If you can raise a baby, you can do a daily workout

It is time for another installment of “One Fit Mommy”! Each week I scour the blogosphere to find other fit moms who inspire me to fitness.

This week is Linda, one of my favorite bloggers. I started following her personal blog (Sundrymourning) shortly after the birth of her first son, where she was talking my language as a first-time mom. She now has two little boys and I got the chance to meet her in person at BlogHer this past July. (Yes, I stalked her in yoga).

Linda is a very busy mom who works part-time for a software company and also contributes to the following websites:

Balanced Living: health and fitness topics
Work It, Mom!: tips and topics for moms
Sundry Buzz :product reviews and giveaways
Lemondrop: everyday musings

She has a very full plate yet manages to make the time for fitness. That hasn’t always been the case though, please read on for more about how Linda has become “One Fit Mommy”:

Q: Have you always been fit? What inspired you to live a fit lifestyle?

No, I definitely haven’t always been fit. I started to get serious about committing to a healthy lifestyle in the spring of 2007, when my first son was about a year and a half old. I’d developed all these bad eating habits (for instance: eating truckloads of cookies after the baby went to bed, because it had been such a hard day and I deserrrrrrved them), I was feeling run down, I wasn’t happy with the way I looked. I’d tried and failed to lose weight before, and I guess this time around I had more confidence in myself — in a way, the challenges of parenthood helped, because doing a daily workout is NOTHING compared to raising a baby. If you can handle one, why not the other?

Q: What about diet? Did you have to do a major overhaul and if so, how?

Yes, I did. I hadn’t been eating very healthfully for a number of years and during my pregnancy I ate whatever I wanted, all day long. Then the baby came and I was using food as a reward, telling myself it was too hard to diet AND be a parent. So I had to really take a look at what I was consuming and my portion sizes and make a lot of changes. I used Weight Watchers for a month or two and that was immensely helpful in terms of being cognizant of my nutritional intake and re-focusing on healthy foods instead of junk.

Q: You just had your second baby in February, did you give yourself a specific time line for getting your pre-pregnancy body back?

Not specifically, although retrospect I think I was a little hard on myself — assuming my body would snap right back into shape. It took some time to re-learn my good eating habits (which I had completely abandoned during pregnancy), and it took time to recover from birth and get strong again.

Q: What advice do you have for moms who claim they don’t have time for exercise?

I think the best fitness advice I’ve heard is that you’re never going to FIND the time to exercise, you have to MAKE the time. I’ve worked out during naps, after bedtimes, while my husband’s watching the kids, and while the kids are briefly stashed in front of a video. There’s always something you’d rather do, or think you should be doing –whether it’s laundry or work email or just relaxing on the couch. If exercise is a priority in your life, you make room for it. If it’s not, then you tell yourself there’s no time.

Q: What is your favorite exercise and why?

Probably kickboxing (the Turbo Kick flavor, anyway), because it makes me feel like such a badass. A sweaty, gasping, half-dead badass.

Q: Do you have any mental tricks that you use when you just don’t feel like working out?

Lately I’ve been doing a workout DVD called 30 Day Shred, and while the workouts are intense, they’re only 20 minutes long. So I tell myself I can do ANYTHING for 20 minutes, and I try and remember how awesome I’ll feel afterwards.

Q: What are your future fitness goals? (Am I going to see you on the cover of my Oxygen magazine?)

I’d like to continue to improve my fitness on my own, but I’d also like to get more involved with group fitness activities. Whether that’s at the gym, through a sport, or via personal trainer, I’m not sure.

Q: If you could go on a free vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go and would you bring your husband and kids?

Hmmm. Well, my husband just hiked a stretch of the Great Wall of China and it looked amazing, I’d love to go do that with him. It’d be pretty hard to drag a stroller along, so as long as we’re talking fantasy-land here, the kids would be back at the hotel being cared for by Mary Poppins while my husband and I go exploring during the day. Oh, and we all arrive via teleportation so we don’t have to take a 3-year-old and a baby on a 12 hour flight. Also, there are ponies. And
calorie-free tiramisu.

Great job Linda on becoming such a fit mommy and thanks for allowing me to feature you! I too am a huge fan of Jillian Michaels – 30 Day Shred, it is a GREAT workout that does not take up much time or space.

Linda has proven that you can decide at any point in your life to make a change and GET FIT! It’s not easy, but then again, neither is being a mommy!

So get up and get moving gang. No excuses!