My friend, you are not alone!
Finding out that you’re pregnant, at least for me, was such a magical and terrifying experience. I had SO many questions like what can I eat, what workouts can I do, can I have coffee, how tired will I get, and let’s not forget, how to handle the ALL-day “morning” sickness. All these questions are just running through my head and the last thing I wanted to do was workout.
I’m in my first trimester with my very first baby and to be completely transparent, those first few weeks, after I found out we were expecting, were very scary to me. I was scared to move wrong, scared to eat certain foods, scared to walk the dogs and I would turn my “belly” sideways if my husband got too close. My fear kept me from doing the few things I love: working out and walking my pups.
It wasn’t until I went to my first pregnancy appointment that I started to feel more comfortable getting back into the gym. I started back slow and steady, doing 30 minutes a few days a week, and then ramped it back up to six/seven days a week. I keep the workouts still low weights and low impact.
So these days, I am not going to lie, I do NOT want to do the workout or even walk because of how tired I feel. However, I’m finding out each day that if you can move your body for even just 10 minutes you will start to feel better. The hard part is getting started.
Here are five tips that help me when I’m feeling unmotivated to work out.
1. Create your own motivational mantra. I tell myself when I don’t want to work out “I can do this. I’m creating a beautiful small human inside of me and even though my energy is low and I don’t want to do this workout I know I’ll feel better after it’s done.”
2. Have your clothes ready to go the day before or even a few hours before you plan to work out.
3. Put your shoes on and immediately get up to go do your workout.
4. Give yourself small goals to complete during each workout such as I’m going to spend 10 minutes on arms, 10 minutes walking and 10 minutes on legs. You can also break your workouts up throughout the day to do them in 10 minute increments, 3 times a day.
5. Make it fun, dance a little, be silly, take breaks but in the end just have fun! Yes.Fit’s virtual races and virtual fitness challenges are easy to do, motivating and also loads of FUN!
The biggest piece to all of this is to give yourself grace through this process. I know you are tired and that the last thing you want to do is get a workout in, but try to look at the big picture and think about how good you will feel when you get just a little bit of movement in.
Know that you are not alone and YOU are truly amazing!
