Someone recently wrote in and asked, “How do you stay fit?”
While I’ve talked about fitness in previous posts, it’s been awhile and I thought it would be great to revisit this topic again and share where I’m at in my current season of life!
As I thought about how I’m staying fit right now, three strategies came to mind:
1. I make it a priority.
I was blessed to be raised by parents who made fitness a big priority. My dad was a runner in high school and college (he was on the track team) and still runs 3 miles every single day at age 64! My mom is also really into fitness and encouraged us to participate with her in various workout programs (or just long walks or bike rides) many times while we were growing up.
As I watched both of my parents make physical fitness a priority — even in the middle of their busy lives — I knew that it was possible to find time for fitness, if you made it a priority.
As with anything you want to do in life, you can’t just say you want to do it. You have to commit to it and make it a priority. For me, that means getting in exercise as early as possible in the day and making my health and well-being a priority.
When I’m fit, I have more energy, I’m happier, I’m healthier, and I enjoy my life more. I’m a better wife, mom, and business owner. In fact, I wear all of my hats better when fitness is a priority. And it’s worth it!
2. I do what works in this season of life.
Staying fit will look different in different seasons. Right now, here’s what it looks like for me…
- Drinking a gallon of lemon water every day. If you drink enough water and stay hydrated, it will help you stay healthy, sleep better, improve your skin, make you feel more energetic, take away aches and pains from dehydration, and regulate your weight and digestion.
- I eat a big salad every day, as well as other raw fruits and veggies. I try to eat good protein at every single meal and eat mostly whole grains. I feel better when I eat whole grains, and I know that it’s better for me.
- Limit desserts and sweets. I don’t completely limit them. I did for a long period of time, but now I just make sure I eat sweets in moderation.
- Get enough sleep. Getting an adequate amount of sleep makes me healthier, happier, energetic, and more productive. It also helps my stress, clears up my skin, lowers my anxiety levels, and regulates my weight and metabolism.
- Make sure I’m not taking on too much. Stress drastically affects your health. Having too much on your plate can cause your whole body to be unhealthy. This is something I’ve made a huge priority in the last two years.
- And yes, exercise. I’ve learned not to push myself too hard. My personality is the type that I can easily be too driven and I can end up pushing myself too hard. Right now I have three very active kids who need a lot from me, I have a successful blog/business and work full-time + oversee my team and the longterm strategy of the blog, and I also invest a lot of my time into my local community. Because of this, I want to make sure exercise is fueling me, not draining me. So I try not to push myself too hard. I’m doing 10 push-ups per day and a run about 1-2 miles every day. And I try to stay active throughout the day, as well.
3. I don’t compare myself to others.
I encourage you to not compare yourself to someone else. It’s so easy to look at someone else and wish you had her body type or her metabolism.
I’m blessed to have great genes from my parents. They are healthy and slim and active and they seem to have passed on their great metabolisms and love of healthful foods and fitness to all of their kids.
But I know that not everyone has the same body structure or health or metabolism that I do. At the same time, I know that I need more sleep and more down time than a lot of other people do. Sometimes I can get frustrated that I’m not as able to go-go-go as someone else is, but then I remember that I have many strengths that other people probably wish they had.
Instead of wishing we were someone else, I want to embrace exactly who I am and all of the strengths and weaknesses, abilities and inabilities, body type and structure I’ve been given. And I want to make the best choices I can with the time, energy, and ability that I have.
I love going to the gym, I just wish I could remember how could it makes me feel mentally and physically when I’m stressed with everything else that has to happen in life.
I love you terribly but I take issue with the phrase “even at 64!” which appears twice in this post. 64 is still considered middle age. I know a lot of people in their 60’s who are way fitter than twenty-somethings.
—your 48-year-old devoted reader 🙂
Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll go edit it!
(And I finished this post while sitting in Urgent Care with my very sick husband who had just come home from Peru. Not an excuse, but it might explain why I didn’t catch that I had included that phrase twice! My brain wasn’t fully in blog mode!)
I hope Jesse’s recovered now, Crystal. That sounds serious.Thanks for another inspiring post!
Do you do weight lifting anymore?
I’m not doing it right now because Jesse is doing Crossfit! 🙂
I was wondering that, too! I had a goal for a long time of trying to run 3x/wk and strength train 3x/wk. I was always feeling guilty because I rarely had weeks where I fit in all 6 workouts. Thank you for your tip about being realistic for your season of life; I think I need to set a more realistic goal and stop feeling guilty or trying to push myself too hard, especially since I’ve been adjusting this year to working a lot more than I had been. I think I need to streamline my strength goals so I can more likely fit that in!
I lost a very significant amount of weight and during that process I started to exercise in my mid 40’s. I eventually trained up and ran a 1/2 marathon at Disneyland. I’ve also run 5 and 10K’s there with my husband and kids. If don’t get my exercise in 1st thing in the morning it just doesn’t happen.
That’s AMAZING! Thanks for sharing!
I only started exercising in my 40s, and had no role models growing up, so it is at times a struggle. My fave run is my Sunday morning one, and like you it works best when I get it out of the way first thing. After work is a lot more challenging. I’m trying strategies like going with a group of colleagues to keep myself motivated. I feel so much better in myself when I do exercise.
Thanks for putting in the link to your “water” post. I was just trying to remember how much lemon you put in a gallon jug. Really need to drink more water, but it’s so hard to remember how much I have done. The gallon jug thing might work.
You’re so welcome!