Or you can create a more realistic list.

The danger in creating new year’s resolutions is that many people approach unrealistic goals with an all-or-nothing mentality. So here are some things to consider so you avoid setting yourself up for failure.

1. Set realistic goals.
Ditch the “every day,” “all the time,” “never,” and “always” words–they are a trap. Adopt the 80/20 approach instead. Do your best to stick to your goals 80% of the time, and allow yourself 20% of the time to do what you want. For example, if you want to eat unprocessed foods but you LOVE, as in you’d consider giving up your firstborn LOVE, M&Ms, then eat the M&Ms 20% of the time and make sure the other 80% is packed with fruits, veggies, complex carbs, and lean protein. Squatting your body weight, losing 50 lbs, or eating unprocessed foods can be very realistic goals for you, but only if you approach them with a more realistic mindset, ie, NOT with a 100% perfection expectation. Every day will not be perfect. You will have setbacks. Your goals might change. And all of that is ok. You don’t have to wait a whole other year to start fresh again. Every day is a new day to restart and reset. So if you eat an entire package of Oreos on January 9th, your goal of eating healthy isn’t totally ruined. On January 10th, have an extra helping of veggies. As long as you stick to your goals 80% of the time, you’ll be successful.

2. Establish healthy routines.
You may have specific goals in mind, but the only way to reach a specific goal is to create a routine to get you there. You’re never going to squat your body weight if you don’t start squatting 5 lbs, 10 lbs, 15 lbs, week in, week out. You’re never going to eat healthy most days if you don’t spend time shopping for healthy foods and preparing healthy meals. You’re never going to get 8 hours of sleep most nights if you don’t start turning off the TV before 10 pm. Your goal is a journey, and there are a lot of steps you need to take to get there. Routines will anchor you.

3. Strike a pose.
I’m currently reading a book entitled, Pose, Wobble, and Flow. It’s geared toward educators, but I’ve embraced its message in all areas of my life. The basic idea is you should choose a “pose” to take and then have all of your actions align with that pose. You may wobble through the pose, but if you practice enough, you achieve flow, like in yoga. Think of your pose as your goal mindset that sums up your resolutions. For instance, if your pose is “making healthy decisions will make me feel better”, then you’ll think about that stance when looking over the menu at a restaurant and use it to drive your meal decision. You might wobble and get a less healthy option, but if you feel bloated and uncomfortable after your meal, next time you’ll remember that decision and your pose and I bet you’ll be more likely to get a healthier option that makes you feel better.

To summarize, little things add up to become big things, but remember that you’re human. As my man Alexander Pope says, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” Make yourself accountable for your actions, but don’t beat yourself up for falling short. It may be a new year, but every tomorrow is a new day.

Want help with your health and fitness journey? Contact me aileen@mamaleanfitness.com

You are what you repeatedly do… heard that before, right? Well, if you stand, sit, and move in improper alignment all the time, you’re going to have… improper alignment. Why should you care? Well, here’s why:

Improper alignment places unnecessary stress on your body, mainly your spine and pelvis. Extra stress can make you more prone to injury and/or illness.

Daily stress on your spine and pelvis can cause a lot of problems, mainly because your body is quite skilled at compensating for this stress at the expense of other body parts. Knee pain while running? It just may be improper alignment (or not. I’m not writing this to diagnose you, but rather make you aware of the interconnectedness of the body). Often we experience pain in a completely different area than the origin of the problem.

Here are a few examples of poor alignment and what suffers as a result:

*Sucking in your stomach while thrusting out your ribs to appear thinner? That displaced air has to go somewhere, and it’s going to be pushed up into your diaphragm or pushed down on your pelvic floor. Over a long period of time, this can result in breathing problems and/or incontinence.

*Hunched forward while typing at a computer desk for 8 hours a day? You could develop kyphosis of the spine, which compresses your diaphragm and can lead to breathing problems (I picture my bent over elderly grandmother, who does happen to have a lower pulse ox due to her kyphosis). Plus, if your shoulders are only used for holding your arms out in front of you, you’ll lose range of motion, making you more susceptible to injury for that one time you break it down just a little too hard at your cousin’s wedding. Ouch.

*Walking with your pelvis ahead of you while carrying a (baby, pet, grocery bag,etc)? You could develop lordosis of the spine, which can cause lower back pain. Lordosis can be attributed to a weak lower back, caused by overly tight psoas and hip flexor muscles from sitting all the time, or from other muscle imbalances. If you’re walking with your pelvis out in front of you all the time, it’s going to excessively stretch the lower back and lead to weakness of those muscles.

So, what is proper alignment?

A few cues:

Feet should be pointed forward, with knees following.

Your butt should be behind you, and you should be able to see your toes. If you can’t see your toes (and it’s not due to an excessively large abdomen), you’re too far forward. You want your hips to be in line with your knees and ankles.

Ribs should be down, so there’s a straight line to your hips and pubic bone. This will cause a slight rounding of your shoulders, which is proper alignment and something I only learned recently!

Shoulders should be down and retracted (scapula pulled back) but not so that it flairs out your ribs. Your goal is to have your shoulders move independently from your ribs. Again, a little roundness is proper alignment.

Take a look at the pictures for a visual of proper and improper alignment: (I pulled these off of Pinterest because 1) I’m busy chasing and feeding babies and training moms who do the same so I don’t have time to make my own pictures and 2) Why reinvent the wheel? There’s tons of great information online, you just have to know what you’re looking for to find it :).)

Want an alignment assessment? Contact me aileen@mamaleanfitness.com

And that’s when I fell out of love with the crunch.

Why crunches weren’t my favorite to begin with:

1. Crunches aren’t the most comfortable exercise, especially for those who suffer from neck pain.
2. They’re pretty pointless to do while pregnant, and I always worried about lying on my back to exercise in the second and third trimesters.
3. They’re time consuming. It takes a lot of crunches before I feel anything.

What does the science say?

According to a 2013 study using a machine to measure abdominal muscle activation, non-crunch exercises were found to be not only more spine-friendly, but they actually produced greater deep ab activation than crunches. This is important for 2 reasons 1) If you’re a mom, your spine is probably begging you to not put any more stress on it after carrying a baby for 9 months, which definitely alters your alignment. And 2) Inner ab activation is more effective for strengthening than just working the outer abs that crunches hit, because we need to activate the inner abs or “transverse abdominis” for proper movement. (*Although don’t over think it… that can cause problems, too.)

If you have back issues, crunches can cause more damage by putting strain on your spine. According to Sarah Key of SimpleBackPain.com, “Crunches are one of the worst abs exercises. They restrict the excursion of the diaphragm and weaken the pelvic floor”. Weakening the pelvic floor is the LAST thing new moms need to do! (*Note for C-section mommies: Your pelvic floor was still affected by pregnancy, even if you didn’t strain it pushing the baby out.)

If nothing else, crunches put you in a hunched over position that doesn’t give you any relief from your hunched position while nursing, and they make your abs bulge, which is the last thing you want on your quest for a flat tummy!

So what to do?

The Core Strength Study article cited above suggests various versions of planks as being more effective than crunches. SimpleBackPain.com lists planks as one of the worst ab exercises for your back. Such is the fitness world–there’s always conflicting information, which makes navigating all of this a little overwhelming for most exercisers. Here’s what it comes down to: New moms and anyone else whose abdominal wall is so weak that they can’t engage their abs shouldn’t put any more force on them, which could cause them to split apart. (*Check yourself for diastasis recti!)

SO… don’t jump into planks, even though I love them later on. There are plenty of inner ab activation exercises that won’t put this forward pressure on your weak abs. You’ll do planks again one day if you want to and if you have a back that can handle them, but not today. Restore before you’re ready for more.

Instead of crunches, do:

1. Pallof presses
2. Racked suitcase carry
3. Side planks (if you must plank)
4. Deadbugs or the even easier version of alternating drawing knees of up to chest and feet back to the floor
5. Oblique twists while lying on your back
6.Simple deep breathing that activates your core muscles (read my post about breathing as the underdog exercise)

My rule is to choose exercises that somehow mimic what I do every day (carrying babies and groceries, maintaining good posture) and that keep my body in neutral alignment to avoid any unnecessary strain on my spine. If you’re in the very newly postpartum club (less than 3 months) you want to focus as much on breathing exercises as possible, then add in some of the other exercises when you have more core stability.

If anything, the non-crunch exercises listed above give you more of a workout in less time than crunches because they also activate other muscles. Time is everything, especially when you’re a mom!

If you’ve scanned my site, you know I’m a mom of 2, and before that, I was an avid runner. I did everything I could to lose the baby weight after my first pregnancy–all 52 lbs of it. And I did, losing that plus another 5 for a grand total of 57 lbs. But once I became a personal trainer and did more research on pregnant and postpartum bodies, I realized that even though I was lean, I wasn’t exactly the kind of fit I aspired to be. I peed myself during jumping jacks. I had lower back pain after every run. I was tired all the time. And I still didn’t have the “sculpted” look I was going for. So what’s the point in achieving my “ideal” weight when my fitness was less than ideal?

That’s why I created MamaLean Fitness–to help other moms like me prepare and recover from childbirth so they can be not only their ideal weight, but their ideal level of fitness.

Here’s my message: If you want to be lean and fit before, during, and after pregnancy, train with me. You deserve more than just a workout program; you deserve to be a fully functional, happy mama. You deserve to be MamaLean Fit.

Pregnant women can reap childbirth benefits from breathing exercises during pregnancy. I recommend reading Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth. A yogi friend of mine turned me on to her, and I felt a lot more in control during the pushing phase of my second childbirth experience.

After childbirth, mindful breathing is just as, if not more, important. Pregnancy does a lot of damage to your core muscles (abs, muscles around your spine called the multifidus, diaphragm, and pelvic floor). As your baby grows, your uterus expands, and everything surrounding it has to go somewhere. Some rearranging occurs and your core muscles “lose touch”, meaning they stop working together, which is necessary for core stability. After birth, you have to do some work to retrain these muscles to work together again. This is where breathing serves as the connector.

Exercise is as much mental as it is physical. Breathing to retrain your core requires you to visualize your core muscles working together. Practice by visualizing all of those muscles expanding as you inhale, and softly contracting as you exhale. This is where you can add in those kegels, on the exhale. Again, the contraction is gentle. You’ll never need to lift a car with your vagina, so don’t squeeze your pelvic floor muscles like they’re the jaws of life (cue birthing joke?).

Practice your breathing every day in the crucial first weeks postpartum, and make sure you feel confident in your core muscles’ ability to work together before starting a more rigorous exercise program (meaning walking is ok, but running will set you up for injury).

So while it may feel like you’re not really exercising, mindful breathing is an essential first exercise post baby, and a power booster for more rigorous exercise in the future!

Step 2: Resist the bubbling unrest from infant as you finish warm up. Pause to change diaper before beginning work out, but practice stability by walking one-legged to said diaper change with infant through toddler’s toys turned obstacle course.

Step 3: Feed infant. Breastfeeding = burning calories!

Step 4: Forty-five minutes later, begin workout. Pause between sets to wipe runny noses, protect infant from toddler’s aggression, and pee.

Step 5: Finish workout. Begin real exercise of chasing toddler while carrying infant for the next 6 hours until backup (husband) arrives. Repeat all over again tomorrow.

Here it goes…

Stop buying food in bulk. 

Now before you tell me to go choke on the 7 boxes of cereal for which the cashier paid you $0.04 after all of your coupons and discounts, hear me out. By “food” I mean real food. The kind that is grown and probably isn’t packaged in a box. The kind you should be eating instead of cereal. Which is why the show Extreme Couponing makes me cringe and warehouse-like food marts make my skin crawl. Simply put, our obsession with saving money is ruining our health by distorting our idea of food shopping.

Here’s why:

1. Buying in bulk usually doesn’t involve fresh food.
2. We buy snacks, not meals.
3. It perpetuates the “more=good” mentality.

1.Buying in bulk usually doesn’t involve fresh food. I had a big club membership for a brief stint. Yes, it was convenient for stocking up on cleaning supplies, party goods, toilet paper and paper towels. When it came to actual food, however, big club always left me disappointed. When buying produce, I stick to the dirty dozen rules for buying organic. To keep costs low for bulk purchases, warehouse marts just can’t afford to stock bulk organic produce. And I understand why; the shelf life of organic produce is shorter than non-organic.*  I’m also pretty picky when it comes to choosing lean meats and wild-caught fish. Call me a food snob, but I view the extra money I pay for these items to be an investment in my health for the future.

2. We buy snacks, not meals. Every time my husband and I did shop at big club, we had to go home, unload the car, and then go back out to buy food to make actual meals for the week. The double-header on a Sunday was exhausting. Sure, we had just spent almost $200, but what did we have to show for it? Some popcorn I’d have to munch on to get me through the next round of grocery shopping, and a bunch of snacks. No matter how healthy these snacks are, they can’t replace real, wholesome food.

3. It perpetuates the “more=good” mentality. Everyone loves a bargain, which is why our society pays homage to the discount shopping god, Black Friday. However, more for less is not always best. When it comes to food, think quality, not quantity. You’d rather have an iPhone 6 than 3 Nokia cellphones from the late 1990s, right? If we can splurge money on technology and gadgets, why do we cheap out on the very thing that will fuel our bodies and help us live long, healthy lives? When we buy snacks in bulk, we eat in bulk, and we distort our image of healthy food shopping, meal preparation, and eating.

So if you want to be fit, follow this rule: Eat. Real. Food. That means saying “No!” to buying in bulk.

Your body survived an invasion, and it’s still standing, ready with that breastmilk. Your body is pretty f*#%ing awesome.

Blame the hormones, blame our image-obsessed society, but I was feeling pretty down about my post-partum body when I stepped on the scale 3 weeks after my second baby and I realized I hadn’t lost as much weight as I thought. Knowing that I had endured 9 months of pregnancy, a stomach bug at 38 weeks pregnant, diarrhea for days, and the pain that accompanies delivering an 8 lb baby, I thought it was extremely unfair for my body to not cooperate with my weight loss plans. I was doing what I was supposed to in terms of exercise rehabilitation and nutrition, and I was breastfeeding a very hungry little girl, yet I still had almost 30 lbs to lose?! Not cool, Mother Nature. Not cool at all. I had a good cry (and a glass of wine), and I reminded myself that my baby wasn’t built in a day, so I shouldn’t expect that kind of turnaround from my body, either. My body is doing exactly what it should be doing right now–healing.

You know what happened after I made peace with my post-partum body, acknowledging its badass-ness? I was more motivated for my workouts, more excited to eat that spinach smoothie. Positivity is a powerful drug! So, MamaLean mamas, accept, nourish, and love that post-partum body of yours while you take steps to make it stronger, leaner, and even more badass. I guarantee you’ll see your results sooner, and you’ll be a better, happier mama in the meantime.

For further reading, check out this article on the post-partum body and what to do to heal properly while establishing a strong foundation for future workouts. Then set up a training consultation with me!