It’s been said that the average adult needs about 8 hours of sleep, preferably uninterrupted and with a little luck, predominantly happening at night. an insufficient amount of sleep or quality of sleep has been linked to everything from weight to cancer! Babies really ruin your chances for healthy sleep… So where does that leave the mummy of a 3-month-old who simply can not get the recommended daily minimum? Something gives. Quite often it’s your waistline.

At this exact moment, mummy is probably a comfy 20kgs overweight. I can’t tell you exactly how past it I am, as she don’t actually HAVE scales, but I’d probably be too scared to get on them even if we did. Not good. I used to dance, walk everywhere, I was a competent martial artist… now I’m an overweight house wife with two daughters and raging sciatica, and there in lies the rub. To help get rid of the sciatica, it’d be good to shift the weight, but to shift the weight, I need to get rid of the sciatica so I can actually DO things. Suckage, right? I think the time might have come for me to sit down and formulate a proper plan… something that’ll work incrementally to start getting me back in the right direction.

I looked my husband in the eye last week and told him I needed to start making this a priority and bless him, he put his arms around me and said “that’s all I needed to hear”. I’m completely overcome with gratitude and can’t even begin to express how much I love him right now. So, here we go;

• Pool, three times a week for at least half an hour. My starting level was 8 laps of a 25 meter pool (up AND back, no cheating). I did about half of it on my back because I found that easier but I wanted to work on my arms as well so I made sure to roll over.
• Any day that I can’t go to the pool for whatever reason, gentle weights and stretching. I need to lift things and push things and squat and stretch. So far I’ve been doing sets of lifting my daughter (now about 5kgs) up over my head three or four times a day, and whenever I have to do the walk a jiggle, I do sets of shallow squats with her in my arms. She seems to like it just fine and at least it’s consciously and actively DOING something.
• From now on, the things I do need to be written down. Not just for accountability but for motivation as well. I know in my mind that if I do it, there will be results, and when I see them they will encourage me to keep going. For right now, the results I’m after aren’t on a scale, they’re in the abilities of my own body. More reps, more strength, less pain.

Unless I want to be in pain, or medicated for the rest of my life (I’m not even 30 yet, so screw that peeps!) I need to make this work. Around two girls… and renovations… and (hopefully) work and who knows what else, but it doesn’t matter, because it has to happen.