Rachel L

Rachel lives in South Florida, and when she’s not home with her two young boys, and you can find her at Levy PR and Events. As a managing partner at the firm, she loves strategizing and coming up with unique out-of-the-box ideas to position her clients at the forefront of stories.  Rachel joined after the birth of her second son, and chatted with us about how ah.mi has helped her and her friends “get back to some sort of normalcy.”

How many times a week do you aim to work out? 

I aim to work out 3 times a week, sometimes 4, but it all depends on how my night went with my baby. Let’s be honest; if the baby was up all night, I’m not going to work out—sorry, but sleep comes first.

I love to work out in the mornings. If I am going to work out, that is the only time I will do it. Later in the day, I start to shut down.

I do have to say, because I am still breastfeeding, I know that my body isn’t mine yet, it’s still in baby mode, and I still have a lot more weight to lose. However, since starting ah.mi, I have come to the realization that it doesn’t matter your journey, whether you are a mother trying to lose baby weight or just trying to get back into shape, you have to do it at your own pace, and you have to start somewhere. ah.mi was my choice to start somewhere. Once my breastfeeding journey is over in November, I plan on kicking it into high gear to get back to my normal weight.

On a normal week, what do your workouts consist of? 

My workouts vary. I will either run on the treadmill in my garage, run outside with my boys in a jogging stroller, join a free workout class at the park near my house, or turn on a quick ab video. I love boxing, so I try to throw that in to mix it up here and there.

“I like how we are all ourselves and making the best out of this experience.”

What are some of your healthy food staples?

For breakfast, again, since I am breastfeeding and oatmeal boasts your supply, I will have overnight oats with some fruit, maybe a hard boiled egg here and there with whole wheat toast and almond butter. 

For lunch I enjoy wraps, sushi or even a salad from the café in our office building. 

Dinner is honestly a hit or a miss. Sometimes it’s fresh salmon with salad, other times it’s pizza.  That’s the great thing about ah.mi, you are supposed to be regimented, but at the end of the day when things don’t go according to plan, you always have pizza as a backup for dinner options.

Do you have a self-care ritual? 

While I am pumping at night before bed, I like to read Daily Mail. I will sneak in some dark chocolate covered almonds while catching up on Big Brother.

How has committing to being healthy with a friend helped you?

It is so encouraging and motivating to be in this with friends. We are open and honest with each other and push one another. If I see Erica or Helena working out at the JCC together, I think to myself, if they can do it I can do it. It motivates me to strap up the kids and go out for a walk or jump on the treadmill in between naps. The different challenges we set each week amongst ourselves are fun and exciting. Each week we try to do wall sits for 3 minutes or mix in a new workout. I like how we are all ourselves and making the best out of this experience.

Why did you join ah.mi?

My sister-in-law Helena told me about her close friend starting this app to get friends to work out together. At this time we were both around 3 months postpartum with our second child. She also had another friend who just had her second child as well, and thought all of us should join ah.mi together.  So we joined, all still breastfeeding, wanting to get back to some sort of normalcy as it pertained to our bodies. 

We also understood this wasn’t going to happen overnight.  We knew that with 2 little ones, you don’t know what your nights have in store or how tired we would be the next day, but we always found the strength deep down to get our workouts in while encouraging and motivating each other. 

We have posts ranting about how we cheated and had pizza and chips and other posts about how healthy our day was, but you know what? At the end of the day, none of us judged one another; we knew we were all doing the best that we could and took each day at a time. 

That was the great thing about ah.mi, Rachel wanted to make working out fun and not like a chore.