Fitness Friday: Finding Your Why
When I first started to put this post together it was going to be about one of my favorite cardio toning workouts I did this week. However, as I sat down to write it, I felt like I needed to back up. I needed to start out with actually getting back into working out after giving birth. Because let me tell you the journey has been difficult both mentally and physically.
Fitness has always been a big part of my life so when the doctors told me to take it easy and not lift or run for about 6 weeks, I almost lost it. Working out was a part of my daily routine even when I was pregnant. It was a way for me to clear my head and focus on improving my overall health. So as you can imagine I was counting down the days until my follow-up appointment. The appointment where my doctor would tell me that I am good to resume normal activity. That appointment came and got cleared. YES! I could not wait to finally get back to running and lifting.
I went on a run the day after getting cleared and the run itself went better than I had expected. My pace really hadn't slowed and I was able to pump out 1.7 miles. I thought this is great! After getting home from that run is when I really started to feel the effects. I had enough pain that I had take some ibuprofen and sit down the majority of the night. I thought the pain was just due to getting back out there after taking so much time off but I seemed to always have a little pain after lifting or running after that. I also found that lifting was not easy. I didn't feel like I lost that much of my muscle while I was pregnant but I was wrong. Lifting has not been easy.
After that first week of trying to get back into a normal fitness routine, I felt defeated. I did not have the motivation to workout if I was going to have pain and not be able to lift like I wanted to. I am going to be honest, I had some breakdowns. I did not feel like myself and I was really struggling with that. My husband would come home and ask if I wanted some time to workout and I would say no a lot of times because I did not want to deal with the disappointment. Thankfully, I have a husband that knows me to the core and knows that sometimes I need to just be told that I am going to do it. Every time I would say no, he would say you need to get out there and do a little something or else you are going to regret it.
I am very thankful for my husband during that time where the motivation was not coming. I have never really lost complete motivation for working out like I did for those of couple of weeks. If my husband had not pushed then I might have given up. After going through that period, I realized that I have to find my reason why. The reason why I workout and push myself. But bigger than finding my why, I need to be patient with myself and realize that my body is not the same as it once was. It did something so amazing and for that I have to give myself grace when it comes to working out. With this new mindset I feel even more motivated than before to workout. My why is so much bigger than it once was. I have a little boy who needs me to take care of him and in order to do that, I have to take care of myself.
So, if you are struggling to find that motivation to workout then take a moment and think about your why. Why do you want to workout? Is it to lose weight? Is it to better your overall health? Once you find your why and post that somewhere then I bet you will make more time to workout.
I can't wait to start sharing some of my workouts from the weeks and hear what workouts you have been doing.
xoxo
Stacey