Feeling Defeated

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ShastaOC
ShastaOC Posts: 17 Member
in Motivation and Support
Today is the second workout I've missed this week and I feel awful. Let me elaborate. Since the end of January I have been participating in a 12 week fitness program. It's the first time in almost 2 years since my daughter was born that I've put myself first, including in my marriage. Since January I've lost 18.5 lbs and I'm a food-logging machine. Yesterday I re-entered the "normal weight" BMI range. However, my workouts make me feel the best. It's active engagement in my fitness and health and I look forward to being strong and fit like I was before I got pregnant. Yet for over a month I've had spotty attendance at best. I work full-time with 26 hours actually at my job and the other part of the time grading. I get 25 hours of daycare a week while I'm instructing and I grade when my daughter sleeps. My husband is a grad student. We have no family nearby and all our friends are parents of small children themselves or grad students. I guess what I'm getting at is that I can either have a job or have my workouts if I want sleep. I'm just feeling defeated about it because one little bump in the routine throws off everything (like my daughter not sleeping and me not being able to grade). Should I just give up until my daughter is older? Should I just focus on weight loss by calorie restriction and then on fitness?

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  • TheRoseRoss
    TheRoseRoss Posts: 112 Member
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    Ask 10 different people, you'll likely get 10 different answers. I would do all that I could to not give it up. It's too difficult to get back into, and every time we find an excuse to not, it makes it easier to find the next excuse.

    I'm not going to insult you by saying "you just have to find the time," because I'm not so narrow-minded that I'll pretend there is an infinite pool of time from which you can pull. That said, you don't need to go to the gym. There are body-weight routines/programs, some that require no equipment at all. It will take some time to research, but you can find body-weight only exercises for every body part. The next step is working out with intensity. A trainer that I subscribe to says "You can work out hard, OR you can work out long. You can't do both." I've been going to the gym for 2 years now, and I can tell the people that are "going through the motions" (even if they don't realize it), and those that are giving it their all. My "test for intensity" has been trying to sing along to whatever song I'm listening to as I exercise. If you can sing beat for beat, you're not training hard enough because you should be exerting yourself too hard to speak. Try signing the "alphabet song" while performing pushups, and you should see what I mean.

    I wouldn't restrict my calories either. Again, it's all down to the individual, but I know people that claim to have changed their eating habits (I have to take their word for it) but lead otherwise sedentary lives (desk jobs) and become discouraged because they haven't lost weight. Some actually gained weight. I think that has to do with metabolism: our body's are lazy. You grade papers, so you may know of that particular student that does just enough work to get a passing grade, and refuses to do any more than that. That is our body. It will work as hard as it needs to, and not a bit more. If your body knows that it only needs to burn 1000 calories a day, it will not burn 1500 just because you want it to. You have to beat it over the head so that it knows "damn! I have no choice but to burn 1500 calories." Nutrition alone will not do that. Your body will figure out the bare minimum of calories that it needs to burn, and adjust your metabolism accordingly. That is why Olympic athletes can eat 12,000 calories a day and have abs carved out of marble, while the rest of us can eat 1,200 calories a day, and have flabby everything. The Olympian's body knows "I need to burn 12,000 calories or I'm going to die!"

    Try looking up body weight exercises for back, chest, shoulders, triceps, biceps, legs, etc, and make yourself a little routine. Allocate maybe 20-30 mins, and give it hell during those 20 mins.
  • kjablinskey
    kjablinskey Posts: 47 Member
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    You need to take care of yourself FOR your husband and daughter. Waiting till she's older won't work, there will ALWAYS be something in your life getting in the way of your fitness.

    I can tell you from personal experience because I think I'm a bit older than you that you need to put a priority on your own needs, if you don't bad things will develop not only for you but your marriage and relationship with your child.

    It may seem selfish, but it's as much for them as it is for you. Stick with it or you'll wish you had later.
  • carliekitty
    carliekitty Posts: 303 Member
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    If it's a nice day out put your baby in a stroller and go for a nice walk.
  • ElizabethKalmbach
    ElizabethKalmbach Posts: 1,416 Member
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    Bond with your baby during your workout. There are Mommy and Me yoga workouts, and quite a few gyms with baby-minding areas these days. Personally, I just popped my daughter into her jogging stroller and went for a long walk every day. I have also done weight lifting workouts in my living room with my daughter.

    Honest to Pete, little kids can do burpees all day long. You just TRY to keep up with any kid under 3 on that...
  • ShastaOC
    ShastaOC Posts: 17 Member
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    Thanks for all the response! My workout is three days a week and one day each is dedicated to weights, conditioning, and one day is split. It's all based on equipment found around the house or easily acquired. On off days I cross train with my daughter and Border Collie by going out for a 3 mile walk/run with the jogger. I guess it's not so much techniques so much as time. If I don't make my 6am workout then I won't get to the rest of the day without my kid trying to climb on my back or demanding to be held while I try to workout at home (I've tried so many variations to be able to do it). I DO have to say that I haven't tried doing burpees with my daughter. Yoga just turns into me chasing her through other yoga rooms as she escapes. There's no wiggle room in our schedules since my husband is expected to be researching 60 hours a week. I like the HIIT suggestion and have tried that with success. How do you make sure you get to your early morning workouts? Do you go even if you've only had a few hours of sleep?

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