How to Find Time To Exercise as a Busy Mum. Podcast Episode 102

Hands up who's too busy to exercise? As a busy mum, there are always other things screaming for attention.

Exercising is crucial for looking after your body, especially if you want a toned and fit body. Exercise is also important for your health and if you want to lead a long and healthy life.

But.

It’s easy to sit still all day (especially if you work at a desk.) It’s easy to do very little exercise with out busy schedules.

On the other hand.

It’s also very easy to make sure you do enough exercise. When you have the systems, habits and routines in place, your exercise routine will be easy and fun to follow.

Today Dr Orlena talks about how you can create your exercise routine in a way that is fun, easy and sustainable. So you can lead your most healthy life and feel fit and fabulous.

Transcript of How To Find Time To Exercise As A Busy Mom Podcast.

Hello, and welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Kerek. I hope that you are feeling fit and fabulous today.

Introduction and What’s Going on with Dr Orlena

It’s rainy here in not so sunny, Spain. It's quite unusual that it rains here in Spain.  We do tend to have about a week in the autumn and about a week in the spring where it absolutely chucks it down.

It doesn't do things in half measures here. So if you get caught out, you get absolutely soaked. What else is happening in Dr. Orlena's world? We are on the brink of moving. So this is super exciting and terrifying. For those of you who have been listening for a while, you will know that I have been busy creating my dream house. This means doing lots of work on our house. Unfortunately, this got slightly delayed by quarantine and COVID. So now here we are actually about to move out and start work and the work is going to take a year. It's very exciting.

Dr Orlena’s Lessons from Moving House

We're about to embark on a bit of an adventure. So we live quite close to the sea, but we're going to move to the little village that is near the sea. The only house that I could find to rent for a year is absolutely tiny. It's a nice house, but there are six of us and we're going to have to squash in. I got to the stage where I thought we'll store all of our stuff. And then I got a quote on how much it was going to cost to store all of it for a year. It made me rethink that is so much money to store all of our stuff.

When I took a look at the stuff that I wanted to store, a lot of it was stuff that we don't use that has probably emotional attachment to it for my children. Boys who love, love, love Lego. They liked to store their Lego boxes. They keep them for absolute years, which is fine when you've got a space to keep them. When space is limited, it's a difficult thing to do.  I think we're going to have to throw everything away. So it's going to be an interesting year in learning how to get on with each other in a very small and confined space. Also on learning how to be tidy.  

I think my children need to learn that lesson. I suspect that I also need to learn that lesson. That I clearly don't make my children be tidy probably because I don't have that tidiness. I think it's really going to be an interesting year on being minimalist and seeing what we can really do without. We're saying goodbye to an awful lot of our stuff.  It's is sad on one level, but on another level, it's a good opportunity to think about what we actually need in life.

I think the 20/80 rule applies here. I look at the stuff and 20% of the stuff that we have we use every single day.  80% of the stuff is the stuff that stays in the cupboards and that we don't use. We just have that emotional attachment to it. I think that emotional attachment can be really difficult to break. The difficult thing is actually breaking it. Once you've said goodbye to it, you don't miss it, but it is daunting nonetheless.

Helping Your Kids Build Healthy Habits And Be Physically Active. 

Now the other thing that is going to happen when we move is that we're going to be moving a little bit further away from school. I don't like to take the car out and drive and the children go to school twice a day. So they go in the morning and they go in the afternoon. Right now that means they walk backwards and forwards four times a day. So I do two of those journeys. My husband does one and they walk back by themselves at 4:30 and it's great in terms of exercise.

We have decided that we are going to cycle backwards and forwards.  This is going to be daunting as well for my son who is eight. He's not a confident bike rider. He's getting much better. He improved amazingly in the last few months when we've been doing a little bit of bike riding. His twin I think was about three when she learned to ride her bike and she just essentially jumped on a bike one time when we went camping.  She cycled ramp this camping site and absolutely loved it.

Unfortunately at that time, my son didn't take that leap and he spent a long time saying "I can't do it". He can't do it when really he can. He's got much more confidence. Doing it four times a day, I think is really gonna be difficult to begin with. After a few weeks, he's going to be in that place where he'll be like, "I can do this, It's much, much easier". So it's going to take a little bit of adjustment, but we're going to get there.

Exercise Is Good For Your Body. Are you Doing Enough Exercise?

I have been talking to lots of you recently and chatting to you about where you are. One of the things that I hear, a lot of people saying, to me in the last few weeks is "I want to do more exercise or just don't have time for exercise."And a lot of people are saying "I would like to lose weight and I want to do more exercise." So there are two things I would like to address here. The first one is I think everybody should exercise, and exercise is something that can just be worked into your day. It doesn't have to be something that really takes over your day.

Exercise Is the Key to Feeling Fit And Fabulous.

It's really the key to feeling fit and fabulous. It's one of the keys, one of the pillars that I teach to living a long and healthy life. It is important for things like bone strength, muscle strength, heart strength, lung strength, feeling good in yourself. However, it is not the key to weight loss. The key to weight loss is about 80% of what you eat. So if you're looking to lose weight really, and truly, you want to change what you're eating. That's not to say if you're sitting there thinking, I don't have time to exercise, that you shouldn't find a way to exercise.

How Can You Fit Exercise into Your Busy Day? 

One of the things that you can see that I have done by making this move.  I've made this decision consciously is that I have put myself and my family in a position where there isn't a choice. Well, I guess there is a choice. We could jump in the car and drive, but I will talk about that in a minute.

By saying we're going to have to cycle to school backwards and forwards. It means that those cycle rides get done because they are a necessity to get to school. When people say, "Oh my goodness, I don't have time in the day to exercise." That's not actually true. That statement isn't true. Everybody has 24 hours. 

Are You Prioritising Exercise?

What you're actually saying is "I am not prioritising exercise," "I am finding other things to do with my time which take priority over exercise." I prove to you that you can change your priorities. Once you make it non-negotiable and say, "okay, I have put myself in this place where I have to do this exercise". Then it just happens naturally. You don't have to move house and you don't have to say, "okay, I'm going to cycle my four children to school them back". Although, that's not a bad idea. You can definitely take a look at your life. You can think if there's a way for you to be able to walk or cycle on your journey and just turn that into a habit.

Exercise Can Be Fun and Easy.

The other thing that you can actually do without moving house just make that decision. You can say, do you know what exercise is part of keeping my body healthy. My health is important to me. So I'm going to take 15 minutes to walk in the morning. I'm going to take 15 minutes to walk in the evening, and that is not negotiable.

It is part of my routine and actually, it's going to help me feel more productive. It's going to make me feel better when I sit down and do my work. It doesn't have to be heaps and heaps of exercise.

How Can You Incorporate More Movement into Your Day?

At the moment I'm totally loving my seven-minute workout. So I get up, I do my seven-minute workout, which actually takes eight minutes. I do 10,000 steps a day and 10,000 steps a day is my bottom line. 

I don't do any less than 10,000 steps a day. That’s normally just walking backwards and forwards around town to school. If on a day when I have driven to school which isn't very often or something's happened (my children stay at home) clearly, I'm not getting those steps. But I will have to spend 10 to 15 minutes just walking round to the garden. I've decided that I do what they call squat-walking, half-squat-walking. So you sort of bend your knees and it gives your thighs and exercise too. I just sort of run around in a circle for 10 minutes. That will give me a thousand to two thousand steps just to take me over my daily goal. As I say, my daily goal is 10,000 steps. It's perfectly possible. Just to incorporate it into your day.

Is Exercising a Non Negotiable For You?

Exercise goal would only happen when you make that decision and say, "this is not negotiable". "I do this every single day and my health is important to me." So I think this also brings us on to non-negotiables or your default setting. I mentioned this briefly in last week's episode.

Is Exercising Your Default Setting?

This morning as I woke up, I could hear it rain, which isn't common in Spain. I look out, absolutely chucking it down and I'm thinking I'm going to have to drive the kids to school otherwise, they're going to get soaking wet.

Luckily about three minutes before we normally leave, it stopped raining. There are only two of them going to school today. So much to my children's disappointment, I said, "come on, we can walk to school". They obviously want to drive and they are saying, "mommy please, can we go in the car?" And we spent most of the journey talking about walking and how I love walking and how I used to have to go to school when I was little.

I used to have to travel for about an hour to get to school. I love being able to get out and walk to school. I don't really like having to sit in the car and getting caught in all the school traffic just to drop people off. It takes as long once you've got caught in all the traffic to drive someone to school, as it does to walk to school.

It’s Easier to Return to Old Exercising Habits that You’ve Let Go

This really goes back to your default settings.

What are your default settings?

When you're given the choice and you can either go one way or the other way?

What do you choose? 

As we're coming up to party season, to the holiday season, this is a really important realization to have. What are your default settings in all aspects of your life? What do you revert back to? Do you revert back to eating fruits and vegetables, or do you revert back to eating sweets and treats? 

Do you revert back to driving to school when you're given the choice or do you revert back to walking? And as I said last week, don't worry, If you realize that your default setting is not the healthy option, you can change that. The first step is to understand that, that is your default setting and you need to do some work to change that.

Watch Out For More Amazing Programs In 2021 That Will Surely Lead You To Fit And Fabulous Life. 

As I said, 2021 is your year. I'm going to be doing some amazing programs. Watch this space.  I'm super excited. I hope that we can get everybody where they want to lead their healthy fit and fabulous life without having to think about it as an autopilot.

All of these things just slot into your life without you having to spend all that brainpower thinking "what healthy food am I going to eat?" "What exercise am I going to do?" You just do it because it's natural.

Fit And Fabulous Family Summit Is Coming Near. 

Just a reminder, we have our Fit and Fabulous Family Summit, which taking part from December the fourth to December the sixth.

Lots Of Amazing And Timely Resources Have Been Prepared For You.

I am honoured and excited to be able to bring you these amazing resources we have. I'm not sure if it's 19 or 20, I need to count the number of people who have actually submitted their videos. Amazing videos to help you go from tired stressed and overwhelmed to calm, relaxed, and loving your family life. We'll be looking at all four pillars of nutrition, movement, exercise, sleep, and importantly emotional life.

And More Talks On Self-Care, Sleep And Mindfulness That Will Help You And Your Family Enjoy A Stress-Free and Happy Life.

A lot of the talks are focusing on the emotional aspect particularly coming up to Christmas. We've had such a stressful year. I think this year has really highlighted to all of us the importance of emotional wellness. Having the tools to help you deal with whatever life throws at you is really important. And that unexpected things happen.  Can you imagine a year ago? Thinking about what has happened in 2020. A year ago we were sat there totally oblivious to anything and our normal lives just being perfectly normal.

A few highlights, there are a couple of talks on sleep. I am doing a talk on how to get a good night's sleep. Bonnie Dimmick is doing a talk on "how to help your children get a good night's sleep." Both are really important things. There are lots on creating calm, happier, peaceful homes.

There's one on hygge which I think is absolutely fascinating. The Danish concept of hygge. A fabulous lady called Tova, who is obviously Danish is going to tell us all about it. I have to confess I always thought it was pronounced huggy. I don't know, in my brain, I've always pronounced it huggy.

A few about self-care and yoga and a lot about relationships with your children. So winning cooperation for a stress-free life. And it's all about the big picture. It's all about healthy living for families. You can create a family life where it's stress-free and healthy living happens on autopilot.

So come and join up. It's totally free between December the fourth and the sixth. You can sign up at [email protected]. Now there is also a lifetime ticket. If you feel that you're not going to have time to watch all those videos, or you want to have access to them for longer, the price of the lifetime ticket is $47. It includes some amazing bonuses, including my feeding toddlers book. There's a  video that goes along with it. I'm not talking about feeding toddlers in this summit because I thought I'm going to limit myself to one tool.

I hope to see you. We're going to be having a meet and greet which will be happening on Thursday, December the third. So I hope you can make it to that too. 

I love to actually chat to people and get to know people. I think it helps create a community. And at this time when everybody is being isolated, it's really lovely to be able to create a community and invite you to that community. 

Have a fabulous week and I hope to see you on Friday and if not, I hope to see you during the Summit. Have a lovely week. Take care.

Written by Dr Orlena Kerek

Dr Orlena is a medical doctor turned health coach. She helps busy mums go from "I can't lose weight" to feeling fit and fabulous. Find out more about her here.