My Fitness Journey

This post is in affiliation with Fabletics. All opinions are my own.

I’ve mentioned fairly often on here the positive impact that fitness and living a healthy lifestyle has had on my life. From my mood to my energy levels, I always feel better when I’m on a consistent workout routine and filling my body with primarily healthy foods. Since it’s the second week of January, my guess is that incorporating a fitness routine might be on a couple of your resolution lists as well. Whether it’s because your fitness schedule got botched up with the busyness of the holidays or if you’re just planning to start your fitness journey, I’m here to tell you the importance of continuing this journey. Fitness should be a part of your lifestyle every.day, not just for the first 6-8 weeks of each new year.

As someone who’s always been on the smaller side, incorporating a fitness routine was something I did to both maintain my body image and because I’ve always had a pretty good grasp on the importance of healthy living. Throughout my entire childhood my dad went for 6-mile runs every Saturday and Sunday, even in the dead of our frigid Wisconsin winters. When it was warm enough out that my mom approved, my sisters and I would ride our bikes alongside him on his route.

In addition to that my family always went on Sunday afternoon family bike rides when the weather was nice enough. After church on Sundays my parents would load whichever of the three of us were too little to pedal on our own into those now-vintage child seats that strapped to the back of their bikes and rode miles around the Fox Valley area. Once old enough to maintain the endurance, each of my sisters and I graduated to bikes until all five of us were riding miles together as a family every week.

So not only has exercise literally always been a part of my life, so has a healthy diet. My mom can be on the borderline over-the-top side for nutrition, in the most positive way ever. We grew up in a house where potato chips could literally never be found. We thought pop tarts were the most amazing nighttime, after dinner snack. I don’t even think I knew they were marketed to be a breakfast food growing up because it was just never allowed. Ultimately, I think my innate desire to keep active and live a healthy lifestyle comes back to my upbringing. It’s almost second nature.

In most cases I like to believe I’ve mastered the art of cooking healthy without losing flavor in meals. If you’d ask my husband I think he’d agree to this. I’ve learned, mostly from my mom, how to take out sodium/salt-filled seasonings and replace them with powders. I’ve spent years pinpointing lowfat or fat-free varieties of items that taste very close to the full fat versions (i.e., Hellman’s lowfat mayo has 1g fat and tastes so close to real mayo. Kraft’s lowfat and fat free mayo taste awful in comparison!). I’ve learned to live by the mantra that if it’s not in the house we can’t eat it, so I just don’t buy things that will tempt us to substitute the healthy things for unhealthy things.

My fitness routines have varied over the years, especially after having our daughter, but throughout that journey I’ve learned how important a fitness routine is to so many aspects of my life (you can read about that here). So I make the time to go to the gym on my lunch breaks, incorporate at-home workouts like lunges and push-ups with a toddler in my hands or sitting on my back, and I’ve started adding yoga to my “me” time when Adelyn’s napping on the weekends. I’m still newer to this yoga journey, but I’ve already learned it’s such a great way to gain strength and clear my mind all at the same time. Plus there are so many great yogis that have blogs and videos to help us starters from home!

So that’s where my challenge to you comes in. Don’t make it about a 6-8 week trial period, make it a way of life. Start eating clean, or even just cleanER at first. Start by committing a couple days a week to exercise and increase it from there as you start to crave the high you get from it. Find ways to make it work instead of excuses for why it doesn’t. Drink.More.Water. And most importantly, stick with it through the year!

Fabletics

Ok, now for my favorite part. I think it’s safe to say that most of us like working out more when we feel cute doing it. If you could see how much I sweat when I workout you would probably be both appalled and understanding about why I want at least my clothes to be cute. (I’m not even joking, it’s ridic).

When I was offered the opportunity to try out the Fabletics line, not only was I ridiculously excited because Kate Hudson is the co-founder, I really wanted a good excuse to update some of my workout wear! If you peruse their site there’s no doubt you'll see why I was so excited. And now after receiving the outfit in the pictures, I understand even more. Everything is so.comfortable and just beyond cute. Kate Hudson is probably my favorite actress and always has been. Husby has always joked that I resemble her (my response is that I could only wish!), and her body after two kids is, for lack of a better term, bangin.

I love her stance on so many things in life, and I’m absolutely enamored by her fitness ambition. And do you see the back on that sports bra and workout shirt? Can it get more feminine?!

Purchasing from Fabletics can either work one of two ways:

1. You shop as you want and buy what you want at full price, or

2. As a monthly program where you become a VIP member.

VIP members aren’t committed to anything other than receiving monthly emails with suggested outfits that you either choose to purchase at a huge discount or opt out of for that month with two clicks of your mouse (or two taps of your finger on a smartphone or tablet screen). The only catch is that if you don’t remember to opt out each month when you receive the email you’ll be charged $49.95 to be added to a bucket in your account that you can use at any future time.

So….what are you waiting for?! Check out the Fabletics site and look cuter on your new or continued fitness journey!