Getting My Workout Mojo Back

Your workouts might have you feeling this excited again one day! Credit: lululemon athletica

I’ve been exhausted for a really long time. It’s well-documented and complained about. When you add the garden variety night wakings of kiddos to sickness that doesn’t stop, I just started to think I was doomed to a life of no energy and it feeling too difficult to get out of bed—let alone to work out and move my body. But then! The kids left daycare, and we haven’t had an illness in the house in six weeks. And my son went from a long stretch of only waking up once a night or so to have a pacifier popped into his mouth to not even doing that. And my daughter would only wake up yelling for us on occasion. Can I just say how restorative it is to go to bed and not be needed during the overnight shift? Much like the nap-stars aligning, the night-stars are actually aligning, too.

Since life started calming down and we all started feeling better post-daycare days, I’ve been working out with more frequency and more intensity. That’s not to say that I feel like jumping out of bed and working out in the morning. But I throw on my workout clothes in the early morning to see how it feels (much like this tip suggests). More often than not, if I’m in my workout duds, I’m more likely to try out a workout DVD with the kids playing nearby or make more of an effort to make it to the gym for a 10-minute sweat session.

And I forgot. The more you work out, the more energy you truly have. The energy spiral starts up again, and it’s pretty addictive.

Now, that’s not to say that moms—particularly new moms—shouldn’t sometimes bypass a workout in favor of sleep. Lord knows I’ve taken months where my only activity was chasing the kids, hauling laundry up and down two flights of stairs, and long walks. But I’m living proof that these exhausting days with small kids do improve. Sure, they’re always going to be exhausting, but you’ll start having energy left over again for workouts. If you’re a new mom who is wondering if you’re ever going to feel like you’re back on track again, I promise, you will. Just give it a little time and patience—for me, it’s been almost 16 months since I had my second!—and you’ll be back in business. And maybe fake it until you make it. Throw on those workout clothes and try for a few 5-minute sessions during the day. Build slowly. But build surely.

Did it take you a long time to get back into a workout groove after you had kids? Did you find that one day there was all of a sudden a light at the end of the exhaustion tunnel? —Erin