A few months ago, my oldest son (I’ll call him L), who’s a little over 3 years old, said something to me that has been needling its way into my consciousness:
“Dad is strong to hug and stand with me and E (my youngest son)”
In case that’s hard to understand, it means that my husband is able to pick up both of my kids and walk around, and I’ve had to tell L that right now, mommy can’t do that. I’m just not strong enough.
Now… I’m not a competitive person by any means. But. That rankled a little bit. It’s something he actually says quite often. He’s getting bigger and heavier, and so is my younger one. In order to keep up with them, I have to do something, and soon. So I took it as a challenge.
Over the past few months, I’ve started to ramp up my exercise routine. Last year, I wrote a post on increasing exercise, but I fell off that horse a few months in. Recently, however, one BIG thing helped change that; my kids started sleeping through the night WITHOUT our assistance! For several months, I or my husband had to stay in the room with them in order for our oldest son to fall asleep, which meant there would sometimes be a period of 1-1.5 hours EACH NIGHT that we had to stay in their room doing NOTHING except wait.
With a combination of sleep training, diligence, and the use of a very valued teddy bear, we’ve finally got some time to ourselves at night! I will say, it’s tempting to just use that time to either laze about or sleep, but starting in February, I decided to really start exercising.
One slightly disappointing update I do have though is that I decided to stop my Physical Therapy. In a previous post, I wrote about my experiences with PT, which were overall very positive, but one caveat I have to make is that I received a very surprising bill for a very large sum of money from the PT appointments a month or two after starting, and after some discussion and calculation with my husband, I decided to stop these altogether. It was a little sad, because I felt like I was starting to strengthen some very long unused muscles, but with some of that foundation in place, I decided to redouble my efforts at doing home workouts.
Here’s the thing; in the past, I relied a lot on going to programs with other people in order to stay accountable. It’s nice to have a group of people willing to, in a sense, put it all out there in order to work on their fitness. But there are a few issues with that. The first is… it can get expensive! I remember getting a Groupon to do Zumba classes several years ago, and it was great! But a membership would have cost me a lot by the end of a single month. I’ve had gym memberships before, too, but I felt like I wasn’t quite using the equipment all that well, and I honestly wasn’t going all that often.
With some hesitation, I decided to just use what I have, as well as put some other strategies in place in order to get some workouts done at home, and I’ve been surprised at my ability to stay consistent. I’ve failed multiple times at sticking with a consistent workout routine, but I’ve decided on a few “rules” for myself to keep from burning out.
1. "The Main Thing is to keep the Main Thing the Main Thing"
It’s a thing an old youth pastor of mine used to say to me. Exercising, getting physically fit, doing workouts, it’s not just for the sake of looking good and feeling great, although that’s really nice, and I think God finds joy in that with us. But mainly, I feel very strongly that we were created to live in sync with God’s purpose. To quote an article written by Judith Allen Shelly, “if we view the person as an integrated whole, created to live in harmony with God, self, others, and the environment, then health means being able to function as God created us to be.”
But…
2. It's ok to do this imperfectly
Sometimes it’s ok if I can’t make myself be motivated by the “main thing.” Part of being a broken and sinful creature is that I won’t be perfect all of the time. I won’t always have a “holy holy holy” perspective on things. On some days, all I might be able to do is accept that God is gracious, that I am broken, and that I won’t always have the best motives. Somedays, the challenge that my toddler issued to me might have to be what I rely on in order to keep myself consistent. And who knows, maybe that challenge came at God’s prompting in order for me to continue to work on my health.
I might have a busy day where I just can’t get in a workout. That’s ok. It’s not “all or nothing.” Sometimes it’ll be “try, try, and keep trying.” I might have to slow down on certain workouts and focus not on the number of reps but on the quality of them. I’m still reminded of grace at these times, because the purpose of the gospel isn’t to make us feel bad about our inability and weakness and cry all the time about it. It’s for us to have a new life lived with God. Every acceptance of that grace, even if it’s in something like trying to improve our health through exercise, is an act of worship that is glorifying God, as we are trying to steward our health as an act of worship, and we must always be relying on grace.
3. Set realistic and attainable short AND long term goals
I mentioned this, too, in a previous post, and I get a lot of inspiration from a woman named Holly Marie Haynes, through her podcast “Crush the Rush.” She has had several podcast episodes, with both her and/or with a guest speaker, where she talks about setting good and realistic goals. A goal like “be able to run 5 miles in a row by the end of the month” might not be a bad one, but let’s break it down! It might be better to say, “I will set aside 15 minutes each day at 6 am to go running.” Based on your progress, your goals may change over the course of the next few weeks, but having strategic, realistic goals, with specific times might be more helpful than one overarching goal with little strategy. The overarching goal is super helpful, but making sure to take time to set realistic short term goals will help to fulfill the long term ones.
4. Find AND Be accountability
I don’t just mean finding someone who will bug you to do workouts. My husband and a few of my friends have been cheerleaders for me, and my sharing with them helps keep them motivated to workout too. Not only look for people who will be “that person” who helps keep you accountable, but also for whom you could be “that person.”
5. Lastly, see if you can find something you LIKE to do!
So here is what I set out to do starting in the beginning of February:
Daily Beat Saber workouts for 25 active minutes.
You might think this is truly geeky but my brother upgraded to an improved virtual reality (VR) headset, so I inherited his old Oculus. There’s a game on there called Beat Saber, where you take the headset and the two hand controls, and you use virtual lightsabers to cut down blocks with arrows on them to music. I know, it sounds hilarious. And it is, because I’m the only one who can hear what I’m doing so I look ridiculous. My husband could be laughing at me the entire time for all I know, and I still wouldn’t hear it! More important to me than the risk of embarrassment is the fact that when I play, I honestly have a lot of fun!
There’s also a way to set a timer on the Oculus so that it only counts how many minutes you have actively been working out. Since it doesn’t count the pauses between choosing a song to play, you get an accurate sense of how long you’ve actually been moving.
I had a few days where I missed a workout during the month of February, but by allowing myself some grace and not taking things too seriously, I was able to get in a workout almost every day after my kids went to bed. Relying on grace rather than focusing on my own ability, or rather, lack of ability, was so helpful in continuing this journey. In the last week of February, I reassessed, and when I realized it was starting to feel a little less like a workout, I made the goal for the month of March to be that I would do a 20-30 minutes Youtube HIIT workout every other day, and do Beat Saber on the off days. So far, it’s been going pretty well! I’m sore, but not too incapacitated.
I also decided to try and see if I could incorporate some exercises or stretching at work. I have the privilege of working at a healthcare facility with some extra exercise equipment that isn’t always being used. Some of my coworkers have even started a midday exercise circle, where we do weighted squats and exercises together. I fished a yoga mat out of somewhere to incorporate some stretching throughout the day, although I do have to fight past the urge to feel too self-conscious since my desk is in a slightly more visible area amongst my colleagues.
As I’ve taken these steps to get more physically active throughout the last months, it’s not as though I’ve seen a lot of change all that quickly. I still probably couldn’t carry both of my kids around at once more than a few seconds at a time. I’m still battling some tiredness and lack of energy by the end of the day. But I can see small areas of progress; harder songs I can finish on Beat Saber without exhausting myself, less soreness in the mornings from a HIIT workout, quicker recovery times afterwards, etc. For the month of April, I’ll start working on doing weighted workouts or weight lifting, with my husband as my accountability partner since he’s my local “expert.”
Throughout the process of trying to get healthier (I’ve even started to watch what I eat a little more!), I’ve realized how multifaceted the process of getting there is. It requires intentionality on my part, as well as things like community engagement and encouragement. I admire people who are able to put their fitness or weight loss journeys online and in public places, but I also understand that once you find a group of people who can encourage you in the right ways, how much more fulfilling and “whole” it is. Healing and wholeness are great concepts to latch on to, but when practicing “on the ground”, it might mean things like having conversations with friends or family about how to go about getting there, and that’s not always easy, clean or straightforward.
I go back to the concept of Shalom. Shalom is usually translated in the Bible as “peace”, but it’s not just about quietness or stillness. It also connotes wholeness, completeness, restoration, reconciliation, and harmony with where God wants us to be. This means all elements of life working together in sync. For us, as we pursue Shalom when it comes to our health, it’s not just about doing exercises or eating healthy. We are witnesses to the fact of God’s grace, and through the way we pursue our health, we also communicate and bring to the people around us a taste of that grace.
For those of you who are currently on a journey of actively stewarding and working on your health and wholeness, what has helped you? Or, based on the previous points in this blog, what has helped and what hasn’t helped your exercise journey? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment down below!