Largely my weekly blog focuses more on my work life as oppose to my training or nutrition. The reason being I have blogged so much about my fitness life in the past that I felt it was more interesting to discuss my work life, particularly as at the moment that is the biggest challenge I face, well that is until I hit January six months pregnant and started feeling pretty demotivated on the exercise front.
This pregnancy I have fortunately felt much better than the first time, particularly during the early stages and this meant that I could train far more regularly. In fact, until Christmas it was very much business as usual on the training front. Of course I amended certain exercises but I continued to train 4 times a week. However, I am finding it harder to get motivated in the New Year and there are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is tiredness. The optimum training time for me in my schedule is at 7pm when Paolo goes to bed but after starting the day at 5.30am I am so tired that I cannot face doing a training session. All I want to do is have my dinner and get an early night. I also used to regularly squeeze in at least an hour of work at this time, but I have stopped that now in the hope that it would give me more motivation and energy to do my workout. Has it worked? Yes, it has a little, so my plan going forward is to clear my evening schedule even more by making sure I have no dinner to prepare. I think if I can train whilst my dinner is cooking in the oven or heating up I would feel as though I was using my time more efficiently. That is the plan for this week at least. Dinner is prepped for the next 3 nights so that will give me a good head start.
The other major stumbling block is that I miss really pushing myself during my workouts. In a way it sounds great to able to do a workout at your own pace, not get too out of breathe and basically have a valid excuse to take your foot off the pedal a little, but the reality is that it is incredibly frustrating. It feels like a pointless workout. Now I know more than anyone that this is simply not true. I know that it is infinitely better to train all the way through pregnancy than to not and I know that to do so safely you have to stay within your comfort zone and not push yourself too hard. However, whilst I know this, when you are used to pushing yourself it can feel demotivating to take it easy and to scale back every exercise. I do remember feeling the exact same way during my last pregnancy. There is not much I can do about this one, I just need to keep telling myself that I am doing the right thing no matter how much I want to push harder.
Finally, I have started to get back into food planning and prepping on a Sunday. I always plan my meals but sometimes I do my food prep on a Monday as I work from home in the afternoon but I feel as though this is just adding more pressure to an already busy day. So this week I made sure that both lunch and dinner prep was done on Sunday night which means for both lunch and dinner Monday to Wednesday all I need to do is heat things up which does feel like a massive time saver and weight off my mind. I am hoping this will help my motivation at 7pm tonight!
It might sound as though I spent all my Sunday cooking but it took me just 30 minutes to chop and peel food and the rest of the time the food was just cooking without me having to do anything to it. I am hoping that I can do this every Sunday, as I used to, to free up time during the working week.
It has been a productive start to the year work wise but fitness and nutrition wise it has been more challenging and I think some tweaking to my routine and some acceptance that I am now 6 months pregnant will help me get back on track. Living a fit and healthy lifestyle does take work, particularly when life changes, so it is important to take a step back and look at how you can make improvements when things are not quite going to plan. I have done that this week and hopefully it will make a big difference.
Fit Bird
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