Some ramblings on habits and identity

I've spent 23 of the last 36 months pregnant or breastfeeding. The thing about growing and feeding a human is that your body's purpose is developing and sustaining that human and… frankly, nobody gives a shit about you.

Seven weeks before I found out I was pregnant with my first kid, I did seven strict pull-ups: https://youtube.com/shorts/H0tMbt9KlL4¹

Then lockdowns started. We were supposed to wash our hands a lot, not touch our faces, and sanitize our groceries.

I, like many others, stopped going to the gym. Instead of lifting, I took naps. My dreams of an Instagram-worthy "fit" pregnancy with my maternity photos taken in the bottom of an overhead snatch and a belly to be envied went down the drain as I stopped leaving my house at the same time that morning sickness and first-trimester fatigue kicked in.

As my belly grew, I feared leaving my house. We knew so little about COVID then, and I was worried about my kid having a third eye… or something absurd.

I didn't leave my house. I wouldn't let friends come over. When my husband deployed, I would go long stretches without talking to another adult in person. I went to the gym once, when things started reopening, while masked, but I found it uncomfortable and was so afraid the whole time that I didn't go back. As I rewatched The Walking Dead at all hours of the night (that good ol' pregnancy insomnia), my sanity was held together with duct tape and bandaids as I reveled in the joy of a challenging role at work and walking laps (masked) at the empty mall on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

As time went on, my fitness dropped. I could see my growing belly opposite my shrinking arms. We moved. Eventually, I had a happy and healthy baby boy in a still pre-vaccine COVID world. None of my immediate family met my son until he was three months old.

… and I never made it back to the gym.

And then there were vaccines! I went back to work as a working mom, trying to navigate the cesspool of toddler diseases with a demanding job and ten direct reports while also going to grad school at night. Time felt scarce, and I felt like I was in survival mode.

… and I never made it back to the gym.

We bought a house and moved again. I visited two different CrossFit boxes, but neither had classes at a time that worked with my schedule. Despite a couple of visits, I never became a regular. I enjoyed lifting but couldn't figure out the practicalities of it in a world where I was the she-fault parent.

I got pregnant again. That first-trimester fatigue kicked in, but with a growing infant already at home, tired became a state of being. People are so careful with pregnant people that it's not a good time to start a new workout regimen. And so, yet again, I wasn't in the gym.

I had my second baby, another beautiful and healthy baby boy. As the postpartum hormones came and went and I settled into what life looked like as a working mom of two, I was disappointed at how I felt- how none of my clothes fit, how a walk around a hilly neighborhood could make me break a sweat, and how I wasn't even sure I could hang on a pull-up bar anymore, let alone do pull-ups.

It'd be so easy to feel like a failure in this state. It'd be so easy to let inertia continue- to find the problems with making something work, to feel like if I weren't doing it 5-6 days per week- like before- it would never be good enough. But, a couple of months ago, cleared by my doctor for postpartum activity, I went to my first Orange Theory class since pre-pandemic.

And then I went back.

And then, I signed up for a month.

And then, I went for all the classes I signed up for.

And the month renewed.

And I got someone to go with me.

Now we go twice a week together.

And now, I can look up and say that I have been going regularly for the last five months.

Emilie Schario @emilieschario

New milestone @orangetheory #bragboard

I don't know what my deadlift PR is (I was so close to 300 lbs in 2020, like SO close). I can't tell you the last time I did a heavy clean and jerk. But I've been in the gym every week for the last five months, putting in the work. Slowly, I went from a walk to a jog to a run.

I'm the kind of person who goes to the gym regularly. This has been part of my self-identity, even for the two-ish years it wasn't actually true. Habits aren't made overnight, though. They're slow.

Are three days a week the same as the four to six before? No, but that isn't the right goal. Twenty-five-year-old Emilie, who lifted four days a week and would spend an hour each weekend day on a cardio machine watching Netflix, didn't have two tiny humans who depend on her for their well-being. If I spend all my time trying to hold 2023 Emilie to the standards of 2019-2020 Emilie, I will never be successful. My life is different now.

Rebuilding a gym habit was as much about reconstructing the narrative in my head as it was about actually rebuilding the practice and figuring out the practicalities of making it work.

What's working now won't work forever. I know that. I'm okay with that. But it is working right now, so I'm just going to lean into it.

1. The Substack Docs tell me that this should be a rich embed but it didn’t auto populate so… whatever. https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037832971-How-do-I-embed-media-in-my-post-e-g-images-video-GIFs-