A Day In the Life of Jami: A New Series!

I enjoyed writing my Diary of a Pregnant Crossfitter series.  I kinda miss having a series - a way to check back in on a certain topic and continue writing about it, and also a way to make this blog more, well, bloggy.  Personal.  Interact with my readers, that sort of thing.

So, new series!  I was back and forth on titles... "A Day in the Life of"-something was a given, as I decided to write this to capture snippets of my lifestyle and hopefully show that being healthy isn't hard, and to also show that I'm human and make mistakes as I'm trying to be healthy.  But "A Day in the Life of a Paleo Mom" was too restrictive to diet/food topics.  "A Day in the Life of a Crossfit Mom" was too restrictive to fitness.  Plus those things don't exactly define me - Paleo is a guideline for my diet, and Crossfit is only some of my exercise routine.  "Holistic Mom" - too geared toward medicine.  The "Mom" thing in general - there's more to me than just Mom!  Finally I just settled on "Jami".  Because I'm me, and this is what I do.

This idea started recently, after a friend of mine suggested I write a post about how I get Justin on board with my lifestyle choices, as that's a problem for a lot of couples - usually the woman wants to be healthy and the husband/partner isn't on board (but sometimes I've seen it the other way around too).  I don't know, he just goes along with it...  I suppose I got lucky!  How should I write about that?  I realized it'd be hard to write about it without just talking about our lifestyle in general.  And that's what made me think, I should just give you little glimpses into our lives - healthy food choices, making time for exercising, natural medicine, husband-wife partnership, child-rearing, general thoughts, and, of course, mistakes!

And that's all who I am!  So welcome to A Day in the Life of Jami!

Today (Friday) is my day off.  I have a lovely advantage of being able to create my own schedule, of which I am grateful for every. single. day.  It finally worked out to have a couple of friends over this morning to work out in my patio gym, and their kids came along too.  Harlee is definitely getting some lessons in sharing!

I was super sore from yesterday - I had personal training at Flex (so glad to be back there!) and I got to max out on dead lifts - see just how much weight I can pick up.  Before I got pregnant I could lift 205lbs.  Which I was pretty stoked about!  The most I picked up while pregnant was 175lbs, and I may have been able to do more but obviously didn't want to risk overdoing it.  And that's how I was the entire pregnancy - I did what I knew I could handle, and not an ounce more.  So without pushing myself to my limits and beyond, I figured I probably lost some strength.  Added to the fact that I haven't been working out near as much after Elliot's birth, I was certain I did.  I went to Flex telling myself if I could lift 160lbs, I'd be happy.  Well, we kept adding on the weight and adding on the weight, and I kept picking it up and picking it up, until finally the bar loaded with 220lbs was just not coming up off the ground.  215lbs was my max - a whole 10lbs more than I left off before my pregnancy!  How did THAT happen?  Oh my goodness I was so giddy with excitement, it was a great feeling!

And this is why I work out.  I love that feeling, I love the endorphins, I love feeling good about myself.

After personal training I met up with my friend Rachael and we attempted to go for a run but we wound up at the park goofing off instead.  I found out I can still do a back bend, starting from a standing position, and then get back up again.  I can also do (a very uncoordinated) front flip.  Hadn't done that since before I got pregnant, so again I was pretty excited!  My back, however, was not.

So today, I'm feeling it.

For the warmup we did tabata step-ups and squats.  Then for the WOD we did four rounds of 65lb back squats, 20lb overhead lunges, 40lb hang cleans, and sit-ups (Teresa, who's pregnant, did push-ups instead).  It was easy enough for my soreness, but challenging enough that I didn't feel like it was pointless.  And I had fun, as usual!  Elliot decided to stay awake through the whole thing, though, so a couple of times I did the squats and lunges with him in my arms.  My back was totally okay with subbing out the 65lbs for 13.5lbs!

At one point Brittany's little guy played a little too rough with Elliot and left a little scratch on his head.  She felt terrible, but he didn't know any better so I wasn't upset.  It's a good thing to mention in this post, though, because when most parents would probably run for the Neosporin (he did break the skin a bit), I ran for the lavender oil.  I put a little bit on my fingertip and rubbed it across the scratch, then I did it again a couple hours later, and it's clearing up just fine.  Lavender is fantastic for healing wounds - scratches and scrapes, bug bits, burns, you name it.  It's soothing as well, which is definitely helpful with wounds of any sort!  I like to avoid drugs, chemicals, and strange ingredients any chance I get, so I use essential oils instead.  They're pretty awesome!  (Message me if you want to know more!  I'll hook you up!)

Justin was out doing whatever he needed to do for deer hunting preparation, so this afternoon I took the boys with me to run some errands.  We reeeaaallllyyyy need to go grocery shopping.  But, I'm pleased to say we haven't need to go to a grocery store for a whole month!  We usually do our shopping at Aldi's - can't beat the prices, plus they've really been making leaps and bounds in offering a wider selection of organic and gluten-free/dairy-free products, which is right up our alley!  In the meantime I sign up for the local co-op every other week, which gets us a huge bag of fruits and veggies for $23.  Since going Paleo, grocery shopping has been waaaay cheaper and easier, and is why it's been possible for us to only need to go shopping once a month.  We were out of any kind of meat, though, so I took the boys to our local grocery store and stocked up on meats from the Pick 5 for $20 selection.  I came home with a bunch of pork chops, chicken breasts, and bratwurst.  I'll freeze them in packs of 5 pieces and then cook about 5 of them at a time.  Like yesterday I made our last batch of pork chops and we'll eat them for lunch (or breakfast, nothing wrong with that!) until they're gone.

That's all for now, I'm going to go pop some homeopathic Arnica for my sore muscles and get on with the rest of the evening!