In Front Of My Eyes: September 2014

A few months ago, I decided I was going to get in shape. I was determined to shake off the last of those baby pounds and start wearing the clothes that are piled up on the floor in my closet. My neighbor had a copy of a pretty popular DVD exercise program and so I thought I'd give it a try. After all it's only 25 minutes a day. Easy peasy! Who can't fit in 25 minutes a day?

Hmmm.....well it seems that when you are preparing a new classroom, taking care of an infant, and 3 other boys, 25 minutes is actually A LOT of time to try and find. So for 3 1/2 weeks, I struggled to find the time but I DID IT!! I exercised 5x a week for those 3 1/2 weeks. And my exercising time at first included some other of my family members. Sometimes my husband or my oldest son would join me. Other times the little guys would try to jump in as well. That's great, right?! In theory, yes but really it was me almost tripping over them most of them time. Me telling them to move out of the way or them laughing at me because I looked funny. And usually by the end of the 25 minute video, the baby would be fussing and so I would end up holding him while doing my squats or whatever other torture activity was on the DVD. Fun times, right?

My 25 minutes usually consisted of me yelling at the television, mostly because what they were asking me to do was kind of hard. And supposedly there is this girl who is always the "modifier". You know the person who your supposed to follow if you can't do all of the exercises the way they want you to. Except for that the modifier looks AMAZING and sometimes I couldn't even keep up with the modifier. And what would really make me angry is that the modifier had just had a baby. I know that's supposed to be inspiring but really it just frustrated me. And did I mention that I never put work out clothes on. Usually I exercised while my family was eating dinner or right after because it seemed the only time that no one would need me for 25 minutes but if I were to run to change my clothes then someone may ask me for something or need me to do something. The baby would need to nurse or someone would need a bath. So I would just throw the DVD in and start exercising which meant sometimes I'd be dressed in a skirt or who knows what. Kind of ridiculous I know.

And the truth is that my 25 minutes would almost always end up being like 20 minutes because the baby would start fussing or something. And there's a few minutes after the 25 that you're supposed to stretch....yeah that never happened.

So lots of people would say to just get up before your kids to exercise, that doesn't really work because I never know what time the baby is going to wake up and getting up at 4:30 or 5 isn't really appealing when you may have already been up in the middle of the night.

Anyways, after 3 1/2 weeks I didn't notice anything different! I hadn't lost any weight and I didn't feel any better. Although, I swear I was sleeping better. So I became frustrated and quit. I know, call me a quitter but it was too difficult and frustrating for no results.

AND THEN......I saw a video on my phone. My oldest son had taken a video of me on my phone when I was exercising and oh my goodness, it was bad. I couldn't believe how bad I looked! Now granted, I did just have a baby but I'd barely gained any weight. However, the busyness of the end of the summer had obviously taken a toll...ON MY BODY!! Was that really my body? Oh heavens, it was sort of shocking.

So, I decided exercising was not enough I needed to get back to some clean eating. As it was, I was struggling with some fatigue, joint pain & other issues that are only exemplified when I am not eating well. So I knew I needed to eat healthy along with exercise. And so I am beginning to clean up my diet, which is not that hard to do, I just needed to be better about meal planning and planning ahead. And I am still pushing play on the DVD player. But the difference is I am not putting the pressure on myself & Curt tries to not let the kiddos interrupt my 25 minutes. This momma can have a lot going on any given day; schooling 2 of the boys, running the oldest to youth group activities, teaching, or lesson planning, and the baby still doesn't go past 3 hours before he wants to nurse again.......So I may not exercise 5 days a week, in fact I thought I broke my toe a week and a half ago and couldn't exercise at all & now I may have a sinus infection and so am not up to it again. But I'm averaging 2-3x a week. I'm doing the best that I can....isn't that all us mommas can do? We just give it all we got .....and some days we have more than others :)

And you know what I may always have to work out with that modifier girl but that's okay because modifying is better than giving up!!!