SCI Fit

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What Your Mom Needs – Motivating the Mature Exerciser Earlier this month I had the pleasure of spending a couple of relaxing days with my mom here in San Diego, where I live, and where she loves to come and visit. After recently relocating back to northern California from Michigan (she had moved there after living in nor Cal for 30 years….don’t ask, she should write a book!), she had been looking forward to getting in some much-needed sun/ocean time, which is her self-proclaimed “life force”. We were able to stroll on the sand, watch a couple beautiful sunsets, and have some good mother/daughter talks. My mother and I are very tight; she was young when she had me (19), and was a self-proclaimed hippie, so she kept me pretty close to her side all through my growing up. She taught me to stand up for myself and my rights as an independent woman, while showing me the grace and compatibility of a loving wife and mother. Her patience is insurmountable, and her love for and commitment to her family and their needs the most important thing in her life…so important, in fact, that she has a tendency to put her own needs on the back burner. The most interesting and concerning thing to me about the evolution of her relocation(s) is the deterioration of her physical and emotional health during the time she lived in the Midwest, and the resulting lack of interest in her health and fitness that developed as a result. At 63 years young, my mother is an active, busy woman; she is a labor and delivery nurse, and if you can’t guess by just thinking about the title, I can tell you that it can be a very physically demanding and draining job. Just think, if the birthing mother is doing all that work, who is the one that is there to help her push, to hold her positions, to get her up and help her walk, to support her body through the – yes, that’s why it’s called – LABOR?! The l&b nurse, of course. Her shifts are usually 12-hour shifts, and you can imagine what it must be like in a busy hospital birthing center if you are a l&b nurse with not one, not two, possibly three, maybe even four laboring women to help. Needless to say, as spry as my mom is, she gets wiped out after a shift, and, to top that, she works the night shift, so her biological clock is all turned around. I think she’s crazy, but she loves her work, and is very, very good at what she does. However, she had fallen victim to a syndrome that is common in any work setting….she had become lazy and discouraged with her own health and fitness outside of her job. During the time she lived in Michigan, she put on 20+ lbs of unhealthy bodyfat. Her exercise was inconsistent and lackadaisical. She neglected her nutrition, falling into the very bad habit of starting her “day”, which happened to be 1 or 2 pm, with strong espresso coffee, not eating for another hour or two, by which time she would have to start getting ready for work if she were on a back-to-back shift, and she would end up grabbing a bowl of cold cereal or maybe a piece of toast on her way out the door.

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