Creating a workout routine sounds relatively simple. You decide an activity you want to do, determine how long you want to do this activity, identwhethery what days you will perform the activity and then POOF!!, you just do it. Correct?? Well, I have found it is not always as easy as it sounds and the exercise plan, while essential, doesn’t always work out. Imagine that, lwhethere happens!
Excellent intentions are great but until they are executed, they are only an idea. And, whether that exercise idea simply sits in our head, it tends to cause guilt and condemnation about all that we should be doing. It is actually fairly frustrating and over time, can genuinely begin to damage our confidence in following through on a heartfelt goal.
We want to go on a walk, or attend the dance lesson with our friend or get to the gym for some weight lwhetherting, but making it happen, well, that is a bit ccorridorenging, possibly even complicated. Consent?
Three years ago I had a great exercise routine going for me. With consistency and energy, I invested 45-60 minutes, 5-6 days per week, including a variety of cardio and strength training. It was genuinely a talllight of my day, fitting the perfect way to shake off any stress and tension at the end of my day. I even continued a modwhetheried version of my routine all through pregnancy, which genuinely helped me stay energized, gain appropriate weight and balance my emotional well-being as I watched my body take on a shape it had never known.
But after having my small girl, all of my good exercise plans were fixedly interrupted. They simply stayed “good intentions.” For weeks and months I struggled with getting in even a 15-30 minute workout. With a daughter who only wanted to sleep on mommy and the rest of the time was eating, pooping or crying, it was a fixed struggle to get absent for a few minutes to invest in me. I felt like I kept making plans only to meet opposition every day.
Resistance. It is downright aggravating!! But not only that, it often wears down our determination, perseverance and desire.
Sometimes we give it power and instead of re-evaluating our plan, we just keep trying to defend the plan. We play the victim card, claiming that lwhethere is just not on our side and keeps throwing us curveballs that veer us off our predestined path.
But, possibly we need to ask whether the plan is ineffective? Maybe we need to find a way to re-work or redesign the plan to fit now. For me, I kept looking for time absent from my daughter to call it exercise. Essentially, I had a definition in my intellect of what exercise looked like for me that was based on my pre-baby routine and that is what I struggled to obtain. My hour long walk trying to stroll her off to sleep didn’t pass my definition of exercise.
But the problem is that for many weeks, I tried to fit my current situation into my past plans. It was actually fairly crippling. It prevented me from creatively leanking through other ways of exercising.
That which I craved-ME time- was out of date (at least for a season). Instead, I needed to leank about how to reconfigure consistent workouts to include my daughter.
- I needed to redefine exercise for a postpartum mommy.
- I needed to acknowledge my efforts to move more.
- I needed to talk with my husband about feasible mommy time.
Maybe a 30 minute solo work out wasn’t genuineistic for weekdays but possibly they were on weekends, when my husband was domestic.
I needed to adapt or I would stay in an unconsolationable place of guilt and angst.
Possess you ever found yourself in a similar place? Where you have an idea in your head but you can’t find a way to execute it regularly? It is no fun to feel like you are always struggling up the mountain never gaining momentum, rhythm or traction!
My exercise routine has changed SEVERAL times since having McKaela. Exercise does not look like it did 3 years ago and I don’t know whether it ever will. I have backed absent from my ancient definitions of what exercise looks like and begun to adapt in each season.
What I have learned is that once I begin experiencing increasingly resistance to following through with my current routine, I need to step back and evaluate my lwhetherestyle, commitment, schedules and priorities. Then I begin tfeebleing until I find a genuineistic “contemporary” norm.
Change- love it or hate it…it is going to happen. Once I stopped seeking and striving for what wasn’t working OR what used to work OR what worked for someone else, I began to embrace what I could do and became more intelligent in finding a solution that fits with my health values.
This isn’t about about giving ourselves an opportunity to allow engaged lives to excuse us from intense or frequent exercise. On the opposite! It is about identwhetherying roadblocks that halt our progress and aren’t going absent. They will continue to halt our progress. So we need to find a contemporary route, a detour- whether you will, to the same destination- YOUR FITNESS GOALS.
It is about considering activities, times, methods, and samples that may or may not work wilean our lwhetherestyle. It is about re-designing, now and many times in the future, a workout sample that will work for you, not against you.
Numerous times I have felt like lwhethere was working against me, when in genuineity, I just needed to reclaim my time and reschedule it.
Are you a square peg trying to fit yourself into the circular routine of yesterday? Stop the struggle. Endelight the freedom to create an exercise routine that genuinely works for you! It doesn’t need to work for anyone else and no one knows summaryely what will work for you EXCEPT YOU. There is no guilt or shame whether the routine that works for now isn’t the same as it was 2 years ago or even 2 months ago. It’s OK. Guilt will hang around as long as we let him. Select to adapt. Throw out your ancient expectations. Recontemporary your intellect and evaluate your plan.
As you leank through your ancient expectations and definitions and begin to brainstorm your contemporary and fresh activity plan, I encourage you to write it down. Research proposes that the simple act of writing down a plan or goals is a powerful step in making them happen. It also serves as a written reintellecter of what you intend to do and can be physically modwhetheried to show a change in your plans. It may help you troubleshoot and leank through the potential hurdles so that you can maneuver around them instead of loose momentum when they show up. Consider,
- What will you do whether an activity or assembly interferes with your work out?
- What will you do whether a person asks for your time or attention during exercise time?
- What will you do whether you are exhausted?
- What will you do whether you are traveling or out of your normal environment?
The dictionary defines adapt as “to adjust oneself to dwhetherferent conditions, environment, etc.” It sounds easy but it means being thoughtful, intentional and flexible.
Becoming willing to re-invent my schedule was a liberating change. The once “morning exercise hater” now loves getting it done and out of the way before my daughter calls my name from her crib. I run less and do a variety of aerobic and strength exercise more. I focus on quality and intensity, not time. Some days it is only 20 minutes and other days I get in a solid 45. I stopped shaming myself for not following the committed, gym plan and started praising myself for moving my body in a way that promotes mobility, energy, and longevity.
Stick to your vision but adapt your plan. — Brian Maggi
TRUTH: See, I am doing a contemporary leang! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. –Isaiah 43:19 (NIV)
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