Health & Fitness

This is the Fall 2016 edition of "I'm going to get healthier."  

The twins are now almost 20 months old... and I'm still trying to get back into shape.  I am in a cycle of feeling motivated, doing something about it, and then stopping and gaining back half of what I lost.  On repeat.

My biggest accomplishment in the last 20 months is being okay with where I'm at.  I view my weight very different than I used to, and have learned to be happy independent of what size I'm supposed to be.  My identify isn't wrapped up in my size.  (In 20 months, I've bought a pretty awesome wardrobe in my current size... so that helps!)

But my next accomplishment needs to be getting healthier.  And I've been doing something about it for about 5 weeks!  At the beginning of the summer, my friend told me that she found a gym with child care, and that gives her a break during the day where she gets to work out.  *light bulb moment*

When I think about what motivates me to work out, 'free' child care is HIGH on the list.  Really really high.  Days are long with three little kids at home.  So I joined the YMCA.  It's 2 hours of child care per day (per kid!).  So 5 days a week we go to the gym and I trade in mental exhaustion for physical exhaustion.

One fascinating aspect of this process is that 'newbies' get a complimentary health consultation with a personal trainer. (I think they're trying to sell themselves...)  But anyway, they have a machine that reads your body composition, called an InBody machine.  Your total weight is broken into water weight, fat, and muscle/organs/bones/etc.

No one likes to see how high their fat percentage is, particularly after having children, but it's an awesome bench mark!  I'm glad I had it done near my peak weight, so I can see progress.  It's also a good gauge for seeing what the 'ideal' is.  What is an ideal weight for my body?  How much fat do I need to lose to be in the 'normal' range?  It takes the focus off of total weight and shifts it to metrics that have a higher correlation to overall health.  My current goal is more muscle, less fat.  (And to be able to run a 5K without walking.)  I've been spending about 30 minutes building muscle and 30 minutes doing cardio.

Progress is slow, but I can (slowly) feel some muscles developing.  I haven't really lost weight, so I'm curious to do another body composition reading in a few weeks and see if there have been any changes.  But at least I'm going in the right direction.  [Halloween candy is probably to blame.  I ate all of the Reeses and Kit-kats out of the candy I bought to hand out.  Whoops.]  My biggest issue right now is my core.  I have no abs muscles, and because of my lower back pain it's hard to find good exercises to strengthen the core.  (Doesn't it feel like to do abdominal exercises correctly, you have to have some existing muscle strength?  I'm literally at zero.)

I don't think my work-out motivation is going anywhere.... I still have a year before Tiago will be in pre-school, and Hyrum is deploying in 2017.  There's a silver lining in every situation.  Let this one finally be my weight loss.