Fitness – Page 2 – Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul

December 8, 2017December 22, 2017

24 and 26 Weeks Pregnancy Comparison photos with Ultrasound Pictures

Made it to 26 weeks and now am an emotional mess. I am keeping up with my workouts except the exercises that have me on my back, those I cut out. I have resorted to just running stairs and doing my mobile elliptical since it has turned winter. My stairs have decreased to a 15 minute time since one day I tried to do 20 and I actually burnt myself out, which I have never done on stairs before. I felt like I was going fast when I got to 18 minutes, but my legs would only help me go up at a slow walk. So instead of pushing myself to exhaustion like I’m trying not to do and to try to save my knees from the added weight they are not used to, I decreased it. In January I plan to run down the stairs, but walk up for the 15 minutes and then in February I plan to just walk the stairs so I don’t fall or risk the baby’s life, but still work on staying active. I’ve never been this far along in the winter before in a pregnancy, so it is all a big adjustment to me to just having to keep the working out inside away from the extreme cold, snow, ice, and never ending darkness since the nights are so long right now.

These photos are from week 24 of all my pregnancies. First pregnancy top left, second bottom left, and third right.

These photos are from week 26 of all my pregnancies. Once again first top left, second bottom left, and third right.

This next comparison is from my second pregnancy and this pregnancy in a front facing view at 26 weeks. I’m sharing this comparison because I find it very interesting how different my stomach looks in both of them, even my belly button. My belly in the second pregnancy was definitely getting rounder at this point in the pregnancy, when in this one my belly isn’t quite there yet, and it looks like my abs are still trying to hold it all in on the sides.

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These are two back views at 26 weeks of this pregnancy. My back muscles are still trying to hold in there and so are my shoulder muscles. When I don’t try to super flex you can barely tell I’m holding a big belly in the front.

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So fitness is still progressing as much as it can be without being too dangerous for the baby. We went and saw our little one last week and she was weighing at about one pound and thirteen ounces. She was curled up sideways right under my diaphragm though, which explains why sometimes it is almost impossible to breathe, but makes me feel loved that she likes to be so close to my heart. Here are a couple of pictures of her.

October 13, 2017August 6, 2020

18 Weeks Pregnant Comparison Photo and Life update

Here is the latest comparison photo at 18 weeks for my last pregnancy and this pregnancy. The changes are starting and I’m slowly starting to lose my form as the baby grows bigger. I’m still fitter than my last pregnancy and can still do more than I was able to before. Makes me super sad though looking back at old photos from right before this pregnancy and seeing how great my abs were though. Really hoping that after this pregnancy I can get back to where I was and maybe even faster than last time. Can not wait to FINALLY get to work on my fitness without regressing and see how far I can get with my body if my thyroid levels agree to cooperate. Here is my last ab photo I took from June 24th before we found out we were pregnant on July 4th.

So you can see where some of my sadness is coming from 🙂 Will be a challenge to get back to that point again, but can’t wait to try when the time comes. The baby is doing great though 🙂 and looking cuter and cuter 🙂 This is from two weeks ago.

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On a side note, I’m so sorry that my posts have been made not as often as I would like. This last week was full of appointments and family emergencies and such that time escaped me once again. I’m actually supposed to be at the moment finishing packing up and getting ready for a wedding that we have to travel a ways for that I’m in. But HOPEFULLY super soon I will have news on my latest book that should be published soon and will be able to share that 🙂

September 29, 2017

Pregnancy Update 16 Weeks Living The Fit Pregnancy Lifestyle

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Two weeks more down and what feels like a billion more to go when I think about it. Luckily, I have been crazy busy as always, which is helping time fly by. It looks like my routine compared to my last pregnancy is still helping my body keep its shape so far. I feel Dawn getting bigger. Sometimes I already feel uncomfortable, especially when she starts moving around like crazy on some days. My left ankle is starting to act up and swell a bit already, which happened a little in my last pregnancy. When I see the doctor Tuesday I plan to ask him about it if my pregnant brain doesn’t take over and make me forget like I have been doing lately. AMAZING news though is that after two months my thyroid is where it is supposed to be, which has helped a lot with the depression and finally having more energy to tackle the things I need to do and tackle with a more positive energy. We see baby Dawn tomorrow to see how she is doing and let our other two girls experience the joy of seeing their little sister. Hoping all goes great. 🙂

September 19, 2017

Gender Revealed and 2nd + 3rd Child Comparing Pregnant Figures at 14 weeks

First off, we had our gender reveal party. As you can see from the above picture for our last baby we are being blessed with our third girl. As you can also see we had a lot of fun with the gender reveal and the party went great. 🙂 I’m so happy that our idea worked and we were able to dig through whipped cream with our faces in the beautiful sunshine to find the pink or blue pacifier. No one knew the gender except the two people we had open the envelope minutes before to put the blue or pink pacifier in the pie pan of their choosing and cover it with whipped cream. No one also knew, except my husband and I, how we had planned to present the reveal. Everyone was laughing and so surprised and excited when we had them come out to all the whipped creamed pies lined up in a row. It definitely worked out better than I thought it would. My husband is the one who found the pacifier, but I was the one who got to wipe it off and tell the crowd the gender with it still in his mouth.

The next picture I have posted is me at 14 weeks with my second child on the left and me at 14 weeks with my third child on the right. It looks like working out with weights and programs on top of running and biking instead of just running like I was doing in my last pregnancy is definitely making a difference. Even though my abs and four pack I had are slowly going away, I’m keeping my figure longer. The baby is continuing to grow at to me what feels like a fast rate. Every day the movements are stronger and now my husband can even find her right away with his hand and feel her movements without as much effort as he had to put in before. I’m interested to see if the difference will keep progressing. Happily I am still having more energy than I did in my first trimester so the work outs are not as hard as they were a couple weeks ago. I’m also excited that in less than two weeks we are having an elective ultrasound and get to see the baby and how much she has grown.

September 12, 2017September 12, 2017

My Pregnant Workout Schedule

Being a stay at home mom and not having the freedom to really leave the house and go to the gym since my husband never really knows what his day to day work schedule is going to be and sometimes ends up being gone days at a time sucks, but I make the best with what I can. One of the best programs I have bought and continue to use has been Beach Body on Demand. I’m not trying to sell it. I’m not a salesperson or coach or whatever for the company. I am just stating that in the past two years I have used it it has been very beneficial. There are so many different levels of programs to choose from fitness wise that it has let me gradually increase my fitness levels since I’ve started it after my last pregnancy and it lets me try out different types of workout routines and instructors to see what works best for me and what I like. This above is the workout schedule I have made for myself combining and switching between three different beach body programs. The programs I have chosen are P90X, 21 Day Fix Extreme, and Core De Force.

Reasons I picked these programs

P90X– This program I have completed before for the whole 90 days without missing a single workout. I wanted to challenge myself this pregnancy and see if I could keep up with it.

21 Day Fix Extreme– Another program I have completed more than once. I chose this one over 21 Day Fix because I felt like this one was more at my level and more challenging. The biggest reason I chose it though was because I wanted at least two days a week to have only a thirty minute workout so I didn’t tire or stress myself out too much with always having lack of time while being pregnant.

Core De Force– I had never done this program yet and wanted to try something new. A friend of mine said that the workouts are pretty much pregnant safe and it would give me the chance to work on my core without putting too much stress on the baby.

The reason why I switch around with the three is to keep myself from getting bored these next nine months. You may ask why I don’t just switch to a different program if I get bored, but the further along you get in pregnancy the harder the workouts become to do so I want to prevent trying something new and hurting myself. I want my body to grow accustomed to the programs I have down so that I can keep up as much as possible later on and know when I need to start modifying more or not. Right now I’m not needing to modify too much. There are some exercises I refuse to do like superman- banana to keep too much stress from my uterus and there are a few exercises I modify if I start feeling too out of it like burpees, but I have already gotten stronger this last month and have been able to do the original exercise instead of the modified version like I had to my first go around with a few. I am well aware that that will change though the further along I get in the pregnancy. So I will keep doing this schedule sequence. Once I get to the bottom I will continue to write out the sequence how it has been, which has been nice so I’m not doing the same workouts by each other since each program has a different number of workout routines.

On Top Of That

Besides just this workout schedule I continue to also do my cardio. Which is a lot simpler of a schedule. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I run 3.5 miles, unless I am unable to then I run 20 mins stairs. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I bike 7 miles, unless I am unable to then I do 30 mins on my mobile elliptical. I have stopped running every day like I used to because my knees started having a hard time with the constant heavy impact routines. So that’s why I now also bike to have a lower impact cardio in my schedule to save my knees so I can continue what workouts I want to for many more years to come.

September 5, 2017September 12, 2017

On To the Second Trimester

If you follow me at all you may have noticed that my posts have been less consistent than I would like them to be lately. I am a very scheduled person and love making sure I do what I need to do every week for my body, mind, and soul. One of those things that help my mind and soul tremendously is writing, but I’ve been having to sadly put that aside some days and even weeks because we are preparing for our third and final baby that is planned to arrive in our arms this coming March. My children are obviously my number one priority. Everything I do is for them and if you are a parent you know how incredibly impossible it is to do just about anything with them around. I am trying to write this now with my two year old crying in the chair besides me because she wants my full on attention…. It is frustrating that I can not read like I used to and desire to and that I can’t write like I love to, but I know it is worth it because they will only be children for a short amount of time and that is time that I won’t get back, Hopefully after they have grown up some more I will finally have time to myself to do what I love to do without having any regrets because I know that I did everything I could and wanted to do for and with them. With this being our last baby we are going to try to go all out with this pregnancy because we know that we won’t get the chance to do this all again. So right now we have been busy adjusting to moving our two year old into our five year old’s room and planning a gender reveal party. Then it will move on to the bigger planning and preparing along with trying to make sure we make the holidays, weekends, and life as fun and memorable for our children as possible. So briefly as I was saying, we are at a tiring part of our life at the moment that has been keeping me from writing my poems, books, and blog posts as much as I would love to.

Anyway, the posts I will be posting most about when I get to it will be about the pregnancy only because I am trying to make this the fittest pregnancy that I have had. This goal isn’t and hasn’t been easy to achieve because as I have posted before I have Hashimoto’s disease. With this pregnancy my levels haven’t been working out for me and my body. When I first went in obviously my levels were too low, so they changed my dosage of levothyroxine and then a month later I got retested and my levels had never changed. That in itself is frustrating and makes not getting depressed, working out, and having any energy for anything hard. Also it makes it easier for your body to pack on the pounds no matter what you eat or do. Well, I have still stuck to my workout schedule without fail since it is more of a habit and way of life for me than anything, which makes it a little easier for me to continue no matter how dead I feel. All through this first trimester I managed to run, bike, and workout and still have my healthy baby inside me through all the tiredness, hypothyrodism, and nausea. Strangely, I had come to realize during that time that on Sundays when I don’t work out that I was the most tired that I had been all week and that I could barely make it through the day. So, I guess it is definitely true that exercise helps fight back fatigue in pregnancy. Waking up at 5 or 6 am and getting it done has definitely been a life saver for me.

My last statement before I end this super long possibly unnecessary post is a short statement about my previous two pregnancies. I want to make this clear before I possibly get any backlash about my way of life during my pregnancy when I start posting my progressions, comparisons, and work-out schedules. With my first pregnancy, I only walked because I was too afraid to do anything else. Every day I would only walk for three miles or more, even though made me miss running like crazy especially if I saw another runner run by. My child was born healthy in only three and a half hours weighing exactly seven pounds. In my second pregnancy I ran throughout the whole pregnancy about three and a half miles five days a week. My second child was born even healthier than the first in only two and a half hours and weighed eight pounds, six ounces. I am excited to take this last pregnancy on with more focus on fitness than the last two. I have no fear that whatsoever that the baby won’t be more than OK and of course if told by the doctors that an issue has sprung up I will make it known and stop my course of action. This is me at 12 weeks pregnant. We will see how things go and progress and if I will be able to make this my fittest pregnancy.

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May 21, 2017May 21, 2017

Surprise Yourself!

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Keep surprising yourself! I know this really surprised me the other day. Things really do pay off, even in ways we might not expect. Just keep looking for the little surprises and excitements in everything you do and in your lifelong journeys to your different goals. The surprises and excitements can keep you motivated and moving forward!