Wellness Challenge: get moving!

This is week four in the Wellness Challenge. The other posts for this series, were about developing a healthy mindset, the H2O Factor, and Feeding the Machine.

This week, I would like to focus on exercise and getting moving.

As I mentioned before, during my B.C. (before children) days, I was always an active person, whether it be organized sports like gymnastics or track [and yes, cheerleading is a sport ; ) ] or just working out. Now it is chasing children around the house and stores [insert laugh].

One day, several years ago, I had an epiphany. I was thinking, "I work out all of the time and I love it". I even thought, "I could take this a step further and get paid for it if I wanted to". So, I set out to get a certification in group fitness. It was such a good decision. I had a lot of fun and I learned so much about fitness! It's also a great motivator when you are the instructor. You kind of HAVE to show up for class [wink]. For several years, I was able to teach various types of fitness classes at some amazing gyms and even at my alma mater for a semester.

I remember one of the other instructors at a well known gym I was teaching at who had five children. She would teach literally up until the day before she gave birth. I was amazed. I remember thinking, "wow, I'm so going to be like that when I have children. A fit pregnant lady who works out like crazy and just pops that baby out".

Well, I was wrong. Unfortunately, almost right away with each of my pregnancies, the nausea set in. I'm talking extreme....where practically walking across the room would cause motion sickness and up came my lunch [gross, I know]. In normal cases, expectant moms have morning sickness and it usually tapers off about the third month. Oh no, not me. Mine was morning, afternoon and night sickness and went for the majority of my pregnancy....four times.

Ok, now that I'm done whining [ha ha], I'll get to the point. What I am getting at is that my days of teaching extreme fitness classes several times a day came to fitting in exercise when and where my tired nauseous body and new busy mommy schedule would allow. Healthy eating habits became eating whatever I could keep down during my pregnancies...which usually meant anything sweet.

After recently having our fourth child, I'm again ready to get on the bandwagon and get back into the groove of a healthy lifestyle. I'm so passionate about working out and feeding this machine, called the body the way it should be fed. Therefore, I decided to do this Wellness Challenge as a means to also motivate myself along with others.

In future posts, I will give some specific tips on workouts you can do at home. Today, however, I just want to encourage you to get moving and motivate you to incorporate easy ways to get into the habit of daily exercise.

These are just a few of the many things you can do to simply GET MOVING:

• Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Take a lap outside during work lunch break or a nature walk with the kids at home.
• Don't "fight" for the closest parking space at the store... choose to walk a little.
• Say "yes" daily to the activities that your children want to do with you that burn energy - play ball, go for a bike ride, play tag, dance, take a walk, play red light green light, etc.
• Take the long way to the mailbox.
• Go old school! Leave behind the leaf blower and snow blower and get out the rake and shovel.
• Do lunges through the house instead of walking.

Have fun with this and I hope that this week, you'll get moving! Next week, I will discuss the benefits of physical exercise.