Food For Thought Fridays: Fitness

Food For Thought Friday is brought to you by the amazing folks at Welcome Baby Care. Be sure to check out their website, and don’t forget to “like” them on Facebook to take advantage of all their knowledge as THE post-partum and newborn experts.

Oh, the alliteration. So annoying isn't it? But it's true, fitness is AS important as the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the amount of sleep we get. I was with my Pilates trainer on Thursday and said to her, "when children are born, they should be assigned a therapist and put on the reformer." (The reformer is the apparatus developed by Joseph Pilates to help get the principles of his fitness method "in the body." And let me tell you, after an hour on that thing, if the principles aren't in your body, then I don't know where they are because that thing is genius). We are given these amazing bodies and rarely reminded how to best use the muscles in them. That is never more true than when a body has been stretched to the limit by pregnancy.

Fitness is not only imperative to our health, it's imperative to our mental well-being. In research conducted at Duke University in a study of people suffering from depression over the course of four months, it was discovered that 60% of the participants who exercised for 30 minutes three times a week overcame their depression without using antidepressant medication. (I want to add here, that this is a good reason to include your doctor in your exercise regimen. If you have been put on antidepressants by a doctor, or if you believe you need antidepressants, please involve them in any experimentation around dosage as it relates to your fitness. There is nothing wrong with being on antidepressants - in my opinion.) The release of endorphins during exercise is what makes a runner get what they call a "runner's high" (I still don't believe it... but I'll take the runner's word for it), or gives one that sense of great satisfaction and happiness once they've completed a workout. For new moms, especially, getting moving again following the birth of a baby (slowly, of course) can make all the difference in managing those baby blues. (That said, post-partum depression and anxiety disorders are REAL! If you're looking to find out more about it - please listen to this last edition of the Gyno Show on My Talk 107.1 where we talked with my friend Liv Lane from Choosing Beauty about her struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following the birth of her first child.)

Finding time for exercise in your schedule is imperative to your wellbeing and that of your family. So, how are you going to make time for exercise today? I'm willing to bet that you just spent 5 minutes reading this blog. Not that I'm saying I don't want you to read my blog, I do... desperately, but perhaps you can find 10 more minutes to run the steps at your office? Or if you're at home, maybe you can split the laundry into four piles and carry each pile from the laundry room to your bedroom one at a time. These are techniques I have used. These days, I see a trainer, and do a lot of cardio at my local YMCA. Additionally, I do a lot of weight lifting - only I don't need weights, I have tiny people! Before you run off to fit in your fitness, take a virtual skip over to my friend Missy's blog, Marketing Mama to read my guest post on what it's REALLY like to be a Mother Of Multiples.