“Being honest with yourself is so important to the healing process.”

So  here I am, mentally prepared to change my health. I’ve gotten to a good place mentally to take on the next phase of physical health. I haven’t worked out in a long ass time. Like I may have tried once of twice between pregnancies and kids to start but it never stuck and and I always found an excuse to not stick with it.

Honestly at one point I think between pregnancies I convinced myself, ” Well, we want more kids, whats the point losing the baby weight to put it back on?” Yes, I realize how wrong that is now, but in the moment, when I was so tired, my nipples were bleeding, I hadn’t showered in a week, the last thing I wanted to exhaust my time on was working out for what I thought was a mute point for my ‘ruined’ body. At these points in my life, I hated my body. I was mean to it. I talked mean to it, i treated it with shame and I hid it at all costs with whatever spanx, tights, or duct tape would hold it in. I punished it by giving into my sweet cravings non stop and never listened to it when it was hurting. Getting to a point where you want to reward and nourish your body is so incredibly important to the sustainability of your health journey. You have to understand that the body is an incredible thing, and that it is constantly telling us what it needs to heal, we just have to learn how to listen to it. We have to learn to respect time. The time it took for us to get into this un-shape and that with time, we can heal. Working out and eating “boringly healthy” becomes something you will crave. Nourishing your body with the right nutrients, and hydrating it is so important and directly correlates to how well you will manage your physical fitness, and how quickly you will repair the damage inside. Please please work on your mental health when it comes to your body. Don’t ever punish it for whatever criticism you try to give it… after all, its all reflection on our actions, your body just wants to carry you through your life and if we don’t respect it, it won’t last long.

Anyway, getting into physical fitness was a journey in itself. During my mental healing, I made a sort of pro and con list to try to figure out why it never stuck with me. I road mapped the exact directions I took and found out where I was hitting the walls. I realized once I stopped making excuses like ” ugh, the kids wouldn’t leave me alone for 20 minutes” “Ugh, I’m way to sore from yesterday” “Ugh, I don’t have time” and I owned up to the reality that I was trying to jump WAY back on the horse WAY too soon. I was doing things like 30 Day Shred and Ripped in 30 thinking a body that has been through 40 months of pregnancies, 40+ months of antibiotics,  14+ years of a horrible diet and no physical exertion since senior year softball , was equipped to handle freaking cross over jacks, or mountain climbers. I was pushing my body to do moves that I had to you tube how to’s before I could even switch the laundry without getting winded.

The old me would have been mean. The old me would have been like ” Well  this is just dumb, the only people that can do this shit is those cute under Armour models who look amazing during their flawless videos” . I would have said “My body will NEVER look like that ever in my life so why even try?” But instead I said ” Okay, what CAN i do? Where CAN i stat?  What is my ‘level if fitness’. Being honest about where your at makes a world of difference. When I started the Bounce Back Baby program I was like ” WOW i can actually do this shit.” I wasn’t so sore that I couldn’t work out the next day,or the day after or even three days in a row. I learned through the program what someone with Diastisis  Recti should and shouldn’t do and instead of ignoring the fact that i Clearly have it, i was like ” OH DAMN! That makes sense, this feels way better!”

I owned up. I Stayed up. And I continued.

Being honest with yourself doesn’t mean you have to shout to the roof tops ” I PEE WITH EVERY JUMPING JACK !” No , like admit to your inner self, okay, do the step out jacks, pick up some kegel work , own up to the fact I let my pelvic floor go to hell, modify the moves, and get your ass back at it.

Being honest with yourself is so important to the healing process. The next hardest thing to do, is get uncomfortable with being uncomfortable.. more on that next time…

Move Damnit.

XOXO