Merry New Year; My Mom Sophia's Tips for Fitness

     During the holidays I took a little time away from writing, but now with the new year already under way I am back in full swing. Like most people I have a list of  New Year's Resolutions. This post is about sharing some realistic secrets( namely my mom's) in hopes to help my readers attain their weight loss and fitness goals for 2012.

     Weight loss and eating better are some very common resolutions for 2012. I just had a conversation with a friend recently and she was explaining how she quits drinking alcohol each January, gives up heavy carbohydrates, and makes a menu plan for her family. Great ideas. Like my friend, I do many of those things also, after a month of eating mashed potatoes and stuffing with every meal, it is time to tweak my eating habits.
     As a triathlete I am always looking for ways to lose weight and stay on track with my training, but I wanted to share with you some realistic ways to get fit, even if you are not a triathlete. I said in my last post that you can't look at diet and exercise as a goal per say. Diet and exercise are a lifestyle and you need to commit to making that part of your everyday routine. How the heck is that an attainable goal for 2012? I promise it is simple. I want to share a story with you about my own mom.
     My mom is an inspiration to me. Is she a triathlete too? No. Is she a runner? Nope. Is she a swimmer? No again. So how is it that she has never had a weight problem and she has never even entered a gym? That is right, she wouldn't have any idea what to do if she entered a gym. She is 65 years old and has maintained the same weight for many years. When people see her they think she is my sister. Admittedly, that kind of irritates me sometimes, but overall I am super proud of her.
     So how does she stay in shape and maintain her weight without a fancy gym or personal trainer? Simple, she stays active by walking her dog ever day. She lives in Northeastern Ohio where the winters are tough, yet even in the dead of winter she bundles up and out she goes with her white Scotty named Beamer, after her favorite car a BMW- I know, don't ask, but off she goes for a walk each and every day for at least a half an hour. She is getting some great cardio without all the impact.
     When we were little kids my mom used to pack us up and take us to Summit Mall in Akron, Ohio. It would be the dead of winter and pitch black outside and off we would go to walk around the mall. I remember that she would walk really fast around the mall and not even go into the stores sometimes. This was back in the late seventies before walking became a craze. I realize now that there are many walking clubs that meet at the local mall, but Mom was doing it well before it was en vogue. She has always been ahead of her time and the speed walking was something that she did regularly. My brothers and I thought she was crazy, but in fact she was really smart; she got her exercise for free, walking the mall in the dead of Ohio winters. She walked so fast that my brothers and I had to do a slow jog to keep up with her. When the weather broke she went outside for her walk, recruiting many of our neighbors.
     The craze today is buying anything local, especially produce. I know a group of moms who started a business called The Produce Box here in Cary, NC, where you can have local produce delivered to your door. Mom was going to local farms many years ago before it was a trendy thing to do. She would talk to my friends about the,"Organic tomatoes that were less acidic," and they would look at her like she was a kook. One of my old boyfriends coined my mom as a hippy and did not understand what,"organic," even meant. Again this was back in the early eighties when she got into the," all natural phase." She always told my brothers and I that we needed to load up our plates with fruits and veggies and slack off on the meat.
     I'll never forgot the day my mom sat us down as a family to announce that we were going to change our eating habits. She had started going to the local farmers market to get all of our produce and she said one night after dinner,"Kids I have an announcement to make." Whenever my mother made an announcement we looked on in horror because as I said she was always ahead of her time and none of our friends parents were anything like her. It took many years for me to appreciate my mom's quirkiness and appreciate what she was advising. At any rate she continued with her announcement that we were going to,"eat a lot less meat." My brothers and I literally cried. After all we loved our hamburgers, steaks and pork chops. A life with less meat, in our opinions, was a life not worth living.
     She continued with her speech that we would ,"load," our plates with healthy fruits and veggies that she got at the local farmers market and that we would still eat meat but just a little less and incorporate more fish into our diets. The reason was that meat was too expensive, but also that it caused,"carcinogens," that would,"pollute," our bodies. I learned about cancer well before most kids, but again Mom was ahead of her time. Most of her information came from women's magazines, but it turned out that Mom was right.
     Another,"fitness tip," that I learned from my mom was to stay moving all day long. So many of us sit in front of a computer for work or in an office. Mom never sat down when we were growing up. She was always moving around. As a housewife she was constantly running the vacuum, doing laundry, or picking up something that my brothers and I had left lying around. The point is that she was always in motion doing everyday activites. Yard work was another thing. How many of us now have lawn services or cleaning services to help us? Rake your own yard and clean your own house and you will burn calories and save money. Get your family in on the action of cleaning and yard work too if time is a factor. If you sit at a computer put on a headset and walk around your office. You'll burn more calories standing then sitting and it's good for your circulation to move around.
     Mom was always involved with us growing up. She would volunteer at school and help out with all our parties. Usually she'd show up in some mini skirt and leopard shirt, which would totally mortify us. As with everything else, she was also ahead of her time regarding fashion. The point is that even though it was embarrassing that my mom showed up with a short skirt on, the cool part is that she could actually fit into a little skirt when most of the other moms could not. Her routine of eating healthy, speed walking the mall, and constantly moving around our house has kept her fit and,"hot," into her sixties. Now that is inspirational and totally realistic. So you don't have to run a marathon in 2012 or even do a triathlon. Just get moving every day and I promise you'll see results.

Happy New Year and Tri-On,
Kelly


My mom Sophia with my boys Bryce and Nicholas