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Hey Girl!

I'm Heather, lover of hard workouts, good food, curse words, and my family. Find me on Instagram (@HotandHealthyLife) and make sure to enter your email below for Free Workouts, Nutritional Insights, and Hilarious Stories Read More…

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3 years this week, that's how long I've been in therapy.
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It started with a text to my friend Whit detailing how I couldn't sleep because my husband was out of town. I was worried my house would catch on fire and I wouldn't be able to get to my sleeping children upstairs. I was researching ladder options I could keep in my garage and use to get to them out from the 2nd level of my house from the outside (We sleep on the main level).
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This text came 1 week after my meltdown as I worried about my car going over a bridge and into water. Would I be able to get myself & my kids out of the car in enough time? I didn't know but that day I bought 4 seatbelt cutters/car window glass breaks to keep in our cars + my purse.⠀
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I was stuck in a cycle of imagining every worse case scenario and playing it out in my mind. What I would do? How I would react? Was I prepared? ⠀
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I was exhausted. ⠀
I was edgy. ⠀
There were times when I couldn't breathe because these potential horrors felt so real. ⠀
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Speaking of potential horrors & catastrophes.... those are limited only by what you can imagine possible and let me tell you girl, I have a very creative mind. I have imagined it all.
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So back to the night of worrying about fires, my friend Whit lovingly said to me "I think it's time that you talk to someone about all of this" and I finally agreed she was right. ⠀
I went to therapy with the sole purpose of conquering these thoughts. I wasn't interested in rehashing my childhood definitely no crying in front of another person. Just give me a 5 point plan to make this stop.
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My therapist lovingly smiled at me and told me thats not how this was going to work. There was no 5 point plan and no amount of intellectually understanding a concept was going to fix me. I was going to have to do things like slow down, tune in to what I was feeling, and (dammit) cry a little (ok a lot).
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3 years later I still sit on her couch once a week and you guys it has changed my life in the best possible way. Soon I will write an in-depth blog post for you about this. For now I want you to know that going to therapy does not mean you're broken. It could just be the beginning of the rest of your life

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I've been thinking a lot this weekend about life 1 year ago (thanks Timehop). ⠀
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We had just announced our pregnancy (and hilariously failed at it...see my insta story) and to be honest, things weren't going well at home.⠀
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I felt terrible which caused me to be short tempered with my kids and ragey at my husband. My husband, who wasn't super keen on the idea of a 3rd kid in the 1st place was ragey right back at me. He couldn't understand what had happened to his wife. ⠀
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Going to the gym was hard because my body felt different and I wanted to dry heave the entire time I was there. I couldn't maintain my workouts the way I had been doing them just a few weeks prior when I saw the + on a pregnancy test. ⠀
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But what was the alternative? ⠀
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There was no strength training program for pregnancy. ⠀
No one was programming workouts for the kind of woman who loves barbells, burpees, and intensity...The kind of thing I was regularly getting in a Crossfit gym before. ⠀
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So there I was, grouchy AF, sick AF, and without the thing I normally did on a daily basis to feel like myself. ⠀
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Again.... hard to think about because I go right back to knowing exactly what all of that felt like in my body. 🤢⠀
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My survival of that chapter of my life depended on me getting some sort of workout in. So I was forced to start putting together appropriate workouts for my body in order to save my sanity. ⠀
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My kids needed me to do it. ⠀
My husband needed me to do. ⠀
Most importantly.... I needed me to do it in order to feel like ME. ⠀
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That's how #ThePregnantAthlete started. It evolved to something to share with other women after a conversation with @brianna.battles where we agreed that a product like this needed to exist. ⠀
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"Hey Bri... I already kinda have a start on it, want tomake an entire program together?" I asked over text one day. ⠀
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The rest is history. ⠀
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Workouts like the ones in #ThePregnantAthlete are what kept me going in those hard days, they are what I wished I would have had in my first 2 pregnancies. ⠀
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Those workouts (along with my 8 week postpartum program) are on sale until the end of the day TODAY. Grab all the details with the link in my bio.

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I married a man who will never ask me to run a turkey trot with him and for that I am forever grateful. Happy Thanksgiving!! #dontputmedownforcardio

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5.5 month postpartum update- I am getting there.
I think Instagram gives the perception that some women have their shit together more than you do.

You know that 👆is bullshit though right?
Here's the truth about how I'm progressing at this stage of postpartum.
Earlier this summer I completed my 8 week postpartum fitness program. I started by introducing rehab type movements and gradually progressed back to a barbell and a little bit of intensity. It was perfect for that early stage.
I wish I could tell you that upon completion of that I was ready to rock at my pre-pregnancy fitness levels and everything was super easy, but that's not the case.
I've returned to the gym, to my community of friends, but I still have to modify a LOT. • Impact activities i.e. jump rope & box jumps are still a no for me. •Running in short distances is ok
•I lift regularly, but at a lower load than I did pre-pregnancy, •Certain things like front squats light up my back so I omit them for now.
•I'm supposed to spend 5 minutes a day on core strengthening, I remember to do this about half the time.
I am fortunate to have a team of providers who understand where my body is at, in both its strength and it's limitations. I check in with them regularly for care and they help keep me realistic in what my body is capable of right now. (Side note, if you're in DSM check out @breathedsm and @dsmspinesport )

My weight... it's a few lbs heavier than it was pre-pregnancy, which to me is not a great indicator of anything. It's just a number, whether I gain or lose more my friendships and marriage are the same. My children think I'm the coolest either way.
I'm not counting my macros or placing tight limits on my nutrition because I have 3 little kids and I don't sleep much. I don't need another thing to manage at this point. I am however trying to be mindful of my nutrition choices. I *try* to keep my indulgences to 1 small thing a day which is a change from the 3 cookies a day of early postpartum 🤷🏼‍♀️ It's not always easy to be patient, but what's the alternative? Hate myself until I "arrive" where I want to be? No thanks to that. It takes time, but I’m getting there.

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Girlfriend moved into her own room last week. ⠀
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And I cried about it because #lastbaby⠀
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I will never bring another baby home from the hospital. ⠀
I will never have a bassinet by the side of my bed again ⠀
I will never fall asleep to the sounds of one of my newborns grunting and squeaking. ⠀
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And that’s what I want for my life. I'm 100% out of the baby making business (thank you vasectomies), but it’s also a really really emotional experience. ⠀
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Knowing that I'm never going to snuggle her in on my chest in my bed in the middle of the night again makes me sob like I've just experienced a death. (We'll still snuggle, just in her room). ⠀
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There have been so many nights of pure exhaustion. Being woken by her cries In the middle of the night left me to scream internally "Noooooo. F*ck I’m tired, why can’t you just sleep baby!?" ⠀
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But then I would pull her from her bassinet into my bed. I would nurse her and then hold her on my chest. Despite the fact that she was fast asleep I let her linger there for 5 or 10 more minutes while I took her in.⠀
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I wasn’t sleeping I was just laying there. ⠀
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In the dark of night, house quiet, simply holding my baby. Knowing that these nights could both feel so long and be over before I would know it. Though it doesn't always feel like it there does come a day when they sleep alone in their rooms for 10-12 hours at a time. ⠀
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Each night I would pray that this would be the only night waking she’d have because I so desperately needed the sleep. At the same time I had to will myself to peel her off my chest and place her back in her bed. ⠀
Motherhood is honestly so weird, but I'm so happy to be able to experience it. ⠀
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Are babies magical? Yes⠀
Are babies hard? Also yes. ⠀
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But as it turns out I'm learning to experience both of those things on a daily basis. I'm even kinda learning to roll with it which is pretty convenient timing considering I'm never going to do this again. 😂🤷#slowlearner

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I'm trying to be productive today, but it's not going well. There is deep sadness that gets me from time to time and its got it hold on me thick today. ⠀
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13 years ago was the worst day of my life. ⠀
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This guy, Josh, my fiance left on a work trip and didn't return. His plane crashed in an Indiana cornfield and the course of my life was forever altered. ⠀
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My feelings about him are confusing. It's been 13 years, I'm bad at math but I think its more than 1/3 of my life that he has been dead. Yet my soul feels him like we just spoke yesterday. ⠀
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Those first few days, weeks, and years I wanted to turn back time and lock him in our house that fateful morning so he wouldn't leave. I constantly played the what if game? What if he had gotten food poisoning that morning maybe this wouldn't have happened. What if he hadn't taken that job? Maybe he's still be here. ⠀
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As time went on my acceptance of his death finally came. I rarely play out those scenarios any longer because I can accept that I did not have control of that situation. ⠀
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Today, 13 years later, my life is beautiful and I am ok. Which makes me happy and also sad. I think that is something you can only understand if you've lost a partner in life. ⠀
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When I look back at those early years it feels like I literally clawed my way out of a fiery hell and simply refused to die. I tenaciously pursued life because I still had it. To anyone currently experiencing this kind of loss, keep clawing because IT. GETS. BETTER.⠀
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Josh's death was horrific, but it showed me that I am resilient. If I survived that I can probably survive anything. ⠀
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The loss gave me an appreciation for life that I don't know I could have gotten any other way. There are these moments where I'm so aware at how precious all of this is, that it could be gone in an instant. It allows me to love differently, marvel in things like sunsets and children's giggles in a way I'm not sure I would be able to do otherwise and that is a gift.
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I miss him. I also love my life now. Those things are conflicting and confusing but the older I get the more I'm learning to make space for both. ⠀
Josh, I still miss you and I'll see you on the other side.

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