Can’t we all just get along!?

I don’t often write about social, political or other issues.  That’s not what I’m here for.  I’m not here to fight a cause or push my world beliefs on others.  But I have been exposed to this topic of conversation through a few different avenues in my life lately and I thought I would address my thoughts on it.

Gym bullies.  Ok, so maybe “bully” is an over-used term.  But I’ll explain the people I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the ones who smirk and stare and laugh with their friends when a less than fit gym-goer is making their best attempt at running or they happen to be bending over.  I’m talking about the ones who feel the need to publicly or privately criticize others who are simply in their presence and trying to better themselves.  I’m talking about the extreme ones taking pictures of people at the gym in less than flattering positions (and even posting them!).  We’ve all seen these people at the gym, and to me it’s really sad.

Before I go on with my mild rant, I also want to say this disclaimer.  I believe there is a difference between the person I just described vs. a high performing achiever who’s physical perfection intimidates us solely because of our own insecurities and perception.  It’s easy sometimes to put our insecurities on the fit girl who runs on the treadmill for an hour with ease and the buff guy who has big muscles.  But every fit person at a gym isn’t there to launch a personal attack on those of us who may struggle in this area.

So let me be very clear.  Not all fitness buffs are jerks.  I am married to one, and he is the exact opposite of the person I just described.  He has a body 10 years in the making that was built from the ground up by shear determination, dedication and passion.  He is the guy that you might even judge when you walk by because he is focused and at the gym for a very clear purpose which goes much deeper than the physical that you see.  But he is also the guy who has met, coached, befriended and mentored many people who have had the guts to walk up to him at the gym, simply because they want to be something more than they are.  He isn’t the guy who laughs or smirks at others who dare step into those doors.  He isn’t the guy who turns someone away because he is too good to waste his time talking to those who may not excel in their fitness like he does.  He is humble and genuinely caring and I am proud that he is the type of man who willingly shares his talents with others.

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I think some people mistake intimidation for strength, when to me it really shows a great amount of weakness.  If you are truly proud of who you are, and are successful and happy, why wouldn’t you want to share that?  Why wouldn’t you want others to feel as great as you do?  Seriously people, can’t we all just get along?

I have been on both sides of this scenario, so I get it.  I was the girl who weighed more than an averaged sized man.  The girl who gained 93lbs during my first pregnancy and had to work my butt off (quite literally) to loose the weight.  For anyone who tells you baby weight just “falls off” after – they’re lying!  Unfortunately that is not every mothers reality!  I was the girl so embarrassed to even go sign up for a membership, because my body was in SUCH bad shape.  But I shouldn’t have felt that way.  What better place for me to be than right there!  There is nowhere else I should’ve felt more comfortable and more proud.  Proud for getting off the couch and taking those steps to not accept what my physical self had become.  And so I squeezed into my extra large track pants and borrowed my husbands t-shirts.  I couldn’t have felt worse about myself.  But I was determined to make a change – and so I did!  The process was not easy, and battling my insecurities publicly as my body learned to move again was mentally and physically challenging.

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It took me a full year to get my body back.  Once I got into the groove of mommy hood and really committed myself to my fitness, I did a 10 week program that my husband designed for me, and lost the final 45-ish extra lbs I was still carrying.  Yes – that is more weight that most women gain during pregnancy in TOTAL.  I was officially down to a weight I hadn’t seen since college, and was about 10lbs lighter than before I got pregnant.  I felt fit, I felt proud, I felt healthy.  I was happy.  A few months later I suddenly found myself on the other side.  A woman who had seen me drop off my son at Kids Club everyday for an hour for nearly 3 months, and sweat through my t-shirts every time, asked ME how I did it.  ME.  The overweight, out of shape, post-baby body ME who was nervous and insecure walking through those gym doors a few short months back.

We aren’t all in the same place.  Some of us are fighting a life-long battle with weight and nutrition.  Some of us are trying to lose the baby-weight.  Some have experienced a tragedy and are trying to get their lives back, including their physical selves.  Some are at their peaks, with 6% bodyfat, who can run a 45 minute 10k and squat 300lbs.  Whoever we are, wherever we are in our journey’s, be proud of yourself.  Maybe that’s a lot to ask, but really, who are any of us to judge another.  Especially in a place designed for people of all shapes and sizes to go and find their greatness!

So, if you are someone who isn’t where you want to be and wants to make a change, someone who’s jeans are too tight, or forget jeans all together!  Maybe you’ve been limited to yoga pants for months, or years even.  This post is for you!  Negative people will be everywhere you go, and they aren’t worth spending a second of your energy on (Easier said than done, I know!).  Be proud of where you are and that you’ve decided to be brave and admit you aren’t happy with yourself, and get that butt off the couch and to a gym.  Don’t let anyone or anything get in the way of you reaching your goals and being at your best.  Trust me, I know this isn’t easy, and it is definitely a constant battle.  As a 23 week pregnant woman who is ballooning again quite rapidly, I will soon be there right beside you, starting all over again after baby #2!  Let’s try to enjoy the ride.

The failure lies in not trying

My story isn’t filled with tales of happiness and success.  My story is about my struggle to reach my goals (and I have many).  Along the way I have, and will continue to stumble and fail over and over again.  If you’ve read any of my posts, you know I am candid about this.  These failures are the most important part of my story.  They are what make me who I am.  My response to these failures represent the forks in the road that determine who I will become tomorrow.  Will I continue down the same path, or will I make a change and DO better, BECOME better.

Today I failed.

Today was the 10km run I had planned to do for months, and had signed up for with a few friends.  It was raining hard this morning at 6am.  It had rained all night long.  I felt completely unprepared for this run.  I have been eating left over turkey and stuffing for a week, and my exercise has been inconsistent at best.  I have lost a total of 79 lbs and am proud of this, but have really been struggling with the last 14lbs.  I should’ve lost all of my baby weight by now.  It might seem like I’m being hard on myself, but I’m not.  Doing it the healthy way, it is not unreasonable for me to be back to my pre-baby weight by now.  I’ve struggled with finding the time to run long distances and I’ve always struggled with the motivation to do any form of weight lifting (which I KNOW is very important).  It is my on-going struggle to manage baby and fitness…oh, and life.  But, I know I could be doing better.  I have definitely not been in the “zone” where I know I need to be to reach my fitness goals.  And then it rained.  The rain was the perfect excuse for me.  There was some legitimacy in this excuse.  It wasn’t a good day to bring the baby out, and have him and my husband find an indoor place to hide out in while I ran.  And since the race started and ended at different places, my husband and baby did have to come in order to drop me off and meet me at the finishline.  BUT…and it’s a big BUT.  I could’ve figured out.  There is always a way.  But today the rain gave me the perfect excuse to blame something other than myself for my inability to complete what I had committed to.

It might seem trivial.  It was just a run, right?  No.  It wasn’t JUST a run.  To me, it represented much more than that.  This was my next goal in a series of goals that I have set for myself since having my son.  It was a chance to accomplish a goal.  It was a chance to push myself.  To complete something I find difficult.  To push through something challenging.  To put myself out there and possibly fail.  I realized something important as I sat at home watching the rain fall.  There is no failure in trying.  Completing a race in a time that I consider embarrassing, is really not embarrassing at all.  Not trying at all though – THAT is embarrassing.  I realized (too late) that the failure lies in not trying at all.  I made the wrong choice.  I chose the easy road.  I made excuses, and I even believed them.  I want to set the example for my son.  I want him to never be afraid to try, and to grow up knowing what I just learned at the age of 29.  There is no failure in trying.  Never.  Period.  I let everyone down.  I let myself down.  I let my son down.  I let my husband down.  I let my friends down.  Of course they are to kind and supportive to see it that way.

Everything I go through doesn’t have a happy ending.  I don’t feel proud of myself today.  Today I took steps backward, not forward.  But lucky for me, this isn’t the end.  My story is one with an outcome that I re-write everytime I get back up when I fall.  No, I’ll never get the chance to re-do this day and make the choice to simply try.  But I can choose to get back up, and try again tomorrow.

I will never forget this day, this feeling of failure.  I will never forget the lesson learned.  There is no failure in trying.  Failure lies only in not trying at all.

My weekly appointment with the dreaded scale

Thursday marked Deacus’ 12th week of life, and my 6th week of working out post c-section.  My progress has been ok, but I am nowhere near where I expected to be.  Somehow I dreamed my body wouldn’t mind the 9+ months of torture it had endured, and would cooperate when I told it to run 10km.  Pre-baby, I didn’t have a running plan.  I was relatively fit from exercising and running 5km or so regularly, and just decided one morning to try 10km – and I did it.  I wasn’t fast, but I did it without much trouble, and continued to run it often and increase my time from there.  Don’t get me wrong, it was hard, but I was able to physically do it.  It was more of a mental challenge.  These days my mental strength cannot mask the pain in my knees and the extra weight I’m carrying prevents my body from doing as it’s told.  I can push it, (and I do!) but only so far.  It is tough to feel so restricted by my own body, and to have lost the freedom to be in charge.  I will get back to where I was (won’t I?), but right now this is the body I have to work with.  This morning I stepped on the scale to see how I was progressing, hoping my track pants might start to fit a little less snug, and that my knees may have a little less to carry on my next run.  Or dare I wish I might even get into a pair of jeans again!  Most days I’m just glad the scale doesn’t just call me a fatso and tell me to get off!  So, how much of those 93 lbs had I shed in 6 weeks?  The scale beeped at me and gave me the good news.  I am officially down 57lbs.  Today was a good day.  With 36lbs to go, I might just get into jeans and even put on heels again at some point in the next few months!  With visions of the tiny stilettos snapping off from under me, I didn’t want to risk heels until I was closer to my goal weight.  Suddenly I found myself thinking of how the average woman gains around 35lbs total during pregnancy.  TOTAL.  I still have enough extra weight to be carrying a small child inside of me.  With 2 weeks until the 10km, and me still being 3km away from that goal, I had to put these thoughts out of my mind and hit the pavement.   Pre-baby I remember thinking I’d gain a lot of weight (I know myself and my body well!) but that I’d get back in shape fast.  What else would I have to do, right?  I could workout every day since I’d have all the time in the world.  WRONG!  Any mommy knows one of the biggest challenges is finding the time to workout.  After sleepless nights, and days that don’t ever really end, if I manage to muster up the motivation to exercise, now I have to figure out what to do with the little guy.  He’s a well behaved baby, but that doesn’t mean he is going to allow me to leave him on his playmat for more than 10 minutes that day.  So I can try interval training at home – 10 min run, 1 min insert soother back in baby’s mouth, and repeat.  My next option is leaving him with the gym’s childcare – a 17 year old girl who’s probably never even held a 3 month old, or has any interest to, (but for $10.50/hr. will do it).  No offence to the staff at the gym, I am sure they are lovely.  I have yet to even be to the gym since having Deacus, but this is how I picture it and it terrifies me to leave him there.  He still seems so little and fragile.  Where has my independance gone?  The days of getting up and going anywhere I wanted to, at any hour, are long gone!  Any outting now requires a jumbo sized duffle bag with all the goodies a 3 month old should need over the course of a few hours.  Including lots of diapers and changes of clothes in case we have any explosions (and we have many!).  I can see how fitness sometimes takes a backseat after children.  Even though it’s a time when fitness should be in the forefront.  I want to set an example for him.  I want to live a long, healthy life, and have the energy to be an active mom to my boy.  But sometimes it feels impossible.  Luckily, today I  have a friend who is kind enough to come all the way to my house and watch the little man while I get in some much needed exercise.  As hard as running is for me, I am beginning to enjoy my time on the road again.  Every part of my body hurts as I work towards getting my body back, and actually being able to complete a run without feeling the dreaded “out of shape pain”.  But while I’m out there I have time to think (and write my next blog in my head), and have some time for Shannon.  I love being a mom to Deacus, and I love being a wife to Nick.  But sometimes I need to just be Shannon.  For me, running helps me find her.  The girl I thought I lost a few short months ago.  The happy, healthy girl, full of energy who can look in the mirror without feeling ashamed of what’s staring back at her.  She’s still in there – somewhere.  And I believe one of these days, maybe on a long run in the middle of nowhere, I’ll find here and bring her back with me.  Until then, I will keep running, give myself some credit for my progress so far, and tell myself what I tell Deacus when we have a rough day of crying fits and no sleep.  It’s ok – tomorrow will be better!