93- Winter Survival Mode: When "Just Showing Up" Is Your Biggest Win

Winter is hitting different this year—illness after illness, low energy, and that nagging feeling that you just can't get your workout routine together. In this intimate, coffee-chat style episode, Kat sits down with you (yes, YOU) to talk about what it really means to stay consistent when survival mode is your reality.

Inspired by a powerful email from a listener during Kat's recent "Ask Me Anything" newsletter series, this episode is a heartfelt response to every mom who's struggling right now. This isn't about pushing harder or finding more motivation. It's about meeting yourself in the messy middle of winter, reframing what success looks like, and giving yourself permission to scale without shame.

Whether you're managing babies, teenagers, postpartum recovery, or perimenopause, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why winter is uniquely hard for moms trying to stay consistent with fitness
• How to reframe "falling off track" during illness and chaos
• What showing up can look like when you're running on empty
• How to change your internal dialogue from criticism to compassion
• The concept of "seasonal scaling" and why winter is about preservation, not progress
• Practical micro-wins that maintain the habit without burning you out

Check out last week's episode for 92- Rugged Flexibility: The Practical Skills You Need to Stay Consistent (Not Perfect)

This episode is a response to Kat's newsletter "Ask Me Anything" series. Want to be part of these conversations? Subscribe to the KatFit Strength newsletter for intimate, unfiltered insights you won't find anywhere else.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey friends, grab your coffee or tea or let's be real, your third cup of the day and settle in. I wanna have a real conversation with you today, the kind we'd have if we were sitting across from each other and you just said, cat. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't seem to get it together because here's what I'm seeing right now, both in my inbox and honestly in my own life. It's February, we're deep into winter. The holidays are over. The new year, motivation has faded, and we're in that gray, cold, seemingly endless middle. Where everyone in your house has been sick, at least twice. Maybe you had big plans to start fresh in January, but then someone got the flu, then you got it. The baby got an ear infection, someone else got strep, and now you're looking at your workout plan. If you even still have one thinking, what's even the point? I see you and I want you to know something. Right up front. You're not broken. The system isn't failing. This is just winter and winter is hard on moms. Stick with me today. This is going to feel less like a podcast episode and more like a coffee chat you desperately need. Let's talk about what it really means to stay consistent when survival mode is your only mood.

Kat 1:19

Welcome to Miles From Review, the podcast powered by Cat Fit Strength, where busy women like you find practical solutions to fuel your fitness journey with authenticity and resilience. I'm Kat, your host, a mom of two active boys, a business owner, and an ultra marathon runner and a strength trainer in her forties with nearly two decades of experience. I'm here to help you cut through the noise of fads, hacks, and quick fixes. This is a space where we celebrate womanhood and motherhood. All while building strength and resilience and reconnecting with you from a place of self-compassion and worthiness. Whether you're lacing up your running shoes to go out for a run, driving your kids to practice or squeezing in a moment for yourself, I'm right here in the trenches with you. Let's dive in.

2:07

Welcome back to Miles from our review. This episode is gonna be different, like I mentioned in the intro. It is something I'm hearing everywhere. Today's episode truly was prompted by my newsletter this week. I. Sent out a newsletter as do every week, it was an ask me anything. It's one I kind of just pop out. I throw it out on social media occasionally, and I throw it out in my newsletter. My newsletter, to be quite honest, I get more of a response from, which is kind of nice I wanted to hear directly from my audience like, Hey, how's everyone doing? You know? Yes, I am putting together a lot of information and trying to present, and I want to, de influence you from a lot of the vast social media and other influences, and really my whole mission is to bring as much as I can from my lens, which isn't always true to your lens, but. The true, raw, authentic, completely imperfect stance of what fitness and keeping it a priority in your life is. And to be honest, my inbox has been full of honest, raw messages from moms and women in every season of life. And if you're not on my newsletter list, pause right now. Go to the show notes and subscribe. To be honest, there is no spamming. It's a once a week, I try to make it worth your time when you're reading it. And this is where the conversations happen. It's where I share things that. I elaborate more on from the podcast, and I don't always talk about on social media, so it's intimate, it's practical, and it's one of my favorite ways that I enjoy connecting with the community I have built. So go into the show notes or head over to my website and hop on my list this week. There was a theme with all the messages and it went something like this. This January, it has been illness after illness, lingering coughs that won't quit freezing temperatures that have made it impossible for me to use a garage gym or even want to go and use my gym membership. And the overwhelming feeling that I can't get my act together when I've sat down to respond to all these messages, it really hit me from what I've been hearing from my clients to not only what I've been experiencing in my own life. I've said it many times on this podcast. Nobody has the exact same 24 hours in a day. The only fact is about 24 hours is there are 24 hours in a day. There are commonalities among all the stories. And when I see stories, it's your real life and it is bespoke to each individual person. And this is a story I'm hearing from so many right now. So today's episode, it's. Essentially my response to her, to you, to all of us who are in the thick of it and wondering if we're just completely lost, and let's get really honest for a moment. Winter is uniquely hard on moms, and I don't say that in like a cutesy, like, oh, this season's busy kind of way. I mean, physiologically, logistically, and emotionally challenging ways that other seasons just aren't. Let's think about this for a moment. Your kids are inside more. Which means there's more supervision, more mess, more sensory overload, and less downtime for you. Even if your kids are older and more independent, you're in your four walls, no matter how big or small those four walls are. Illness cycles through your house, like just. A horrible, horrible thing. Like someone's always getting sick, someone's getting better, and someone's about to get sick again, and you are either actively sick, recovering from being sick or white knuckling your way through taking care of everyone else while maintaining all your other responsibilities. The days are shorter, so you're getting less natural light, which means. You're lower on vitamin D, lower serotonin, and quite frankly, lower on motivation to do much of anything. And let's not mention it has been extraordinarily cold. Your body is just working harder to exist. Like I said, you're cold. Your body's fighting to stay warm. You're fighting off germs constantly. Your immune system is running over time and on top of all of that. You are supposed to maintain the same workout schedule you had in June when the sun was shining at 7:00 PM and your kids were running around outside, or they were engaged in other social activities or other sports, and you had energy. Of course, this will result in you feeling like you're failing, but here's the thing I want you to hear. You're not failing. You're surviving. And that notion of. I just need to get my act together. I hear it all the time, and I get it. I really do. It's the feeling that you used to have a handle on things. You used to be consistent, and now you're just not, and you want to get back to that place where everything clicks. But I wanna challenge you today, the idea that having your act together looks the same in February as it does in May. It doesn't, and it, it shouldn't. Last week on the podcast, I talked about rugged flexibility and the ability to adapt your training, to meet the demands of your life without losing that thread of consistency entirely. If you haven't heard that episode, I really encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. I'll put it in the show notes. And I give you practical skills to implement into your life. And when, I'm gonna take a little side, John here. Pick a skill and go from there. We talked about defining your bare minimum weight. We talked about questions to ask yourself before getting into a workout. We talked about the five to 10 minute rule,. It is meant to strip away from that all or nothing thinking that perfection seeking model. And this week I wanna zoom in on what it actually looks like when you're in that survival mode because whether you're in it now or you're reflecting back to a time where you. Have been it, it is something that we will experience in multiple seasons and even in that very lovely, warm summer, long daylight extended days, we will experience survival mode. The truth about fitness that the Instagram highlight reels just don't show you is consistency doesn't mean doing the same thing all the time. It means staying in the game, even when the game looks completely different. And it's okay for things to look different throughout your year, and it should look different throughout your year. If you're comparing yourself to this warmer months where everyone, it seems to be healthier when we're out of the whole cold and flu season, and you feel like you have your act together where you're feeling strong and energized and then you're in this where we are right now, the brutal winter where there's the illnesses, your act together. May mean something different. It may look like 15 minute walk three times a week, and some body weight squats in your living room while you have a sick kiddo recovering on the couch or your kids are at your feet. Both are consistency. Both are showing up, both count. And it's a reframe and it's looking at that I need to adjust to adapt to where I'm at. Let's get a little bit more practical into different scenarios here. So scenario one, I haven't worked out in three weeks because someone in my house has been sick the entire time. I feel like I've lost everything. Well, first you haven't lost everything. You may have lost some conditioning, but your muscle memory, your foundational strength, your years of training, those don't vanish in three weeks. Second, your job right now isn't to just jump in where you left off. It's to do something, anything that reminds your body what movement feels like. So 10 minute walk, some stretching on your living room floor, a few sets of squats while you wait for your coffee to brew. That's it. So that's the assignment. It's not a full workout. It's not getting back on track. It's just. The little by little that's gonna lead yourself back to the routine or that time where you're like, I had it all together. Scenario two, I can only manage 10 to 15 minutes before someone needs me. It just doesn't feel worth it. I get it. 10 minutes is worth it. We have been so conditioned to think that a workout doesn't count unless it's 45 minutes or 60 minutes, and you're drenched in sweat and you can barely walk the next day, but that is absolute nonsense. 10 minutes of intentional movement is better than zero minutes, enough to maintain a habit, which is more important than the output. Right now. It's a deposit in your bank of resilience. And it's also a signal to your body that you haven't given up. And here's the secret. Once you start showing up for 10 minutes, sometimes it turns into 15 minutes and sometimes 20 minutes, and sometimes it stays 10 minutes, and that is a thousand percent fine. Scenario three, I'm so tired, I don't even wanna try. What's the point? The point is not the workout. The point is proving to yourself that you're still in this. Fatigue is real. If you're running on broken sleep, recovering from illness, managing stress, your body needs more rest than it needs another workout. But here's the nuance. There's a difference between arrest and resignation. Rest says, I'm going to take care of myself today so I can show up tomorrow. Resignation says, I'm just not a workout person anymore. I give up. So if you're truly exhausted, rest, take a nap. Go to bed early, do some gentle stretching. But if there's a tiny part of you that has energy for something, do that something. Even if it's small, even if it's boring. Even if it does not feel like enough, because you are not just moving your body, you're proving to yourself that you haven't quit. And in these seasons of hard, the way you talk to yourself is either gonna help you. It's either gonna build your resilience or build the reasons to quit. And when you're in survival mode, when you're sick, exhausted, barely keeping up, that voice in your head can get mean. You are so lazy. You are used to be disciplined, everyone else is managing. Why can't you? You'll never get back to where you are. If that sounds familiar, here's what I want you to understand, that voice. Is not telling you the truth, it's telling you a story based on fear and comparison. So the antidote is a different story, a truer one instead of, I'm so lazy, try, I'm recovering and my body needs rest instead of, I used to be so disciplined, try. I'm still disciplined. Discipline looks different in different seasons instead of everyone else's managing try. I don't care what everyone else is actually dealing with. I know my reality and I'm doing the best I can with it. Instead of I'll never get back to where I was. Try, this is temporary. I will have energy again. This isn't toxic positivity. This is self-compassion, grounded in truth because you're not feeling your adapt and adaptation is a skill, not a character flaw. So in the winter when you're in this survival mode. I want you to pick what feels doable today, not what you think you should be doing. There's two different distinctions again, one is putting yourself in that comparison trap, that all or nothing principle. And the other is leading with compassion, which is not weakness. It's recognizing your reality and still seeing what you can do to fulfill that drive of wanting to show up for yourself. So movement options, a 10 minute walk, even if it's around your block or in your own four walls where you reside. Body weight, squats, lunges, wall pushups while your young children are watching a show. Or you're cooking dinner, a YouTube workout during nap time, 20 minutes or less. Stretching on the floor while your kids play nearby. Dancing in your kitchen while you make dinner. Heck, have a family dance party. Take the stairs, park further away and play with your kids. The non-negotiable. It doesn't have to be a workout to count. Something is always better than nothing, and boring is fine. Effective is fine, the goal right now is preservation, not progress, and these small deposits maintain the habit even when progress stalls and what is harder. Is, the more you move yourself away, the more there is no action. It is harder for you to start when the weather gets nicer again, when you get out of it. And I do want to say there are times where it is completely impossible to find movement. And I get that. What I'm talking about is when we're. Putting ourselves in positions that, as I mentioned, I can't get a 40 minute workout, so I won't workout at all. I can't sweat like I used to. I can't do the things. But not recognizing how much control we have in our situation. So this is not a time where you literally are dealing with an overwhelming circumstance or you yourself are. Sick and down and out, and plus your kids are, and you have work projects. This is the times and the in-between where you're experiencing a lot of friction between you and yourself and where our workouts fit. Into our chaotic schedule. This is the rigid flexibility adapting to still showing up in the capacity that we currently have while we're weathering a rough season. And I wanna circle back to those emails and what really inspired this whole episode. You are not losing this drive. You've not lost that identity of someone who moves and takes care of yourself. This is a season of hard and hard seasons require different strategies. The drive is still there. It's protecting itself right now, and that's okay. And if you're feeling like you can't get your act together like you're falling behind like everyone else has it figured out, and you're the only one struggling, please hear me. You're not alone. You're not broken, and you're doing better than you think. Winter is hard, illness is hard, and motherhood is hard, and all three of those at once is a level of difficulty that doesn't get enough credit. But surviving this season while keeping even the smallest threat of your fitness routine alive, that's the work. That's the win. And spring will come, your energy will return, your kids will get healthy. You'll sleep through the night again. The sun will stay out past 5:00 PM. But the moms who will be ready to build momentum when that happens, they're the ones who didn't quit in February. They're the ones who did the 10 minute walk, the body weight squats in the living room, who met themselves exactly where they were with compassion instead of criticism. You are one of those moms. I know you are because you are still here. You are still listening, you are still showing up. Even if. It's just to hear someone say, me too. I see you and you are not alone. Let's redefine success for the season. Success is not perfection. It's persistence. Success is not crushing your goals. It's keeping the pilot light on. Success is not doing everything. It's doing something. Keep showing up. Keep meeting yourself where you are. Keep being gentle with yourself while staying in the game. You're doing incredible, incredible things, both in and out of your workouts, and I'm cheering for you every step of the way. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend who is in the thick of it right now. Send it to a mom in your life who needs to hear that she's not failing, she's adapting. And please, if you haven't already, please follow the podcast and jump into the podcast notes and subscribe to my newsletter. That's where the real raw conversation happens. It's where I open my inbox for questions, share things I don't talk about anywhere else, and build community with moms and women like you who are navigating all of this in real time. The link is in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe to Miles from Review for more honest conversations about the mental side of fitness and how to keep moving forward no matter what life throws at you. Until next week, be kind to yourself. You deserve it.

Kat 19:47

Thank you for tuning in to Miles From Review, powered by Catholic Strength. If this podcast inspires you, don't keep it for yourself. Hit follow or subscribe to stay updated on the new episodes, and leave us a review to help more women and moms discover this space. Your feedback fuels this podcast and I'd love to hear what's working for you or what topics you want to dive into Next. You can connect with me on Instagram at Cat Fit or share this episode. Road with a friend who is ready to embrace her strength. Remember, fitness isn't about perfection. It's about showing up for yourself and finding strength in every step of your journey. Until next time, keep moving forward one mile at a time.