February Week 1: YOU

Write about where you are…what is your body like? What parts are strong? What parts do you want to make stronger? How is your body serving you at the moment? How would you like it to serve you more? What are you grateful for when it comes to your body?

Today is all about acknowledging where you are. Try not to move ahead too much. Today is today. Your body is what it is right now. Write about what is.

Remember to note today’s movement/exercise/fitness (whatever you want to call it!) and plan ahead for tomorrow. Set the intention to move your body again tomorrow.

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan:

Get clear on what you want your body goals to be—weight loss, stronger arms, the ability to do longer hikes, to be able to carry your kids more easily, to be more flexible, strengthen your pelvic floor post childbirth, combat aging, etc.

List your intentions and then add details—how much weight you plan to lose, what you would like to be able to lift easily to measure your strength, how far you would like to be able to walk or hike comfortably, etc.

And now write about why—why did you create these goals?

Set your goals, make them measureable, and be specific about your “why.”

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan:

Describe how you your mindset when it comes to your body? Body positive? Struggling? Supportive? Kind? Degrading? Frustrated? Obsessive? A combo of these? Something else? Can you easily talk yourself into or out of exercising?

Write it down with the intention of figuring out how your thoughts are supporting or sabotaging your body goals. Do you feel like you need help changing a negative mindset? Do you need words of encouragement to keep you in a good headspace?

At the end of this month, what would you like your mindset to look like? (More positive, almost automatic, etc.?)

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan:

What do these things have to do with fitness goals? Well, in our society, it turns out a lot. Not having the “right clothes” to workout in or wearing the “wrong thing” keeps many of us from exercising. And our view of exercise is that it “has to” take place in a gym or workout class in order to “count.” Does this ring true to you? Write about it.

Do you feel like you have to be wearing certain clothes in order to exercise? Do you feel pressure to be “pulled together” from head to toe in order to move your body in front of other people?

What about location? Do you feel like in home workouts are as effective for you as gym visits or group classes? Write about how location effects how much you do or don’t move.

A potential resolution for clothing and location hang-ups is: Snacking. Not eating, but exercise snacking—incorporating movement throughout the entire day. For example: taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking around the block at lunch, running in the yard with your kids, stretching when you wake up or before going to sleep, doing kegals or bracing your abs while waiting in line, etc. Do you feel like exercise snacking could work for you? Write about it. Include what “snacks” you could fit into your lifestyle.

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan:

A common way people sabotage their fitness goals is by overdoing exercise as soon as they try to get back into it. It’s not intentional, but it happens very frequently: you go from couch to running and push hard to “make up for” not having run in a while. Then you get sore or injured and quit…sound familiar? Have you overdone it in the past?

Time to emphasize that we are NOT trying to overcorrect for past behavior. The past is in the past, hindsight is 20/20, and we can learn from looking into our past instead of using it to fuel a current fire. So you haven’t moved your body as much as you’ve wanted to or feel you “should” have. So what? We do not need to push ourselves now to make up for past decisions. Show up right where you are, as you are.

Write about overdoing it. How do you feel about overdoing it? Are you? Did you? Do you tend to? What do you need to tell yourself to move forward now without overcorrecting?

[How to avoid overdoing it: Remind yourself that you don’t need to come out of the gate swinging. You have nothing to prove, you have only to show up. Improvement will come with the showing up. Give yourself time to adjust and plenty of room to grow.]

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan:

Your daily goal this month is to show up. How do you feel about showing up? Do you make it a production by coming up with reasons not to? Do you create drama around the simple task of showing up? Or do you just show up? How much are your thoughts getting in the way? How much are you getting in your own way? Write about it. Work through it on paper. Write about how the month is going so far.

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan:

It’s tempting to focus on what has worked for us in the past before we were moms. But what if we scrapped all of that and moved into the now? What if we look at ourselves as different from our past? What if we honored the fact that people change, tastes change, preferences change—really that change is constant.

How have you changed since becoming a mom? What did you used to do for movement? What sounds fun to you now? Are you holding on to past interests? Do you need to? Can you explore old interests as well as new ones? How does the season of life you’re in NOW affect what you’re able to do? Write about the changes and challenges…then brainstorm about how you can work around them.

New season, new challenges, new goals, new game plan.

Today’s Daily Movement:
Tomorrow’s Plan: