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Since we’re all super busy, you don’t need to read this post UNLESS you:

1. Have ever said or thought, “I’m so busy I can’t think.”
2. Believe that breathing is a sole function of the sympathetic nervous system and therefore never needs to be done intentionally (because, who needs one more thing to do, right?)
3. Make decisions by committee, or agonize for days/weeks/months over making decisions.

Now, who do we have left here? Everyone? That’s what I thought. OK, read on. Actually LISTEN on.

I’m doing something fun this week with Kate Hanley, the Ambassador of Chill over at Ms. Mindbody, the creator of the Daily Unwind and author of the Anywhere Anytime Chill Guide. Just knowing Kate online adds zen to my life.

There’s an entire section in Hot (Sweaty) Mamas about “Rejuvenating the Multitasking Mama.” It’s important. For all kinds of reasons. Kate makes some excellent points about why–EXACTLY–beyond the oft overused oxygen mask analogy, namely that when we take time to tune in to ourselves we get VIP access to our intuition. I KNOW! I forgot there was intuition in there somewhere!

On Thursday, June 14, you can listen in on our 30-minute conversation about No Drama Decisions. You’ll need to register, but it’s free. Join us and you’ll also get access to a special deal on her Daily Unwind program. The call times are:

11am EST / 10 am CST / 9 am MST / 8 am PST

or

My mom had her first stroke 20 years ago, shortly after her 57^th birthday. I was 21 years old at the time and had just returned to college after spending winter break at home. She and my brother were out for lunch when it happened—her speech changed and the left side of her body become temporarily paralyzed. I rushed home from Milwaukee and for the first time in my life really worried about losing a parent.

Thankfully, I didn’t lose her. Small parts of her personality seemed to disappear, but for the most part she returned to the same caring soul she’d always been. She still had some residual left-sided weakness, but probably not something a stranger would catch on to.

It’s been 20 years since that stroke and my parents are now well into their 70s. While they’ve each had they’re own physical challenges along the way, they’ve been doing okay and adjusting to their aging bodies for the most part.

That changed two months ago when my mom suffered another large stroke to the right side of her brain. Unlike the last time, she probably won’t be walking again and her personality isn’t bouncing back like it did back in 1992. She’s lost her left-side vision in both eyes (homonymous hemianopsia). In some ways, I feel like I’ve lost my mom—she’s prone to the silence, fatigue and a lack of motivation that are common side affects of stroke. But she’s still here and for that I am truly grateful.

After spending two months in a transitional care facility trying to regain her strength to walk, my mom is being discharged tomorrow. Truth be told, I’m terrified to see her go home. She’ll need 24-hour assistance—just going to the bathroom or getting into the car require the help of two people. I’m not sure she really understands how different life will be.

I’m sharing all of this because I think it’s important for us all remember how significant a healthy diet and exercise are to us as moms. We spend so much time watching after our kids that sometimes we forget what we need to do in order to stay healthy ourselves. I’m not saying my mom brought this on herself, but I often wonder what things might be like if she’d kept up with her tennis game, continued golfing on a regular basis, or skipped a few of my sporting events so she could exercise. Maybe she’d be taking my kids on walks, reading them books, babysitting.

But we’ll never know.

I love my mom, and it kills me to watch her go through this.  Sadly, she was in a similar situation with her mother. I’m not going to let the cycle continue. If I can help it, my grandkids will have active grandparents.  Be a role model for your kids.  They need to learn good habits, and you need to keep these habits going.  Remember, some day your life may depend on it.

-Laurie

I found this hanging in the basement, where my kids spend a lot of their free time in the winter. I can’t get them to pick up dirty clothes off the floor, but I see they are self-motivated to try something hard, set goals, and work to achieve them. They are already discovering the joy of crossing something off a list.

I heard Kathleen Turner say in an interview on the radio that you must try things that risk failure in order to grow.

Before you ask yourself what you can put on your challenge list, ask this first: Do you want to grow? Then ask: How do you want to grow?

What’s on your challenge list?

–Kara

A perk of pursuing 5Ks over marathons is that friends and family are more likely to join you on the course. That's me and my husband in orange (yup, wrong holiday) with my sister, brother-in-law and two nephews last weekend.

How about you? Do you modify your goals according to what’s going on in your life? And what’s your goal right now? I’d love to hear about it! –Kara

What can make a fit mom, trying to raise fit kids, more proud than seeing her child grasping a donut hole in one hand and a baby carrot in the other?

O.K., a few things. But this ranks, I tell you.

After church on Sunday the kids ran into the foyer, where the post-service donuts and coffee are served. One of the reasons they like this church (for now, actually, the only reason) is because they offer donuts. When I found them the first thing that caught my eye was the bright orange nub of a carrot poking out of my daughter’s fist. She was simultaneously taking bites of donut and carrot.

Here’s why this matters to me:

#1–I did not say, “In order to eat a donut hole you must also eat a carrot.” But I have said that, or versions of that, quite a bit in my years as a mother.

#2–I did not expect anyone to eat their vegetables that morning. I didn’t know there would be vegetables served with donuts. (Who does that? Are you pointing at me? I didn’t do that, I promise!) The choice was all there’s. I know she likes carrots, but…

Before you a table; a spread of donuts holes and a little bowl of carrots. What would Jesus do?

OK forgive my irreverence. But seriously, the child who chooses a carrot? Let me be a little bit proud, here.

Seeing that carrot in her hand, it was like getting an A on my Motherhood Report Card (they don’t hand these out very often). I felt like perhaps I was doing something right. That my message about how our body needs healthy food for fuel was resonating.

More likely, of course, is that she just likes carrots. I’m puuuuurdy sure had broccoli florets been offered they would have gone untouched.

But let’s linger here for a little longer. Let’s dwell in the victory, such that it is.

A huge part of our message in Hot (Sweaty) Mamas: Five Secrets to Life as a Fit Mom is that an important reason to exercise and eat nutritiously–aside from the bazillion health benefits–is to role model a fit lifestyle for our children. There is research that supports this. But you know what? There is also research that says, “Meh… what parents do doesn’t really matter.” Like most research out there you can find a study that supports any view you want to take.

What I can’t find in the research, but that I swear I’ve read somewhere because I repeat it often, is this: Parents who are active raise kids to become active adults.

Subtle. Did you catch it?

Most of the research focuses on what makes kids active. But we know very little about what will influence them to become active adults. In the long-term plan, this really is the ultimate goal. What will they choose for themselves when they leave the nest?
I have plenty of anecdotal research, of course. My favorite comes from Liz Johnson, a triathlete I knew in Dallas, whose story I included in my book, “Becoming an Ironman: First Encounters with the Ultimate Endurance Event.” Liz was a single mom of six kids. She lived in a small town in Kansas, coached a swim team and taught aerobics when aerobics was the hot new way to exercise. She trained for the Hawaii Ironman in 1989 and her kids helped her every step of the way:

My support crew and my training partners were my children. The kids all swam, so we were in the pool together a lot. Three of the kids did track and cross country, and my third son Jere–number four child–used to get up and run with me in the mornings. People talk about how training is time away from their family, but not for us.

She goes on to explain how she tackled her long bike rides:

We would take the car and two bikes and the kids would take turns riding with me. They would ride about ten miles apiece and then switch out. Of course, we had to work it so we had somebody old enough to drive the car.

But here’s what Liz says at the end of her story, that perhaps is all the research I need, maybe it’s the research I’ve been referring to all along:

Aside from being an ironman finisher one of my greatest athletic accomplishments is raising children who have grown up to appreciate fitness and include it in their life somehow.”

Maybe that’s why the carrot was somehow symbolic that my choices are influencing my children’s choices; a sign that my kids will grow up to make healthy choices, too.

If there’s one thing I’ve realized as a parent–and I realized this fairly early on–it’s that I don’t have a whole heck of a lot of control. My job as a parent is to help them become who they are meant to be. I live the way I do because I want to for my own reasons; in doing so I hope I’m leading by example, that there are some merits worth emulating. And, as a friend of mine said recently, one of my goals as a parent is to end up on my children’s advisory board. Good enough.

I will bring the donut holes and the carrots to the meetings.

Do you think a parents lifestyle influences their children’s choices? Do you have research to back that up? Either way, I want to hear about it!

–Kara

As Leap Day approached I began to have this sense I was to get what I always seem to need: an extra 24 hours in the day. I didn’t write this blog post as usual on Monday because, well, I could do it on my “extra” day (and I also wanted the novelty of posting on Leap Day for no other reason than to have February 29 logged on the blog, which is about as significant as picking out a certain coffee mug to drink from in the morning to elicit a certain mood, but that’s what I do).

An extra 24 hours.

Would the laundry get washed, folded and put away? If so, Leap Day could replace my desire to declare “Naked Day” for this same purpose.

Would I have enough time to work on upcoming deadlines? If so, Leap Day would allow me to bring my head “above water,” rather than stay where I usually am, just below the surface, breathing with a snorkel.

Would time for my workout come easily? If so, Leap Day could become the “restart” day I’ve needed in the slow-to-motivate last two weeks.

Then I started to think that perhaps Leap Day should be designated a holiday so that people can take advantage of their 24 hours however they wished. I wanted my daughters home from school. I wanted us to approach our extra 1,440 minutes with intent. By marking this bonus day in some way special, we would celebrate time–really consider what it means to have time here on earth–and thus, our life and our time together.

Backstory: I spent the weekend at the Motherhood and Words Writing Retreat. I was cocooned with seven extraordinary women with ample time for writing my life and a bonus health coaching session that provided much needed tools for living my life (and don’t you know I’ll be blogging about that in the future). If you’ll allow me to continue with my metaphor, I feel as if I’m still snugged up in that protective cocoon built from my experience at the retreat. Sure I came home and dove back into “real lice”–oh my gosh, did I say lice? I mean life, although, yes, there was lice, too (again, another post, focus Kara!)–I can’t shake the serenity. There was a metamorphis. I feel different. I have new friends; new essays; new ideas; new knowledge. I am by no means ready to fly, I am still enjoying this place of comfort and transition–LO!–the PRESENT!

Is that truly possible? Am I here, living in the present? Or… is it the coffee mug I chose this morning? The one that evokes Eastern religion and meditation for me. The green is calming, the orange blossoms–my favorite color–make me happy. Or did I pick the mug because I’m already here, in the present*, where I should stay because, to quote a friend: it’s the only place my body knows.

Would you believe… while writing this post, the school district called with their automated message announcing that, due to severe weather, school is cancelled today, Leap Day. Coincidence? No, I can’t see it that way. God is so unbelievably good to me like that. I will embrace the day for the holiday it is.

–Kara

*Disclaimer: I kind of hate it when people talk about the importance of living life in the present when I don’t feel I’m doing that very well, mostly because I’m hearing something I already know and forcing myself to thinkabout being present doesn’t seem to work very well. Therein lies my problem, as I learned on this retreat. I can’t just *think* about being present, I must act on living in the present. I can no more think my way about being present as I can think myself into running a personal best 5K. For that I am planning my workouts and diligently following the plan with specific speed and strength training. So it is with living in the present. Apparently mindful workouts (sitting still, reflecting, meditating) are necessary.

My mom says when you grow up in a fit family you have the advantage of never having to start exercising. Apparently getting started on the path to a fit life is the hardest part. Kids in fit families just don’t know any different.

Here I am working out with mom. Before I was born she would smuggle me into the fitness center.

This still goes down as our hardest workout together. What started as an easy walk around the maternity floor–throwing in some lunges and squats–became more difficult as the night went on. It left us both exhausted and crying. The exercise-induced endorphins were awesome though.

I don’t exactly remember any workouts those first few months. Maybe I slept through most of them. Maybe the dog wouldn’t let me out of her sight.

We still go to the fitness center together a lot. I have my workouts and mom has hers. Mom doesn’t need to smuggle me in or make an appointment any more, she just has to remember to carry more stuff in her gym bag. I’m old enough now to know better not to sabotage her workout with a dirty diaper. I’ve learned the day will go better for me if I let her workout… She’s a nice mom and all, just nicer after the workout.

Now that I’m three, my fitness world is expanding: swimming lessons, soccer, riding my bike. So much to do. Mom still makes a pretty good training partner. She says she always will.