The Struggle Is Real - Part 2: 10 Tips for Being a Fit, Badass Mama (or Dada)

If you read my last blog post, you know that over the course of the past year-and-a-half, I have been struggling to get my health and nutrition on point. I got into the best shape of my life just a few months after having my daughter in 2016 thanks to the amazing calorie burn of breastfeeding and the fact I took an extended maternity leave and used my "free time" to train in my garage for my Russian Kettlebell Challenge kettlebell instructor certification. But immediately after passing my certification in February 2017, I returned to work full-time, and the stress and challenges of juggling work, baby, buying and selling multiple homes, moving multiple times, maintaining multiple households, and just generally trying to figure out how to ​do working mamahood completely overwhelmed me, and this fitness and nutrition expert - who holds multiple certifications in both disciplines - let her health and wellness slide.

Finally, in January of this year, I decided to "stop the insanity" (who else is old enough to remember this Susan Powter reference?) and get control of my health again - a work-in-progress for sure. And during this process, I have discovered a number of tips and tricks for how to regain your health and fitness when you are a busy, exhausted and overwhelmed parent, and over the course of my next few blog posts, I will share my 10 Tips for Being a Fit, Badass Mama (or Dada).

Tip #1: Ditch Perfectionism and Embrace the Gray

When it comes to living a fit and healthy lifestyle, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving your goals is the fact that many of us live in a world with only two colors - black and white. We take an all-or-nothing approach to dieting and/or working out, and if we aren't able to stick with a certain fitness program to the letter, or we "cheat" on the newest fad diet ("I ate a carb! I ate a carb! It's over!"), then we throw in the towel and vow to start over "next Monday," and the cycle continues.

The reality is that despite what you see on social media, which generally represents the "highlight reel" of people's lives and not the full picture with all of their messy closets and sad moments exposed, the majority of life takes place in the vast land of gray that is filled with many shades (50 at least...), and our ability to achieve our health and wellness goals and find balance in our lives is largely a function of embracing this concept - particularly as a busy mama. This may sound easy and yet for many of us with Type A (A+, let's be honest...) personalities, admitting that we should lower our standards is a tough pill to swallow.

Most of you are probably familiar with the Pareto Principle, a.k.a. the law of the vital few, which states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. But when it comes to your health and wellness, what I now know is true is that if you spend the majority of the time (let's say 80%, for the sake of this argument) on making healthy choices, you will achieve your goals. Because in the equation of life, losing weight, getting fit and improving your health are the sum of all of your choices and habits over time; they do not equal - either positively or negatively - any single decision you make in any given moment.

So, my #1 tip to being a Fit, Badass Mama/Dada is to ditch the perfectionism, embrace the gray in all aspects of your life, and strive to do just a little better, a little more often. Because when it comes to losing weight and getting fit, good enough, is indeed good enough, mama.

Tip #2: Nutrition Is the Grand Poobah of Health and Wellness

This next tip might be hard for you to digest (pun intended), since I know many of you enjoy working out more than noshing on veggies and drinking large quantities of water, but when it comes to your health, particularly weight loss, nutrition is responsible for 80% of your results.

(Actually, nutrition may be responsible for 75% - or maybe 90% - of your results. But following the theme of the Pareto Principle from tip #1, I'll stick with 80%, which represents the general consensus on this topic anyway.)

Let me repeat this to allow it to marinate (again, pun intended). If your goal is to lose weight or get healthier, the vast majority of your results are a function of what you eat and not a function of how much time you spend in the gym or how intensely you workout. Or even whether you workout at all.

Certainly, staying active is an important aspect of good health and can serve as a catalyst for living an overall healthier lifestyle, but if your goal is to improve your health and/or to lose some weight, you should spend 80% of your time and efforts on improving what you put in your mouth 80% of the time (see how I connected tips #1 and #2 here?), and only 20% of your energy on working out.

What this means in practice is that if you have 5 hours each week to spend on your fitness and nutrition, then 80% of that time (or 4 hours, in this example) should be spent doing what it takes to eat healthier most (80%) of the time (e.g., meal planning, grocery shopping, meal prepping, cooking, etc.), and only 1 hour on formal exercise (for example, 3, 20-minute sessions over the course of the week). Because in my years of experience in the fitness world, what I now know is true is that most people struggle most of the time in the kitchen (and not in the gym), and since nutrition is responsible for most of your results, it just makes sense to focus most of your time on cleaning up your diet - most of the time.

Tip #3: If All Else Fails, Be NEAT

As busy parents, it is often hard to find time to get to the gym or do any sort of formal workout. Which should make you happy to learn that Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (a.k.a., NEAT) plays a bigger role in helping people achieve their health and weight loss goals than many of us realize.

What is NEAT exactly? NEAT is the energy expended for everything we do other than sleeping, eating or engaging in formal, sports-like exercise. Think going for a casual stroll with your dog, gardening, or doing laundry.

This looks like a "NEAT" way to mop your floors.

Recent research now suggests that most of the time NEAT is more impactful than formal exercise when it comes to weight loss.  As Dr. James Levine, a Mayo Clinic obesity researcher who coined the term "NEAT," has stated: "You can expend calories in one of two ways. One is to go to the gym and the other is through all the activities of daily living called NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). It appears that NEAT is far more important for calorie-burning than exercise in nearly everyone." (And I'm assuming that means for all of us who aren't professional athletes.)

In National Geographic's well-known study of the longest living and healthiest populations in the world, the highly-acclaimed (and highly-recommended) book The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner reveals that very few of these supremely healthy, fit and long-living individuals ever stepped foot in a gym, picked up a dumbbell, or stepped on an elliptical machine. Instead, they often walk or bike for transportation, spend time performing yard work, and play with their (great, great-) grandchildren.

So if you are a busy mom or dad who just can't seem to fit a formal workout program into your overwhelming schedules, do not let it discourage you. Be OK in the land of the gray, cancel your unused gym membership (at least for the time being) and instead focus most of your time improving your nutrition and the rest of your energy doing what you can to increase your NEAT each day. Take the stairs at work. Mow the lawn. Park farther away from the entrance to the grocery store. Stand up and move around while you're on conference calls. Go for a short walk after dinner with your family. And maybe even invest the money you've saved after ditching your gym membership in a pedometer so you can track your NEAT progress daily as you gracefully whisk across your kitchen floor in your brand-spanking-new mop slippers.

Being a parent is hard. It is time-consuming, it is exhausting, and it does not leave you with much "free time" to focus on yourself and your own needs. So if your goal is fat loss, weight loss or improved health, what I now know is true is that it makes sense to spend most of your precious time on the "big rocks" that are most likely to help you achieve the results you want -  eating better and incorporating more movement into your everyday life - and then fitting in the "little rocks" - like formal exercise - when you can, as (sugar-free) icing on the top of the (gluten-free) cake.

Whether your children are 2 or 20, if your life is crazy and you are struggling to stay or get healthy, to lose or maintain weight, or just be the best version of yourself, stay tuned and subscribe to my blog so you don't miss the rest of my Tips for Being a Fit, Badass Mama (or Dada). And please leave a comment below to share your advice for living a fit and healthy lifestyle when you life is OOC!

Until next time, by happy and healthy,

Kathleen