Introduction

Here we go... first off let me explain that this blog is really just for me to track my journey. I don't expect anyone to read it or follow it. I don't plan on censoring it based on who might read it and I don't plan on proofreading it much either!

So what do I mean by my journey? The short version - which you will find is hardly ever short, though shockingly still abreviated (as I am quite wordy) - is that I am a person who likes to be relatively fit. I also like to live life. I enjoy the health benefits of fitness, but I am also quite vain. I do not enjoy being out of breath at the top of my stairs or asking for help bringing in the groceries. I recently had my second child in less than 2 years. 3 months ago, I had my daughter Baylor via scheduled C-section. At the time, my oldest was 19 months old. When I got pregnant with my son, Rhett, I was in the best shape of my life - eating well, working out regularly and enjoying a great work life balance.

I continued to work out during my pregnancy (Crossfit, mostly - but we'll get to that) and ate relatively well but added dessert to my daily food routine. I'm not usually a sweets person, but that was my "craving". I would sometimes eat dessert after lunch and not say anything about it when I got home and then have dessert again! I laugh as I type/say that because I was enjoying the splurge and certainly working hard enough to justify it.

When my son was 8 weeks old, I went back to the gym and started with crossfit again, but had to slowly get back into it since my incision site was still healing. At 12 weeks, I went into lockdown mode. I had a wedding to go to at the beach with several friends who were a couple of years younger (read: still had good metabolism) and who did NOT just have a baby, so I wasn't aiming for a 6 pack, but just wanted to work hard enough to be comfortable in my own skin in a bathing suit.

So what did this lockdown entail and why is that important? I'll answer the second part first to say that my daughter was 3 months old yesterday and it is lockdown time again! This time, it's fall so I don't have a bathing suit taunting me from 6 weeks away, but I do have another wedding for good friends (who were actually at the beach wedding) and I've got to make it through the holidays which are a hard time for everyone! Then it is just a matter of time before that bathing suit season looms again. More importantly, I have an entire closet full of clothes begging to be worn...not stretched or shoved into, but worn! Aaaaaaand, I really need to be able to bounce up and down the stairs repeatedly, sometimes carrying a moving 30 lb weight and a 15 lb sack of coal all at the same time without dropping any of my preciuos cargo and still have energy not to fall down when I reach the destination. Plainly said, I want and need to be fit so I can keep up with my family and enjoy them and their boundless energy!

My intention on this blog is to track my progress and hold myself accountable. I'd love to have a record of my journey, a place to store my recipes, a motivational tool to get me rebooted when I fall off the wagon or lose my momentum.

I find myself searching Google and Pinterest for recipes, quick workouts, etc and always love being directed to a blog written by a real person who lives a real life (as opposed to celerities who can spend hours a day working out, have trainers, chefs, people to care for their kids, etc --- or people whose sole mission in life is to be completely fit all the time without any wiggle room). I grow frustrated when I find recipes that require hours to prep and cook or come with the assumption that I am home all day and can pop down to the kitchen to do step 6 in a 14 step crock pot recipe. Crock pots are meant to dump ingredients in and GO, am I right?!?! AMEN!

I am fighting the urge to explain more about myself, who I am, my circumstances, what I do and so on, but I hopefully have plenty of time for that, so I'm going to get right to it.

Here is my lock down, plain and simple. Strict paleo eating with 2 cheats per week (my beloved cocktails =cheats for the purpose of this lockdown. Even gluten free ones), working out a minimum of 3 times per week (I'd prefer more, but this has to be realistic) and trying to get a reasonable amount of sleep. For working out, my primary focus is crossfit, but I'm also trying some new things and might pop into a spin class here or there depending on my schedule!

So that's it! That's what we are working with. I plan on using this blog to post pictures, track progress, post recipes, menus, etc. I would love to chronicle this journey and perhaps be a pit stop for folks looking recipes, workouts, etc!