Resources Ive used: Exercise Beginnings

As I write this, I realise completely that Im in a unique situation that helped me to lose weight - I don't have children. As depressing as that is for me to say that, as most who know me know that Id love to not be in this position, but its a position Im in in my current phase of life and I need to acknowledge it. I also had and still have a lot of time to spend just on myself even though I work full time in a busy healthcare sector. A commodity I know a lot of my Mum friends, frankly, just don't have for themselves. I know my busyness and fatigue levels is nothing compared to a Mum's. So Im going to absolutely do my best to be aware of my own biases and I sincerely hope that those who read this post will not hold me in disdain and think, "Yeah, ha, like she knows what its like."

You're right, I have no idea what its like to be a Mum juggling kids, maybe as a single parent or alongside a career and now Im telling you to make time for looking after your body. So I'll make this post about all the little simple things and resources I used around the house and my neighborhood to get started with exercising.

A precursor to that, let me encourage you to follow my lead on something. The first three months you start trying to lose weight, (other than walking as much as possible), don't prioritise exercise. Just focus on your food habits. I still think to this day, weight loss/fitness is 80% food, 20% exercise. Get your foundation for healthy eating built FIRST. Because when you hit your plateau or have a really bad day, I think food will be your first and biggest hurdle.

Back to exercise. First thing: don't wait for New Years. Don't wait til the weather or season is nicer. Just start NOW. I started the journey at the end of November. Around late January early February, the weather was still wintery but I started doing more physical activity. Second thing, keep a notebook and use it as a workout log!! I can't stress enough how helpful this is. I'll talk about this another time. And make sure its an actual notebook with lines spaced large enough to write in with a shaky post workout hand.

Heres what I did:

• Swimming. Its indoors, Im under water, its quiet. Its probably one of the absolute best cardio fat burning activites that is also completely safe for joints and pain issues. Plus you sleep amazing afterwards and if the facility has it, you can treat yourself to a steam/sauna/hot tub after. Calories burned. Make sure you've got a decent swimsuit (no bikini's) for functionality's sake and a pair of goggles. Since I dislike one pieces, I bought myself swimming underwear and shorts (from Walmart), a tankini top (see here for an example). Log your laps and how long it took overall. Remember, one lap is 50m. If you don't like your body in a swimsuit, suck it up buttercup. No one is going to see it anyway once you're in the water. And the other swimmers around you? They're too busy swimming to care. Unlike the gym, the pool is one of the few exercise places out there where you'll see people from all ages, all walks of life, all sizes and body shapes. Tip for Mums: Find out if the pool facility has a daycare place you can put your kid in for 1.5 hours (some gyms have this). OR pay a babysitter to tag along with your kids and play with them in the kid pool while you swim some laps. OR find another Mum friend, both you of bring your kids and you each tag team alternate weeks who plays with the kids while the other swims laps. Bonus, all kids will sleep soundly in the car on the way home I promise. OR chat with the hubs about giving you this time away from the kids while hes home. Talk about it from an investment point of view (if he wants a wife with a healthy fit bod, this does not come overnight). Besides Im sure he has something he enjoys for himself away from you and kids.

• Elliptical. Always using a pre-programed HIIT. You can find these machines at every gym, every community facility practically. By HITT I mean High Intensive Interval Training. On the screen it likely looks like a hills and valleys type of workout. Start out nice and slow and most of all, be gentle on yourself regarding expectations. I would recommend alternating 2 mins of Level 5 with 1 min of Level 1 then repeat for 15 minutes. Feel too easy at the beginning? Wait a little and you will start sweating after 10 minutes. Record in a notebook these details when you're done. If at the end you know you didn't even break a sweat, increase the levels slightly next time and/or increase the high intensity minutes. Keep the rest period as one minute always. Tip for Mums: I have no tip, this is obviously a machine you never want a child around. If you're lucky enough to get one off Craigslist/Trademe, use it in the garage or whatever room no one likes to use and lock yourself in and listen to loud music to drown out the crying/whining. Oh yeah, make sure hubs is home so when the kid/s give up they have someone to annoy instead of you :) No hubs? Perhaps a cage filled with lollies, colouring books and a snuggie with the kid locked in it? I dunno... Lol.

• Hill Walking. I was already into walking and doing the odd hike here and there so this was not difficult for me to get into until I ramped it up later on to bigger challenges like the Grouse Grind. What I did instead and what I recommend to start with is just doing walks in a neighborhood that has a bit of a hill and doing it either alone, with a friend or with your dog. If you live in a mostly flat city like my hometown, this might be tricky, but even there, there are the Cashmere/Westmorland/Quarry hills that you can practice on. I like walking a route or loop rather than a there and back again approach because it makes me feel like I have achieved my own little Mt Everest and thats a nice feeling especially when you're starting out. Below is an example of a favorite hill walk I like to do near my in laws place. It starts off with a steep woodland trail for 160m to get your heart pumping and sweat coming down then a nice gradual downhill walk on a footpath thats relaxing enough yet still works the calves. The other cool thing about short hill walks is the reward of a great view. Just so you know, when I first did this route I stopped and started multiple times because my breathing was so labored. Just take your time and DON'T SIT DOWN! Sitting down will make your legs cramp up so don't do it! If you need a break, do it will standing and leaning against a tree or something. And don't drink too much water on the way up. Have little sips only. Save the water drinking for when you get to the top, trust me, by the time you get to the top you'll think water is the best tasting liquid (and it is!) My other tip is this, on these walks, don't take an ipod/mp3 player. I dare you. Just take yourself, a water bottle and a cellphone (turned off). Once you get used to it you'll start loving the smell and sights associated with these sorts of walks - damp moss, tree bark, streams, compacted soil etc. Tip for Mum's: This is exactly the kind of walk my Mum used to drag me on as a kid, and drag she did, until I got used to them as part of our weekly routine and once I got used to them I actually started to enjoy them! Make sure you reward/bribe them (whatever you call it) with a lolly or small ice cream afterwards. In fact, if the route to your kids school is 5k or less walk that as well!

• Workout PDF Plans. Perhaps you've heard of the instruction videos/pictures of Kayla Itsines, Bob Harper, Nike+ etc. These are becoming overwhelmingly popular because of an assortment of reasons but the reason I like them is that most of them don't require special machines or one to show up at a gym. Most of them use your body weight as your own resistance. I tried a few videos by Kayla Itsines with a very fit mom friend of mine and found they were tough but the primary reason why I disliked it so much was I felt pressured to do as many reps as possible during a short time period with little instruction on correct posture or procedure. This encourages people to rush and rushing in my opinion leads to accidents and injuries. Im sure theres plenty out there (and no I do not get paid for saying this) but I personally started using workout instructions by Lauren Gleisberg. I originally found her stuff on pinterest. They're very simple, pictures clear, no pressure to do them fast, and simple short sentence instructions. You do pay for them yes, but its worth it. She designed them and they are her copyright. Best thing is the basic workout plans are very affordable - $12.
  
  Tips for Mums: Im drawing a blank here. Refer to the cage idea under the elliptical heading. Ever seen the Nickelodeon show Rugrats? Those kids spent most of their waking hours in a sort of fenced in area and they turned out fine... 

So thats pretty much it. I just repeated these four simple exercise activities: swimming, elliptical, hill walking and pdf weight training workouts. Each were about an hour or so. I wanted activites that were very different from each other, had different intensities and most of all would be the sort of thing I'd (mostly) enjoy. I started doing two per week. Then progressed to three and since then, two to three is my norm. I typically saved my hill walk for the weekend due to lack of available daylight hours after work. I wrote down what I did in my workout diary. And then about every 4 weeks I reviewed what I was doing and made sure I changed my goals/plans for gradually heavier weights, longer or steeper hill walks, more consecutive laps, more intense HIIT workouts. Again, make the changes little by little. You want any changes to be a challenge but not so horribly so. If you didn't meet your new challenge or goal, big deal. Celebrate the workout, tell yourself - "EVERY workout is a GOOD workout." Log the details and try again next time and let it go!

I hope I made a few Mom readers laugh. Honestly, I don't mean to make light of how difficult it is for Mums. What I hope to do in the future is get some solid advice from some Mum friends of mine who juggle an assortment of stuff: kids, careers, husbands, in laws, housekeeping AND they maintain a healthy food and active lifestyle and write some future posts either with them or on their behalf. I hope this was helpful.

Melody

Resources Ive used: Scripture and Prayer

I know this is a bit of a sensitive topic for Christians and Non Christians alike but I'd like to make a case for why healthy eating and exercise is as much a form of spiritual discipline and worship as any other activity we do. 

In the secular world, Christians are typically known for what we don't do with our bodies, particularly in regards to sex (which is a convoluted issue anyway). But what about food? What about exercise? We look to the bible as the word of God, we look to Jesus as our ultimate model and his followers as forefathers and mothers in the faith. What did they do?

When I first started thinking about losing weight I spent time mulling over the theology of it and praying about the matter. I wanted to make sure I was doing it as a form of honoring God and not myself. The physical reward of losing weight often feeds a kind of self love that is not remotely helpful and more often sinful ie "It was MY good works that got me into shape." I was well aware that here in Western culture, exercise and food can become a religion (and for a lot of people it is) and the gym is often the church of a different kind of disciple. Don't get me wrong, Im not saying Im perfect with this for gyms are bad (they're not), Im just letting you know that theres a flip side and to consider this before jumping in. I did not want my efforts to be more healthy become a higher priority than my relationship with Jesus.

Things I prayed about for myself:

• That I would have a deeper understanding of the worth of my physical body, in Christ sacrificing his. (1 Cor 6:20)
• That my body was made by God, that by being born again now houses the Holy Spirit and as a result belongs to God and not myself. (Psa 139:13, 1 Cor 6:19).
• That I would grow in the fruit of the Spirit, in particular, self control when it came to what I put in my mouth. (Gal 5:22)
• That I would not be controlled by legalism in regards to food/drink. (Matt 23:23, Rom 14:3).
• That my eating or drinking would not cause anyone to stumble in their faith or be discouraged. (1 Cor 8:9).
• That in my eating/drinking, I would be a role model to others. (Prov 31:11, 1 Tim 3:11, 4:12, Titus 2:3).
• That my eating and drinking, would be for the glory of God. (1 Cor 10:31)
• That I would acknowledge and participate in joyful Christ centred feasting as well as fasting (and that any fasting would be not remotely with the intention of weight loss). (Luke 9:16-17, Ecc 3:13, Neh 8:10, Matt 4:2, Luke 5:33-34).

In particular there was one writer who particularly impressed a number of thoughts for me to consider - Elizabeth Elliot, in her book "Discipline: The Glad Surrender." Before this book, I had actually never heard of this lady. Id heard of her husband (Jim Elliot) but I had no idea how prolific she was as a speaker and writer. In the chapter (The Discipline of the Body, pg 44) she makes a number of excellent points:

 

"Discipline, for a Christian, begins with the body. We have only one. It is this body that is the primary material given to us for sacrifice. If we didn't have this, we wouldn't have anything. We are meant to present it, offer it up, give it unconditionally to God for his purposes."

"More spiritual failure is due, I believe, to this cause than any other: the failure to recognise this living body as having anything to do with worship or holy sacrifice. This body is, quite simply, the starting place. Failure here is failure everywhere else."

"It is significant that only 10% of our nation's top executives are overweight. This seems to me to indicate that few men who have not succeeded in curbing the appetite will make it to the top. Physical restraint is basic to power. They do it for power in this world. We do it for power in another."

"Gluttony, one of the more obvious modern sins, is generally tacitly accepted. Little is said about it from the pulpit. It is too embarrassing; it gets down too close to where the people, including the preacher, live. No one who is overweight dares preach about it - he has no room to talk... While a very small percentage of people are overweight for physiological reasons, the vast majority simply eat too much of the wrong things."

"Many a Christian has found the hardly hoped for strength of the Lord when bringing to Him some very real, very difficult physical need. If weight has literally become a 'burden', why should we not bring it to the Lord and ask his help in overcoming it? Can my will not cooperate with His in this matter as in spiritual matters?"

Shes very blunt, and the book is a bit old school and some comments of hers may raise a few eyebrows but I think think its a good read. I appreciate authors who annoy me at least a little bit because their comments make me think hard. For me personally, her tone really helped me a ton. Maybe its because of my blunt personality, but soft, buttery, faux encouraging hyper spiritual "you're a snowflake" type words, honestly they make me yawn. I feel Westerners for the most part are addicted to pithy encouragement to the point, that it often now does nothing to us changing our habits. There are times when encouraging words are needed and there are times when hard convicting words are needed. When it comes to Elizabeth Elliot, if you don't want to be convicted, don't read her books. 

There's another book in particular I hope to obtain and read at some point, and perhaps share in the future: 'Every body matters' by Gary Thomas. He's the author who wrote the well known marriage book 'Sacred Marriage.' Clink on the link and have a read of the blurb on Amazon. He does an excellent job of connecting and discussing how we use our bodies (in particular getting fit and healthy) with scripture. I think its cool that hes also teaching pastor who also runs marathons. Heres a great video of one of his talks:

I'd like to finish this post with some basic points. If you're a Christian, please don't think of your health, your food, your body as separate from your worship. If you're not a Christian, or not spiritually minded for that matter, please at least consider your physical health along side your emotional and mental health. Everyone knows that good physical health (biochemically and neurologically speaking) is correlated with good mental health. Take a pointer from my favorite blonde lawyer:

Resources Ive used: My Mum & Grandparents

My Mum doesn't know how much she has helped me in my weight loss journey. She hasn't helped me directly per say but there is a number of things she has done for me and with me throughout my life that has contributed to my knowledge and understanding of healthy eating, exercise and living. Im aware that not everyone has has experienced the same benefits. There are certain skills that I have because my Mum deliberately and actively taught them to me long before I was even a teenager. When I have told others about my upbringing (the good and best parts, not the nasty parts) I still typically get raised eyebrows and comments like , "Wow, I wouldn't do that to my kids, you gotta let kids be kids!" As if I was somehow deprived of my childhood because I was taught adult life skills in childhood. I wasn't deprived, I was prepared!

I have no regrets. Im sure my Mum has no regrets. Let me explain:

- By age 5, Mum taught me how to use the stove top oven and make pikelets (mini pancakes) with supervision. Every time she baked (which was typically weekly) my brother and I were always somehow involved. The reward was getting to lick the hand beater or eat the leftover icing! From a young age, being involved in the kitchen was fun.

- By age 10, I had been taught and was expected to pick, peel, cut, boil, stir fry, stew every fruit and vegetable you could think of. If my brother and I dared to stupidly say out aloud "Im bored" you can be sure in 2 seconds you'd had a giant bowl of potatoes put in front of you to peel. Cooking starch (potatoes, pasta etc) was probably the first independent cooking task I did without supervision. And we did it constantly. It was simple and it was easy and Mum trusted us to get it done. If I didn't do it, it meant dinner or lunch was delayed and no one likes delayed meals.

- Everyone in our family cooked and I got to watch and participate with everyone. Growing and collecting and cooking food and eating was such a huge part of our lives. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents at the family bach. My Pop (grandfather) kept fruit trees, chickens, pet rabbits, giant compost bins and most of all a giant vegetable garden. Even my Mum as a single parent on an extremely low income kept a vegetable garden, and later a giant vegetable garden when she remarried. Everything I ate, I knew where it came from. I knew the meat on my plate came from live animals and it never occurred to me to be weirded out by that. We never treated the chickens as pets, more as loud annoying livestock. Although most meals were planned and put together by my Mum or Grandmother, I still observed my Pop cooking his interesting meals - usually a mash of sorts (he loved keeping his leftovers in a giant mason jar). Unbeknownst to me, my biological father was also a trained chef (I grew up not knowing him). For all his flaws and issues, the one thing my family agreed on, his food was amazing and I discovered this when I finally met him and it was cooking and growing food that gave us something to enjoy together. My brother also eventually trained as an Army chef and is an amazing cook. I knew which family members cooked what the best. My grandmother made the best vegetable and barley soup. She always served salad with this delicious condensed milk dressing. My Mum made the best chocolate and courgette/zucchini cake and chilli beans (seriosuly its the best). Recipes to this day I can make blindfolded. Im aware that even though we were not financially rich, I was rich in my upbringing. I was rich in having so many wonderfully loving family members who taught me how to appreciate and joyfully eat good food with zero guilt. For sure we had treats. But most if not all baking was done by scratch. A wonderful treat was eating fish n chips at the park or beach or my grandmother giving my brother and I 80c to buy a popsicle at the dairy. 

- By the time I was 14 I was cooking dinners and regularly baking something either to give my Mum a break or because she was working (she worked shift work as a nurse). My brother was expected to cook as well, AND all clean up was done by us regardless if we cooked or not. All dishes had to be done immediately after dinner, and yes by hand. My Mum didn't buy a dishwasher til I moved to college. The only thing I didn't appreciate during this time period was that my (now ex) step father (being a giant sexist misogynist) increasingly expected me to be a household replacement of my Mum and he considered cooking and housekeeping "women's work." This was NOT the attitude my Mum and Grandparents raised me and my brother and I knew it, but at the time I went along with the system because frankly, I was terrified of him and punishment was severe if I didn't do it. Besides whenever he did cook (which was rare), his food was disgusting. So if I had to cook food myself to avoid his food, fine by me. Despite his attitude, I kept cooking because I genuinely enjoyed it not because he expected it of me as a female. By the time I moved out at 18, cooking and all the housekeeping that goes along with it was such a part of my life that it has never to this day stressed me out. No matter how poor I got in university or early on in my marriage, no matter what lack of ingredients I had, cooking was easy and relaxing. Trying new recipes and new ways of cooking was fun for me. 

- So Ive talked about food a lot, but not about exercise. My Mum would tell you, right off the bat that she hates what anyone would call "exercising" and she never failed to tell us growing that she deliberately avoided sports and PE at school. My brother and I grew up loving physical activity and trying out sports and Mum would say she had no idea where it came from (my father wasn't particularly fond of sports etc either apparently). But she always encouraged and supported us in our pursuits. We had basketballs, tennis racquets, rollerblades, hoola hoops, hockey sticks, skipping ropes. I even had a pogo stick at one point. My brother and I both had bikes and went everywhere on them. Whatever we wanted to try out, she let us and encouraged us. I tried and failed gymnastics (meh). My brother tried soccer (meh). We both knew how to play cricket, rugby and netball (thats a given for any Kiwi kid). We were both expected to be outside of the house as much as possible either playing or doing something productive. One of the best things about my Mum is that she encouraged us to explore. Exercise can be made incredibly easy and fun if you turn it into exploring. Despite her distaste for sports, Mum loved and still loves hiking. Her idea of a good time was packing enough food for a day and driving my brother and I somewhere random and making us hike for hours on end in order to "have an explore around."  And at the end of the day we'd stop at a dairy on the way home and she'd buy us an ice cream. I didn't know she got it from a book but when I was really little she would excitedly recite "Im going on a bear hunt.." to us whenever we went for walks. Its now a family legend that there was a local bear that lived near our bach. As we got older, the hikes got steeper and the day trips more remote. We eventually learned that the worse things got at home (between my Mum and her husband) the more hikes and day trips we three went on. I learned from Mum that during great grief and stress, one went for a walk/hike. She taught us to love and appreciate nature, to smell the smells, get our feet wet in rivers and beaches, to pick up and inspect interesting looking rocks and bugs, to keep going in order to see whats around the next corner. She also allowed us to explore on our own, to travel on our own, use transit on our own - long lengthy hours - without a cellphone! She held us to very high behavioral standards but in turn Mum gave us a huge amount of freedom and allowed us to think for ourselves. In turn I have always trusted her and knew unconditionally that she was my best friend and a good parent. Mum also modeled exercise in nature as a form of spiritual worship. We were raised Christian and most often during a walk with Mum I would see and hear her unashamedly pray out aloud. Whether for herself or for us or some other situation. I witnessed joyful singing and sorrowful praying - most often in the woods or hills. What I saw modeled was a woman who deeply loved the Creator by often walking in His creation and enjoying it.

In closing, let me share this:

Having healthy habits can be self learned in adulthood, but its blimin hard compared to the skills you learn almost by osmosis in childhood. Im well aware of the skill set I got from my Mum and Grandparent's that made heading into attempting to lose weight that much easier. That's not to say I also didn't pick up habits from them that I had to unlearn as well. Home Economics and Nutrition is incredibly helpful to learn for both boys and girls, women and men, but I frankly didn't need to learn them in a traditional school setting because I got that education at home. Many people didn't get that blessing. Im noticing its completely normative for young people here in Canada to head off to college with pre university academics and intellectualism but zero life skills with cooking and organising a kitchen. Isn't that a shame? We're wondering why theres awful nutrition and obesity rates in the West, despite the fact we're the ones with the most and best access to food and education. 

And before all the feminists get their knickers in a twist I have to say, these skills HAVE to be taught at home. Doesn't matter if its the Dad or the Mum doing the teaching. If I had grown up with my father in my life I'd bet my cooking skills would have been a 50/50 influence by both parents, but he wasn't in my life so it came from my Mum and Grandmother. I'll bet my brother's kids will likely be taught to cook by him. If and when I have kids, the teaching will most likely come from me, but I'll leave the baking to my husband because thats what he enjoys doing. But for the vast majority of us, the food we learn will still most likely be learned from our Mums and Grandmothers. If you don't like that, get over it. And as a woman, I can't think of a more lovely, precious, bonding experience with the women in my family than learning recipes handed down. In many cultures these recipes are proudly and closely held secrets shared from mother to daughter.  But at the end of the day, eating and cooking is not a women's thing, its a human thing. We all need to eat therefore we should all know how to cook. I think there would be much less panic, misinformation, confusion, yo yo dieting, stupid food "trends" and myths if people were taught at a younger age common sense in eating, cooking skills and learned that exercise can be stress relieving, relaxing and fun and not punishment for their food "sins." 

If you did not grow up in a home where cooking and nutrition was taught well then my hope is that this blog would at least get you in the right direction in your proactive pursuit in your adult life no matter how early or late you entered into the fray.