I have been wanting to tell this story for a long time, but you know how life gets! With the YouTube channel growing daily, my focus has been on developing most of my content there. But this story is too important to tell, so here goes!
How It All Started
Our winter seasons here in southern Ontario are changing, and one common shift is a mid-winter thaw. Of course, the thaw is only temporary and all that water turns into a dangerous sheet of ice that covers the land. This happened in late December of 2018 and it turned our property into a literal slip and slide.
My husband needed to go back to put the chickens to bed and I was worried about his footing. He had already taken a bit of a fall earlier in the week, so I decided to go with him. Safety in numbers right? Well unfortunately it was me to took a tumble; I slipped and fell hard on my right hip. Embarrassed by my “ass over tea kettle” state, I quickly got up, brushed myself off and went along with my chores. But within a few hours, I knew I had hurt myself badly. The ache had set in and the bruise was forming. I could feel that things in my body had shifted in an anatomical way.
It took weeks for me to feel even remotely normal again. I was shocked at how slowly my 40 year old body was recovering from an innocent slip on the ice. I was out of shape, carrying too much weight and not nearly enough muscle. I had no one to blame but myself for this. These are hard truths that need to be spoken and accepted in order to move on. I, and I alone am responsible for my health and I was facing the repercussions of my sedentary lifestyle.
It’s not easy coming to a place where you know that you are the reason you are where you are. It would have been all too easy for me to blame outside factors;
“I don’t have time”
“I don’t have the money”
“I’m too unwell/unhealthy to workout“
But I had been there and done that and it got me nowhere, except flat on my ass and hurting for it.
I vowed right then and there (after I healed up) that I would start exercising again. I could see the writing on the wall and I didn’t like it. I watch the elders in my family limping, complaining about ache and pains, struggling with getting out of chairs and unable to run or hike anymore. I could see how a sedentary lifestyle in my 40s would lead to a severe lack of mobility in my 50s and 60s. Use it or lose it!
Having a small home but having NO desire to join a gym (lack of availability and high cost were my biggest deterrents), we decided to get an exercise bike. I found one that folds up and it still strong and sturdy enough to hold up easily hold an adult’s weight.
Slow and Steady
As someone who helps to guide people to improved health and vitality, I knew that slow changes are sustainable changes. At that point in time I was washing my hair every three or four days and I decided “I’ll hop on the bike on hair washing days.” If I had to wash my hair anyway, might as well get sweaty first!
Now this may seem silly, but it really did work! I didn’t put the pressure on myself to jump into a routine that would not be sustainable for me in the beginning. I also knew full well that an injury could happen if I pushed myself too hard.
Slowly but surely that routine shifted and I started working out more frequently, at higher intensity and for longer durations. It was a slow climb, but a sustainable one.
I am now past the one year mark of my new exercise routine and I am still going strong! I work out on the bike every other day, ride the bike hard for 30 minutes (with a five minute cool down afterwards). I also do yoga at least twice a week, meditate almost daily and go for long hikes with my family as least once a week. I am never bored!
I am so proud of the progress I have made and my ability to stick with this new aspect of my self care and health regime. I am living proof that if you want change, you CAN make it happen.
Determination, hard truths and realistic goals got me to where I am today.
How This Changed My Life
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Weight Loss
I want to stand firm in saying that this was not my main goal for starting a new exercise habit. While I knew it would be a welcomed side effect, I was striving for strength more than anything. I wanted to feel strong and to improve my cardiovascular and respiratory functions. However, I also knew the dangers of carrying extra weight including strain on my joints, ligaments, heart, lungs and most of the other vital organs in the body.
This winter I had to buy myself a brand new wardrobe because nothing I owned fit me anymore. Again, I state this was not my only end goal, but damn did it feel good!
Strength
Homesteading comes with it a lot of hard manual labour. I slug chicken feed in huge bags from the car to the coop. I haul wheelbarrows full of soil and fill garden beds and boxes all spring long. I stack and bring in firewood all winter long. I am no stranger to hard work and lifting heavy loads. I can’t tell you how much easier these chores have become! I used to need a hot bath after stacking firewood and now it’s just as easy as sweeping the floor.
Sleep
For years since the birth of my son I was plagued with sleeplessness. I would be up for hours in the middle of the night, exhausted but unable to sleep. It was affecting so many aspects of my life including energy levels, my mood and my overall emotional health. Once exercise started to become a regular part of my life, I was sleeping so much better. Sure, I still have the odd night when I wake and can’t fall back asleep, but they are infrequent now.
Mental Health
I have always been very transparent about my struggles with depression (including PPD) and seasonal depression. I used to have to use light therapy just to make it through the winter, in fact I have a post about it here. This is the first winter that I have not turned my light on once. While I cannot attribute this to exercise alone, it has been a huge contributor to this drastic improvement in my mental health and overall outlook on life.
Digestion
Being a healthy eater and herbalist, my digestion was always pretty decent. But exercise did kick it up a notch and I’ll explain how. Exercise improves blood flow to all the vital organs of the body, including the digestive organs. It also provides a massaging like action to those organs, improving peristalsis and the churning actions needed to properly digest our food. If you suffer from chronic constipation (defined as less than one bowel movement a day), get moving! I promise you with regular exercise things will improve.
What’s Next?
For me the next step is including weight training into my exercise routine. While I am proud of the cardiovascular and respiratory improvements I have made, I know that fat vs muscle is still an issue for me. There are some excellent studies coming out that discuss the impact of frailty and carrying extra weight has on the body’s ability to deal with viral load. Understanding these statistics and discoveries have made me realize how vital muscle mass is in terms of true metabolic health.
Thanks to some amazing people I follow like Dr. Tyna Moore, I am motivated to start strength training. At this point all I have are resistance bands, but I do hope to save up for the kettle bells in the future. I also have a membership to Gaia TV and plan on utilizing it to it’s fullest potential as they have tons of pilates videos that will strengthen my core and back.
I am excited to embark on this next phase of my wellness journey and I hope I have inspired you to do the same. The time is NOW to take back your health. You can be stronger, healthier and more vibrant than you ever have before!
So much love to you all,
Regular Readers/Watchers
If you are a regular reader of this blog or viewer of Spiraea’s content on YouTube, I would be honoured if you took at peek at my Patreon site. Patreon is a crowd-funding site where folks can show their gratitude for the free content that creators like me produce. My currently Patreon family has been so amazing and supportive. They are the only reason I can continue to put out free video content on my YouTube channel and write blog posts right here. I have immense gratitude for them and would be thrilled if you joined us.
