No time to work out? It can be hard to prioritize fitness as a busy mom.
This is my new system that got me back in the saddle. Stop the excuses and get back into gear post-quarantine to take back control of your health. Today I will walk you through what I did to get past my workout and eating blues, and I share step-by-step instructions on how to set this up on your end. Plus I dropped some really cool details about the results I have had after 6 weeks!
Let’s feel good again together!
Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast
Those of you that follow me, know I am a big fan of the fundamental needs system, which is sustainable self care. One of my fundamental needs is to move my body. That has looked different in different seasons of my life.
When COVID hit, I was in a groove at my gym. I was feeling this feeling that I would hang tight and do their workouts from home, then it just wasn’t working out. Not to mention my business was really ramping up and now I’ve got kids at home. How am I going to carve out two hours a day?
By the time I get the stuff ready, get to the gym, do the work out, get back home and shower and get ready, I just couldn’t find the time. I got in a lull and I decided enough is enough. I can’t just keep prolonging working out.
So many moms can’t find the time and feel like it is going to have to wait until the kids are older. There are solutions to this all over the internet, but I have found a unique way that will check all the boxes for your own health and for saving you time.
This is my brand new system that I am going to give all of the credit where the credit is due. My good friend Stefanie and I have built this thing together. I was so sick of setting these goals for myself and not sticking to them. So I reached out to Stefanie and we ran with an idea I had and we came up with this system.
I quit the gym
I made the decision to quit working out at the gym. The gym that I work out at is LifeTime Fitness. I am not working out there now and I actually completely canceled my membership. I have been a member of their gym since my mid-twenties. That is a long time. I haven’t always been working out there, I would put my membership on hold and pay ten dollars a month to keep the same dues I had always had.
This gym is like a self-care oasis. I would go there just to work sometimes. They have a cafe that serves organic foods and smoothies, a salon, an indoor pool, swim lessons, an outdoor pool, snack bar. You can just go and stay for hours. The daycare was on point and they had amazing classes. I could go on and on.
I was so torn when I tried to decide if I was really going to quit this gym. When I made the decision to quit the gym, I spoke with my other friend Joelle. She has been in Beach Body forever. She got me hooked up with Beach Body on demand and I am loving it. That has been my replacement for my workouts since I started this new system.
Meal planning is one of my eight fundamental needs. It gets done in our house every week, no buts about it!
It’s time to prioritize your health again
With this system, it doesn’t matter what kind of workout program you want to do, that’s not the point of this. It is how you are actually going to prioritize your health again. I not only wasn’t prioritizing working out, but I also wasn’t prioritizing what I was eating and drinking.
I had literally fallen off the saddle. Coming from a place of major athleticism my whole life, was really hard for me. Also suffering from a bad bout of IBS for a couple of years, I had dialed in my diet like no one’s business. After I had gotten that situated, I had gone to a hard-core paleo diet.
I was feeling great so I just started eating all the things, became super sedentary because of quarantine and I’m not up and moving, all of the things came crashing down at once. I rode in that for about 3 months and I started feeling crummy again. I noticed just getting the kids in and out of the car was getting harder.
I am very aware of my body at all times, so these little things for me, especially as an athlete, is my indicator that I am not prioritizing my body anymore. To me, that is like a surefire way to lose productivity in every aspect of my life.
Since one of the things that I am constantly promoting is living your life with complete satisfaction, being productive, to be the woman you were called to be, these things are so important and there is just no way of doing that when we aren’t taking care of our bodies.
What does it look like?
- You will need an accountability partner.
- You guys are going to set up a specific fit challenge in a shared google doc.
- You will create your own fitness goals.
My own fitness goals are that I want a minimum of three days working out a week. Four or five days would be awesome, but I started out slow because this gets changed and reevaluated every three months. This is just what can you commit to for twelve weeks. The next goal is that six out of seven days of the week I will only have one grain and one dairy in my meals. The third one is that I wanted 60 ounces of water seven days a week. I
didn’t include anything on here about sugar or alcohol. I don’t really drink, it’s rare, we will have a glass of wine every now and then, so it wasn’t something that was important to me for my health. Sugar is very much a problem, and I should have put it in here, but I wasn’t ready to make that commitment. I didn’t want to see myself fail, I wanted to see myself succeed and work out.
Stefanie’s goals looked a little different. We allowed each other to create our own goals, but it is clearly defined on a shared google doc.
“Stop the excuses and get back into gear post-quarantine to take back control of your health.“
The Rules.
- You have to define what is the starting and ending point.
- You get one grace week in a 12 week fitness challenge time frame. That week needs to be defined.
- You have to log everything inside of your fit criteria spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet is a place where you are going to clearly define what all of your goals are. You will have a goal for working out for each day of the week. Across the top of the spreadsheet you just put each day of the week, then on the left hand side you put down what specific criteria you wanted to meet for your fitness goals. Each day you go in and mark off each thing you did. It would be a shared spreadsheet between the two of you.
Accountability is key
Here is where the accountability comes in. There is an incentive too. The incentive is if you go through this whole thing in the twelve-week period you get this grandiose prize. The two of you will need to determine what that would be.
Stefanie and I have decided it is going to be a trip to be able to see each other. We talked to our husbands about it, they were cool with it and we figured out a way to make that happen. The only way that trip is going to happen, is if we don’t get more than three strikes. Three strikes and you are out.
What are strikes?
If you don’t meet every one of your fitness goals in a week, you get one strike. Strike one we have to send the other person a minimum of a $30 gift. If you have been following along in my stories, you will see that two weeks ago I got a little gift in the mail because Stefanie didn’t meet her goals for that week.
This past week, I didn’t meet my goals. I only worked out once, and I just couldn’t make it happen. So now Stefanie gets a gift in the mail. That is one strike for both of us in the 3 month time period. If we get to three strikes in the 12 week time period, we don’t get to do our trip. That is something that we really want.
What happens on strike two? We are paying for the other couple to go on a date. This is why you need to find someone that is very serious about this with you. You need to define your strikes and what happens with each strike for you. The fun part of this is that distance does not matter.
You can do this virtually with anyone. If you don’t have any close friends willing to do this with you, come on inside of the Facebook group and ask someone to do this with you. It doesn’t have to be someone super close to you, but it does have to be someone that you know is going to be dead serious about it.
The winner gets a prize!
The grand prize needs to be something you both can agree on as well. It could be fitness related, it could be financial or not. Anything that is a big incentive for you, whatever that looks like. I’ll never forget, when I was training for my half marathons, whenever I had someone to run with, I would get up and run more often because I knew they would be there outside my door ready to run. Everything is better when you are doing it with a friend. Let’s just be real.
No excuses
There is no reason that you can’t start this. Maybe you are in a spot where you aren’t working out at all. You can pay for a workout plan like I am, or you can find free resources from places like YouTube, and plan for your workouts whatever that looks like for you. Sometimes it’s just yoga for my workouts. I love doing heavier lifting though so I went out and found some basic weights for me. I was just done making excuses.
This truly has for almost 12 weeks now helped me to show up consistently to every single one of these goals I made.
When we don’t feel good, it’s really hard to show up where we need to show up. All of this comes down to the question are we taking care of our body physically. All of our bodies can do incredible things and this is a really great time to start. You don’t have to dive in hot and heavy. Make your goals simple. As I was eluding to, if you are just beginning and you aren’t working out much at all, just start small.
When we sit down to evaluate at the end of the 12 weeks, I am going to be more strict with myself. I’m disappointed that I went easy on myself. I have big goals for myself.
The results?
Over these past 12 weeks, I have built more muscle mass, my clothes are fitting differently in good ways, I’ve become way stronger. I hiked to the top of the biggest mountain here in the valley in Arizona. It’s the second time I have done this hike. Physically I wasn’t quite ready, but because I had been doing this, I was able to make it up and down. It was brutal, but I did it and I was proud of myself that I was able to get through it.
My eating habits have been better, I’m getting better sleep, some of my cravings and physical ailments I get are subsiding. I took this first step I needed to, but I’m not going to just coast through the second quarter. I am going to push myself to the next level.
It is really working for me and I know it can work for you too. Have fun with this. Come on over inside the Facebook group and tell me if you found an accountability partner. I would love to see you over in the The Systemize Your Life Academy where we dive into all the systems so you can learn and grow in more than health and fitness! Can’t wait to see you there!
Frequently Asked Questions
Work life balance sounds great, but I need help. How can I get accountability?
That is my favorite thing in the whole wide world to give my community! I was a cheerleader all of my life and I never had a clue that it would manifest itself this way. My favorite resources for accountability here are the Systemize Your Life Facebook group and the Time Management Bootcamp Facebook group. I’ve got 5 people focused on investing in the women in this bootcamp and we are all in to bring you success!
