All tagged holiday

Where Can It Be Easy? Where Can It Be Enough?

Learning to be with your body isn’t a math equation, and once I realized that, I started to notice how it actually felt when I wasn’t trying to force it to keep up with sky-high plans on top of everything else I was juggling in my life. Like many things, I noticed without coercion and with curiosity, I began to hear and work with myself rather than against.

I learned it feels good to me to drop all the thought threads in some swings or incline pushups at the sink or stray sets of other repetitive, mildly sweaty movements. Unbroken sets of 50 used to sound like torture to me, like a challenge that was always bigger and meatier and more intimidating. Now they sound like a lilting lullaby.

For now. That may change, as bodies and minds do.

If you’re like me and most womxn with whom I work, no motivation hack in the world is gonna make it more likely you’ll get to the gym. It’s not a desire thing; it’s an overbooked one.

The questions here, for me:

  • Where can it be easy?

  • Where can it be enough?

  • How would it feel good to interrupt that overwhelm shame train (not like punishment for hopping on it) and redirect its energy?

A Better Path to Self-Care for the Holidays

Loving yourself looks different for everyone, and it's important you find what it looks like for you.

For some, it's strength training. It can be meditating. It can be yoga. It can be cooking. It can be your favorite show on Netflix. It can be a manicure and a bubble bath and a glass of wine.

Those acts of self-care are important parts of loving yourself, for sure, but this picture is not complete. The ultimate act of loving yourself, in my opnion — the one ring to rule them all, if you will — is to protect your energy.

HOLIDAY SURVIVAL GUIDE

The holidays are coming up. Everyone's favorite time.

And, let's face it, even more so than last year, this might be a tough season for you, if your friends and/or family members aren't on the same political or social (or any -al) page as you are.

Everyone tries to deny the tension, pretend like it's not there, or (my personal favorite) make a sassy statement that explodes into World War whatevernumberwereonnow. We often white-knuckle our way through holidays, gritting our teeth and forgetting to enjoy the time of joy, gratitude, and community (some of our favorite things!).

Happy 4th of July (and THANK YOU for ONE YEAR)!

This is entirely self-indulgent of me, but I also wanted to take a quick second, on the one-year anniversary of #StrongBySteph, to thank all of you who have been here, whether you've been A1 since Day 1 or just recently joined in on the fun. 52 emails about hacking nutrition, living in gratitude, learning to lift, and letting ourselves take up (and increase!) our space in the world have been quite the ride. And we're only going up! 

I'm so thankful to have you as online friends, IRL friends, colleagues, lifting buddies, Instagram supporters, Facebook commenters (and trolls, because, hey, me too. Love you.), fellow pizza enthusiasts, sauce slatherers, puppy people, and everything in between. I began this project as an outlet, creating space in the fitness industry in which we could discuss more than how many reps we should do or how many grams of carbs are safe to eat, and it's turned into more than I imagined. A simple "thank you" could never be enough, but that's what I've got.