Yesterday I was still bleary-eyed when I started stretching on the gym floor for Body Back. I prided myself on remembering to shave my legs since I was wearing capri workout pants. I remembered a thong too. No one wants to see my butt cheek creases. I get that. I was feeling good. That’s when our instructor Christie brought in the scale.

Ugh! So, apparently we have to weigh in each week. Ya’ll know how I felt about that last week. Okay. Deep breath. I got it over with and hopped up there.  Ya’ll, I kid you not. I LOST 4 LBS. THE FIRST WEEK! I felt like this:

But, I played it cool and walked back to my spot in the gym all like:

Nothing motivates you like results. I kept thinking, “Oh, my God. That was a good start. I can do this for 8 weeks!” Let’s run and lift weights! I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Greyson. The early hours, the food logging and passing up my favorite sugary lattes was worth it. When I got home I realized there was no school for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. I looked at my kiddos and knew we could not sit around the house. I thought, “Well, I’m up. The kids are up. Let’s go work out.” So, we went to Stroller Strides. Yep, I did two workouts in one morning. It felt amazing. It may not happen all the time, because I did feel like this by the afternoon:

Thanks for letting me tell you about my workouts with GIF’s. That was fun.

I’m a night owl by nature. I think many Type B creatives are. I can nap in the afternoon with the kiddos and be up happily tapping the keys of my laptop at 11:30 pm…Midnight…12:30 am. If I’m fired up to write, I will sometimes do that.

Not on the nights before Body Back.

The number one question I’ve received on Facebook and Twitter this week is, “Wait, you’re doing the 5:30 am class?! Uh, I can’t do that.” I promise you can. Actually, this week has been amazing because of it. (There are other times to accommodate your schedule! Greyson often has evening meetings or conference calls for work the nights of the evening classes, so that didn’t work for us as far as childcare.) Yes, I’ve had to go to bed earlier. I’ve had to stay up on some very cold, rainy and lazy afternoons while my babies are snoozing. Oh my, how I wanted to curl up on the couch with a blanket and doze off! I didn’t, and it has been worth it.

It’s been worth it because the two days this week I woke up at 4:30 am, it was quiet and peaceful as I made my way to class. It was cold and the air made me feel energized. Then I got a whole hour to push myself and work out kid-free. I actually got to class on-time because I didn’t have to pack up two little ones and all the junk we haul around everyday. It was just me.

After class I got home right at 7:00 am both days. The house was still quiet. I heard little stirrings from my family as I was able to enjoy some coffee, empty the dishwasher and start a load of laundry all before 7:30 am. I was energized. I was pleasant. I felt good. I had pushed myself really hard that morning. There is satisfaction in that.

Oftentimes I’m groggy and cranky with my family when I’m just waking up. The mornings of Body Back I’m really happy and excited to see them. I start the day accomplished. It’s really amazing. Even night owls need to be early birds sometimes.

Follow along during my 8 week Body Back journey with Fit4Mom. I’ll be updating here twice a week and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #SPBodyBack 

It’s everywhere. It’s looming over us wherever we go. Preschool, the store, church, friends’ houses. Name a place. We are all in fear of any one of the numerous plagues wreaking wintertime havoc. Last week Henry and I were down with a seriously nasty cold. He had the cold on top of Roseola which resulted in a 4-day fever. In Charlotte’s class there has been a child stricken with flu and another with strep throat in the past week.

The germs! My God, the germs! We can’t seem to escape them. No amount of grocery cart sanitizing is gonna save us this winter. Seriously, ya’ll.

I’m glad we got flu shots, but we all know the strains going around aren’t being covered by the shot. Sweet Jesus, I keep having flashbacks to 2007. 2007 was the ONE YEAR I was too lazy to get my flu shot. Well, I got the flu and I wanted to die. Seriously. Praying for death. People who don’t get the flu shot have never had the flu. I mean the kind of flu that is diagnosed as actual Influenza. They give you Tamiflu and you are on your ass for 5 days. That kind of flu. Not the “Oh, I feel achy and my my nose has been runny for two days.” I mean the flu.

I feel like I was pretty responsible when Henry was sick, paranoid even. Paranoid about spreading germs. We cancelled all New Years plans. We stayed away from everyone until the pediatrician told me he was “no longer contagious.” (FYI: For Roseola, that’s when the rash appears. Our doctor said you are not contagious by the time the fever breaks and the rash appears. Here’s more on Roseola.)

However, some cold symptoms remained, turning into an ear infection. We are now on a round of antibiotics. I know the answer, but I always ask about ear infections, “It’s not contagious, right?” The answer is always, “No, not contagious.” Cool. Okay.

As he’s getting over it, but boogers remain. Nasty green boogers and the occasional slug of yellow snot stick to his sweet face. I wipe it, and wipe it and wipe it again. With wipes, with tissues. He screams. It sucks.

Here’s what bugs me: The stank looks I get from other parents and adults in general when my kid’s nose is crusty. I want to shout, “I know it’s the peak of flu/strep/puking season. I’m SORRY! I’m doing the best I can! He screams like I’m skinning him alive to wipe his face! Boogers and snot are part of being a human child! The doctor says he’s not contagious anymore!” 

I feel like I’m constantly reciting his recent medical history when someone says, “He needs a tissue.” I just can’t stay ahead of the snot. I’m sorry, but we can’t stay inside forever. Occasionally you will have to witness my boy in his natural state during snot season.

This morning my brand new FitBit went off at 4:30 am. I had flashbacks to my 2:00 am alarms when I was a news reporter. I thought, “I’ve done this before. I can do it again.” Only, I haven’t done THIS before. This is new. It was still dark, raining and cold. Oh, and Monday. I didn’t care. I was psyched for this opportunity.

Remarkably, I walked into the gym on time at 5:30 am to meet the group of women I’d be taking this 8 week challenge with. They are my group for Body Back.  Many readers may know I’ve been doing Stroller Strides since I started saying home after maternity leave with Henry. Stroller Strides is a great workout you can do with the kids in the stroller. We get cardio, strength training, abs and stretching in each class. It’s great.

But, I needed more. In fact, I didn’t even know how much I needed until my first Body Back class today.

Body Back is a results-based workout designed for moms. Workouts are high intensity interval (HIIT) workouts resulting in weight loss & increased strength and energy. Groups are small. Classes are twice a week. We get one-on-one attention from the instructor. We get nutrition counseling. It’s pretty awesome.  Christie is our instructor. She’s lovely and energetic. She makes 5:30 am bearable, even exciting. For the first class we discussed our goals for the 8 weeks as a group before assessments.

Assessments. Christie pulled out the scale. Oh God. I was the first to step on and I legitimately thought that somehow that scale was totally off. Surely it was a piece of crap, right? Oh no. It wasn’t. Christie said it was brand new or something. I’m not sure. I couldn’t hear anything at that point. I could only hear Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.”

“Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again”

I stared at the number and assumed that because I was fully clothed and had a protein smoothie in my belly that the scale was 25 lbs. off. Right? 25 lbs. of liquid was what I drank this morning, right? I should have peed before assessments. Right?

I took a breath and smiled. I asked Christie to take my picture making a funny face to stay positive. It was my only defense against the defeated, horrible feelings I felt looking at that number on the scale. Long ago, in what often feels like another life, I had extremely negative emotions towards scales.

The short of a very long story is this: I battled an eating disorder as a teenager. I was diagnosed with Anorexia at age 15. I had fantastic inpatient and outpatient treatment for two years. Going away to college was the best thing that happened to me when it came to eating habits. I have had a happy and healthy adulthood, and a good relationship with food. It’s not a secret, I’m happy to explain anything about it to anyone, it’s just that an eating disorder is no longer part of my life, so I don’t talk about it that much anymore. I’m proud to have awareness of my mental health because of what I went through.  That’s it.

Anyway, since I had children I’ve been all like, “I want to show my kids how much I love my body! I like being healthy and working out, but I’m going to show them that their Mama enjoys food and has a positive body image! Gimme that cupcake!” That’s great, but I hadn’t stepped on a scale since I was 9 months pregnant in the OB’s office and didn’t care how much I weighed.

In my body-positive, scale-free life I kinda went a little too far the other way. Cookies anyone? I have been living life as if I was 25 lbs. lighter. In my mind I still have a thin 20-something body that looks great in a wedding dress or a bikini. Don’t get me wrong, I think I look okay. I don’t have the body loathing that I once had. I mostly like the way I look. But, today I came to the startling reality that I’m now a 30-something woman who has gestated and birthed two babies and I am not, in fact, keeping it as tight as I would like. My body is different now. I just stopped nursing my second baby last week. The breastfeeding calorie burn is gone and a softer belly remains.

I’m embarrassed to put that on the Internet, but it’s true. Don’t we all want nothing but Photoshopped, perfect pictures on social media? Well, I’m over that. This is what it is. This is where I’m at.

More than how I look, I want to be stronger. I want to be leaner and trimmer. I want to be able to run further. I want to do real push-ups. After assessments today, I learned I can do a whopping one real push-up. One. I want to do more. I feel like I’m at a place where I can get in really good shape. I’ll be updating twice a week about my Body Back journey. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I’ll be using hashtag #SPBodyBack.

I may not get back the body I had as a 20-something. That’s okay. This is the body of my 30’s. You know, the one that carries a 4-year-old in a “Frozen” Snuggie and a 14-month-old still rocking his Christmas pajamas in January. It’s the body I’m going to have. It’s my “body forward.”

Someone asked me once, “What’s your favorite smell?” Easy. The smell of my children’s hair after a bath. I’ve always washed their hair with Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo or Head to Toe Shampoo/Body Wash. You know the stuff. It smells like a baby. We’ve all had it around the house forever. My obsession started when they washed Charlotte for the first time in the hospital. I breathed her in. When they took her to the nursery I could still smell her on the receiving blanket next to me. I needed her back with me to breathe her in some more. That’s when I fell in love with the smell.

She’s four. I still wash her hair with it just to smell her. She’s had a ton of cherry-bubblegum scented bubble bath or whatever, but her hair is washed in Johnson’s. Always. For Christmas she got a box of princess bath items. A comb and mirror, complete with her first bottle of body wash. Surely it would make her skin princess-smooth. She was psyched. My heart fell a little when I saw the shampoo in there too. I knew nothing would keep her from hair that magical and I knew it wouldn’t smell like Johnson’s.

That night I reluctantly sniffed the pink bottle and washed her hair. When I went to check on her before I went to sleep I leaned down to kiss her. I smelled her hair.

It was a new smell. A non-Johnson’s princess smell. It is not the smell of a baby. It was a mixture of cherry-bubblegum and sparkles. I loved it. In the whiffs of fruity candy, her curls carry the scent of my four-year-old. The smell is bright and spirited. It somehow represented my funny kid who is learning about a bike with training wheels, builds Lego towers as high as she is and wears dress-up clothes while drawing pictures. My cherry-bubblegum girl who sings loud, runs fast and hugs hard.  It’s perfect for her hair now. All too soon it will smell like highlights or hairspray and I’ll long for the scent of cherry-bubblegum.

Plus, I get to wash her baby brother in Johnson’s until he cares about shampoo, if ever. I think their hair will always be my favorite smell.