Slacking Off? Cut Yourself Some Slack

I recently chatted online with an old friend who is having difficulty  finding time to exercise in her busy life as a working mom. Ana used  to sweat off the pounds in her college days as a member of FAMU’s  Incomparable Marching 100 Band. (Go Rattlers!) With no more early  morning band practices and a slowing metabolism, part of her is  yearning for the good old days.

Ana has two awesome kids and handles a lot of the family  responsibilities since her husband’s job requires late nights and  travel. In the course of the day, working out is often at the front of her  mind but the bottom of her list. Even with a free gym membership through her job – one that has onsite childcare – she wasn’t exercising and was not happy with herself about it.

We discussed her situation and ended up with 4 rules Ana would live by:
1. Set reasonable and measurable goals.
2. Find a workout partner or trainer to increase accountability.
3. Pay better attention to her food choices.
I promise to go into much greater detail about all three of these rules in future blogs. But I told her rule No. 4 was the most important of them all, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Many times we are too self-critical, keeping mental lists of all the reasons why we should be thinner, healthier, and more fit than we are. We start to believe we can’t get it together, which makes us feel worse and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Try this instead: whenever you realize you have fallen off the wagon, forgive yourself and make the commitment to get back on. Whether it’s been one week, one month or one year, don’t let what you haven’t been doing hinder you from starting back up again.

So what if you ate too much ice cream at last weekend’s birthday party? Commit yourself to working out extra hard this week to make up for it. If you haven’t been in the gym in a while, make a date with yourself in your planner, arrange a babysitter, throw on some sweats and spend 30 minutes improving your health.

Falling off the wagon is easy, but so is getting back on. It doesn’t take some major act or life changing-event, just make a simple commitment to yourself to start over again. Take one small step in the right direction. That path leads you toward your fitness goals!

Oh, and I am happy to report Ana is following our rules very well. Not too long after our chat she posted a message that she was headed to the gym with the kids in tow!

Remember, you can follow me on twitter @coachtia and e-mail me questions to fitmommies@noirmommies.com. I’d love to hear from you!