A lot has happened since I last wrote. I made it through the 9 months of pregnancy – yahoo! My beautiful, healthy baby girl is 5 weeks old today. The c-section went as planned, and life with two kiddos is starting to become my new “normal”. More about pregnancy and raising two little ones later.
I’ve anxiously awaited the 6 week postpartum mark. The official start of my fitness plan. The day I can get a piece of MY life back and start to build my physical self into the person I want to be. For me, success in fitness is something I can’t say I’ve ever really accomplished. A sad realization for me actually. I’ve struggled for as long as I can remember with body image. Yes, I’ve made changes in my body over the years. I’ve gone from a very overweight girl, to a fairly fit one, and then back again with each pregnancy. I’ve accomplished goals that maybe someone looking from the outside would see as successes. I ran a half marathon, completed several 10k runs, lost all the baby weight after my first baby (and am now working on it after the second!) I do realize how far I’ve come, but sadly it was never enough. There has always been something missing. Especially over the course of the last number of months, I have had a lot of time to think. Time to think about me and who I want to be as a woman, wife and mother. I realized that I’ve been going about things all wrong. It was my mind that really needed the overhaul, not my body. I realized that no matter how much weight I lose, or how fast I can run 10km, it doesn’t mean anything if I don’t change my mindset. Fitness for me has always been such a chore. I’d exercise begrudgingly, complaining and even badgering my trainer, who also happens to be my husband. (Yep – you can imagine how well that goes over!) I made excuses about why I couldn’t exercise that day, or why I ate that snack. I’d secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) be hating the girls whose body bounced back without effort after pregnancy. The girls who were just naturally thin all their lives, and even after a McDonalds feast would never even hit 120lbs on the scale. The ones who just could not ever understand how hard it is for me to get my body back and how unfair it is that my body image issues have (unknowingly until now) impacted every part of my life, for my entire life. If you’ve read my posts or you know me, you’ll know that I really did try. I tried to find my own personal success, and happiness within myself, but I never quite got there no matter how far I ran or what the number on the scale said. Until recently I didn’t realize that it had nothing to do with all of that. It was simply because my heart wasn’t in it. I exercised because I felt I had to. For that person, or that event, or that reason that wasn’t really enough to keep me motivated for the long haul. These reasons would come and go, and my weight and fitness would fluctuate right along with them. My heart just simply wasn’t in it.
Over these months a lot has happened. Outside of everything that went along with pregnancy and a new baby, I also very clearly saw my baby boy turn into a little man. An incredible, talkative one with likes, dislikes, opinions, a strong power of observation and the ability to verbalize his thoughts. Tonight was a little mommy success. (If you have kids, you’ll relate to this). I got the 5 week old baby in bed in her crib by 8pm and the 2 year old in his pjs, teeth brushed, books read and in his bed just waiting for dad to get home from work and say goodnight. SUCCESS! As I curled up in my own bed hoping to get a little nap before the baby was up again in the night, I heard my sweet little boy Deacus having a chat with his dad. He told his dad that when he was bigger he wanted to jog with mommy. He told him that mommy ran in the mud and he wanted to go too. I nearly broke down into tears right there. They continued to talk and his innocent, two year old voice was so excited as he talked about jogging with mom and lifting weights with daddy when he got bigger.
The night before I went for my first jog postpartum. The kids were both in bed but I talked to Deacus the next morning about it when he noticed my muddy running shoes at the front door. He asked where the mud came from. I told him how mommy’s boo boo was finally healed so I was able to start exercising, and that I had gone for a jog in the rain while he was sleeping. The conversation ended there, as he seemed content with my answer, and we went on with our day. For months previous I had told him that I couldn’t do this, or that because I was pregnant. And as I healed from the c-section I again had to tell him it would be a little bit longer that I couldn’t do certain things because of my “boo boo”. He was only 1 ½ when I got pregnant with his sister. He didn’t even remember me any other way than this. He just thought of his momma as a large woman who didn’t exercise and couldn’t play with him the way his dad could. I really didn’t even realize the impact of this, or that he had really taken all of this in until I overheard his conversation. He was so excited when he talked about mommy jogging.
I’ve been working hard to change my mindset related to fitness and failure, and this was another eye opener for me. I never again want to have to tell him “I can’t”. I never want to tarnish his view of the world and his excitement toward fitness and exercise or anything in life. Most of all, I don’t want to have to pretend. Kids are smart. They see through it. Eventually he will know if my heart just isn’t in it. How can I expect him to be a certain way, when I myself am not? I don’t know how it happens but somewhere along the way, we as adults start to see activity as a chore. We no longer run through fields for hours with endless amounts of energy and beg not to go inside. Yes, maybe the types of activities and reasons behind doing them change as we get older, but the joy and passion for it doesn’t have to. I don’t ever want him to lose that. Especially not because of me.
So what does all this mean to me?
My heart is finally in it. Not for the short term, not because I have to. But because I finally get it. I finally see that having legs that move and arms too, and the ability to use them is a privileged. I am done complaining. Being a mediocre version of myself just isn’t good enough. Not for me, or my family. I deserve better. They deserve better. Will this make my workouts any less difficult? Will this mean I won’t struggle along the way? Absolutely not. But it does mean that I am taking on these challenges that I have faced so many times before, with a greater purpose and focus. It goes much deeper than looking good in a bikini. My husband told me once when I was complaining about working out so hard: “You will hate your workouts, but you will love your life”. He couldn’t be more right. It’s not about the 60 minutes in the gym. It’s about living life to my potential. It’s about doing more than just the minimum required to get by. It’s about my joy and positivity spilling over onto those in my life, instead of failures and insecurities hindering them. It’s about my outside being a physical representation of my inside. It’s about treating my body the way I should so I can live a long, happy life. So I can be truly proud of who I am – inside and out. For me and my family. It’s about having my heart in it and for once in my life approaching my goals with my head in the right place. It’s about truly believing in myself, as I hope my children someday will in their own selves.
shannonvan 