When I was a kid (and even into my early 20’s), nearly every time I’d walk into a Target, I’d pretend to kick the giant red cement balls outside the store. While I was smart enough to never really kick them, I still found it amusing to run up and imagine as if I was taking a penalty kick in the World Cup. Part of what made it so fun to do was that I knew the balls weren’t going to move; they were static. I mean, they were made of cement, how on God’s green earth could they move! 

But now let’s imagine something that’s got some more movement to it, say something like the water gun game you find at carnivals and state fairs. You know, the one where you try to hit a moving target with a water gun. The one where you spend 10 tickets in hopes of winning a giant stuffed bear you could find at the Dollar Tree (Two department store references already; I’m doing pretty good!) That game is far more dynamic than playing the “kick the Target balls” game. 

In the same way, health is more of a moving target (That’s not me saying your Target will be moving away from you, sorry if I scared you). It’s more like the water gun carnival game than trying to kick a stationary cement ball. It’s more dynamic than static.

Get Fit or Get Pregnant?

As someone who’s been blessed enough to work with many pregnant women but who will never be pregnant, I get to glean so much insight from that population. “Do you actually feel like you have more mobility in your hips as the textbooks say?” Or “What’s it like to have someone from the inside kick you in the ribs?” Or “how does it feel when they hiccup?” All the most crucial questions. But the pregnant woman I learn from the most is my queen. I remember a while back, we were on our nightly walk, and she told me she finally felt she had recovered enough from the postpartum period to start working on her fitness again. But she was wrestling with this decision, “I feel like I’m at the point where it’s either I get fit, or get pregnant again?” 

Welp, God wanted to make that decision easy for her, so He blessed us with another pregnancy shortly thereafter. While my wife may have had fitness-specific goals before finding out, growing another human gave us an opportunity to shift them around a bit. Going from “I want to add some muscle, improve my running endurance” shifted to “I just want to make sure my body functions at the level I need it to.” Nutritionally, “I want to prioritize my protein intake” shifted to “I just really need to eat whatever my body will let me” (As someone who will never get pregnant, I have no idea what it’s like to love a food one day, and then get nauseous enough from that same food the next that one has to locate the nearest restroom. Thank you ladies, for what you do to carry our children!)   

Can there be overlap with those goals? For sure. But what qualifies as “healthy & fit” prior to being pregnant might look different than what’s “healthy & fit” while pregnant. Health needs to be a moving target. 

It’s Worked Before, so I’ll Just Do it Again

“I just started up on Atkins again.” “What for?” I asked. “Well, my husband and I did it ten years ago, and we lost some weight, so we figured we’d try it again.” This is a conversation I’ll often find myself in: “[xyz] health thing worked before, so I’m going to try it again.” And I totally understand why. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, so if you’ve tried Atkins before and it worked, what’s to say it won’t work again now? Seems pretty logical. But let me ask you this: Are you the exact same person today as you were ten years ago? 

You might be in the same job, maybe even still in the same house, or potentially still telling the same dad jokes no one laughs at (I can’t be the only one still saying “INSERT DAD JOKE HERE”), but your health isn’t the same. When you last did Atkins, you only had one child, could spend all of Sunday on meal prep, and had what now feels like all the time in the world to exercise. But now that’s different. Maybe you’ve been pregnant several more times, your children are older, and your sleep quality looks very different from ten years ago. You’re in a new season of health, so that means you might consider trying something new. 

And you know what? That’s a good thing. It means you get a chance to grow. Grow in your knowledge, your experiences, and your adaptability. Because your health has evolved, you get to evolve with it. I’ve evolved as well. I used to have a strong urge to run up and kick the massive red cement ball outside Target; now I have the urge to run up and try to lift it up. Needless to say, my wife won’t let me go to Target with her anymore.