Hi everybody. This is Kris Stokes from Custom Fitness Personal Training Studio and today we’re talking about how it takes a village. I’m sure you’ve heard that some way, some where. As a mom, it rings true over and over again.
I remember, I’ve been teaching prenatal moms fitness and health and nutrition since about 2005 and there was a time that this woman came in and just said that she had just moved here and she was moving back because of family. She had moved away and was living up North and didn’t have anyone to help here when she needed someone to watch the kids or when she needed to work late and she just was exhausted.
It comes in, in other areas too. If you think about it, bringing a child into your life is a huge change right? It’s a challenge and it’s something new and that happens in other areas that aren’t quite as evident sometimes and quite as drastic. Children, obviously, you go from having none to having one, or having one to having more and it becomes this huge lifestyle flip that you have to make. You don’t have a choice. You now have to support this child that you brought home. You have to feed them and clothe them and take care of them.
Take Care Of Your Body First
A lot of times our bodies kind of go unnoticed, but our bodies also were babies at one point and they had to be clothed and fed and taken care of. That worked out really well while we had other people to do that for us, but then, once we grew up and we got to where we were supposed to take care of ourselves, we did okay. You know we did the basic essentials and then as life carried on and we got more busy, say in our 30’s and 40’s, we tend to pay less and less attention to what we need and more and more attention to what other people need.
Now, that’s very good-willed of us, that’s a very great servant attitude, however, you cannot serve others, if you do not serve yourself first and take care of you. If you have poor health, you can’t help others who have poor health. It’s just not going to work out and that happens a lot of the time as friends and family and client members that I know that are taking care of aging parents. They’re going and taking care of those in need, but they don’t take care of themselves and often that situation leads to them being there 24/7, sometimes with extra help, sometimes without. They’re lifting and moving people who are a heavier weight and more awkward to lift than anything else that they’re lifting. It’s not like lifting a bag of groceries right. Typically, you’re lifting things that you haven’t trained to lift, you’re moving things around, you’re having to stay alert and awake more often. You’re also stressed out, so you’re extremely tired, trying to help take care of this other person.
What ends up happening is, the caretaker, more often than not, ends up the one who gets sick or hurt and can’t continue and so it’s really important to remember that you need to support your body, you need to take care of your body. No matter what situation or stage of life you’re in, and I know that can be so hard because sometimes it just feels like there’s not much you can do.
Find Your Village
The first step is finding your village. Finding your support team to help remind you and to help make it possible for you to stay on track. To know that you’re doing something beneficial for yourself, so that you can then turn around and help others and that can be, in that situation of taking care of an elderly parent, that can be just in normal, everyday life. You’ve got to have a village that’s going to support you and help carry you through. A lot of times, these people that are our closest friends and our family members that we love being around, a lot of times, they may not mean to, but they may sabotage your goal set.
You may start down a good path, changing how you’re eating and you think, I’m doing it this time. I’m going to exercise, eat better, feel better and I’m going to sleep how much I need to sleep. Then all of a sudden it starts pretty quick after that. People kind of start giving you a hard time about it by making jokes or saying things that just make you feel less confident in what you’re doing. Maybe they are all-out, truly sabotaging you and just not allowing you to take a step down the right path.
A Good Support Team
It’s really important to find new people in your life that can support you in this and that’s where the team at Custom Fitness comes in for so many of our clients, is as that village, if you will, that support team because yes, I want each one of our clients to have support on the outside as well, but I know that sometimes that support isn’t quite a 100% or it can kind of waiver from time to time. It could just not be enough and you may have one person out there that’s really rooting you on, but it’s just not enough to get it done.
As a support team, we step in and help people to create those changes and feel good about those changes and to move forward from there. It’s nice when you have a village there. They’re going to help you to know that you’re doing something beneficial. They’re going to remind you of the successes that you’ve already had, when you know that you want to quit. They’re going to remind you that you need to take time to rest and recover. They’re going to remind you that you said you were going to do XYZ and you are getting it done and it’s going to be a great thing.
The next time that you think that you might need a little support, and you just aren’t quite sure where to find it, then feel free to reach out. Give us a call, 806-322-3188, we’d love to be able to support you in that goal that you have and in your better health. Hope you have a great day and can take something away from this that’s positive for your life.