Whew! Pals, I did not mean there to be such a big gap between today’s post and my last one – but such is life at the end of the school year, I suppose! :) Thanks for being here. Onwards to today’s topic…!
If you had told me a few years ago that I would get into rucking, I probably would have looked at you in confusion – and asked the number one question submitted to the question box when I asked what you wanted to know about rucking on Instagram a few weeks ago: um, what is rucking?!
Well, friends, John and I are a few months into this rucking adventure, and I’d love to share what we’ve experienced so far – the good, the hard, and my advice if you’d like to try it, too. Let’s go!
What is rucking?
Rucking is simply walking with weight on your back – simple as that. Unlike hiking, it doesn’t need to take place in the woods (though it can!). Rucking is an important part of training for many branches of the military, and so the idea of rucking as exercise kind of moved in popularity from military communities out into the wider world in the last decade or so.
Why were we interested in getting into rucking?
Funny story :) In the last year or two, an interview with Michael Easter popped up on one of John’s regular podcasts, as part of a publicity round after publishing his first book. We did a double take – Michael was a fellow graduate of our college class, and in fact was an English major alongside me! It is not common to see a classmate pop up in the news – we went to a tiny school! – and so this was an unexpected delight. In the book and in the podcast interview, Michael extolled the benefits of rucking, which was the first time I remember it piquing our interest. His enthusiasm was later echoed by Peter Attia and others, until it felt like we were hearing about rucking everywhere we turned.
What appealed to us about rucking:
— It would not require adding anything additional to our schedule. It might seem silly, but this was the biggest one for me. Since we were already in the practice of taking a walk several times each week, we could simply add weight and get more out of what we were already doing. Balancing the need to exercise with all the other things I want to do is a constant struggle for me, so this was huge, and easily what got me on board so quickly.
— The health benefits. From my understanding, rucking builds muscle and strength while improving cardio and endurance. (You can burn up to three times more calories than walking alone.) The pressure the weight puts on your muscles and joints also helps to build bone density, which is particularly important for women.
— It’s simple. You just need a pack, some weight, good sneakers, and a place to walk. There are no fancy moves to learn and no subscription to buy.
— It’s outside, and can be done with others. We’ve been able to incorporate our kids (more about that below!), and though we haven’t yet participated in any group rucks, we enjoy being able to ruck side by side.
Last fall, John bought us each one of these ruck plates – 20 pounds for me, and 35 pounds for him. (Experts suggest starting with 10-25 pounds and gradually scaling up until you’re carrying no more than 1/3 of your body weight.) We put the weights into normal backpacks we already owned and set off on our first ruck.
It was awful. We were both terribly uncomfortable – the plates sat low on our backs and bounced as we walked – and ended up cutting our first outing to less than ten minutes. I freely shared my very negative impressions with John, ha.
We returned the plates (that was a heavy box to ship off at UPS, yikes) and decided to go all-in with official GoRuck gear – backpacks and plates. We got another 20-pound plate for me, and this time a 30-pound plate for John. This was a leap of faith – our initial attempt was not a positive experience, and the GoRuck gear is not inexpensive – but it seemed like our best option if we wanted to make a real go of it.
While the GoRuck gear was noticeably more comfortable, the weight quickly fatigued my shoulders and back and caused pain between my shoulder blades for the first few weeks. I would complain bitterly to John on even our short 10- or 15-minute loops – somehow it made me feel better, ha – and constantly adjust my straps to try and relieve the pressure.
But we kept going! John gamely encouraged me to “embrace the suck” (which is apparently something that rucking people say), and slowly, over several weeks, the pain started to lessen and we were able to increase our distance. Now, half a year later, we regularly ruck for 30-40 minutes several times a week with no pain or fatigue, at a sub-20-minute/mile pace.
Our thoughts on rucking so far:
Rucking has been a great workout for us. When I have my pack on, I can feel my whole body working — particularly my calves, glutes, rear, and core. I’m grateful for that.
That being said, the greatest delight I take from rucking is twofold: first, as I alluded to at the top, I feel like I’m gaming the system by getting more benefit for my body without adding anything to my schedule. It feels like some sort of cheat code and I am HERE FOR IT. I suppose I’m working both harder and smarter? :)
My second source of delight is knowing that I’m doing something that will make future-me grateful. My bones don’t feel any different right now – I can’t notice any changes and haven’t looked at any scans – but just knowing that what I’m doing today (even when it feels hard), is making it more possible for me to enjoy my favorite people, activities, and places for a long time to come is thrilling for my future-oriented, big-picture-loving brain and heart.
I’m not particularly motivated by pushing myself to complete challenging physical tasks (that’s all John), but increasing the likelihood I’ll be strong, mobile, and independent in the future? That will get me off the couch.
Rucking with kids
A last aspect I wanted to circle back to: though my rucks have mostly consisted of 30-40 minute rucks around our neighborhood thus far, John has set off on longer routes – and he’s taken our two older kids (5 and 8) with him. (They don’t carry packs!) On many Sunday afternoons this spring they’ve set off on treks around our town, a little platoon of adventurers, five miles or so at a time. They’ll stop along the way to play at a playground or get ice cream downtown and return after a few hours, tired but happy. June and John even rucked to our friends’ house one memorable afternoon – 10 miles!! (To be fair, I picked June up toward the end – she completed 9 of the miles :))
I like to think this might be just the beginning of our family’s rucking adventures together. From keeping us connected to keeping us fit, I’m hoping it will be a part of our family’s culture for many years to come.
What questions can I answer for you about rucking? Has anyone else tried it? I’d love to hear!
A few years ago, I began a new holiday tradition: filling in a Christmas memory book.
This checks out, right? Holidays, traditions, and intentional memory making are kind of my thing (or, one of my things, anyway!), so this wasn’t a surprising development. What may surprise you, though, is how poorly I stuck to the tradition in the years since. I filled in about half of the questions the first year, and then a handful the second year… but always a bit half-heartedly. The prompts felt repetitive, and my answers weren’t capturing what actually mattered to me about the Christmas season.
This past year, I never pulled the book out of the Christmas boxes. And wow if this wasn’t Cultivate What Matters 101: if a goal (or a tradition, or project, or memory book) doesn’t really matter to you, you’re unlikely to follow through.
(Cut to me, not following through.)
So I sat with that for a minute. On the surface, this memory book seemed to be checking all the boxes: I love Christmas and value celebrating it in a meaningful way. I love writing. I love records that add up over time. Still, this book wasn’t doing it for me! As I packed away the Christmas boxes, though, I hit on something that I thought actually would be meaningful to me…
As longtime readers know, I pour significant time and effort into creating our Christmas cards and newsletters each year. It’s a project that connects me to my grandmother and to fond childhood memories of sitting around a table with my siblings and parents, adding our signatures one by one to the year’s letter. It scratches my creative itch, it connects me with people I love around the country, and it satisfies my desire to tell a story about the year as it’s ending — to tie a bow on it, if you will. It delights me to no end.
What would be meaningful, I realized, was finding a better way to enjoy those Christmas cards I work so hard on, as well as a few photos from each Christmas season. No, it’s not a 1:1 switch, but once I realized that this mattered much more to me than recording what we ate on Christmas Eve (spoiler alert, it’s always the same) or what songs everyone was loving that year (spoiler alert, they’re almost always the same), it was an easy one.
Now, our Christmas cards, letters, and photos live in a simple album that’s easy for everyone to flip through. I couldn’t love it more.
I know this is a tiny, simple switch, but to me, it”s emblematic of a larger idea, and so it seemed worth sharing, in case you might need the same reminder I did:
You can change traditions, no matter how long they’ve been running or how much money they cost to get off the ground. You can tweak them, refresh them, or scrap them completely.
You can change the way you capture memories. You can start something new (even if it won’t capture your whole marriage or your kids’ whole childhood!) and you can retire something that no longer fits (even if you’ve invested many years into it!).
Saying goodbye to what doesn’t matter (or what matters less) makes room for the things that matter more (and the things that matter most). That’s a reminder I always need. You, too?
Friends, I’d love to hear: have you scrapped or significantly changed a tradition or way you record memories? It can be really hard!
In somewhat surprising news, I’m happy with the way my face looks.
I say surprising, because, as of this week, I am 37, and drawing ever-closer (or perhaps I’m already there?) to the age where panic over the visible signs of aging often sets in. But I don’t feel panicked. In fact, I feel rather pleased. This seems worthy of exploration, and so I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit lately. Shall we explore together?
Here’s why I think I’m content so far with the aging process, and with my particular face — some reasons practical, and some more philosophical.
1. My skin looks objectively better than it did when I was younger. I had some acne in high school and despaired of bumpy, flaky skin on my forehead through much of my twenties. Over time, I’ve learned more about my skin and found products that work for me. (In case you’re wondering, I’d say only two have made an immediate, highly-noticeable difference: this charcoal soap, which evens out my oily/dry skin (I’ve been using it since 2017!), and this toner, which completely got rid of the forehead flakiness and smoothed out my skin overall (in the rotation since 2019).)
When you remember what things used to be like, it’s easy to be grateful for where you are now.
2. The signs of aging my skin does show are palatable to me. I have some serious laugh lines around my eyes. They truly don’t bother me at all – I see them as evidence of a joy-filled life with lots of reasons to smile. Other than that, I think my skin looks… kind of the same as it always has? I attribute this 100% to genetics, fanatical daily use of sunscreen since I was in college, and a penchant for wearing big hats when I’m spending time in the sun. Thank you, mid-aughts magazines, for drilling this into my head.
3. I am frugal. John and I are highly-motivated savers and givers, and I don’t have a ton of extra spending money lying around. Because of my frugality, more invasive (a.k.a. expensive!) procedures have always felt off the table — and so I don’t spend time researching them or analyzing before and after photos or even considering what’s possible. I’ve also never met with a consultant who told me all the things that could be improved, so it’s easier to be content with what I have. Ignorance is bliss :)
4. The faces I look at most are aging naturally. And many of them are the people I admire most. That’s in part because they’re mostly faces in the real world with me, not faces on a screen. My friends and family and the women at school pick-up and soccer and church and in my neighborhood are who I have for companions and comparison, not the cream of the internet.
I also read a lot about how social media, with its filters and ring lights and editing apps, is not realistic. This has inoculated me against the idea that online perfection is something to strive for; instead, I assume it’s artificially enhanced and move on.
5. I’m largely protected from ageism. The world can be a cruel place. I’ve had the same job for 15 years, and for most of that I’ve had only women colleagues. I don’t have to routinely get up in front of a boardroom of men, I’m not in sales, and I don’t often find myself in professional settings where I’m judged on my looks. Ageism and prejudice based on beauty is a real thing, but it’s just not a thing I’ve had to deal with.
6. Beauty has never been my foremost characteristic. To be clear: I could name plenty of things I wish were different about my face. It used to sting when other people’s looks were complimented more than mine, but now I’m grateful for it. From my teenage years, it right-sized my expectations: if I wasn’t expected to be “the pretty one,” it was okay that my skin wasn’t perfect and my face was only “good enough.” And it hurts a lot less to see something degrade or be less valued over time if it’s not something you hold dear.
7. And yet, a good, good man finds me beautiful. And he tells me that often. What more could I want or need?
8. Still, I don’t believe my beauty is a measure of my worth or value. This is beautifully rooted in my Christian faith. What makes me worthy is that I am made in the image of God, as we all are — and that never changes or fades. No matter my age or how I feel about the body God gave me, my value is secure.*
9. I tend to recognize the good old days when they’re here. I won’t look back in twenty years and wish I had appreciated how I looked. I know I have it good right now, which makes the idea of fixing what I have… kind of silly.
10. I am so grateful to be alive. I am grateful to age alongside my husband and children. And aging has a physical component. In this world, that’s just how it is.
This feels like a risky post to write. It could easily be misunderstood or misconstrued, or maybe I’ll look in the mirror in 10, or 20, or 30 years and feel quite differently. But I have achieved a measure of peace in this area of my life that spills out into so many others, and if there’s something about how I’ve gotten here that might be helpful to someone else, I want to share it — because there’s not many other people who will. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracist, a message of contentment in imperfection is not one that many online voices are incentivized to share, since it doesn’t really sell anything (except maybe sunscreen!).
So! I hope you receive this with the heart with which it was intended, and please do chime in with any thoughts of your own. I look forward to reading them!
Inspired by a recent Lazy Genius podcast episode, I thought we could chat today about a few small changes I’ve made recently that are bringing me outsize joy. To be clear, these are inexpensive, small, one-time changes, not necessarily steps on the way to a bigger change (though, of course, even small changes are always leading us somewhere!).
Not many of Kendra’s examples could be copy and pasted into my life, and I’m guessing mine wouldn’t fit exactly into your life, either — but hearing her changes immediately got my wheels turning, and I hope mine can do the same for you!
1. We bought a giant umbrella. As many of you know, we walk or ride bikes to elementary school each day. For the last few years, we’ve grabbed one of a handful of normal-sized umbrellas (each in various states of disrepair) on rainy days, then did our best to fit a grown-up, child, and backpack underneath.
Then! John bought this absolutely enormous golf umbrella a few months ago, and everyone can fit under with ease. Rainy days are positively luxurious now.
2. I leave ten minutes early for preschool pickup instead of five. I used to brag that it took three minutes to go door-to-door from our home to our two younger kids’ preschool, and while on the best of days that might be true, five minutes is a far more realistic average. Plus, they’ve changed a light pattern between here and there in the last year, and traffic has generally picked up on this particular stretch of road.
All this to say — I often made it in time leaving five minutes before pickup, but it was stressful. A few months ago, I committed to walking out the door with ten minutes on the clock, and it is the easiest-breeziest feeling to know I will arrive with time to spare.
3. I set my alarm ten minutes earlier. I’m an avowed snoozer — I do not like to get out of bed at the first chime of my alarm. While I don’t think there’s a moral component to snoozing or not, it can put a kink in my morning routine.
Recently, I had the somewhat brilliant realization that while it would not matter to mybody or brain if my alarm went off at 7:20 versus 7:30, I would have effectively moved my start time up by ten minutes as long as I committed to a single snooze. So I did, and it worked! Friends, you would not believe the difference ten extra minutes has made in my morning routine — I think I’m going to write a separate post about it, because this and a few other tiny changes have really added up.
4. I say yes every time John asks me to go on a midday walk. John and I both work from home three days a week. On those days, we’ll often go for a brisk 13-minute walk right after lunch. (Yes, we’ve got our normal loop down to a science!) Some days, though, I’d be in the middle of a task, or just feeling behind, and I’d beg off.
No more. Now, I always say yes. Nothing in my job is so urgent that it can’t wait 15 minutes, and my days are greatly improved by getting outside in the sunshine with the person I love most.
5. I listen to a podcast while making kids’ lunches in the evening. I have been known to grumble about how I don’t have enough time to keep up with the podcasts I subscribe to (especially now that I don’t commute to work). In an inspired application of the behavioral intervention temptation bundling (basically, combining something you have to do with something you want to do), I decided to take the extra minute to pair and pop in my earbuds before pulling out the lunchboxes each evening as I try to develop this habit. Catching up on Coffee and Crumbs, Risen Motherhood, or Honestly makes this somewhat-tedious 15 minutes something I look forward to.
6. I park far away. While I’ve been a default-stairs gal for awhile (my OB’s office was on the third floor and I took great pride in the fact that I never took the elevator through all three pregnancies, ha!), I’ve recently recommitted to parking in the back corner of the lot. Not always (not at night, not when I’m crunched for time, you know the drill), but when it’s at all reasonable, I do it. Every little bit of activity throughout the day helps! Plus, I kind of delight in making the “weird” and “slow living” choice :)
I tossed this question out to the Articles Club gals on our group chat and thought it could be fun to share a few of their answers, too! Here we go…
I have duplicate cleaning supplies on both levels of our house, which means our bathrooms stay much cleaner… though cleaning a bathroom still doesn’t make me happy. — Pressley
I plan out all my Peloton workouts on Monday and “schedule” them all, down to the exact class, so I don’t have to think about it the rest of the week. — Chelsey
We moved our socks to our dining room buffet. So much easier than walking back upstairs when we need to get out the door! — Ginna
On Sunday afternoons one of us now makes lunches for all four of us (two parents, two kids) for Monday and Tuesday. Not having to make a lunch on Monday evening delights me every single week! — Bethany
I keep a “gifts” note on my phone with gift ideas for… myself! My mind used to go blank when someone asked me but now I can just pull it up. — Chelsey
We bought giant containers of ranch and taco seasoning – no more worrying if we have a little packet in the pantry! — Libby
I taped a note by the front door of essentials we have to have when we leave the house on a weekday morning. (Me = phone, laptop, lunch; son = lunch, book bag with folder, water bottle; daughter = bottles, low supplies). Simple but effective! — Kelly
I’d love to hear:what small changes have you made recently that have made a difference? Please join in in the comments!
