The Start of My Story

For those of you who are new here, I’m Meg. If I were to describe my life in a word, it would be desperate – desperate for Jesus, desperate for my husband, desperate to be a better mom, and desperate to be as healthy as possible in every way. I don’t and won’t use filters on any of my pictures because I think everyone needs a healthy dose of reality. What I want more than anything is to pierce the fakeness and deliver some encouragement and truth about what it means to be fit amidst the craziness of life with littles.

My wish is that my story can encourage you and the tricks I’ve learned can help you.

The Pandemic Baby

My youngest daughter was born in the summer of 2020, ending what was by far the most difficult of my three pregnancies. For those of you who had a pandemic baby, you can probably attest to some of the struggles I faced. The significant decrease of human contact, the covered faces, constant temperature readings and hand sanitizer around every corner made pregnancy seem even more taxing than it was in the pre-pandemic world. I remember feeling that in a time where everything was changing, I just wanted pregnancy to feel normal. It was anything but normal. I found myself sinking into anxiety and depression throughout the pregnancy. I would get stress headaches and would eat all my feelings – and I had a lot of feelings.

To set the stage for the start of my journey, I’ll share some desperate thoughts that I jotted down in a note on my phone at about 7 months pregnant.

"The biggest frustrations in my first two pregnancies were the comments people made about the way I looked. Some comments were the typical, "Are you sure you aren't carrying twins?" And "Wow! Your stomach is huge!" The worse comments were "Hey fat lady!" And "You looked like a beached whale!" But I am genuinely missing the nasty comments because at least that would mean I wouldn't feel so alone. 

Pregnant women are in a sad place when the only people with whom they can truly discuss their pregnancy are the masked health care providers who are trying to cut even shorter their 20 minutes appointments to prevent the spread of this disease.

Where is the nurse who will diagnose my discomfort and recognize the fact that it is painful and hard? Where is the end to this exhaustion? Is it July second? Because that feels far too long to wait."

Can you just see it on my face in the picture above? The “I’m so done” look. I’m smiling in this photo, but my body and my brain were screaming, “Get out!” 

Postpartum

I ended my pregnancy exhausted, unhealthy, mentally weak and about 25 pounds ABOVE the recommended pregnancy weight gain. As we brought our Independence Day baby home on the fifth of July the stress and anxiety I had during pregnancy began to subside. The weight I had gained while pregnant started slowly coming off as I nursed her over the next few weeks.

Nursing a newborn about a million times a day every single day will give you a lot of time to think. But as I sat with my newborn, I felt so alone. I felt insecure about the weight I had gained and started looking to the internet for other women’s experiences with postpartum weight loss. Online, women would say to accept every change to my body because what I had done was beautiful. That sounded wonderful, but I knew I wasn’t healthy. I found amazing transformation videos of moms who had lost TONS of weight by doing high-intensity workouts, most of which were of “merely” 30 minutes every day. Surely, I could fit this into my daily routine!

My New Years Resolutions

I resolved to count calories and get my body moving. I started using a calorie tracking app about a month after giving birth. Tracking my calories brought awareness to what I was eating and helped me hit my pre-pregnancy weight by December 2020.

My husband and I decided to get an exercise bike as a combined Christmas present. We said even if we just barely used it while we watched TV at night, that would be something. And indeed, it was something. Getting that bike kickstarted my New Years resolution to get my body moving and pay closer attention to what I was eating.

I’d be lying if I said I rode the bike every day, but even the occasional low-intensity rides helped lift the postpartum fog and ease the anxiety that I often felt.

The next step in my fitness journey was bringing my kids along for the ride. We started trying kids yoga videos on YouTube and quickly developed a habit of incorporating fun adventure-based yoga challenges into our daily routine.

My Workouts

Since January 2021, I’ve been lifting weights, biking indoors, walking, dancing, completing 30-day yoga challenges, and fitting whatever I can into my homeschool mom of three little kids schedule. In the future, I’ll share my monthly exercise goals, tips I’ve learned to get my kids moving, how to workout in increments throughout the day – basically anything and everything related to the topic.

The Adventure Continues!

Share your story! Where are you on your fitness journey? I’d love for you to follow along as we learn how to be Fit With Littles together!