Fit Mama Friday - Meet Jackie

Meet Jackie.

Writing a guest post for today’s Fit Mama Friday is the lovely Jackie, a proud mama and the blogger behind Mind Body Mom. Jackie’s blog is all about living with passion and being passionate about life. She’s finding the balance between being a mama and being ‘more than a mama’, and blogs about her experiences. Jackie struggled with the maternal guilt over taking time for herself, which we’ve all experienced, but is working past that to pursue her dreams, whatever they may end up being. As well as a proud mama, Jackie’s a dancer, a PhD student, a blogger, and about to become a Zumba instructor. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your fitness story on Fit Mama Friday today, Jackie!

I used to be shy when it came to talking about fitness. I was raised to value my education (I’m still working on my PhD!) and to work hard in service of others. By comparison, talking about my latest date with the elliptical machine seemed superficial. In college, I would sneak in time to read my fitness magazines, hidden under my textbooks, or slip off to workout before volunteering long hours as a tutor or working in a women’s shelter.

Fast-forward a decade or more: I am proud and vocal about what I do to be a fit mama, and about all of the benefits I get from fitness.

My workouts have supported me through some of the hardest times in my life, affording me a sense of strength and confidence when I have battled with everything from body image to daily stress to the grief I experienced when my dad passed away suddenly a year and a half ago.

Exercise has also been the fuel that has propelled me through some of my proudest moments, giving me the energy to follow my career and creative dreams while raising my daughter.

My workouts, one-by-one, have helped me feel like a strong, capable mama who can withstand the emotional highs and lows that come along with living life.

In fact, I am now starting to celebrate life with fitness. I had long ago given up the idea that I could perform as a dancer, believing that once I left my early twenties my body and lifestyle just couldn’t accommodate anything more than the occasional dance class.

Well, in just a few days I will be celebrating my birthday by being paid to perform as a samba dancer and I plan on gifting myself a one-day Zumba instructor training a few weeks later. My passion for fitness and dance is no longer something I hide, but has become an integral part of who I am.

Finally, I have started to incorporate some of my own interests in mindfulness and meditation into my workouts, which has been so helpful in training my mind to be in the moment, and really make the most of the time I have – in fitness and in life in general.

For example, at the beginning of a dance class or a high intensity interval session, I take a moment to express some gratitude for my body, my health, and my life. I take a moment to acknowledge how blessed I am to have the time to work on my health and the resources to pay for shoes or the YMCA membership I use one or two times a week.

When I take a moment to express gratitude at the beginning of each workout, not a minute goes by with me loving, smiling, and sweating hard. I never look at the clock. I literally love working out because it reminds me I’m alive and that I have a good life.

What I do to stay fit

The corner-store of my fitness is dance, which I have loved since I was a kid. At different points in my life I’ve been obsessed with tap-dancing, Latin ballroom, and hip-hop.

I stopped dancing entirely when I became pregnant, struggling to find a low-key dance community in my LA neighborhood that would accept a busy mama with no professional background.

Although I had the energy before being pregnant to keep up with dancers in professional studios, I was exhausted while I was pregnant. I stayed fit, but my intermittent dates with the elliptical machine were about all I could manage with my work schedule and my need for much more sleep. I felt healthy and strong, but really missed that creative outlet in my life.

I didn’t find the right place until shortly after my daughter’s first birthday, when I stumbled upon a Brazilian cultural center five minutes away from me. I’ve been dancing samba, Brazilian hip-hop, and taking the occasional Zumba class ever since! This place is family-friendly and open to people with all dance and fitness backgrounds, which has been so important to me as a mom slowly working my way back into a creative and fit life as a (part-time) dancer.

On great weeks, I’ll be dancing twice a week; on most weeks, just once. But the classes are high-intensity, and the creative burst I get from just one class provides jolt of energy that propels me through the rest of my week.

Beyond my weekly dance sessions, I do high-intensity interval training on my own about four times a week. This primarily happens in my living room in the early morning hours before my daughter wakes up or during a break on a day I work from home. On Saturday mornings my husband and I will do intervals together while our daughter is in childcare at the YMCA.

I get many of the workouts from sites like thedailyhiit.com, the occasional fitness magazine I pick up, or DVDs I’ve enjoyed from Jillian Michaels or Moms Into Fitness. I love using a fitness timer for the intervals, which allows me to focus less on counting out repetitions, and more on proper alignment and putting all of my energy into the moves.

Every few months I go through a running phase, and will incorporate 30-minute runs around my neighborhood into my fitness routine. I find running outside is really effective for clearing my mind when I have professional challenges I’m facing, which means I generally find myself running in the weeks leading up to a big exam or presentation.

It sounds like a lot of exercise, and it is. I need some kind of movement in my life every day in order to maintain my sanity. It hasn’t come easy, and it hasn’t always been consistent. In fact, I’m going back to having my daughter in part-time daycare in the fall as I write my dissertation, and we’ll see what happens as my time to work and workout is condensed into a few days a week!

One of the main challenges that I’m facing right now is finding the time to counter all of my active time with quieter, gentler activities: stretching and gentle yoga, massage, hot baths, and time for reading and relaxing.

Given that I have such little time as a working, studying, dancing mama, I’ve often felt pressured to use all of my time for fitness sweating!

It turns out that so much physical activity, combined with hours of poor posture at the computer and three years of carrying a child on my hip – along with a young, but aging body – will land you in the physical therapist’s office if you don’t treat your body right. That’s exactly where I’ve been this past week.

I’ve been given strict homework to stretch on my foam roller, to take nightly baths with Epsom salts, and to balance my workouts with yoga and meditation at the end.

I’ve taken this as a firm lesson in not using fitness as a means of being hard on myself, but as a tool for overall well-being, which includes time for reflection and quiet along with the push-ups and fast-paced dancing.

Of all the challenges that I have faced staying fit as a mama – exhaustion, time, injuries, scheduling – there is one I feel I have overcome entirely: motivation. I am always motivated to sweat and feel stronger and get a little relief from the stress of being a working mama living through the joy and pain of life.

Working out and dance makes me so happy, there is no way that I am not jumping at the chance to do it.

And now, I’m no longer shy about how incredible fitness makes me feel. I’m still fully engaged in my career and still work hard to be of service to others, now with the added challenge of being a mama to a very energetic three year-old.

But I no longer view my commitment to fitness as superficial. Staying fit is essential to the rest of my life working together while I stay sane and strong as a mama.