By Renee Martinez, Founder of Raising Boys World
After each of my pregnancies, I gained a new friend. Literally, in the form of a roughly 10lb. roll of fat at my waist. So, I’m now the proud owner of fabulous fat rolls gracing my hips at every movement and breasts that may very well hang into a different zip code. It’s such a hot look.
When I wasn’t sure if I was finished having children, my fat-roll friends just hung around. I guess I wasn’t ready to break up with them. Now that I’m moving into the post-baby years, I want the extra weight banished from my body. The only problem is that I want it to happen, like right now. Loosing weight completely sucks!!!!
In all seriousness, I think I’m ready to really focus and try to shed this weight. As a mother to boys, I want to show them that women are strong both mentally and physically and that I can do anything I set my mind to. Also, that health and fitness is a priority and that we respect ourselves by taking care to do what we know is important to keep us healthy. With all the crazy messages in the media that bombard our sons, I think it’s up to us to show them reality.
I spend all this time teaching them about eating well and making sure to exercise and play outside – meanwhile, I’ll have a bowl of ice-cream and skip my workout. That’s probably not the best message. Why the double standard? Shouldn’t we be living by example?
The boys see me play tennis every week, or go for a run or do a race here and there, but honestly, other than tennis; there’s very little consistency. As far as eating is concerned, I really enjoy cooking and pride myself on preparing healthy, mostly organic culinary faire, but paying attention to quantities is not my strong suit.
So I’m going to use the value of sending the message of women have great strength, health, pride and respect to my sons as my reason for creating and sticking with a healthier lifestyle. I would think that should be a good enough reason, wouldn’t you? When you stop to look at how you live your life, is it how you would want your sons to see you? Or how you would want your sons to think of women?
About the Author: Renee Martinez consults and speaks professionally on social media marketing, integrated marketing communications, public relations and branding. She is the president of Ruby Marketing Communications (www.rubymarcom.com), a boutique marketing communications company that specializes in providing branding, social media strategy and integration, and creative services. Her blog (www.lisac95.sg-host.com), provides resources on everything marketing and social media for her active audience.
Renee has contributed as a featured monthly columnist in the monthly jewelry industry publication, JCK, on matters related to internet marketing as well as in InStore Magazine as a featured blogger where she writes about developing effective marketing strategies for the jewelry industry using social media. She is the founder of: Social Media Biz Summit (www.socialmediabizsummit.com), the first large-scale SM conference to come to Buffalo, NY; #jewelrychat, a weekly twitter chat for the jewelry industry and www.RaisingBoysWorld.com. Renee teaches social marketing courses at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY for the business school as well as offers small group social media marketing training and educational seminars for businesses in Western New York and beyond.
Renee has dabbled in the internet marketing arena since the early 90′s and is not ashamed to call herself a “marketing geek”. From chatting in AOL, “sharing” music on Napster, and teaching HTML classes before it was considered “cool” to developing comprehensive social media strategies, effective public relations campaigns and managing online communities (most recently Chevy Girls Buffalo).
She enjoys being able to help people find their voice online and to create buzz about their product or service that will give them the results they desire.
Renee can be found on Twitter (@reneemmartinez) and Facebook (http:/www.facebook.com/RubyMarCom).
