Most of the moms I know are really, really good at taking care of people and really terrible at taking care of themselves. Case in point: I love the 10 lb slimdown, but one of the reasons I stopped last time I started this habit is that it was very hard for me to carve 40 minutes out of the day to do it. Really. I was actually having trouble devoting 40 minutes- not even of every day, just several days a week- to taking care of myself. Now that I no longer have a young infant and my eldest is in school full time (no, I STILL cannot believe it) I am finding that easier, but really, 40 minutes? That’s not even an episode of Burn Notice. I should be high enough on my own list of priorities to rate that much!

Talking with other moms, the subject of why we consistently move our own needs to the bottom of the list often comes up. I don’t pretend to know if it’s a universal problem, but I do know that almost every mom I know has run into at some point. Whether it’s worrying that we’ll start to gain instead of lose the baby weight when our kids hit that “I’m so active you barely have time to pee let alone make a salad so you’re going to eat the rest of my macaroni and cheese for lunch every day because you’re hungry enough to gnaw your own arm off and it’s already cooked” phase or not ever having five minutes in our own heads, it’s there. It’s where we live. And if you are trying to be a mom AND, you live there twice. (A mom AND work outside the home, a mom AND go to school, a mom AND still have a sense of identity outside motherhood… you get the idea.) I don’t often get to have real talks with dads, but my impression is that dads don’t do this to themselves as much. So it begs the question… why? Why do we do this to ourselves, as moms? It’s not because it doesn’t benefit our families for us to take care of ourselves. As far as I can tell, it’s a line of self-talk we have bought into that taking care of everyone else reduces our stress. So let’s do ourselves a favor and STOP IT. Take care of you today. I mean it. TAKE CARE OF YOU. Because your kids love you. Your extended families love you. If you have an SO, he or she loves you. *I* love you. So do it. Please?

I also want to take a moment to offer some Kudos to my workout buddy, Jenn for LITERALLY putting herself first for a while every day. Getting up at 4 am so she can get her workouts in FIRST every day and making sure she takes care of herself before she starts taking care of everyone else is awesome. I am SO PROUD OF HER! (And our mornings would be a lot less hectic if I’d take a page out of her book. Maybe tomorrow.)

So. Hello week five of the 10 lb slimdown and healthy eating overhaul around here! I cannot say enough good things about this workout program. I’m not an authority, but I know that I enjoy at least 2/3 of what Chris Freytag has included in this plan, and I DO know that this is the perfect after baby rehab. (Why she doesn’t market it that way I don’t know!) Plus, if you haven’t already, check out the guns on her! That is a woman who can go sleeveless every day and twice on Saturdays! I like it!

As far as the post-partum thing goes, I have a very mild diastasis recti and ANYONE who’s had a 9 lb baby needs to rehab their pelvic floor at least a little. Between the planks and squats and the plyometrics, this program has done wonders for what Keeghan (and probably Ian, too, but I wasn’t tracking it so I can’t say) did to my body. (He’s SO WORTH IT and also, 19 months old today. Really. That seems like an impossibly large number, but I double checked. It’s true.) I’ve reached a point where the workouts in the regular 10 lb slimdown are still challenging but completely doable- I haven’t been modifying almost at all. So I’m hoping to make a move to the 10 lb extreme. I’m going to give it a shot and see if I’m ready. I’ll let you know.

Monday Progress Report:

I feel like I should specify here that I’m tracking my TOTAL progress. So when I say + or -, I mean vs. day 1, not since my last progress report. It helps me to keep the big picture in mind, so I don’t get discouraged on weeks where progress is smaller.

Day: 29
The scale has moved: -9 lbs
The inches have changed: -11.25 inches
I feel: Ready to push through ’til New Year’s!!!!
I’ve walked: 30.39 miles and counting!

The two of them are approximately 70lbs, total.