Should you work out when you're sick?

The should-be-glorious month of March hasn't been a happy one for our family. Three weeks ago, I came down with the worst cold of my life. It started as an innocent little sore throat, turned into a nasty cough (that still hasn't completely gone away), and a lovely sinus infection. I usually pride myself on NOT getting sick, so I don't even think twice when my snotty-nosed children take sips out of my precious water bottle. All three of us ended up with this nice end-of-winter tribute.

Normally when I'm sick, I don't really change my workout routine. I typically feel better after a good workout. This time, however, a few pain-in-the-lung jaunts on the treadmill changed my mind. I didn't lace up my workout shoes, or put on my fat-girl-in-a-little-workout-shirt (I desperately need maternity fitness gear) for TWO WEEKS!

Did you know, by the way, that exercisers in general tend to get sick less often than our sedentary friends? I don't think this applies to pregnant exercisers. I catch everything! Anyway, experts like to cite a rule of thumb when deciding whether or not to lace up the sneakers when you're sick. It's called "the neck rule." If all of your symptoms are located in the neck and above, you should be okay to exercise...it's probably just a head cold. However, if you have a fever, or congestion in your lungs or chest, or if you feel achy, you need to lay low. But helloooo...would anyone with a fever SERIOUSLY try to work out? Yuck! If you're tempted (please tell me you're not), don't. You'll end up with more serious complications like dehydration.

But honestly, use common sense. Listen to your body. I started out knowing I was getting sick, and I worked out anyway. I felt way worse after the workout than I did before. And if you ever need a good excuse to sit at home watching TV? I'd say that being sick is a pretty good one.

Staying inside for two weeks, however, made me absolutely crazy! The weather is FINALLY getting warm, and I just wanted to leave the house to feel some sunshine on my pasty-white skin!

On Monday, I was super excited to get back into my routine. I dropped my son off at preschool, and headed to the gym. As I sped happily along with my daughter in tow, I couldn't wait to drop her off at the Kids' Club for some ME time. All of my hopes were dashed, however, when she--out of nowhere--threw up ALL OVER HERSELF AND THE CAR. I hate it when my babies throw up. I turned around, went home, spent the next few hours cleaning her (and everything in the car) up. I prayed it would only last 24 hours, but no such luck.

It has been a sad, sad week. We're still stuck inside. My daughter threw up for three days, my son for one. I've been cleaning up lots of vomit and that-which-comes-out-the-other-end. My sweet little girl has fallen asleep on the bathroom floor, the kitchen floor, the couch, my lap, and everywhere else she could get comfortable. Poor thing. As for working out, I'm happy to say that I've been able to use lots of my work-out-at-home "Plan B" options.

Today, I feel like things will be okay. I've had two starving children who have kept everything down for over 24 hours. Next Monday is supposed to be in the upper-60's! We will sit on the front porch if we have to, but we are going outside, dangit! Some Vitamin D--the sunshine vitamin--is just what the doctor ordered to keep these winter sicknesses away! I can't wait!

What about you? Do you work out when you're sick? What about when your kids are sick? Are you as excited about the warmer weather as I am?

When it comes to working out, could LESS be MORE?

I have a good friend who recently started working out regularly. She wants to lose a few pounds, and is working out three days a week for about 45 minutes. She's not seeing any results, and asked me for advice. I immediately told her that maybe she needs to work out more--more often, and longer. But then I started thinking--more about my own situation than hers--is it possible that less is actually sometimes more?

After the birth of my first baby, I worked out consistently, but probably nearly not as much as I do now. I changed my eating habits (tried the South Beach Diet for a few weeks--HATED it, but lost all the baby weight), and continued working out REGULARLY.

After the birth of my second baby, however, I couldn't wait to start working out. The overtraining probably happened during my pregnancy, and I was working out (intensely) anywhere from an hour to an hour-and-a-half six days a week. Soon after my baby was born, I went right back on that schedule. And guess what...I NEVER lost all of the weight before getting pregnant again. It's possible that I had more muscle, but I actually think I was just overtraining. Looking back, I should have probably cut back on the intense workout sessions, really focused on clean eating, and would've had better results.

I hate to say it, but my heart rate monitor is partly to blame. I'm a number gal, and I couldn't stand the thought of seeing my total calorie burn for the week anywhere under 3,000.

I'm completely guilty of the American mentality that if a little bit is good, then a lot must be better! I made a horrible garlic pasta when I was first married. If the recipe calls for 3 garlic gloves than 7 would make it even better, right? Luckily I married well, and my husband and I laughed for days. Another example--if you're supposed to apply sunless tanner once a day, then wouldn't twice a day work even better? I've been beautifully orange more times than I'd like to admit!

I have the same problem when it comes to working out...if I didn't have little rugrats keeping me grounded, it actually sounds fun to me to spend countless hours at the gym. But I would definitely be overtraining, and would probably look no different than I do now (pre-pregnant now, that is).

Overtraining can be especially harmful if you ARE following a diet plan. Over-exercising and restrictive eating will cause your body to hang on to any available fat for fear of never getting any more!

So what's my point? Listen to your body! Are you logging countless hours on the treadmill without seeing results? Are you losing muscle? Are you completely exhausted? As strange as it sounds, for some of us, working out a little less could actually be the answer!

So come July when I'm waking up at 4 am after a sleepless night just to fit in a super long workout before my husband goes to work, remind me...LESS IS MORE! I'll definitely be experimenting and tweaking my life with the birth of #3. As always, I'm open to suggestions!

Can any of you relate? Do you overtrain? Do you undertrain? Do you wonder why you work out so much without ever seeing results?

10 Tips for Making Fitness a Way of Life

I'm often asked how I manage to keep myself physically active as a busy mom. My simple answer is that I take things one day at a time. Each day is unique, and brings different challenges. Occasionally on a morning that I plan a long outdoor run, I wake up to falling snow. Early morning workouts don't ever work when I've spent the entire night awake with a sick child (or healthy children who spend the night playing musical beds...our bed is NOT big enough for the 4 of us!) Things happen, so I try to plan accordingly. Here are a few of my secrets for planning around life:

1. On a particularly hectic day, don't skip a workout just because you don't have a full hour to spare. Figure out how to fit in 10-minute mini sessions. Roll out of bed, and do some push-ups, jumping jacks, planks, and lunges. Later in the day, go on a quick, brisk walk. If you're reading something, find a wall, and squat while you read. Do seated Tupler's in the car! End the day with some pre-bed stretches. It may not seem like a lot at once, but throughout the day, you can easily squeeze in a full workout!
2. You may be tired of hearing it from me, but wear a heart rate monitor! At the end of the week, it's extremely motivating to see how much time I spent working out, how many calories I burned, and what zones I trained in. I try not to ever go more than two days without a workout! My heart rate monitor keeps me honest with myself.
3. Set goals for the ENTIRE year at the beginning of the year. Want to run a few races this year? Schedule them now! Even if the races aren't until late in the year, you'll have them on your mind, and will plan your training accordingly. For me, races aren't just about the race, but about the journey it takes to get to the starting line!
4. Have a nice stash of fitness DVDs at home. Workout DVDs are almost always my back-up plan. When I just can't pull myself out of bed early in the morning, I can start a DVD nearly an hour later, and still be done with my workout at the same time I would otherwise be returning home from the gym. For one, I don't have to brush my teeth (or put on mascara) to work out at home, and I don't have to account for any travel time. I still get in a good workout (as long as the kids and husband cooperate), and the day can continue as planned.
5. SCHEDULE your workouts. If you're always hoping to find time to work out, it's probably never going to happen if you have a busy schedule. You HAVE to plan it in. My workout schedule varies slightly from week to week based on my life schedule, but I always know when I'm going to work out the next day. I don't wake up in the morning hoping it will happen sometime that day. I wake up, and get moving. If you need to, put a reminder on your phone, write it on your calender, do whatever you need to do. I normally plan all my workouts a week in advance. Then when a day (or night) doesn't go as planned, I move to plan B.
6. Add variety to your workouts. If someone were to watch me and my different workout routines, they would think I have serious workout ADD. I don't do the same things day in and day out. I love group fitness classes, because each class is never the same...and I try LOTS of different classes. I LIFT. I CYCLE. I YOGA. I CORE CROSS TRAIN. I POWER PUMP. I TREK. But my own workouts are never the same, either. I run outside. I lift weights with gym machines. I use free weights. I use my own body weight for resistance. I interval train. I do the elliptical. I climb stairs. You get the idea. Variety is key for keeping workouts interesting. Variety is also key for avoiding plateaus. If your body never knows what's coming, it will never stop changing and improving!
7. Keep company with other fitness-minded people. If you try to place yourself in situations and with people where you won't have to compromise your fitness goals, you're much more likely to stay on track. At work, take breaks with the walkers rather than the donut-shop-frequenters. Eat with the brown baggers rather than with the fast foodies. Invite other health conscious couples over for a healthy home-cooked meal, and vice versa. Find a workout buddy, or an accountability partner. If you're not working out together, you can still report to one another and keep each other in check.
8. Change your workouts with the seasons. Don't hibernate for the winter just because you refuse to run outside in the snow. Right now I'm SO EXCITED for spring to come because I can truly enjoy the outdoors. Working out indoors, however, is the only thing that keeps me going in the depressing month of January. Winter months are great for snow sports, while summer is great for swimming. If your workouts change with the seasons, you'll have more to look forward to every few months than just changing colors and temperatures!
9. Forget the all-or-nothing mentality. Just because you may not always have time for a full hour workout doesn't mean you should skip the workout all together. 20-minutes is always better than nothing! The same goes for healthy eating. Just because you splurge at one meal doesn't mean that the whole day should go to waste. One healthy meal is better than a full day of indulging. (Unless indulging for a full day is planned. In that case, one bad day doesn't mean the whole week is shot!)
10. Just do it! Stop making excuses, and get moving. Use each day as a step towards your ultimate fitness goals. So what if you have 10- 50- 100-pounds to lose. Losing the weight won't happen overnight. It will, however, happen with lots of small steps along the way. Whatever the obstacles, do what it takes to get up and start. You will get better with time. You'll find what you like. Just push yourself to take the first step, to climb out of bed in the morning, to schedule your workouts. Once you make fitness a habit, it will become a way of life, and you will be that much closer to reaching your goals!

What are YOUR fitness secrets?

Selfish Blogging

Tonight, I was at my weekly get-together-to-sing-a-little-and-talk-A-LOT night with my girlfriends. It was the first time we've gotten together since before Christmas, and it was great. It's our "singing practice," but we didn't even sing a single note tonight. We talked, and laughed, and relished in the beauty of away-from-home-and-kids time.

Four of us are pregnant, and listening to the two that are still in their first trimester made me SO GRATEFUL to have those 13 weeks of you know what behind me. All night vomit fests should be enough to force every woman to never have a second child, but somehow we forget.

One of my so-miserable-she-hasn't-washed-her-hair-in-five-days friends asked me how in the world I manage to keep working out when I'm pregnant. Honestly, when I wasn't feeling good for those few months, working out was the only thing that made me feel better.

A few nights ago, I was feeling sorry for myself. I had just watched Julie & Julia and was wondering why in the world I even write this silly fitness blog. I definitely don't have the knowledge or skills MizFit has, or the organization SimpleMom has, or the 365-day plan Julie Powell had.

But tonight, after talking to my lovely friends, I realized why I blog. I've started and failed at a lot of things in life. I've dreamed big dreams I've yet to accomplish. But I've somehow mastered the art of fitting fitness into my occasionally chaotic life. If I accomplish NOTHING else in a day, I can almost always (as long as the last two weeks don't count) say that I exercised in some way. And somehow, blogging about it keeps me motivated and accountable.

So for those of you who stop by and read what I have to say, thank you! YOU are my inspiration! I can't wait to share 2010 with you!

More Worms For Dinner, and other updates...

In case you were worried, we all survived the worms-in-the-brown-rice disaster. Stie's comment that she's "just a good tape worm away from reaching [her] goal weight" would have been a happy ending to the story (in my case...not in my pregnant friend's)! Maybe I'll buy some more Great Value brown rice in hopes for some sort of fat-eating parasite! But all was not lost, and my dear friend Evelyn and I have shared many a laugh because of the unfortunate event.

First, I took over a peace offering:And Evelyn brought over the BEST "wormy" Chicken, Bacon and Ranch Pizza EVER. What a nice friend for working so hard to make me feel OK after feeding her rotten rice! As for the rest of my silly experiments, going 'poo-free is actually going well! The baking soda wash makes my hair squeaky clean, and the vinegar rinse makes it super soft! I have super fine hair, so I'm trying to adjust the amounts to see what works best. Too much vinegar makes it too soft and straight. By focusing only on the ends with the vinegar rinse, everything seems fine. Has anyone else dared to give it a try?

My cousin mentioned to me that she actually washes her hair with egg whites! In college, I used to curl my hair with an egg-white mousse, but I've never tried washing it that way! Michelle adds her own concoction of good smells with cloves, mint, crushed flowers, etc. Who knew eggs could be so versatile! The baking soda thing's working for me, but maybe I'll get brave someday and give this one a try!

The other experiment--waking up early to work out--is going quite well. I'm definitely more tired. And I'm for sure suffering from sleep-deprivation-induced-grumpiness. But I love being done with my workout by 7 am. More on this later.

Are you experimenting with anything? (Brown rice meal worms, anyone?) Let us know what you've tried and what works/doesn't work for you!

Side note to the egg-white mousse thing: After my mission, I was at a friendly gathering where my pre-mission-boyfriend was also present with his wife. I'd used egg whites in my hair that night to give it the crunchy-curly look (I know...so hot). My ex's wife was having a major allergic reaction for some reason, and they weren't sure why, so they left early. Come to find out, she was allergic to eggs, and my hair had caused the reaction! Good way to put an end to an otherwise awkward evening! Go me!

Life AFTER the Freshman 15

It's no secret that I hate missing a workout. I'm the type who plans my day around my workouts, not my workouts around my day. Signing The Boy up for preschool really threw me for a loop. I had to re-arrange my workout schedule to accommodate his new schedule. Preschool would not change her schedule for me. (Rude, no?) In the normal, not-stay-at-home-mom world, people have to actually arrange workouts around other commitments. What a concept!

Working out has just become a normal, routine part of my daily life. It has been for several years, but it wasn't always. Though I've always enjoyed physical activity, before joining the gym after gaining the Missionary-Woman-30 (on top of the Freshwoman 15 I'd gained three years earlier), I was definitely just a sporadic worker-outer. My daily trek to and from campus had to count for something, right?

I have fond memories of college (and of Finnish pastries on my mission). From those years, however, I have actually very few memories of working out. My freshman year, some roommates and I joined a kickboxing class. We laughed at each other as we fumbled our way through it, but if something more fun was happening on kickboxing night, we'd skip the workout in a heartbeat. My first date with my now-husband was actually a 3-mile run (that almost killed me) as he was training for his first marathon. But we all know that the run wasn't just a run. Any exercise I did in college was more for the social benefits than the physical.

If I could go back, would I work out more? No way! I'm glad I had that time in life to socialize, be crazy, eat junk food, and occasionally fit in a workout with friends. I was in a completely different season of life, with very little worry about my physical health. I'm glad I wasn't obsessing over every slice of pizza-brownie-vending machine purchase. I enjoyed life. I was happy. I honestly barely noticed that the pounds were creeping on. I was too busy!

My life is completely different now than it was back then. I had so many outlets as a student that I really didn't need to set aside ME time. Everything in my life was about ME. I had no idea how different life as a mom would be. I only thought about dressing my perfectly behaved children in the cutest clothes, and wearing them on my hip as I would wear any new accessory. I didn't realize that in reality, NOTHING would be about ME anymore. Honestly, my workout is just about the only thing. So even if it means waking up at the crack o' dawn to get it, I'm going to get it. I can't live without it. As my kids get older, and my schedule more and more is merely a reflection of their schedule, I will still find a way to fit exercise in. I have to.

When I joined the gym 6 1/2 years ago, I knew I was making a lifetime commitment. So now that life has changed (as it always does), I'm not going to let the routine slip. Sure, I'm changing from working my life around my workouts. But I knew that one day my kids would start growing up, and I'd have to fit my workouts around my life. And I guess I'm OK with that. As I learned in college, living is really what it's all about. Exercising just helps me live better.