99- Motherhood and Fitness: Building a Consistent Routine Without All-or-Nothing

Kat, host of the Miles From Her View podcast powered by KatFit Strength, explains that motherhood isn't the end of fitness — it's a new chapter that requires a different approach than typical "perfect plan" advice. Drawing on nearly 20 years of coaching and her own ultra-running experience, she argues inconsistency usually reflects programs that ignore the other 23 hours of a woman's day, not a lack of willpower. She outlines key strategies: schedule protected workout times based on realistic "worst weeks," use flexibility and adaptability, divide and conquer household responsibilities when possible, ditch all-or-nothing thinking, accept missed/messy/interrupted workouts, and work in ranges with baseline and shortened workout options. She emphasizes that seasons of life change, progress can mean maintaining or simply staying in motion — and that you don't have to figure it out alone.

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Transcript

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After almost 20 years of coaching women through this exact thing, motherhood isn't the end of your fitness journey. It's a new chapter with a completely different rule book, and most of the advice out there. Either ignores that rule book entirely, or hands you a version written by someone who's never actually had to wake up with a baby and feed a baby at 3:00 AM and then show up for their own workout at 5:00 AM today we're doing the real version, the Messy Interrupted. Sometimes you're doing the squats with a toddler on your back version because you don't have to choose between being a great mom, being strong. You just have to learn how to be both in the same season with the same 24 hours. Let's get into it. 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. Welcome back to Miles from Review. I am Kat, I'm your host, we're going to go over, how do we do this? The biggest challenge that clients come to me with is they can never seem to. Maintain a fitness routine. They're thinking it is something wrong with them. They think they need to buy a special program, a special piece of a workout equipment, try different things where, as I said in the intro, most programs are not designed with the dynamicness that motherhood brings into your life. Whatever your titles are, whatever your 24 hours is looking like. Most programs are not planned and designed and taught with the skills on how to integrate your fitness routine into your everyday life. And this is where I draw on my early part of my career in college coaching, the goal was to. Have the athletes gain the autonomy and understanding of how to push themselves. We're not talking at all costs because when we are looking at something where we are going at all costs and not listening to our body, that is to territory for injury, burnout, and more as a college athletic coach, we are prepping the athletes to perform at their best at the right time of year around championship season. We also want them to continue to perform and to break through their times, their distances, their heights, so that in their four years they are seeing that progress how does this relate to you where you're like, I don't consider myself as an athlete. I am not someone who is going to compete well. It is the same ideology as a coach of women who are looking to incorporate a fitness program into their everyday life. I want them to be champions. I want them to be able to perform their best every day it is not at all costs for individuals in everyday life. We are being pulled in every single direction. Again, you know your titles, you can think about them right now. Think about all the transitions you have to do in any given day. All the things you have to think about in any given day. All the things and all the people you have to show up for that is your 24 hours. I wanna clarify something I said in the intro because it was pretty glossed over. If you've been a long time listener, you've heard me say this before, but I'm going to repeat it. If you are new, and because we can always hear this again. None of us have the same 24 hours. The only fact is there are 24 hours in a day. My 24 hours is totally different than all of my clients. All of my clients have different 24 hours with that. In those 24 hours. The coaching needs to be different. There are commonalities across the board with all of my clients, and then there are uniqueness with all of my clients. There's uniqueness with myself and how I train compared to. Other friends who are also training for ultra distances as well, because nobody has the exact same 24 hours. Even the individuals in my house don't have the same 24 hours. My husband and I do not have the same 24 hours, even though we have the same children and we are moving throughout the day. His 24 hours is different than my 24 hours. So this notion that oftentimes gets tossed around, especially on social media, that everybody has 24 hours and everybody should be able to get this done, is absolutely false. So we're gonna establish that there. When I look at a client, when they come to me and say. I have never been consistent at working out. I wanna get to know what does their 24 hours look like? Who is this person that is before me and how can I write a program that can be integrated into their life it is not going to be seamless, and it's not going to happen on day one. This is something that I explain to my clients and I also share with them, and it may come as something a bit. Bold and maybe seeming like I don't believe in them, but I do expect my clients to fail. I do expect. There to be weeks where they're not gonna show up for workouts. It doesn't mean that everyone in their house has come down with an illness. It is, life is going to happen. Life will always happen. Life will always interfere. So I want to set my clients up for success, that they have a program that they can maintain, not at all costs, because there are. Times we need to scale back with our fitness. But it the challenge with that, and where we typically see plateaus and no progress is when we have programs, when we have plans, when we are working with trainers who do not understand. The other 23 hours of our day, assuming that you see that trainer or that plan takes 60 minutes, just making it simple math here. So when the plan doesn't take into consideration what you're doing in the other 23 hours a day and what those demands and how fluid those situations can be, that's when there tends to be these long pauses. That's when clients. Tell me, oh, I'm really good at the first two weeks, or the first three weeks, or the first four weeks, and then something happens and everything derails it. That's indicates to me that the plans that they have done do not appropriately integrate with that individual. It has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with. Their motivation, their willpower, their strength, their ability to handle the workout. I tend to argue that all of my clients can handle very intense workouts. If you are a mom and you have many hats titles,, your depth of resilience is big. You can handle a lot, and we need to bring that into. Our workouts. That does not mean you go from consistently lifting 10 pounds to now lifting 50 pounds. It means how do we employ the skills that we currently do in our everyday life to be able to transfer into our workouts? And I'm going to go into that and we're gonna go into ways to keep our workouts there. Again, not at all costs. I cannot say that enough. This is not an episode of well. If you had the time, if you had the drive, you would work out. This is not that kind of episode. This is not how I train myself. I wanna be abundantly clear on that. It is not in my vernacular to coach my clients at all costs. It is absolutely the opposite. I coach my clients from the autonomy of they know their schedules and how to show up, meeting themselves where they're at. This is how I train. This is how I've been able to make it to the a hundred mile finish line multiple times while wearing multiple hats in my own life. And. Doing that multiple times. I ran my first a hundred miler three years ago, as well as other subsequent ultra marathons over almost close to 20 ultra marathons. In the last six years, I have done it without being burnt out. I have done it without injuries cropping up because it is not at all costs because it is. Absolutely understanding when to pull back and when to push, and how to show up with these skills that I work with my clients with. I did an episode like this with episode 77. You don't have to go back and look, and I cannot believe I at episode 99 right now. It has that for a moment. We're gonna take a little side. John here. I cannot believe in all the craziness of life. I am almost at a hundred episodes. So this is episode 99, and I do feel it is important to reiterate, add a little bit more depth to the understanding of how we can integrate. Motherhood and fitness and how it looks different and why it isn't your fault, and how we can keep our fitness there and adjust it so that you aren't burnt out doing things at all costs and at the risk of injury. So one of the first things that I go over with clients is we need to have designated workout times. This is not a hard and fast thing. A fluid life requires a lot of gray areas. I am someone who loves structure. I am someone who loves control. I am like, give me a schedule a man. I can do it. But when we are dealing with multiple things in our life, multiple schedules, multiple people, multiple demands, what helps is. Being flexible and adaptable, and I'll get a little bit more into that later. But when I say designated workout times, it does not mean at 5:00 AM every single day without fail, you are doing a workout. What it means is you are looking at your week as a micro cycle, or even that could be the macro in the days, a micro cycle, but you are taking the initiative to schedule the workout because if you say, oh, I'm gonna work out two times this week, but there's not the action to put down either in your calendar or. An actual plan of this is the time that you're going to work out. It isn't going to happen. Think about times where, maybe it was that magical, seemingly January 1st where you're like, I'm gonna start working out four times a week or three times a week, whatever that frequency is. And you declare that and you're like, okay, here we go. First week starts off great. Second week is pretty solid. Third week you drop a day, maybe it's still solid. And as the subsequent weeks of the year, the new year, tick on there starts to be some diminishing efforts of showing up. You need to set real protected times for your workout. Yes, life can happen. I get it now. When life happens, this is where we become a little bit more fluid. You need to. Adapt and change from there. So we wanna look at setting real protected times for your workouts, not based on the schedule you wish you had. And that's the key thing is we all have the unicorn week, the week where, my goodness, everything is happening like it should and you are nailing it. Maybe think about that first week in January where everything is seamless. You are knocking it out of the park, so to speak. You're like, I can sustain this. I'm here. I've arrived. I finally am stepping into that version I always envisioned, however life happens. I said, life is always gonna happen. And when life happens, that's what typically plans derail. You have gaps at the gym, you fall off, quote unquote, that wagon or off the tracks, and you then start to think, this doesn't work for me. So when we schedule workouts. I always have my clients think about what is your worst week? What is a week when literally it is pouring with all the needs and the demands, and we plan for that week. That is how we plan. What is your bare minimum? What do you know you can sustain when essentially the sky is falling? Because when kids entered my life, when I became a mom, I. Was like, I can maintain this routine. I was up at 5:00 AM because I knew that was the only time I had to work out before the kids woke up, before I was quote unquote on that clock, no one needed me during that time. I could finish a workout, but what I also ignored during that was I needed sleep. Sometimes I was up two or three times a night with. A kid, both kids, et cetera. Sometimes I was up late finishing work. Sometimes my body just needed extra sleep. But I would get up because that is the only time. Because if I was committed, if I was going to be motivated, if I was someone who truly worked out, I needed to get up. It was the at all costs that started costing me my sleep. My myself, my happiness, I was crashing midday, I was getting cranky. I started, getting soft tissue injuries because I was pushing myself so hard and ignoring that I needed sleep because that I felt was the only time I had for me. So I needed to learn to adapt that 5:00 AM there's nothing magical about 5:00 AM and working out. Yes. At that time in my life, that was when. My kids didn't need me for the most part. Most of my kids would sleep past 5:00 AM There was always maybe one or two mornings where someone would wake up and either a workout would end or I was able to turn on a show or something and distract them for a little bit. However, I had to learn a hard lesson that. My schedule's gonna look different. My energy demands are gonna be different and that I need to have more adaptability. But how can I have more adaptability with scheduling my workouts and understanding that this flexibility does not have any value on my worth? As someone who takes pride and wants to prioritize their fitness, that was the first thing that I needed to be okay with. Again, this adaptability thing is going to keep coming up in this framework, so scheduling my workouts had to mean that I had to be flexible, but still schedule them. So sometimes I train mid-morning after drop offs from school. Sometimes it's a lunchtime lift or run in between client sessions. The point is it's on the calendar and it's protected. I do understand in this scenario and some of the scenarios I'm going to use. It may not apply to your life. So what will apply is the scheduling and the adaptability. Again, you have and know your 24 hours with adaptability. With scheduling, you can find times, and I know this is coming across harsh to fit the workouts in again for some. Getting a workout in mid-morning after drop offs is not applicable, or even at lunchtime is not applicable. Okay. I do understand that some of my clients, the morning is the best time slot. So we really work at how can we ensure we're getting good sleep, how do we tap into that? And there are other ways to be flexible with your workouts, still being able to show up and we'll get into that later. So if you're hearing that and you're like I'm already out. I can't work out mid-morning or lunch, my 24 hours is not your 24 hours. I am using this as an example. We want to stop just treating our workouts as something you get when there's leftover time. There will never be leftover time because there will always be something to fill it. Something always will come up. So you have to claim that time, put it on your schedule, set a reminder, and treat it with the same respect. You give it to the time you give your children, your partner. A doctor's appointment, a parent teacher meeting, the thing is your health is important and it deserves the kind of protection that you give to everyone else. And be honest with yourself about the times that will actually work. It's hard to be honest with ourselves, but be honest with it. If you know you're absolutely exhausted by 8:00 PM and you need to unwind, don't put a workout. Then don't tell yourself you're gonna work out after the kids are to bed. If you know that is just not going to happen. Look at your actual energy patterns, your actual rhythm, and find those pockets of time that are genuinely available, not theoretically available. If you know you have a hard time getting up at 5:00 AM don't schedule a workout then. If you know you don't have time for an hour long workout. Do 30 minute workouts, do 20 minute workouts. Your season, your schedule will change. But the important thing is taking that time and prioritizing it and putting it on the calendar and getting comfortable with that time, potentially moving about. I will say there are times where. I'm not super keen on having to get up early, but I know I need to get this workout done and it's the only time, and it's maybe one time out of a week or one time out of a four week period that I need to adjust and I'm gonna be bold here and force myself to get up extra early knowing that my sleep has been consistent, that it's a little out of the norm, but my workout is important to me. Again, it's not at all costs, but it is with scheduling and understanding that this is this week's demand. Next week it'll fluctuate and change. Number two, divide and conquer. This is a big one, and I do understand, again, this is. Based on your situation, your setting. And I do understand not every person has a partner who may be able to help out. Some of my clients have partners that travel a lot. They also travel, but if you have a clear plan, may not be permanent, the same thing every week, but. If you have a clear division of labor in your household, this helps that each partner gets their time to focus on themselves in a 24 hour cycle or even a 48 hour cycle. Again not every single time do I, and even now that my kids are in middle school and high school, do I have uninterrupted workouts? Or that my schedule is perfect and that I always have a consistent, complete workout time. So I wanna preface it with that, that there is that adaptability, a flexibility that is gonna keep coming up. There are times where both with my husband and I. Our week looks extremely dicey. We are currently in a week where the divide and conquer is, my goodness, a lot of it is following on me because he has a, an abnormal call scheduled this week where it is bleeding into the evening with that, and this goes back to scheduling and stuff like that. I scheduled my week, so it is a lower workout week for me. We talked it out. We saw where. Someone has to pull back while someone's pushing in return. His workout week is lower because he has all these calls that are in the evening and out of the norm where he has not done work until eight, nine o'clock. So a lot of the evening routine, or all the evening routine rather, is falling on me to get the kids to and from their respective sports and activities to be around for homework, to get dinner on and off the table. So that is where things are coming. I have clients early in the morning, so this week I am unwilling because I need rest to get up at extremely early times. So this is where I'm like, okay, I need to pull back on my workouts, and that's okay. This week is not permanent in my schedule, this week, I need to handle more. He's handling more with work, so he can't handle more at home. This week is not permanent that way. So you're gonna have to look at your schedule and look at the demands and see where can you divide and conquer. And I do understand in some seasons, a lot of the labor. Does fall on the default parent. And when my kids were little, a lot of it fell on me. Does not mean my husband wasn't supportive. It just is. That was how it worked out in my household. Look at where you can have the help, where you can work together. Your partner is a partner. It shouldn't be all on you and there. I do have an episode coming up with a fantastic psychologist where we go into establishing boundaries and how to set up solid partnership and what this looks like, not just in the context of getting a workout in, but in the whole context of a relationship. And it is a really incredible conversation. Number three, ditching the all or nothing trap. This is something that I've mentioned throughout this episode is we are done with the all or nothing. The all or nothing thinking sets you up for guilt, shame, and frustration. It is not. A successful methodology to apply, especially to your fitness routine. Think about all or nothing when you are showing up in that all or nothing context. It means I'm going to show up absolutely a hundred percent or absolutely nothing at all. When we do that, it inevitably causes us to fall off that proverbial track. We're done with that. What we need to focus on is looking at what we can do that day, so you plan your workouts out on your schedule. Again, realistically, understanding your schedule and what you can do, we have to be really honest with ourselves. It is okay to say at some point, I want to work out six days a week, or I want to work out four days a week or three days a week. But in reality, you may only have the scheduling capability with everything that you have going on. Energy capacity. Accessibility or assistance to get to one workout or two workouts, maybe even three. But you have to know your schedule. Schedule those workouts in there. You need to know what assistance you have with the resources around you, with your partner, with other outside resources that you might be able to have help support you in getting time for yourself. Then the all or nothing trap is what we need to ditch. We need to understand that if you have a 40 minute workout, but life happened, maybe your energy is just slow and you have the capacity for a 10 minute workout. Showing up for that 10 minute workout is a success that it's not I can't do 40 minutes, or I don't have the energy for 40 minutes, so therefore I'm not gonna show up. No, it's showing up with the understanding of what is the capacity I have today? What can I do to today? Realistically, the all or nothing is I'm gonna ignore my capacity. My scheduling, understanding, et cetera, and I'm going to force it or I'm not going to do anything that prevents us from making progress, that causes plateaus, that also keeps us on and off, that proverbial track that wagon. What, however you wanna frame it. So when we look at. Where am I at today? What can I do today? There is plenty of times where I have executed, scheduling my workouts, planned around my workouts, employed the assistance with my husband, where we did the divide and conquer, and then it comes time for my workout. And maybe something comes up at last minute that desperately needs my attention and I need to cut it short. Or maybe I start my workout and my body is saying Absolutely not today. I listen to it, I scale back. I do what I need to. I adjust where I need to, and it keeps me showing up consistently within the frequency that works for my life at that season, during that time for my goals. Again, this is something that. You have to work on it. It is bespoke to you. This is where the uniqueness of my clients come in. This is where I understand that maybe my clients may have a similar title. Maybe their kids may in the same season of life, maybe their, home situation with partners is pretty much identical. However, they're still unique individuals at number four. Be okay with missed and messy or interrupted workouts. If we only found success on an perfectly executed workout plan, the amount of people that would be able to find success would be extraordinarily small. You can still find success on a workout plan that looks messy. Again, that is how I make a 200 mile finish lines. My training plans do not look pretty. The amount of times that I do have to adapt, adjust are a lot, and that is the norm of my training plan. When I worked in college coaching and I had more of a beautifully controlled container with college athletes. My plans still looked a little messy. There was always a bit of a pivot modifications put in, understanding where the athlete was at, understanding what we had to tweak, what we had to introduce, what we had to take away to see that they would be successful. This is what athletes do. The levels may be different because of what they're training for versus what you are training for, but. They had missed workouts, messy workouts, not so many interrupted workouts in the sense of they had kids or work or life. But there may have been some times and there was times where I had to make accommodations where athletes. Had something come up, something, a family thing that where they had to go home they had other things that did come up. Smaller chances of that than when you are holding down a career, raising children, a household. Interruptions become greater in that context than someone who is a student athlete in the college context. It is normal. Do not believe the hype that might be out there on social media where this person is touting that. In order to be successful, you have to have these perfect curated workouts that are never interrupted and they look beautiful. That is not sustainable. If that is something you strive for and that is an expectation that you think is going to get you the results, you'll forever stay. In that proverbial hopping, on and off the track, falling on and off the wagon, and that all or nothing principle is what is at the heart of that messaging. It is not sustainable. It sets you up for guilt, shame, and frustration, and that isn't going to help you progress or see the results you want to see with your fitness. Now, with understanding that. Missed and messy and interrupted workouts are going to happen with breaking away from that. All or nothing trap with helping that divide and conquer and scheduling your workouts. This next one, number five, is working in ranges, which helps you continue to show up where you're at in the capacity that you have so that you can continue seeing progress. One of the things I help. With the clients that I work with is, I always say we're working in ranges. We're moving away from rigid, fixed thinking of workouts that I always have to be here and I never can drop below. This pacing in a mile, this weight that I lift, no, we need to break away from that. Part of that is, 60 minutes of working out is the gold standard. 40 minutes of working out is the gold standard. No, it is not the gold. Standard, the gold standard is being able to show up in your most toughest weeks in the capacity that you have to put your health and wellbeing first. Yes, it's going to look different than in that unicorn week, but being able to show up for yourself should be the gold standard. Not in these dare I say. These arbitrary terms of hitting constantly 10,000 steps a day, working out for 60 minutes every single day, never having more than one rest day. Never letting anything in a fear that is setting yourself up for failure. That's all or nothing. That's perfection. Seeking with fitness, where if we work in ranges and how elite athletes do they work in ranges, that it is going to help you become more consistent. How I program for my clients is we build in flexibility from the start. Every session has a target version if everything goes smoothly, but it also has a shortened version, a condensed version, a baseline version. So no matter what the day throws at you, that there's a version of the workout that works to meet your life. Because the fact of the matter is I'm not always there with my client. I have a subset of clients where I've never met them and they have a workout plan that we communicate via the app they need to have the skills so that the plan that I put forth, they know how to adjust, to push, to pull back to work in the ranges that they have, the capacity that day. Clients who I do see in person or in a video virtual context. Again, they have the same skills. They have access to the app in which they know the workout is structured in a way that they have autonomy to be able to show up in the capacity and the time constraints and all the things that life throws at them to be able to be successful because this is what a lot of programming misses. It thinks of only that unicorn week when everything is going perfectly and not in the context of life is messy and. Interrupted. There are so many things that come up in life that we don't plan for. Our energy levels can be predictable, especially when we are entering that perimenopause menopause timeframe. When we are in the young child, baby toddler area where there's no guarantees, your child's going to sleep, and then they. Grow up into teens and they wanna have those hard conversations at 10:00 PM when you're like, I am so tired, but I need to be present. So life is unpredictable. So when we get comfortable working in these ranges, it allows us. To have the autonomy, the freedom to still show up for ourselves, which is huge. A successful program is one you can still show up on your worst weeks, albeit, I'll put a little asterisk there. There are weeks where my clients, they're off. Because life, that's what it recalls for, and that is a thousand percent, okay. That does not mean a program failed. That does not mean you failed, and you can't maintain consistency with a workout. No, because there are times, even for myself, where a whole week is needed, potentially unplanned, oftentimes we can't schedule these things, but there are times in our lives where we do need to say This week. Maybe two weeks, maybe three weeks. We need to put a more formal workout plan on a pause. That is normal. Even elite athletes have that too. You're human. So this is where getting comfortable in building and flexibility is going to help. Flexibility is looking at the timing structure. I write my workouts and I tell clients, we're gonna celebrate sets and reps left on the table. We're gonna celebrate unfinished workouts because That's what helps keep us successfully showing up. So again, if it's planned, I plan them on a baseline of around 40 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes, and clients know if they only have a certain amount of time what they need to do. The way I write my programs are the. Exercises that are at the top that they start with in I know those exercises, if they were to just do the first two exercises, it is going to allow them to see the progress as well as maintain what they have gained with their workouts, that it will still help set them up for success. Now also layered in the app I have a collection of workouts for them. If it's I need to do X, Y, Z, they know they can go in and pick a workout that may not be scheduled for them on that day that they can do an alternative workout, maybe work. Called them to travel and they don't have access, or they don't wanna go work out at the hotel gym, and they're in their hotel room, so they have a body weight workout right there. Or maybe they threw in exercise bands into their suitcase and they have those. So again, it provides them autonomy to be like, Hey, you know what? I know this workout is going to also help keep me moving forward. And this work travel thing came up. I'm still in control. I can still. Address my own health and wellness needs. So the baseline becomes your anchor. When things get chaotic, when everything is falling apart, you and you have almost nothing left, you can still hit that baseline. This is part of a well structured program. This is something that is setting up clients for success, and this is how the whole programming and how I coach my clients with their programming to. Be able to keep showing up even in life's most chaotic moments. Range thinking applies to intensity too. So not every session is going to be maximum effort where you are, picking up the heaviest weight that you could ever lift and pushing or pulling through that and. Some days you may have that energy to do that, and some days you need to maintain, and some days it's just move. All of it contributes, all of it matters, and all of it adds up over time in ways that like the rigid and the all or nothing thinking, never will. That sets up for the constant stop start and feeling this guilt and shame around our fitness. Number six, the season is huge. The season of life you're in can dictate your energy, your time. Seasons are not permanent. Your child, children don't stay babies forever. The chaotic mom taxi season will end pregnancy, postpartum. You're always postpartum. It changes. Pregnancies don't go on forever, and perimenopause, menopause is not, there is some leveling out with that. So looking at the seasons, this is going back to what can you do to set yourself up for success? What is realistic in this season? This is when I tell my clients that. It's okay if they miss workouts. It's okay if sets and reps are up on the left on the table is because we're learning how to show up during these times. There we're learning that there might be some seasons of surviving and there might be seasons of thriving, and how do we become comfortable with that flexibility? It feels abnormal because we are taught that. When life gets crazy, we should be able to handle it all and there shouldn't be any push pull, but the more we can learn that, okay, this is a time to push. And when I say it's not an all at cost things or this is the all part of that, all or nothing, it's not. Okay. Now we're gonna do the most maximum amount of workouts. Make up for lost time. It's not that it's okay. We can turn up the intensity a bit appropriate to the level in which we are at, not where we want to be, but where you are at now. And when a season of pullback comes into, I know I have this great foundation. I know that I have this good baseline that on days in that season where I need to pull back, I might find energy levels are there, or time. Capacity is there that I can push a little bit more in a season of pull and that push in that season of pull is going to look different than in that season where you're having those unicorn weeks and you can really push and the energy is there and you're thriving. This stuff is not black or white. This is not the fun, sexy stuff you find on any social media. This is the stuff where it may feel hard and uncomfortable at first with clients when they're adapting to this, when they start to implement these skills, the integration of their workouts is incredible. They're finding they can do it. They were always the individual who is someone who. Prioritizes their fitness, their wellbeing, their health, and they are thriving even in times where they are surviving because they're able to pour into themselves because they're able to have that consistency behind them. And that looming shame and guilt thought of, oh, one day I hope to, oh, I hope to get there, to be that person that can prioritize my health, but. It is not in the all or nothing. It's not in the at all costs. It's not in the never interrupted, perfect, curated workouts, and this is where that mental battle comes in, which is hard. The mental battle of guilt, the mental battle of comparison. That voice that tells you're not doing enough. Not training hard enough, not disciplined enough, not consistent enough. That feeling everyone else has it figured out, and you're the only one white knuckling it. That mental battle keeps you stuck, not the actual circumstances you're in, not the real barriers in front of'em. It's a story that you tell yourself about those barriers and. When you get paralyzed by comparison, when you're overwhelmed by the gap between where you are and where you want to be, when you convince yourself that if you can't do it perfectly, you shouldn't do it all, that's when you stop moving and when you stop moving, that's when you actually start to go backwards. Not because of the missed workouts, not because of the rough week, because you stopped trying altogether because the mental weight of it became heavier than the physical effort would've been. So I want you to hear this, and this comes from two decades of working in this industry. Progress looks completely different in every season. Sometimes progress is hitting. New PRS in the gym, lifting heavier weights. Sometimes progress is maintaining your strength through a period of absolute chaos. Sometimes progress is continuing to show up when every part of you wants to quit. Trust me, it happens to me still. I have been someone, an athlete for life, and there are times where I just wanna quit, but I keep showing up. The goal is to stay in motion even when it's small steps, even when it feels like you're barely moving, even when you look around and feel like everyone else is sprinting. Because motion is what builds consistency over time is what builds, and the accumulation of small ander in interrupted good enough efforts. That is what creates strong, capable, healthy body and mind, not perfection, not intensity. Every day just. Staying in motion. Before I close out the episode, I'm gonna take 30 seconds and be direct with you. If you've been listening to this episode and thinking, I need the support in my life, I want to understand how to do this. This is what I do and this is why I created my business. I work with women virtually or in person, currently in person. I do have a wait list, but virtually I am still accepting new clients. It's not a cookie cutter program. It is not a here's a spreadsheet or here's an app. I will never see you again or talk to you. It's real coaching built around your actual life, your actual schedule, your actual season. If you've been trying to figure it out on your own and you just feel stuck and overwhelmed, it's not because you're failing. You have the capacity. You are strong, and you are someone who can do this. It might just mean you need someone in your corner. If you pop up to the show notes, book a call with me. I'd love to chat to see if this would be something that would be ideal for you. We're here episode 99. In a week it'll be episode a hundred. This is something that I never thought would take. This is something that I never thought would grow, and when I look back. Most in particularly, not only just to the episode 77, when I talked about these things before and I now have gone a little bit deeper into it. The messages that I received from listeners, I am just genuinely grateful. Grateful that you are still here. Grateful that the community keeps growing. The listenership continues to grow, continues to show up, and I do hope that this is providing you with real, tangible action steps that you are able to implement. The reason why I wanted to start a podcast is because not only. A greater reach than social media. It is a way for me to really do a deep dive where social media has limitations. It's a way for me to hopefully you feel closer to me in some regards that you have access to me, whether or not you ever become a client of mine, that hopefully this is a way that you can take action to help prioritize your own health and wellbeing. And if you take one thing from this episode, let it be this. You don't have to do it all to be able to do it right. And motherhood isn't something that happened to your fitness journey. It's a new chapter with different roles, different challenges, and if you let it, different opportunities to show yourself what you're actually made of. The rules are different now. The approach has to change. And what worked before may not work right now. And that's not a failure, that's just the next version of yourself trying to figure it out. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this has resonated with you, share it with another mom or a woman who needs to hear it. And better yet, follow the show, leave a review. This helps other women like yourself who are looking for real, tangible information to be able to continue growing and prioritizing their own health and wellbeing. I'll see you next week on episode 100, and it's going to be something special. 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.