 Hey everybody, welcome to the Wallach way. I'm Jessica and today's video is going to be part two of our four part series about self care as a homeschool mom. Today we are going to be talking about physical self care and in case you missed the first video, which was just kind of the overview of what the series is gonna be and kind of why self care as a homeschool mom is so important to me and some of the benefits that I have seen from prioritizing myself for a year, I will link it up here for you guys. Okay, so I know that this is a video that most of you have been looking forward to when I announced this series. Obviously, if you are new here, you are probably not going to notice, but if you are not new here, you have been picking up on it for the past year. I took 2022 as a year to prioritize myself and I have made some physical changes, which I'm so not done, but I have lost 35 pounds and four sizes and a lot of you have been commenting along the way about how much you have enjoyed seeing the changes and how you would love to know what I'm doing. And so that's kind of what this series is all about. In this series, I am going to be talking to you about how I prioritize self care as a homeschool mom, how I fit it in, the benefits of it and any tips that I have. So today we're talking about self care physically. So my number one thing that I did from the get go physically was I in the very beginning was like, okay, I'm going to change soda for water. That was the first thing that I did because when I think of self care physically, I think of like drinking, eating and moving. Like those are kind of the top things that I did, but I started out small you guys because baby steps add up to big changes. And so you really have to think like what is one thing that I can do or what's something small that I can do? At least that's how I had to start because I had started and failed this process so many times that I was like, it's because I'm trying to do all of the things. So the first thing that I did was, okay, you're going to just change your sodas, which if y'all have been around the Waldoch way, you know that I was powered by Dr. Pepper. Like I was somebody who drank way more than I want to admit switching from soda to water was not easy. I luckily only had about two caffeine migraines and Excedrin migraine has enough caffeine in it that I was able to take that and get past the migraines. But that was my first step as I changed soda for water. And I kind of just stuck with that for a month. Like that's it, that's what I'm going to do. And then in February, I started saying, okay, it's time to move your body. And we just started going on walks and our walks were short because I couldn't walk very far. We started out with about a mile just around the house, like out in the, I say our neighborhood but it's not really like a neighborhood. But we would just go for walks. All of us, sometimes just me, it just depended on the day. And we would just walk leisurely, nothing fancy because I couldn't do much more than that. And then once I started drinking water and moving my body, it was like, okay, well, now let's eat some more fruits and vegetables. So at dinner instead of all potatoes because I am 100% a carb girl. So if you're wondering, did I give up carbs? I totally did not. I am all carbs all the time but I would give some of my potatoes up and have a vegetable. I would have fruits and snacks instead of junk and just little things like that. That's all I did. I didn't have to do anything drastic. I was trying to just make small changes. And it was crazy because I was already making sure that Emily was eating healthier or has always ate healthier. I just wasn't great about doing it myself. So I kept tons of fruits and vegetables in the house. I mean, Emily will eat any fruit and vegetable. Like she loves them. So I was keeping them in the house. I was feeding them to her. I just wasn't eating them myself. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna eat them too. So I would have fruits for snacks and veggies for dinner. I started eating breakfast because I haven't always been that great about eating breakfast. I was making sure that I was eating a breakfast. And as I started feeling better, I decided I wanted to work out a little bit. And so I started with Grow With Joe has a YouTube channel. So I will link her up here as well. And I just started out with some of her workouts. She has some really short ones like Walk, The Weight Off and just kind of a short cardio. I would do 10 or 15 minutes once or twice a week. Nothing crazy. And I did that for about four months. In April, I was ready for something a little bit more. I didn't know what though, because I felt like there's so much information out there. Like so much. It's overwhelming and it was hurting my brain of what was the best thing to do. So I reached out to a friend of mine who happens to also be a homeschool mom but also a fitness coach. And I valued her because I knew that as a fitness coach who also was working from home while homeschooling, she would be realistic. Like she wasn't going to be like giving me all the stuff that I couldn't do. Like she's a fitness coach and she homeschools and she works from home. She kind of lives my life. She knows what it's like. She knows how complicated it is or the unique situations of it. And so she was like, okay, this is what you're gonna do. And she gave me macros, which is macronutrients. If you're not familiar with it, it basically means that you have a certain number of carbs, a certain number of fats, a certain number of protein and then like an overall calorie goal. And so at first, I mean, the goal is to eat even, but at first she was like, just stay under these calories and try to hit your protein. And that's what I did. I tried to do that as frequently as possible. And then we slowly started moving my protein goal up higher and higher because I started really low because that was not hard or not easy for me. And it was really easy to even kind of like blow my calories, if you will, on things like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or like, oh, they fit in my calories, I can eat them. But then at the end of the day, you would realize that you were starving because you ate junk instead of whole food. And eventually I started realizing that I could get more for my calories if I would eat whole food. So even though I wasn't like, I'm gonna eat better, it slowly happened on its own because I could fill up and eat more of it, right? Like I can eat, for example, a whole bag of popcorn for 100 calories or I can have like three peanuts. Like you start looking at things like that, I can have I think like four or five M&Ms. Like you start looking at it like that, like what you can have and the fact that the one is gonna feel better and do more for your body than the other. So you just start making better choices whether you intend to or you set out to or not. And so that's part of what I started doing with my health is I just started making more choices that were better, that were fueling my body and filling my body more full that still fit into that. So if you're curious, because I want to be 100% transparent, my macros have been the same the entire year even though I wasn't hitting them, I now hit them. My daily goal is 1810 for calories. My protein goal is 145 grams for protein. My carb goal is 172 for carbs and my fat goal is 60 grams. So just full transparency there. That is my goal for eating now and that's been my goal all year but I just eat better at it now. And then I started saying, okay, let's work out too. So she designed a workout for me. I was working out three days a week and I started with nothing but body weight because I couldn't do any more than that. So we're talking body weight squats. I remember she had me do an incline pushup with just my body weight and my incline was like this, you guys like against the wall. I was probably at, I don't know, like a 20 degree angle because that's the best I could do. And I couldn't push my body up any more than that. And I would do step ups with just my body weight. But that was pretty much it. I wasn't doing a ton of weight. We started slowly adding to our home gym. Our gym is on our back porch. It is screened but it is not closed. So that means it is very cold when it's cold and it's very hot when it's hot. I will share with you guys what our home gym looks like but I do wanna say before I share with you what it looks like, that this is over the course of a year. We did not go in with any of this. In fact, I started working out in the gym with nothing, like we didn't even have mats on the ground yet. And so we slowly collected over the year and it's also because Kevin got involved with me too. So I started working out with body weight only in about April. By the end of May, I was using some weights like dumbbells and Kevin had started working out too because he wanted to give me enough time. This is what he said to find my own way before he kind of like joined me, right? Because he says that he would have loved to have seen me do this earlier and he was afraid if he did it with me or tried to push in any way that I would go running in the opposite direction which I probably would have. So he waited until like the end of May before he started kind of mid into May before he started doing it with me. I just kept adding from there. Like we kept adding to the gym and I kept just doing more of the things I was already doing. So I just kept drinking more water until I got up to about, right now my goal is 80 to 100 ounces a day of water and I just kept eating better and better until I started hitting my macro goals that Kristen had made for me. And me and Kristen just kept changing my workouts every eight weeks which is what she does in her program and she redos your workouts every eight weeks so that she was pushing me to either do more reps or higher weights and I love that she was there the whole time hyping me up. So for example, let's see if I can pull one up to give you an idea. When I first started doing squats I was just doing my body weight and now I can squat somewhere between 40 to 50 pounds depending on whether it's a kettlebell or a dumbbell. But that took me a year to get there. Again, I just wanna be transparent I want you guys to know everything. And it was hard work. It was not easy. There was tons of days when I was not motivated or I didn't wanna do it but I was determined if we're being honest to kind of just prove everybody wrong. Like I knew that Kevin wanted me to keep it up and he wasn't sure if I would and I wanted to prove to Emily I could like I wanted to prove to her that I could do it and I could do things that I couldn't do before once I lost some of the weight. So she's always wanted to go zip lining but when we first started I was over the weight capacity so I wouldn't have been able to do it with her. I'm still not sure I wanna do it because I don't like heights but now I'm under the weight and I could. When we would go to theme parks I would have to ask for the special seat for like the plus size person or the poo size person or whatever they call it which meant that she didn't typically get to sit where she wanted to sit. When we would go to the mountains and do the mountain coaster gets on the roof she always had to ride with Kevin because if she had rode with me even when she was very, very small and very, very light we were over the weight limit. I by myself wasn't but us combined were. We had talked about kayaking before but the idea of kayaking stressed me out because I knew she would have to be with him which would mean I would have to be by myself and I wasn't sure if I could handle a double kayak but was a single one gonna hold my way and it was just always stressful and so there were so many things we didn't do and we didn't experience because of either my help or my size or my weight and I was just determined I was like I'm just gonna do this and so I just kept pushing. What I did to make time for it is I would find pockets in our days. Our walks either started like after dinner we would go for a family walk. I slowly started getting up earlier because I found that rest was really important to this whole process and to progress if you don't rest enough you're not gonna make progress and so I started prioritizing my rest as well making sure that I was getting to bed at a certain time which meant my phone getting turned off. I actually have modes set up on my phone like you can go in and I have bedtime so that it renders my phone a paperweight after midnight. I have exercise mode so only my exercise app works when I'm exercising so it doesn't distract me. I actually now have a homeschool mode set up so I don't get distracted when I'm homeschooling but I just found either pockets of time or I was very creative. So I started going to bed a little bit earlier which meant I could get up a little bit earlier and if I strewed something for Emily which I used to do to be able to get more sleep in the morning or be lazier in the morning I could strew something in the morning and I could sneak out to the gym, porch and get a workout in. And because Kristen was a homeschool mom who was a fitness coach she was able to design my workouts that worked for my schedule so I could say like look I've got 30 minutes and that's all I've got it should make the best 30 minute workout for me. And then I started getting really creative during the summer because I had set a step goal for myself. I try even now to stay between seven and 10,000 steps a day. I'm not like die hard on that but I try really hard to do that. And again, our gym is on the porch which means that we have treadmill out there but it's hot and it's Florida and so it was hot outside. So I just got creative. I would pace back and forth when I would read aloud if you're not very graceful I wouldn't suggest doing that. It took me a long time to get used to it but I would just pace like the length of the living room or beside the table to get my steps in while I read out loud to her. There were times when it was cooler weather that I would have her come sit like I would put a blanket or a towel on the floor at the porch slash gym. And I would have her listen to me read while I walked the treadmill. I would read for my Kindle out loud while she walked the treadmill or while I walked the treadmill to get steps in. I just got super creative. One of the ways that I am creative now, I don't get steps although you could technically I guess put your active watch I guess around your foot if you wanted to or on your shoe but I don't do it with mine now. But I got an under the desk elliptical because I find that I am sitting a lot between what I do for work and homeschooling. I'm still a lot. And so I got an under the desk elliptical and I will put it in front of my chair when I read aloud and do it or I'll put it like I'm not doing it right now because I'm filming a video but if I was working like if I had my laptop you know when I was working I would have it under the table right here and I would be doing it while I was working. It's not going to be enough by itself to make any drastic changes but I just find that it helps me add some more movement in. It's about the equivalent of riding a bike and it keeps me from being sedentary which I find that if I keep moving like the more that I move the more I want to move. So it just makes it easier like the more I move the more I want to move so if I just keep moving at some kind sneaking it in somewhere like it just little things add up to big changes and that's kind of I guess really the main reason I want to do this series number one is because I know a ton of you had questions that you wanted me to answer or you wanted to know my story but I wasn't ready to share it so now I am. And also it was like because I didn't say I'm going to go all in and I didn't I did little things and they've made big differences so it was just as simple as soda for water. Walking, adding in some exercise, eating better foods but slowly over the course of a year and it just adding up to bigger things. So I am also going to try to tell you some of my top I guess resources for self-care as a homeschool mom physically. My number one top resource is going to be some kind of active tracker, fitness tracker. We had FitBits for a really long time. I now have the Samsung watch because we have Samsung's and it was a gift and I really like it but some sort of fitness tracker so you can track. Like, okay, you don't have to go for 10,000 steps but if you do 2,000 on average, try to get three like just up your steps. I like having Kristen as a resource which I will link all of her stuff in the description if you're interested in hiring a fitness coach she hands down is an amazing one and she's a homeschool mom so she's gonna get your unique situation. My under the desk elliptical for sneaking in some extra movement but if I had to pick one thing and one thing only it would be the set of dumbbells that we started with because I think that strength training hands down made the biggest difference in the changes that I saw physically in the way that I felt mentally because I would have never used the word strong to describe myself a year ago like that's not I was anything but that but strength training has definitely made me feel stronger like physically stronger mentally stronger emotionally stronger like when you can lift some weight I don't know that's just a really, really good feeling so those are some of my top picks if I was going to pick a few things to start out with also a really reach over here a really great cup or bottle or whatever it's gonna take to encourage you to drink water this is mine I will link it as well it's 40 ounces so I know that bare minimum I have to drink two of these a day and that's that's in cup holders which is nice anyway so that would be probably some of my top picks if you're going to count calories or do anything in the kitchen a kitchen scale like a decent I mean they're not any bad ones like I think ours was like $20 and it works really, really well as nice because you can weigh and know exactly what you're eating and yes I weigh the majority of everything that I eat and eventually it just becomes second nature and it doesn't feel like a chore anymore so it's no longer a chore for me and then I purchased a scale for like myself that I will link because not because I think you need a scale but because this specific scale measures like muscle mass and bone mass and water weight and all of the things and so when I wasn't losing weight then there was a lot of times I didn't lose weight it was nice to be able to look and see that okay you're not losing weight but your fat percentage is going down and your muscle percentage is going up and so that kind of mentally kept me still going in the game and keep pushing forward because I could see that okay well you're not losing weight but you're quite literally changing fat for muscle so those were the things I think made the biggest difference again hands down if you can only get one as the dumbbell set but something that's gonna encourage you to drink water a kitchen scale if you're going to be either measuring or weighing your food the scale in the bathroom just helped me mentally be able to keep going and then I really like my end of the desk elliptical but if that's all you're gonna do it's probably not going to be enough it's great for extra movement but not if it's gonna be your only movement and then some kind of fitness tracker and it doesn't even have to be like I don't know you can track it however you want you can probably track it with pen and paper if you want it and be just as good but some sort of tracker where you can track what you're doing and then if you want somebody to gift you something or you have a little bit of extra Kristen as a coach because she was invaluable now if you have any tips for homeschool moms and self-care to stay healthy physically or how to prioritize themselves physically I would really really love it if you would leave it down in the comments not just for me but for other moms I really wanna make this a place where we can encourage each other and we can help remind each other and homeschool moms in general that you can't pour from an empty cup you need to take care of yourself first and any tips or tricks that you have I'm sure will be greatly appreciated by somebody so make sure you leave everything you've got in the comments and then make sure you come back next week for the last two videos in the series which are gonna be where we talk about self-care on the homeschool moms emotionally and self-care homeschool mom mentally.