Summer & Accountability

Well, I've finally got a moment to myself to blog without someone asking where are their headphones, socks, football gloves, shoes, etc or ask for money! The life for of a mom with now 3 teenagers and 2 tweens has officially sent me in "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" land.

Since my last posting, My 'baby' is now a young lady & has graduated from elementary school, I gained a teen from tween land as my middle son turned 13 & is owning every ounce of teenage-dom now, I work out in the middle of the night & I lost my great aunt whom I grew up with in my childhood home. I'll get back to all of that in future blogs. I have promised myself to be committed to blogging this summer so I don't end up committed for real!

Now, to why I wanted to make this post. Accountability.

I'll first talk about it with the fit girl perspective. As I've stated, I work out in the middle of the night. With my husband on 2nd shift, I go to be trained by him at a local 24 hour gym when he gets off of work. It has a lot of benefits to it, but being up during the night and day with small sleep sessions can take it's toll. With summer in effect, I've contemplated taking one of the teens with me in the mornings to the gym to help them burn off some of the energy. That would mean no husband trainer. It's a rare thing for me to workout without him. He's more than my trainer, he's my accountability partner. I know when I'm with him, I'm going to give my workout my all. I can talk myself out of that last rep on my own sometimes, I can tell myself that the chocolate cupcake will not hurt my workout. But with him, I'm on my A game. I want to show him I'm a beast when it comes to this fitness thing. So my mission is to have accountability for myself being healthy without him babysitting me. I also have my facebook & instagram post to keep me on track though.

Every time you post your progress and post as much healthy stuff as I do, you kind of have a following. So you feel weird if you slack up on your workouts and let your gut hang in a picture. My friends who see me regularly that are on facebook with me, I'm the same girl that is on the social networks, so they won't see me on my second cup of a fattening cocktail or third hamburger. When I'm home, I practice what I preach. I teach my kids to read the nutrition labels in the store with me. I'll sit & watch my daughter's fave shows with a big bowl of baby brussel sprouts....and like it! We make salads together & create healthy recipes. I have 2 boys on the verge of their college years in a couple of years & I want them to be able to make healthy choices on a couple of dollars...especially my athletic kid.

I'm saying this to say, you don't need a husband trainer to be accountable, but you are surrounded by people & things to make you accountable for you. You shouldn't want to let you down. Seeing my before pictures motivates me when I have a case of the frumps & frustrated with the slow process of rebuilding a body. Everything I eat, I think about how this will help or hinder all of the progress I've made these past two years. It's become a habit, an obsession, a lifestyle. I can't give up this healthy kick. I've embraced that it's not a phase anymore. I'm that annoying person on facebook who always talks about their workout and what they eat. I'm the girl at the store reading the labels & examining my produce. I'm the instagrammer that posts motivational pics and quotes. I have online albums of my workouts....And I'll be damned if I feel ashamed of it. Because with my search to be accountable to myself & wanting to detach from my trainer, I found that the only person I was trying to prove anything to was myself. And that makes me proud.

 Accountability is everywhere. You just have to look around, identify it & embrace it...if you can't, look in the mirror.

There's a 2nd part to this. I want to delve into accountability with everything else...I'll post it in a few days. But in the meantime, here's me doing something that little short stay at home moms shouldn't be able to do: workout like the pros & squat 225 lbs! Time to go & feed my crew!

Temptation, food & the freaking height chart.

As most of you have read before, I have mom issues. Not from being one but from having one. This does not effect my day to day life, HOWEVER, when I am stressed, disappointed, have an encounter with her or what have you, I fall into a vortex of "Everyone sucks, I need a cheesecake and a dose of shut the hell up". This can lead to the tv suddenly speaking to me by posting 1232942 Pizza Hut, cookies, cakes & a Diners, Drives Ins & Dives marathon. Of course, this is NOT good for someone who although works out like a beast, is still 4 pounds overweight according to my height. So, it can lead to 3am trips to the bathroom and repeating to myself, "This is not the time to eat the kids' afterschool snacks." Emotional eating will make you lie to yourself. Things like, "If I eat this piece of cake, all I'll have to do is run it off for an hour on the treadmill and drink smoothies all day tomorrow." or my fave, "I'm going to do a cleanse tomorrow, so I might as well order the cheese fries. The kids will eat some of them anyway!" That is your body lying to you like a teenage boy with his first girlfriend. Don't fall for it!

Life happens, trust me, I know! My daughter's birthday was this week. The day before, my sister was baptized. Of course my entire family was there for my sister to support her decision. And as anyone with a brain would know, my Dad had us celebrate at a beautiful buffet brunch at a nearby hotel. Buffet can be a curse word if you're into a healthy lifestyle, especially a luxury buffet brunch with an omelet station, carving station,  breakfast foods and tons of pasta! But it can be navigated and you can atone for your 'sins' if you're not going there regularly. I chose to make sure I ate a protein bar on my way to brunch which helped me not eat more than 3 of those delish sausage links they had glistening at me like fresh snow! I did have 2 mimosas...mind you, my mom was there, so that was definitely a requirement! However, I did drink tons of water before church, after and during brunch. Then the kids and I headed home after spending a few more hours at my Dad's and we stopped at Wendy's. I choose a chicken salad half order and a jr cheeseburger. If I wasn't married to my trainer, I would have given him full disclosure because that way, he can make a plan to torture my body for my bad choices and they would help me. If left up to me, I would have did a kale cleanse or completely backslid and ate cheesecake! I'm human, and I love food. But the choices I make affect the body I want. Eating unhealthy makes me bloated and sometimes nauseous now. I get full faster because my stomach is no longer the turnpike of french fries that it used to be. It takes time, it's hard work, but I'll be damned if I have another waiter conveniently forget to ID me because I look like my 24 yr old sister's mother! I know my goals, to hell with that freaking body chart telling me I'm still overweight, I'm a long way from where I want to be but I'm a long way from where I was....and I did it with a whole bunch of kids in tow! :)

Motivation, Goals, Motherhood & All That Jazz....

        My husband/trainer asked me this morning, pre-coffee, what exactly my goals were. Considering we have been together for almost 18 years, I wanted to hit him in the head with my coffee mug...Well, before I filled it with the elixir of the Gods, of course. He meant my fitness goals. See, I've worked out with him for almost 2 years now, helped him follow his dreams & start his own business, but somehow, with the addition of new clients, he forgot what I was really "working" for. Most people this time of year have a reason to head to the gym: The New Year's Resolution drive, the great deals on gym memberships, the idea of going on vacation in the warmer months and not wanting to wear a Walmart house coat, I could go on. Well, I don't have a goal like that. I think goals for me are a set up for epic fail and a disgraceful fall into a box of lemon twist oreos. I don't know exactly what I weigh. My trainer/husband weighs me but makes me look up. I know what my weight range is, thanks to the lovely nurse who not only weighed me with clothes on during my GYN check up, but felt the need to say, "I need to move this notch up a bit". I'm not looking to lose a miracle weight Biggest Loser style. My goals are long but simplistic...

        I want to be naked and have my husband not catch his hand in one of the rolls on my back when I'm channeling my inner Beyonce sex goddess. I want to dance wildly and not look like I need a defibrillator so that I can embarrass my teenagers. I want to take my daughter to the mall and not wish for poison when I see that she wants to keep shopping, but my body feels like it traveled the Underground Railroad just walking from our parking spot. I do not want to hear, "You look great for 5 kids!" I want to look great. I want to put on the most hottest MILF outfit know to man when my birthday comes in April and say, "And this is what 35 looks like" and make much of facebook envy in my awesomeness and throw up on themselves. I want my back not to feel like 5 epidurals of hell, more like 2-ish. I'm sick of knowing when rain is approaching in Seattle and I'm in New Jersey. I want to be able to wrestle all 4 of my boys if they come home with bad report cards. I don't want to look like the big one of the couple...Since my husband sheds weight faster than drawers on a spring breaker, I want to look like his female equal. I want to prevent what I'm watching my Nana fight, dementia, hypertension & diabetes.

          See? Not the typical I want to lose 20 lbs for the summer than eat cheesecake all winter response. For me, fitness is the rest of my life. Yes, 2 years has changed me physically in major ways but there's still soooooo much more to go. I'm a true believer in life that your goals should always be to strive for more. You should be happy, you shouldn't strive for perfection, BUT you should always want to learn, grow, change into a bigger, smarter prettier butterfly.... I want to always look for improvement in myself. I am proud of my journey, especially the motherhood part, but I want to always be my own motivation. I say to my kids all of the time what my dad has pushed with me- You should always lay your head on your pillow at night feeling you have done something good for yourself, your family and your world. My kids are my biggest motivation to want more, be more, live more. My husband is my support & travel guide to my goals, but the biggest person I want to be better for is finally ME. It's always a long road when traveling to your goals, but looking back at me 2 years ago & now, I'm liking this journey more daily!