Balance

It's an ever evolving idea that we are always trying to strive towards. As moms, balance is a nice idea but I'm not sure we ever achieve it. As someone who is a mom and trying to lose weight, it's darn near impossible. You must pick your priorities and be okay with the tasks that get left on the table.

This week, I had to find balance.

1) Literally. I had to find my center of gravity, core muscles and equilibrium and balance during a lot of the lifting I did with my trainer. He doesn't have me doing overhead press on a gym ball, nothing like that. But even just step ups make me realize that after prolonged inactivity, ruined abdominals, baby hormones, ligament changes etc, it's impossible to balance! This is something we forget to retrain after a pregnancy and I must incorporate more of in my routine.

2) After my last post about my crazy day, I realized that the food choices may be misleading. Because I balance out days like that with days like yesterday. My last post was about me squeezing in every minute on the treadmill that I could and putting my kids and errands first at the expense of not feeding myself properly. That is fine, somedays. But you must balance that out with a day like yesterday:

Breakfast: turkey sausage and corn flakes

Trainer

Lunch: popcorn on our living room picnic, 3 meatball roll up on a corn tortilla with a slice of cheese and a coke

snack: zone bar

Dinner: Filet, broccoli, little potato, gf Chocolate Thunder from Down Under (split 3 ways)

I also choose to play with my son and his new toys and send my husband for the cake instead of sneaking in 20 mins at the gym while picking up the cake myself. Balance.

Then you have to realize you had Chocolate Thunder from Down Under last night and you have to balance that with passing up on cake today. Just because it's a party (vacation, holiday, bad hair day, whatever) doesn't mean you lose sight of your goal. Pick your battles, pick your treats.

3) Need to balance out all this cardio and weights now with a little yoga. This is always the last installment of my weight loss journey. It's probably the most important but always the last to join the program. Skipping warm ups and cool downs makes for one tight ball of twine of a body. I love yoga, I love the way it feels afterwards, and I love it makes me feel more balanced in my life. Time to do it.

4) Have fun. Throw a 3 year old birthday party at the pool. Balance the urge to super organize, over decorate, over feed, over think and realize that all a 3 year old needs is a Lightning McQueen (or fill in the disney character du jour here) cake. Okay, I still had the food, drinks, and gift baggies but given my learned trait to over entertain, I showed some restraint. And it was fabulous. It was relaxing, low key, fun.

Most importantly, I got to take off my cover up off, be proud of my body and relax because I felt I had worked so hard to earn that right. I may not be rocking that hot bikini bod yet, but I certainly earned the right to walk tall and not care about those last 9 lbs.

Balance. This week I did a little for me, a lot for the kids, a little for me again, ate a lot good, some bad and oh yeah, is there still time to fit spending time with my husband in there? Thank goodness the weekend is not over yet...