people who matter, and 4) Those who don’t care what others think change the world. He writes, “I have spent almost my whole life– 31 years– caring far too much about offending people, worrying if I’m cool enough for them, or asking myself if they are judging me. I can’t take it anymore. It’s stupid, and it’s not good for my well being. It has made me a punching bag– a flighty, nervous wuss. But worse than that, it has made me someone who doesn’t take a stand for anything. It has made me someone who stood in the middle, far too often, and not where I cared to stand, for fear of alienating others. No more.” He also lists four really good tips for learning how to not care so much about other’s opinions (boy howdy do I love tip #1!) but I would add one more to his list and it’s this: forgiveness.
See, mocking others and worrying excessively about what others think are two sides of the same vicious coin. A coin, that if we’re really honest with ourselves, we’ve spent plenty of time flipping. And so it is for this reason that it is necessary to forgive others – before they even do it, if you can just make it a blanket policy – for their cruelty. Because their cruelty mirrors our own, making it equally as important that we forgive ourselves. Forgiveness isn’t absolution; it’s learning. Learning how when we love others, we learn to love ourselves and when we love ourselves we naturally love others.
You know that voice that sometimes whispers you were created for better than this? Listen to it. Every time you feel brought low by the arrows of others or the tempests of an ungentle life, remember it. Every time you are tempted to laugh at a failed other or crop the tallest poppy, remember it. Every time you feel less than, no matter how you came to that dark place, remember it. You were created for better than this.