For many busy families with small kids, it’s very hard to find the time or motivation to workout. Parents are chronically tired and get less exercise than their child-free counterparts. Some people have 2-year-olds that still don’t sleep through the night. Or maybe you may have a toddler that sleeps through the night, but you also have an infant – good luck getting any kind of unbroken sleep!
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| Unmotivate Me |
Knowing how time-restricting it is to be a mom with a toddler, I can’t begin to tell you how infuriating it is for me to read “motivational” workout posts by friends on FaceBook, as they check into their favorite gym for the 98th straight time. Usually the image says something to the extent of, “If your family meant anything to you, you should be working out right now. Get up off your ass and let’s go. Because if you don’t get up now, you’ll end up taking pills for the rest of your life or you’re going to die and miss out on seeing your children grow up.” At least, that’s how I read them. And while these sayings may have an underlying truth, the overwhelming majority of people who posts those motivational pictures on my feed have no children, so they have no idea what balancing family, work, and home life is truly like. It’s hard work. And reading those is often times, rubbing salt into the wound.
I will tell you a small secret of mine; my husband and I are asked, or rather reminded over and over, that we are reaching the time that we should try for a sibling. This is something I would love to do. But aside from financial concerns over adding another diaper and daycare expense – anxieties that are strong enough to paralyze me from even thinking about a 2nd – I don’t think my body can handle another pregnancy at my current weight. I feel like I’d be depressed watching the scale go upward, and if I were to get pregnant, I’m likely to get gestational diabetes or something else crazy will happen to me because of my increased weight. And I just don’t like the idea of being so big that no one even knows I’m pregnant. I’d just look like a fat person.
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| The boring cardio. |
At this point in my life, I am trying to get fit, but it’s literally a daily struggle. Nothing is 100% consistent in my world, as much as I want it to be. But, the fact is, I’m trying to be as consistent as possible. So how have I been able to accomplish workouts with a toddler? In one of my previous posts, I talked about how my work schedule is from 8 – 4. This allows me around 45 minutes – 1 hour of workout time before I have to go pick up my daughter from daycare, which closes at 6:00 PM. Usually when I go to the gym, I just hit up an elliptical or a treadmill. I like interval runs on the treadmill and the elliptical is just to get some easy cardio in. If I’m feeling ambitious, which I’m usually not, I’ll use free weights to do some combo exercises. The elliptical and treadmill can be boring, but hey, it’s cardio.
However, science has proven that high intensity interval workouts (HIIT) and sprint interval training (SIT) can be just as effective, if not more effective, than traditional cardio. And the results are achieved in shorter amounts of time – 90 minutes of sprint interval training produced the same results as 5 hours of “traditional” cardio – meaning you could do 3 – 30 min SIT sessions verses 5 – 1 hour runs.
For busy moms – HIIT/SIT are a WIN.
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| Working on Day 11! |
I personally think HIITs are awesome because of the fact they don’t require much time. Actually, I do them when I’ve left the office later than I want to but yet still have time for exercise. My favorite free source of HIITs on the web is Zuzka Light. She’s amazingly fit and I’m tempted to buy her ZCut workouts and become one of her “Warriorz.” She’s also a co-founder of Body Rock TV, which is another great source for free videos and other 30 day fitness challenges. But, if I had to pick my overall favorite workout video fitness personality, though, I’d say my favorite is Cathe Friedrich. She’s a workout video pioneer and I remember when I was unemployed and first moved to San Antonio, I saw her videos on the fitness channel. They left me sore, which at the time, had never happened before. Her videos however, aren’t free, and some series are actually quite expensive. But if you can afford it, they are worth it!
Currently, I’m working on getting my cardio, doing ZWOWs and doing a 30-day squat challenge, which I've posted a picture of. I’ll post other challenges I do and report on my progress.
Now it’s your turn – how do you squeeze in a workout with your children? Do you have a favorite exercise, website, or fitness personality? Weigh-in!
