Mommy Fitness Blog: My Daily Schedule

February 2, 2013

I have a back injury. It’s a re-occurring injury on the left side of my lower back. I think I pulled it while carrying the baby in his carrier one day. After all, I’m often distracted and moving my body in awkward positions doing different things like trying to hold two children’s hands while crossing the street with a heavy baby carrier in tow. For the past couple weeks I’ve been walking around the house with a heating pad strapped to my back. I’ve avoided any exercises that involve my lower back including running. For the first time in years, I even downed some pain pills. Even when I had 2nd degree burns on my  hands, I never took a pill to relieve me, but the pain I feel is so great and yet so endless.

Besides my back pain, I’ve also been working non-stop. It’s Friday evening, 10pm, and I just finished paperwork for one of my care homes. I’m gearing up for my nonprofit’s Parent Transformation Bootcamp next week as well as completing to-do items for the Belly Ball. While finishing up tonight’s paperwork I was literally fighting off emotions of fatigue, frustration and sadness.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t really smile anymore.

This may be my menstrual cycle talking (which came very late this month) – but I just feel so tired. I feel unappreciated. I feel like I don’t want to get up in the morning. And yet, I want to because I love seeing my kids, but after a few hours, it starts to get really exhausting… as it always does…every day.

For the last two nights I was awaken at 2am because of emergencies at different care homes. If it’s not the care homes, it’s my sons who love to sleep to the right, left and foot of me. I don’t remember when I had a really deep night’s sleep.

So lack of sleep, coupled with an injury, work and endless days with the kids makes a very, very tired mama!

My day schedule is usually like so:

7:00am – get kids up, cook breakfast, tidy rooms, fix beds (big pet peeve), laundry, dishes, pack snacks for day
8:20am – run out and begin errands (with all kids). I either take Christian to preschool (he has 3hrs of school T/TH) or go to my mom-me fit club (T/FRI). I also have meetings or go to both my care homes at this time to manage or purchase groceries.
12:00pm – come home, put baby to sleep. (other boys don’t nap). Start work on computer, make phone calls, supervise boys while they play outside
4:30pm – begin preparing dinner
5:30pm – start cleaning the house
6:00pm – dinner
6:30pm – bedtime
7:30pm – work until bedtime
10:30/11pm – sleep

You are probably looking at this schedule and wondering what time I workout! LOL. It’s been so irregular because of my poor sleep and demanding daily schedule. Sometimes I train around 1/2pm after I run errands and before I get home (if I still have energy). The most ideal time, is the morning, which is a tough one because I don’t sleep well.

Last week was my ‘rest’ week – since I had completed my DVD and magazine shoot, I wanted to take a break for a bit, which was good. This week, I trained almost daily but not too hard because of my injury. I also made a new fitness calendar and began writing in a fitness journal to start keeping me accountable again.  One big thing I really want to work on is getting up and training at 5am. It’s the only way I can really make sure I’m consistent and focused without the kids distracting me.

Throughout the day it’s really hard to get anything done when they are awake. I find it harder to train at the park with my mom-me fit group because I’m constantly running from one kid to the other (which I guess is a great workout!) At home, being boys, they fight over everything: like, if I flush their toilet, (and they wanted to do it), or someone took a toy, or someone’s not sharing, etc.  Just the other day at my sister’s Grand Opening for her care home, my eldest son broke a vase, the baby pulled a meat dish from the dining table and someone spilled soda on the sofa.

I wanted to cry.

Tomorrow I have to get up early if I want to fit a workout in. Then I need to go to my carehome and prepare for the celebration for one of my favorite resident’s 100th birthday. Then I need to go shopping for some equipment and supplies for my nonprofit. Then I need to visit a resident at the hospital. Then I need to prepare for meals for Sunday’s game. This is all assuming that my husband didn’t plan anything for tomorrow.

While it gets stressful – I try not to think about it. The best thing that has helped me in this period in my life is to just pray about it….to thank God for all the blessings I am given. I think about what I’m grateful for. I think about having my beautiful children and being able to spend large amounts of time with them despite it being very crazy. I think about the blessings of having my own business even though it’s a 24-hr commitment and a constant investment emotionally, physically and financially.

I think about choice.

When I get stressed, sad or depressed, I try to write out my thoughts , create goals and create action plans to follow it.

That’s what I’m probably going to do after I finish this entry.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Performing a pullup at the park during a mom-me fit club meetup

This is how I look like on a daily basis around the house…(with the heating pad on my back)

This is my favorite part of the day…putting my only son that actually naps to sleep.

My new fitness calendar. My goal is to feel confident in short dresses this summer.

2 Comments

  • Reply Lilian February 2, 2013 at 12:39 pm

    Dear Maria, Please checkout everything you can find from Deepak Chopra. Books,videos, interviews. His findings and suggestions may be a great support for all your endevours. Maybe you even can team up with the Chopracenter for your social work. Greetings from Europe, Lilian

    • Reply Maria Kang February 5, 2013 at 4:01 am

      Thanks Lilian. I love his books!

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