I wrote this piece in an effort to help stay at home parent’s (mainly Mums but don’t worry Dad. I wrote about you here) with their health and fitness at our Maynooth based gym and personal training centre.
We have helped so many over the years juggle their commitments to find ways of getting a result.
Some of the solutions have been a little unconventional and out of the box but they are a solution to problems that we all face.
There is no denying that life can be tough but unfortunately our environment today is fast paced and in need of convenient solutions that make it even harder to carve a little space for ourselves.
Stress is at an all time high and therefore results can be a little bit harder to come by as a mum.
As a stay at home parent, the principles and methods are outlined to help you find some that strike a chord and give you the motivation to ‘do’.
1. Be in a caloric deficit
So diet is fundamental. More so than exercise I believe. Especially when you have a nano second in your mind to breathe let along train.
When your movement and exercise habit is limited to start with you need to pay attention to how much food you are consuming.
It is very easy to overeat. Especially if your diet is made up of satiating refined carbohydrates and ‘food on the go’.
Nowadays it is getting easier and easier to do find out how much you are consuming and work yourself into a deficit.. I write about what I recommend to do here.
Then it is a case when starting off to just hit that number. Maybe start a bit of walking for 3-4 weeks and off you go. It is what you do after this period that really counts.
It is also a great starting point on finding a route that is sustainable.
You should be able to contain within your daily ‘budget’ a small percentage of foods that you enjoy and are processed. That wine, ice cream, biscuit and chocolate bar should never be excluded totally. But understand this – they have to be managed.
Blowing your calorie budget in a weekend is easily done.
2. Once you have this focus on nutrient quality
Nutrient quality is important. But nothing to start yourself mirroring those ridiculous food bloggers with. Just start working more protein into your meals. Have some greens with each meal and monitor how much carbohydrate you are actually consuming. Get the fibrous stuff into your diet more than the processed sorts (breads, pasta, rice). Work in more wholegrains, vegetables and fruits.
This shouldn’t take 13 trips to 13 shops to source ingredients with. As a stay at home parent it is literally what you can grab and go (for some cool tips on this check out here)
3. Locate your trigger foods – everything in moderation doesn’t work
Everything in moderation doesn’t work. Why? Because some foods you just can’t eat in moderation.
For me the cheesecake and chocolate rice cakes are like kryptonite. I am like a proverbial hoover. So guess what? I don’t eat them that often. They are my trigger foods. I eat them when out which with kids is once in a blue moon.
Locate your trigger foods and do your best to avoid them and certainly don’t have them in the home. Be specific too. Sugar isn’t a trigger food. That is a nutrient. You can’t avoid it . But a creme egg is. You see the difference?
The reason why people ‘allow themselves’ a square or two of dark chocolate because despite most people thinking it tastes ‘indifferent’ they are convincing themselves that is a healthy alternative to their trigger food. It is easier not to eat the bar!
3. Be a food snob
I like the attitude of being a food snob too. Ever noticed that you tend to take your time when you are eating something of quality that is expensive? Food snobbery.
If you want something buy the best. That chocolate bar you want. Buy the 5 euro bar. You will savor it and eat less of it.
That cake. Don’t go cheap. Buy the most expensive version. You will appreciate it a bit more.
Go for the rolls royce instead of the fiesta of foods.
4. Make your home environment safe
This leads us onto your home.
‘When bored will munch’
If your home is not a safe haven then you will find our way into the biscuit tin. So put some obstacles in the way and stop buying the stuff.
By buying the stuff you are removing the barriers yourself. It would be better to just put a little obstacle in the way first before taking the dive.
Some items are inevitable, like kids treats for lunch boxes, and all I can say there is buy the minimum for the week so the guilt of you eating them again puts that hurdle in the way.
Again it just stops you testing your willpower.
5. Stay Busy. Real Busy. Out of Home.
Idle minds makes idle fingers. If you are busy and around the house then of course you are more likely to eat. Boredom sets in and boom. Tea and biscuits get consumed.
Our action stations tend to be around the kitchen.
Stay busy. Don’t give yourself time to get bored. Get out of the home preferably. Train, go for a walk, jump around, get stuck into a workout DVD, mow the lawn etc etc. But don’t revolve it around food.
6. Map out your day – find those 20-30 minute windows to Train (from home if needs be)
You have time. You have the same 24 hours as everyone else. It is how you use them and how ruthless you can become.
Look at your day and see where you have those gaps in your day. And you DO have them. Then schedule that time with the most productive thing you can do to transform yourself.
You will see pockets of time that you waste. 30 minutes a day is all you need really to totally transform your body. 30 minutes.
Can’t find it?
Then you aren’t serious about transforming and your half baked commitment is not a commitment at all.
You have to be ruthless about the pursuit of development and growth.
Read some inspiring prose, train, workout in your front room, get out for a run, prepare some meals. Time is your most precious commodity so use it.
Be productive NOT busy.
7. Stress – take a breath and a minute- there will be bumps in the road
Remember when you were learning to ride your bike as a kid and the amount of times you fell off? It hurt, it was a pain, and you probably despaired and cried. (It is something I wrote about here)
But you carried on.
There are always bumps in the road. It is how much you keep at it. That little drive that has a cry and then gets back up. And that’s ok.
Take a breath and accept that this is the way. Everyone who we have worked with have struggled. BIG TIME. You will not be the exception.
8. What are you doing for yourself each week?
This goes back to my point above about time. At the start of the week get your diary out and instead of scheduling the kids matches, work commitments and make time for YOU. Stay at home parents are great at putting everything above themselves first.
Plan your training. Time out. Whatever is focused on YOU.
Make an appointment with yourself first. This does a couple of things.
It removes the excuses of ‘everyone else’. Secondly, it makes it easier to actually do. Especially if your partner knows that you have an appointment to get to that is really important.
So many of us are reactive to circumstances when in fact there really is no need.
9. Stay Accountable
As a stay at home parent, you can’t do this alone. You can’t. No matter how hard you try. Unless you have the steely determination of a Marine then sticking to something will be just a little bit harder.
So why not assemble a team around you. Friends for training or a walk. An online support group where you can get assistance with your food. A coach. Myfitnesspal. There are many options that work. The trick is to stay consistent in this approach.
10. Accept the bumps in the road. Don’t accept not doing something about them
This goes back to my point above. Progress is never linear. It is a messy zig zag of ups and downs.
So if you hit a speed bump it is either, to paraphrase the title of John Kavanagh’s book – ‘Win or Learn’.
What is derailing your efforts? The lunacy comes when you are making the same mistakes over and over again and doing absolutely nothing about them.
Remember change is hard.
There will be resistance from yourself. Why wouldn’t there be? We love the snuggly comfort of our own daily routines. They keep us warm and cosy. We can literally press the cruise control button and hey presto we have done our day.
The problem is when this cruise control is on the highway of inactivity and junk foods or other unhealthy habits.
That is where you need to identify where you are making the wrong turns and fix it.
11. You are not weak willed. You are holding yourself to too high standards set by the wrong people
Let’s get one thing straight. You are not weak willed. Or useless. Or lazy. Or whatever negative self talk you care to speak to yourself with.
Your standards are too high from where you are looking at the moment.
Maybe you are comparing yourself to an ideal that is just that bit too far away at the moment.
I get it often. Phrases like “I want to look like….”
Well that’s great. What about bettering yourself today. And then tomorrow and then the day after. The compound effect works. It has what has led to such startling transformations like the ones here
You see there the actual results come from the process.
And that feeling of ‘ it is not working for me’ is coming from negative self talk. Be careful what you say to yourself. If you say it enough of course you will start to believe it.
From what I have listened to over the years there is a ‘guilt’ and ‘anxiety’ situation going on when trying to transform.
Guilt stemming from the past and what they have and haven’t done and anxiety coming from ‘what is coming on the future’
Buckle up and enjoy the process. There are folks around you who love everything about you at this very moment. And that is the important phase. It is the stage which generates action, calm and a sense of achievement.
12 . What is stressing you at home? Find it and address it. Otherwise it will continue to address you.
Like trigger foods there will always be times in your day or week that seriously test you and your character.
Stress can control you. Or, you can control it.
Think of stress like a tap running its water into a cup.
Some stress is harder to manage and is harder to turn off.
Kids, work, schedule, too many commitments, home…these things can literally pile up to the extent that everything swamps you.
And then we have the self imposed stress…poor food choices can put a stress on the body, lack of sleep, poor time management, lack of exercise mean that the tap never gets turned off. If anything it ends up pouring faster.
SO how can we control the flow to levels which mean that we not overwhelmed and the cup doesn’t pour over? As a stay at home parent try a few of these: –
- – Meditation (love the app Calm)
- – Stop and deep breaths for a minute
- – Plan, prepare
- – Take some exercise
- – Clean up your diet
- – Hire some help
Remember there are many services that we offer. We have helped hundreds of folks like yourself transform themselves. Check out our services here and our online solution for those who don’t live near our training centre in Maynooth.
John Lark is owner and founder of Sphere Fitness.
