Have you ever tried working out with a kid weaving between your legs? Or climbing on your back? Or (once they’re a little older) critiquing your form?

Let’s be real. Squeezing in a workout when you have kids (especially when they’re on summer vacation and you work from home) can be rough. Routines are thrown off completely and it’s hard enough to just conquer day-to-day tasks. Adding self care in seems like a total luxury.

But it’s not.

I’m a firm believer that if you want something, you’ll make time for it. It might mean cutting out other things that are less important, but if you really want it, you’ll make sacrifices.

This weekend I took the girls to their school to play on the playground and take their scooters around the track. I figured I’d get a nice walk in while they were doing their scooting. Um, wrong. If there’s anything all these years of motherhood should have taught me, it’s that nothing goes as planned. Ever. Ellie wandered slowly, dragging her scooter along beside her at a snail’s pace, while her sister sped around the track like there was Olympic gold at the end.

As we inched along, I got frustrated about not getting in the little bit of physical activity I thought was a given. But I quickly shifted my perspective before becoming full on doom and gloom.

I couldn’t walk briskly. So what? My meandering littlest one was happy as could be and I’d just have to make the most of it. Instead of rushing her along, I started doing lunges next to her. She found this incredibly amusing and so did her sister. We were all happy.

Why don’t I do things like that more often?! Being a mother means being a master of manipulation. You take the situation you’re presented with and you make it work.

So I mentioned a few weeks ago that my husband got me a Fitbit Flex for Mother’s Day—and that I’m maybe, sort of, a little bit obsessed with it. Well, getting to my goal of 10,000 steps a day has proven to be a little more difficult than I expected, which has only strengthened my obsession. I find it especially crazy when I have a day where I’m on my feet a lot and I don’t get nearly as many steps in as I thought I would. Turns out standing around the kitchen chopping veggies or waiting in line at the store is not nearly as active as it feels. Still, I’ve found ways to add more steps into my day and each week my activity has been improving.

Along the way though, I’ve noticed some peculiar new issues that I lovingly refer to as #fitbitproblems…

Have you ever woken up one day with the realization that maybe you don’t feel as good as you could?

Tired of weird stomach issues and feeling bloated and zapped of all energy, I took to the internet one day searching for books about healing yourself through your food choices. I poked around for awhile before putting six or seven of them on hold at my local library, determined to make a change.

While all of the books were interesting, I was totally pulled in by Alejandro Junger’s Clean and its message of restoring your body’s ability to heal itself by getting rid of inflammation and toxicity. The more I read, the more I nodded my head. I’ve experienced so many of the symptoms discussed in the book and couldn’t think of a good reason not to give his 21-day cleanse a try—especially since I could do it and be done in time to indulge in a big, fat brownie on my birthday. 😉

Now, this isn’t one of those hardcore starvation cleanses. It’s really just an elimination diet (which removes a lot of the foods that cause inflammation) combined with a cleanse that aids digestion—basically, you have a liquid breakfast and dinner (which can be a smoothie, green juice or soup).

Being a relatively clean eater in the first place, I didn’t expect to have too much trouble—although I was afraid of my sweet tooth and tendency to closet binge when stressed. I kept a diary to track my progress and any changes I felt and thought I’d share it with you guys in case you have toyed with the idea of doing something similar.

Warning: I’m going way out on a limb here and sharing detailed statistics (both pounds and inches) and before and after photos. Be gentle. 

Can we talk about the Always Superbowl commercial for a second? It hit me hard. I cried actual tears. My husband looked at me like I was crazy, much like when our oldest daughter was born and I would randomly burst into tears while sitting on the couch watching TV.

I hit puberty at nine. Nine. My daughter will turn nine this summer. When I think back, that was the time period that changed everything. I was suddenly conscious of my body; uncomfortable with it. From boys in my class noticing and mentioning how much I had grown (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) to grown men starting to look at me in a way I hadn’t experienced before, my body suddenly seemed like this foreign thing that I had no control over. I hadn’t grown accustomed to it yet and felt like I needed time to understand it, yet it felt like the outside world was already judging it.

I’m not exactly sure when it started, but for a long time I was in this weird relationship with food. I needed to eat all of it. Like, every last bit that was on my plate. It didn’t matter if I was at a restaurant and there were like three portions piled up or if I was at home and my eyes were just way bigger than my stomach. If it was there, I had to eat it.

Part of me thinks it was my inner cheap ass and hater of waste saying “I’m not letting that end up in the garbage.” Another part of me says I had no willpower and wanted all of the tasty things. It was probably both.

It wasn’t until I started exercising regularly last February that I began thinking more about my relationship with food. After a few months of working out almost daily and losing very little in the pound department, I was immensely frustrated. I was eating healthy most of the time (although trying hard to sweep sugar binges under the rug) and seeing very little for it.

Do you know how annoying it is to sweat your butt off with Jillian Michaels just about every single day and have the scale stare back at you with the same unsatisfactory number week after week? Yes, I was feeling better. Yes, I was absolutely stronger and healthier. But failing to lose any weight when you’re working so hard messes with your head.