Just Start--- Get up and move!

It will come as no surprise when I tell you that I’ve been in a funk lately. I have been going through the motions of work, personal life, and exercise for the last couple of weeks. I would get to the gym and just do the exercises with no focus. I wasn’t studying my personal training material because I had no desire for anything.

I have figured out that I have a certain way of dealing with things. I get to a certain point of depression and then it hits me and I’m like “Wait. This is ridiculous. You are better than this!” and then I snap out of it! I don’t know why I’m like this. It must be the fighter in me… and right now I feel like Muhammad Ali! I’m ready to start kicking ass!

It’s been about 2 weeks since my miscarriage and I’m finally feeling like my old self. The first week after my D&C was so rough in the gym. It felt like I was starting all over. I could barely do lunges, my bench press was weak, and my cardio was horrible. It wasn’t until this week that I’ve started feeling stronger. Last week I remembered something that my doctor had said to me. While I was recovering after my D&C I was expressing to my doctor all my frustrations. As I was asking a million questions and going through my rant, he stopped me. He said “I get the frustration, but you shouldn’t feel this way. You have lost all this weight and you were able to get pregnant… on an un-medicated cycle too. You need to feel proud.”

Remembering what the doctor said to me really pushed me into working harder on bettering myself. In my personal training material I am in a chapter that goes over how exercise affects your hormones, which we all know are crucial for overall health for everyone. Here is a list of hormones that are all directly helped with exercise:

Thyrotropin (TSH)- Stimulates production and release of thyroxine from the thyroid gland.

Endorphins- Blocks pain, promotes euphoria, and affects feeding and female menstrual cycle.

Oxytocin- Stimulates muscles in uterus and breasts, important in birth and lactation.

Cortisol- Promotes use of fatty acids and protein catabolism, conserves blood sugar-insulin antagonist, and has anti-inflammatory effects with epinephrine.

Estrogen/progesterone- Controls menstrual cycle, increases fat deposition, promotes female sex characteristics.

There are so, so, so many more too!

I cannot express how important exercise to our overall health, but especially to those with hormonal imbalance. With diet and exercise you have control of something that effects your overall livelihood. I can guarantee that without changing my lifestyle 2 years ago, I would not have been able to get pregnant especially not on my own without medications. I have so much pride in knowing that I had such a big impact on my own life.

For those of you who are scared, too tired, or unmotivated to start. Just start. Do yourself, your family, and your future a favor. If you don’t know where to start, just get up and move. Start walking and when you feel like you can, jog. Do jumping jacks, try assisted push ups, squat your body weight. Just move! I promise you will look back years down the road and will thank yourself. I know I sure do.