Keeping Balance
Keeping Balance
Growth through Relocation and Acclimating to a New Gym Environment
Have you ever pondered how a major relocation can stir up your life? Let me tell you, it's more than just a change of scenery. Join me as I recount our journey from Tennessee to Arizona, the unexpected decision to rent, my initial resistance to the change, and ultimately the adaptation to my new surroundings. Plus, I'll share my experience with CLEARSTEM (a skincare line that's been a game-changer for my acne-prone skin in this desert climate) and how a shower head filter has changed my body.
Ever thought about how it feels to be an introvert in a massive public gym? It’s a sensory overload that can leave you feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, but sometimes, we need to step out of our comfort zones for the sake of our wellbeing. My transition from my cozy home gym to a bustling public one in a new city was not easy, but it taught me a valuable lesson about resilience and self-care. Also, I’ll share how I picked up the pieces of my disrupted fitness routine after our move, how to pick up your routine after illness, the result of my big PR attempt, and more.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
CLEARSTEM SPF
Shower head filter that changed my life (affiliate link)
The crossbody bag I'm rocking
Unstoppable, the 12-week cyclical strength training program
To grab your free list of home gym equipment faves, click HERE and I will email it to you!
DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS?! The Keeping Balance Method is now an APP! Introducing a brand new membership for on-demand home workouts that live in flexible workout vaults for each menstrual cycle! Learn more HERE!
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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Keeping Balance podcast, after what was a little bit of a break for what I like to call life, you know, trying to practice what I preach, prioritizing my mental health, and I was running out of space to do all of the things with the big moves that we just did from Tennessee to Arizona. So I am coming to you from my new office in our new house in Arizona. It's a temporary rental. Let me tell you, if you are an entrepreneur or if you work for yourself, buying a house is very difficult, very difficult. So what they need is two consecutive years of tax returns in your current entrepreneurial pursuit before they can even consider you for getting a loan to buy a house. So I only have one year of tax returns and they were like nope, can't even look at your income, you don't count, you don't rate. So we are renting, which actually is turning out to be a better idea anyways, because we know nothing about the Phoenix area. I've visited Phoenix, I've visited Tucson, but I've never been in Phoenix enough to know the neighborhoods well enough to be confident buying a house and being like, okay, this is going to be a long-term thing without having explored a little bit. So that's kind of our game plan is we're renting maybe a year, maybe two years, we're going to explore, we're going to see how we like the various neighborhoods and what the dealio is, what the stitch is, and pray to the housing gods that interest rates go down, because we this is so funny and so horrifying Our interest rate that we paid on our house in Tennessee was at 2.1%, and looking to buy a house here now the interest rate are 8%. Okay, enough of horrible boring stuff. Interest rates, loans, buying houses it's just a mess. It's a hot mess express, and I'm so glad that's behind us.
Speaker 1:This move, though, was exhausting, and it was kind of a disaster. So, long story short, my husband got out of the military, we moved to Arizona for his new job, and I have to be honest with you, I was feeling a lot of resistance towards this move initially, like something in me was just feeling like a kid stopping her feet, being like no, I'm not going anywhere, like, literally, was having an internal temper tantrum about the whole thing, and you know what I just I got over myself, essentially is what that is. I just put on my big girl pants, and I expressed all my feelings and we decided to give this a shot. So we've always wanted to move out west. We've always wanted to be surrounded by mountains and there just happened to be a really good job opportunity here for my husband, and I can work anywhere. So we're just getting this a shot and I well, for a lack of a better term just decided if I'm stuck here, I'm going to make the best of it. Right? So that's what we're doing. We're going to make the best of it.
Speaker 1:But here are some things that I've noticed about living in Arizona so far. Number one the sun here is a different kind of sun. It's not the same sun that there is in on the East coast. Okay, you can tell me all you want about the dry heat, and the dry heat is fabulous so long as you're in the shade. If the sun is out, it's impossible to exist Outdoors. I'm sure I will get used to it.
Speaker 1:But one of the first things I did when we got here was orders an SPF, and I decided to order from Clearstem. Yes, clear stem. I've been hearing about the nonstop and I used to be a beauty counter girl and I just decided to try something new, and clear stem is designed specifically for breakout prone, acne prone skin and I am so far loving it. It's like a tinted SPF which is fabulous Because you, I don't really like to wear makeup but I do love a good blurring filter in a bottle, if you know what I mean. And so clear stem Tinted SPF is actually fabulous for that. So got myself some SPF.
Speaker 1:I got myself a couple of hats. I got myself a couple of those what do you call them? Fanny packs? I didn't wear a fanny pack back in the 90s and so suddenly I'm like Faced with fanny packs everywhere I look, or the cross body, I guess you could say you can wear them either way. So I did go to Lula Lemon and I got myself a couple of those cross body bags, because when you get into like the neighborhoods or the suburbs, whatever you call them a phoenix, scottsdale and Tempe in Mesa and all those places Everywhere you look, the, the women there, I mean they're just dressed very well and they're very On point with the times, with the style, and I am just clueless when it comes to fashion and presenting myself in a way that's like not work out clothes. So I had to do a little bit of like watch and learn, and, in an effort to fit in With the cool kids, I got myself a couple of things. Okay, so that's what we did.
Speaker 1:It's also really odd here that you have to prepare to turn left like three lights in advance. What, what is that? Also, the fact that if you walk outside a your feet are burning, but be, your feet are black, like I'm not used to the fact that there's desert everywhere, like, obviously, though, but seriously, I, I've been an East Coast girl for my entire life, minus the 11 weeks that we lived in Oklahoma, which was kind of like a, a cool adventure, because I knew it's gonna be 11 weeks. And then, of course, we lived in Tennessee for three years, and I don't I don't know about you I consider that still the East Coast. I don't know, it's not the coast, but it's the East. It's still, you know, green forests and lush grass and a couple of rolling hills that are called mountains, you know. So this is a total 180. I mean, this is like whoa, but is pretty freaking cool. It is growing on me day by day. I just can't wait for some cooler days, because it's October 17th and it's over a hundred degrees right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, oh, the other big thing too. Okay, this is a big PSA. Get ready to like take notes on this, because if you are somebody who has an itchy scalp or a sensitive scalp, you really need to take a look at your shower head. Okay, this is important. So when we were in Tennessee, I was hearing all over the place about shower head filters, where you literally just unscrew the shower head, screw in this filter and then put the shower head back on and it filters out chlorine and fluoride and, apparently, those are the things that really irritate your scalp. And so I got it, and not only did my hair texture improve and not only did my scalp improve, I mean dramatically. It went from like hurting all the time and flaking all the time to, within a few showers, no flakes at all, but it also helped my beer spots.
Speaker 1:Okay, what are beer spots? Beer spots are. It's like a rash that you get, and I would only get it when I stepped out of the shower or if I'm standing up for a long period of time without moving, and they are just little white spots that appear all over my legs and they are very tingly and itchy. So usually I'm just standing there and I start to feel my feet and my legs tingle and I can just, without having to look at my legs, pinpoint the exact spots where those white blotches are appearing, and it took me a long time to figure out what those spots were. I had them all my life.
Speaker 1:Honestly, for as long as I can remember, I've had beer spots, but I didn't figure out what they were called until last year, actually from an Instagram follower, because I was posting about it when I was posting about my whole journey with discovery, and I had a lot of mold discovery, that I had Hashimoto's heavy metals built up in my body, all those things, and so one of the things I was piecing together was the beer spots I've always gotten that I just forgot to think about, forgot to even bring to the table when I was talking to practitioners. So, anyways, after a few weeks maybe of having this shower filter in, I stopped getting beer spots. So bizarre, and it's not really a rash per se, but I think it's more of like a nervous or it's like a vasculature issue, because it happens when you go from like hot to cold temperatures, so stepping out of a steamy shower, and then also when you are just like standing still without moving and you get blood pooling to your extremities. So, anyway, that's very exciting. If you have any of those issues, then you should definitely look into a shower head filter. I'm going to link the one that I use is like $37 off of Amazon. And the other thing about living here is that we must live close to a what do you call them? A warehouse, an Amazon processing center, because now when we order things from Amazon, it's like do you want this delivered to your front door in two hours? And I'm like, excuse me, what, forget overnight next day prime, our stuff is here within hours of ordering it, like faster than ordering groceries from Instacart or whatever, and it's absolutely insane, but I'm not complaining. Probably not good for the you know yield, dopamine, instant gratification situation that we're all struggling with now with our phones and, you know, social media addiction. But anyways, yeah, the shower filter is a must.
Speaker 1:So when we got here, I suddenly realized that I have forgotten to unscrew the shower filter and pack it, and so our new owners of our old house are also now the proud owners of a shower head filter. So you're welcome for your healthy scalp. But I immediately felt the difference. So within one or two showers here without a filter. My head was just so uncomfortable. I was itching nonstop. My scalp looked like horrendous, it looked like I had put a Halloween costume on and I was getting like scabs from itching. My head was bleeding. So this is how necessary this shower head filter was for me, and I was so devastated because I ordered it, got it in a couple of hours and apparently these people in this new house like glued the shower head on it was impossible to get off, and so we had to wait for all of our stuff to arrive on the moving truck, because we were here for about like 11 days without any stuff and we had to rummage through and find a heat gun, and so we had to loosen up the glue with a heat gun and then get tools to crank it off. And so finally, lo and behold, I have my shower head filter on and it's already improving, and I didn't get any beer spots today.
Speaker 1:Isn't that ridiculously fascinating? Take a look at your water. I think you can go online and you can look up your zip code and figure out like the crap that's in your tap water or your like your public water supply. It's a little bit scary and an interesting tidbit If you're someone who struggles with hypothyroidism whether or not that's Hashimoto's or autoimmune nature or not Did you know that they actually used to use fluoride as a way to treat hyperthyroidism? So in other words, people who had overactive thyroid would take fluoride and it would help to shut that thyroid function down, to slow it down to a normal level. And so can you imagine if you have a normal or a actually slow thyroid and you're consuming fluoride not only through your oral hygiene products but also through the water that you drink and the water that you bathe in. So that's just something to keep in mind. They have since stopped using fluoride to treat hyperthyroidism, I think because of the connections with neurotoxicity. So just again, something to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:The more you know, all right, let's move on. So that is. That's the whole moving situation. We're here, but here comes the dilemma we don't have a home gym set up right now. So originally we thought we were buying a house, right, and we were going to be able to install our rack, our barbell rack and everything in our garage. That was the plan. But now that we're renting, they don't want us drilling massive holes in the wall, understandably, and we, so then we can't drill in our rack, not to mention the fact that our garage is an is absolutely chaos in there right now between boxes and all the things that don't fit or look right in our new house. You know like when you transfer all your furniture to a new house, some of it just just doesn't work anymore. Very frustrating. But long story short, we don't have a an official home gym set up right now. We are considering maybe moving some stuff out to the backyard area, but I don't know how that's going to do in the extreme heat, right, I don't want to go touch metal barbells or metal dumbbells after it's been baking in the sun in the desert all day. So I don't know what we're going to do, but we did know.
Speaker 1:My husband and I were like we need to lift some, some objects here, like we're getting a little bit antsy, and that's what I noticed about myself when I haven't been lifting for a prolonged period of time is that I just feel really pent up and anxious. So for my mental health and for his mental health and for just general health, we got a gym membership. We found the closest gym to us. It's like an eight or nine minute drive away, but it is like a global gym y'all. It is a big, all overwhelming sensory overload gym with all the bros and all of the fit in.
Speaker 1:What do you call them Fitness influencers? Why can't I think of this word? Fit fitstagram? I don't even know. Anyway, fitness influencers, right with their tripods and this, and like I don't care, I do, I'm going to have to do the same thing, right, like I am a fitness influencer, I guess. But it is just a lot. It is a lot, and so I posted this on Instagram.
Speaker 1:I was like I am not comfortable working out in a public gym, but I'm just going to have to basically get over and do it anyways for the sake of my own health during this temporary season. And I got some responses that were like wow, you know, this isn't the right message to be sending people you're all about, you know, owning your space in the gym and women being deserving of their place in the weight room, and so me saying that I'm uncomfortable in a public gym isn't the right message. And that's not what I was saying at all. And I think this is a really important topic to bring up, because we are all comfortable in different environments when it comes to working out, some of us love being in a public gym. Some of you guys thrive off of that environment and being with other people. It motivates you, you work harder, or you just get more out of it Because when you get into a different location, you have committed resources to that workout right, you have carved out the time and you've driven there and you've spent gas.
Speaker 1:You had to get on an outfit and, you know, look presentable to the public. Maybe you had to shower because he is stank, I don't know, but you had to put in the effort and make some kind of commitment to get there. And so in some people's brains they're like okay, if I'm here, I'm going to do the damn thing, and so they get more out of that workout and they get more out of that environment. I have not really had that issue because I am used to working at home. For the past what four or five years, ever since I got pregnant, really, with Murphy he's about to turn five I've worked out at home, in a home gym, and I've worked out with nobody else in there except for my toddlers or my babies. And so to go into this gym where it's absolutely massive and it's loud and it's colorful and there's people on the equipment that I want to use and it's just different. You know what I mean? It's totally different.
Speaker 1:I'm an introvert. I like being to myself. Most of the time I get exhausted by being in that environment, and so it was a big adjustment. And so actually, the first time I went and worked out there, I left and I was like feeling really kind of depressed and bummed. I almost wanted to cry and it wasn't like I don't know, I'm going to get better at this, but it's something that I am choosing to sacrifice for now for the greater good of my body, if that makes sense. And so taking care of ourselves doesn't always look like doing the most comfortable thing, so it doesn't always look like the bubble bath with the cucumbers on our eyes, and sometimes it does look like getting out of our comfort zone and feeling a little bit pushed and doing the thing that you wouldn't choose on the perfect day, but the thing that you know is going to benefit you long term. And so for me right now, this looks like going to a public gym, and I'm actually a little bit sad too about the fact that I'm not going to have Murphy and Kellen working out with me anymore, at least for right now, until we figure out how I'm going to work out at home.
Speaker 1:But I know how important it is to expose your kids to exercise, and so instead of them being right there in the gym with me now, I'm just talking about it. So they have a little kids area in that gym that I'm not comfortable bringing my kids to and it's also very expensive. But instead of them witnessing me work out in the flesh, what I'm doing now is I'm just telling them oh guys, while you were napping, I went and did a workout Today. I did some squats and I did some this and I did that, and my legs, they feel really strong. That was a good workout.
Speaker 1:And so just talking to them about the workout, so they are still understanding that that's a priority for us and that it's a normal and expected thing of people to do, to take care of themselves via physical fitness. That's just how I'm doing that. It's like taking the place of them being in the gym with me, because we know now I think you guys have all heard that circulating real that the mother's fitness level has such a great impact on the fitness level or the activity level of her children and therefore the health of her children, and so that's a huge thing to have on you, right? So it's important to me that my kids know that their mom takes care of themselves with physical activity just the way that their dad does. And not just that, but they are getting to experience the joys of going for walks, going for bike rides we went for our first little hike the other day and so joy via physical activity is still a part of their lives, and so now the only thing that's quote unquote missing is them witnessing firsthand the purposeful, intentional, structured movement. So we're just talking about it and that's all it takes. That's all it takes. So that's what I've been up to.
Speaker 1:We've been just adjusting to our new environment and getting out of our comfort zone and after a few workouts I'm not going to lie I've been getting a little bit more comfortable with that gym. I did discover a little outdoor area that is turfed and much quieter, probably because it was so damn hot, but I was like I don't care, I'll work out in 100 degrees, it's shaded, so it makes a big difference and it kind of has that crossfit environment. So I do have to put the disclaimer. I have worked out in crossfit gyms, right Like globo gyms and crossfit gyms to me are just very, very different environments, and so working out around people in a crossfit environment for some reason feels so much different than working out in just a public gym. And do you know what? Also, I get the sense of when I'm in a public gym as I'm just looking around and I'm thinking to myself what if people from centuries ago could witness this? It's truly like watching hamsters on a hamster wheel. It's all of these humans hopping on these different machines to move their bodies in various different ways to essentially make up for the lack of movement that we now do in our everyday lives. It's just kind of interesting when you look at it from that perspective and that's kind of funny. But hey, it's meaningful and we love it and we do it and it makes us feel good, so, whatever, ok.
Speaker 1:So, moving on, we also need to talk about how to get back into working out when you've been not working out for a long time. That was very eloquently put. So there's a couple of questions that have been coming up in my KBM membership. Those girls have been getting the vid that's still going around. And so the questions that are coming up are hey, so I've been sick with COVID and I want to get back into working out. I still don't feel 100% yet. Should I just be doing the normal workouts that I'm used to for this menstrual phase?
Speaker 1:Ok, so, talking specifically about cyclical fitness and jumping into workouts that would be quote unquote, designed for a specific menstrual phase, so in other words, higher intensity in the first half of their cycle or lower intensity in the second half of the cycle. And so, if you've been sick, should you just, right off the bat, jump back into a cyclical workout? So let's say that you had COVID for like 10 days and then it happens to be cycle day 10. And that would be an intense workout and that would be an RPE or a rate of perceived exertion of 7 or 8, or like 70% to 80% of your maximum effort. And, to be completely honest, no, that's not appropriate. And so, when it comes to cyclical fitness and other factors such as being ill, being injured, being out of the gym for quite some time, having lack of sleep, a lack of nutrition, a lack of proper hydration, all of those things being generally stressed out and worn down, all of that stuff is. You know, some of it's more important and some of it is just another equal part of the puzzle piece when it comes to planning and strategizing your workouts.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the cyclical factor isn't going to be the top of the pyramid or maybe the bottom of the period pyramid period. I'm trying to say that cyclical fitness isn't going to be the only thing that matters when it comes to planning your workouts. And so if you are following a cyclical program maybe you're in unstoppable right now and you're doing my 12 week strength training program you're not going to just jump right back in and expect to feel the exact same way that you normally would if you were healthy in a follicular phase versus kind of bad from COVID in your follicular phase. So what you would do instead is you could still do those same movements, but you would take that RPE way down and you would gradually build yourself back up. So maybe that means You're doing a more more menstrual style, maybe you're doing a more alludeo style, maybe you're just doing the same workouts with a very low intensity.
Speaker 1:But please don't feel like just because you are in your follicular phase or your Offsetory phase, that you always have to be working out exactly like I or any other person tells you to, based off of a typical presentation of that phase of the cycle. Okay, so, there are still tons of ways that you can customize cyclical fitness and tons of you know Pre-ammoners that you're still working within. It's just that the cycle is giving you your bird's eye view of your programming. It's giving you that overall strategy. It's giving you that very generalized RPE guidance, your progressions, okay so, in other words, your periodization, which is that longer-term planning for how we are going to progress through intensity and then regress and do a deload week. Okay, it's just part of the strategy, and for you coming back from being sick or injured or out of the gym for some time, you're gonna have to work within some parameters and make it work for you, because that's the whole point of fitness, right, and it's the whole point of a cyclical fitness too, is it? It's custom to your body into your life.
Speaker 1:So for me personally, I wasn't in the gym for, I guess, two To three weeks, I want to say, because we had to dismantle our gym in Tennessee and the moving truck came and they packed everything, but then later they moved everything and then, even later than that we actually Took our five-day road trip out here to Arizona and then from there it was another 10 or 11 days until our moving truck arrived and we kind of felt back on our feet again. So, yeah, it was a while and I went back into the gym and, yeah, my body was quite sore after what I would consider a more gentle workout, and that's normal. That's fine, that's part of the game, that is totally expected, and I think you know when I or other people might bring up red flags. When it comes to fitness and we mentioned things like feeling sore all the time isn't normal. I don't mean that you should never feel sore after a workout. I don't mean that Sornus is always an indicator that you're not healthy. It's only a red flag if you are not recovering from your workouts after a few days, if you're constantly sore, if you're not adapting to that same stimulus and the same workout every single time makes you sore every single time, because soreness is normal. Soreness is just your body adapting to something new that it hasn't experienced, and so we we're gonna, we're gonna expect to have that right, especially having not worked out for kind of a while in my book. So, yeah, don't worry about that, but for me it's looking like Just sticking with what was previously around a 50% for me and just getting back into, honestly, like, defy my body. I get very stiff when I'm not lifting and working out on purpose, so I'm really just working out kinks and getting my joints lubricated again and Just taking it slow. There's really no pressure on me.
Speaker 1:But speaking of pressure on me, something that I Wasn't necessarily thrilled with was the fact that I did not reach a goal that I was really set on on accomplishing before we did move and if you Get my newsletters or if you, I don't even know where else I said this, but I was really determined to Hit a 100 pound strict press by the time we had to dismantle our gym in Tennessee, and over the course of living in that house and being in that home gym, I Was able to progress from 80 pounds up to 95 pounds and for an upper body lift. For me, I mean that was really significant. I am really strong on pulling, but pressing not as much. Especially, having had two surgeries on my right shoulder for torn labrums, I it's just not my strongest lift, and so I was really thrilled with the progress I did make using my Typical programming, with just unstoppable honestly getting me there over and over again, and I was so determined. I've never been able to breach a hundred. I've been to 95 and the second I put on a feather extra. I cannot do it. The bar doesn't move, it is. It's almost comical at this point. So I was like making a lot of progress. I had I had breached 95 without a belt and so I thought was about a month to go that I could get that 100, and About a day or two before we had to dismantle our gym, I Attempted it again and I was feeling really good and really strong and I didn't make it.
Speaker 1:I was really convinced that I would and it just got to about eye level and it wouldn't budge and I was pretty devastated for it for like five seconds and I was like you know what? This was a completely arbitrary goal that I set in terms of the timeline, because you know it was convenient. Basically is what I'm trying to say. It's not that I Felt like it was Possible for my body and you know, basically the timeline that I put on myself was out of convenience rather than a more logical place, so I just didn't want to have to kind of not start over but move several steps backwards after not being in the gym. Because when I did go back and do overhead press in that gym, 85 pounds was feeling more like 95 pounds. But it's okay, it is okay, we're going to get there, I'm going to get through it and I will get to 100 pounds if I am continuing to be consistent and continuing to push those numbers and get my comfort zone even more.
Speaker 1:And could I have been going to hotel gyms and making all these different sacrifices to keep training so that I could hit 100 pounds while we were traveling and getting here? Yeah, I could have, but I didn't want to. That was something that I just wasn't willing to do. When you've got two toddlers and you've got Hashimoto's and you're moving a cat and you're in different places and I'm still trying to poop in this hotel all alone, go boss out of PR. No, thank you. So it just wasn't. It's a goal I would love to get and it means something to me, but it's not so important that I was willing to run myself down for the sake of it, you know. Okay, so that's where we're all at.
Speaker 1:So if you're in a season where you're just kind of shifting things around, you're reprioritizing. It's all good. It's all good we're going to find our equilibrium again, and these times have changed, especially moving. I've read over and over again that moving is in the top five most stressful life events. Who knew?
Speaker 1:But hey, if you're going through a stressful time, you just need to give your body some space to find equilibrium again, and so that might be getting at your comfort zone for a little bit. But all we're going to do is move forward. That's all we can do, and the things kind of suck, okay. So, if you are new to this podcast, if you are listening for the first time, or if you're a long-term listener, since we're coming up in almost a year of having this podcast, thank you so much for listening, and we are going to be back for more juicy content about all things being a fit female, or all things trying to be a fit female. I will catch you next time. Thank you so much for being here. Take care of yourselves, guys. Lots of love, thanks.