Latest / Fit for Hiking / Ep. 21 Motherhood + Fitness: How To Balance Both

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Ep. 21 Motherhood + Fitness: How To Balance Both · Fit for Hiking

• Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional in Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness trail talk and adventure, hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active. Looking to level up your health, unlock your potential and become inspired to live your most vibrant life. You're in the right place. You're listening to the Fit for Hiking podcast. 2s Hey you guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. Today we are going to be talking about a topic that's really newly near and dear to my heart. If you are a mom, this one is for you. If you're not a mom, you might not find a ton of value in this. But if you are thinking about stepping into a season of parenthood anytime in the near future, then this is still going to be so helpful. This is some stuff that I kind of wish that I would have heard just a little bit of real talk on before I had my daughter or maybe even while I was pregnant with her, just so I could kind of prepare for the reality of how some things shift. So today I want to talk about motherhood and fitness. How does it all work together? How can you make this all work in a balanced manner? Because it feels like as a mom that we're just literally sprinting through each day, like we have a million things on our plate, especially, you know, I don't want to at all undermine stay at home moms, but if you're a working mom to man, you have a lot on your plate. Stay at home moms, never get a break. It's a lot. So either way, whether you're a stay at home mom or a working mom, like we are all exhausted, overwhelmed, oftentimes feeling very overstimulated. And the last thing sometimes that you think about is prioritizing something that is strictly just for you, right? Your own health, your own fitness usually is the first thing to go when overwhelm hits, when life gets busy, especially when you're solely in charge of taking care of this little human, that's yours. And there's so many things that come along with new motherhood, like anxiety, depression, you know, some postpartum issues. And so there's a lot of obstacles up against us, not just from time standpoint, but also from a mindset, you know, mental state, physical state. Um, you know, we have a lot that's shifted seemingly overnight, you know. Even though it happens slowly over pregnancy, there's nothing that can quite prepare you for when you bring that baby home and they're yours and you are their provider, their caretaker. It's a lot of pressure and it can be hard to prioritize yourself anymore. So, you know, as many of you know, I have a 15 month old daughter. Her name is Juniper. And before stepping into Parenthood, I worked at a fitness studio. I had every ability to work out like 6 to 7 times a week. It was awesome. I never really had an excuse of not working out because I literally worked at a gym. So on my lunch break it was very seamless. I would just get my workout in and then I would go on long hikes every weekend. You know, I didn't have the responsibilities of being a parent yet, so never really struggled with consistency, to be honest with you. Like I always got my workouts in. I never really struggled with that. But when I got pregnant, I was so excited to carry this on and have like a super healthy pregnancy. I had this idea in my head that I was going to have a really fit pregnancy. You know, some of the stuff that you see on Instagram that's like, Oh wow, that's such goals. When you see moms doing certain things while pregnant. 1s And then pregnancy sickness struck and I was incredibly sick for like 2 to 3 months, solid every single day, all day. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed at night, it felt like a horrible hangover that just wouldn't let go of me. And it was really debilitating and like mentally and physically hard because I went from being someone who was super active at that point. We had been living in the van when I got pregnant, so we were like hiking all the time, working out a ton. And then I was pretty much. Like caltrate it and like I couldn't really do a whole lot. I tried to do what I could, but it wasn't really until my second trimester that I started to feel a little bit better and then a little bit into my third trimester, I was put on bedrest for some complications in my pregnancy. So needless to say, it really wasn't the super fit pregnancy I've been dreaming of. I would sneak in a few short workouts per week. Half of them would pretty much be me sitting down and resting, but would do what I could when I could, when I felt able. But then I really had to kind of stop altogether in my third trimester due to the risks. So this inconsistency with exercise was a new thing for me and it was kind of tough. And then it continued obviously into postpartum. You can't even work out at all for, you know, about six weeks after you have a baby and after that, like, yes, you're cleared, but you're also still healing. There's some lingering pain. I was seeing a pelvic floor for some issues that I had experienced. And you're also still like a slave to breastfeeding, pumping. You're still trying to figure it all out. We weren't sleeping at all by six weeks. Like, think in my mind. I thought by six weeks, like we'd have a rhythm. We'd be like figuring it out. And that just wasn't the case for us. Like we were still very much deep in like the newborn struggles. So that inconsistency continued into postpartum. So, you know, coupled with minimal childcare, no family nearby and running a business exercise looks vastly different for me today than it did two years ago. And it's been a major process over the last two years, really. I found out I was pregnant exactly two years ago, so things have changed a lot for me in the last two years where I used to be able to say like, Oh, no excuses, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. You know, I kind of naively thought like, you want a bad enough, you're going to make it happen. And while that is true, to a certain extent, I didn't really know the challenges that moms face, especially in those newborn years. So that's what I want to talk to you today. So I used to feel like I was lazy or slacking if I didn't do at least five intense workouts weekly. Now I'm lucky if I fit in like 3 or 4 and they're usually from home and not very intense. They're usually shorter. They get interrupted by my daughter. Oftentimes if she wakes up from a nap early or if she needs something, hiking is kind of hit or miss, depending on how she's doing. If we have the time and energy on the weekends and today's obstacles, energy and priorities have just shifted for me. Like I'm not the same person that I was before I got pregnant. I have a completely different life. My priorities are just different. My priority is my family, my daughter, whereas I used to be able to prioritize like my health, my activities, my hobbies, all these things pretty high up there without feeling too bad about it because I wasn't a mom yet. So things are just different. So I've had to adjust because of this. My expectations for how to maintain my health and fitness. So if any of this is resonating with you, I just want you to know that you're not alone. Like if you struggled with getting into a good rhythm postpartum and you just feel like you're never going to get it back. You're not alone. And think Too often we see people's highlights on social media. Like if you follow me, you may even think, Wow, she works out so much. But trust me when I say it's probably half or less of what I used to do. And that's been really hard for me to accept. So just because you see someone post a workout once or twice a week doesn't mean that they're doing that every single day. Like they might just be showing their best moments. Obviously, I'm not sharing like all the times that I skip my morning workout because we've been up all night with my daughter, so things aren't always what they see. So how does anyone really balance both well and consistently between motherhood and fitness? Let's talk about it. So the truth is, I really don't have all the answers. I don't want it to come across like I have this totally figured out and dialed in some weeks. I feel like I'm crushing it. I'm like, okay, I'm getting my rhythm back. This is awesome. And then other weeks feel like I'm getting crushed because she's sick or something happens. We're up all night. She has a sleeping regression, we travel and it throws off her schedule. You know, there's an endless amount of things that can happen that really throw off your routine as a parent. So the truth is, I really don't have all the answers. But here's what I've learned so far with becoming a mom who still wants to prioritize her own health and fitness. So, number one. You may need to let go of some of your previous routines. So if you've always worked out in the mornings, for instance, but now you find yourself awake half of the night, this might need to change. In fact, every day and week may end up looking a little bit different. If your baby's anything like mine and doesn't like to adhere to any sort of schedule, you know, some babies do great on schedules. They thrive. They will put themselves on a schedule if you don't. And others are a bit more like Juniper, where they are different every day and you can't quite keep up. It makes it really hard to have a routine. So I do my best to make plans, but I've learned to hold on to them very loosely because she really dictates our schedule now. So learning to be flexible, to change your workout time, even every single day, it's going to be different. It's so important. This saves you from the mental game of feeling like you're failing if you didn't stick to your previous routine. Like if I was still holding myself to the standards of my pre-baby life, I would feel like total crap about myself and my efforts. And I would say, Wow, I've totally failed. What am I even doing? It's not even worth it. And that's just simply not true. And I can't hold myself to that same standard because like I said, my life looks completely different than it did two years ago. All right. So number two. Is to really figure out what works for you in this season. And this might take a little bit of trial and error. So for instance, like gym versus at home workouts, doing your best to find childcare at a gym. If you feel like you really want to be a gym goer still, like if you find that you need to go to a gym in order to really block out the distractions of motherhood and everything else in life, then I think that's what you should do. If you find that going to a gym is in no way realistic with your schedule. You can't find childcare or gym with childcare, you don't have any childcare support nearby. That's the boat that we're in then, yeah, you might need to do at home workouts. So that's something that I've had to accept. I used to do, you know, like I said, group classes go to the gym. I used to love to go somewhere and be social for my workouts. And while I still love that and wish I could do that more often, it's not as much a realistic opportunity for me because we have such little childcare support and I pretty much have to do my workouts from home while Juniper's napping or in the morning before she wakes up. So that has changed for me and it might change again at some point. I hope it does because I miss going to the gym. But right now I'm going to the gym maybe like once a week, if that, and the rest of the time I'm doing my at home workouts. So being flexible with that and figuring out what's actually going to remove barriers so that you can get your workouts in in this current season. And again, this could change in a few months, like things are going to ebb and flow throughout your parenthood journey. So being flexible with that and just figuring out what's going to create less barriers for me so that I can just get this done and get on with the rest of my day, but still prioritize it and make it happen. And having uninterrupted workouts, I will say, is something that I do recommend because I've definitely dealt with a lot of a lot of interruptions in my workouts and it just doesn't feel like I'm able to get in the zone and really like have that me time in the same way. So I'm working on making sure that whether it's my husband watching her or I leave the house or I do something while she's at the nanny for the day, she goes twice a week. So I really prioritize those two days as workout days because I know that I'm going to have like 6 to 7 hours where I can work and work out uninterrupted. So I definitely think that advocating for yourself to have uninterrupted workouts is really helpful If you can make that happen. Okay. Number three is remove the all or nothing mindset around workouts and healthy behaviors. So I am such a big advocate of talking about this because honestly, I find that this is one of the most pervasive thought processes in our mountain metabolic clients, my clients that I'm talking to every single week. They really struggle with this shifting of if I can't do it perfectly, then I'm not going to really try to do anything at all. And I definitely used to fall into this trap as well, where I felt like I was very all or nothing, which led to a lot of like restriction and then binging with food or like really intense all or nothing efforts with exercise. And the reality is that you're probably not going to be able to go 100% in with your healthy lifestyle in the first few years of parenthood, like some people might be able to, especially if you have like a ton of support. But for the people who don't have family nearby, don't have like all the money in the world to have like a ton of childcare, yeah, it's probably not going to be an option to be like gung ho. Everything's all about your health and fitness in those first few years. And that's where I'm at right now too. So if you are trying to have an all or nothing mindset, whether you realize that you do or not, it's not going to work out well because then you're just going to end up doing absolutely nothing. And that is the that's the trap of it, right? So trying to take a more moderate approach to the things that you can do in this season, even if it's not your very best, even if it's 20 minute workouts three times a week or just going for really long walks, because that's something you can do with your baby. Or maybe you find like Mommy and me classes that sure, they might not be the best workouts that you've ever done in your whole life, but it's something that you're doing to stay active. It's good for your mental health. You're getting out of the house with the baby, looking for little things that you can do, even if it's just prioritizing nutrition and rest on the days that workouts are not feasible. And trust me, I've been there a lot. Um, it's still better than doing absolutely nothing and just throwing the towel in and saying if I can't work out as much as I used to, as much as I want to, if I can't be perfect with my meals, then I'm just going to not do anything at all for my health. And that can be such a detrimental path to take. So really working on catching yourself when you start to go down those paths. So this could be something like, Oh, I don't have time to do the like 40 minute to hour long workout that I had planned. So I'm not going to do anything. If you have ten minutes, like do ten minutes of that workout, great, Like get something in or if you have a really large kind of less healthy meal one day and then you tend to just say, okay, screw it. Like I'm just going to eat whatever I want all weekend or this whole day is ruined and then I'll start again tomorrow or whatever that thought process might look like for you. Catch yourself in the middle of that and reroute and say, Nope, this was just one meal of my day. That doesn't mean that the rest of my day I should continue overeating and feeling worse about myself. So really trying to stop those thought processes in their tracks and reroute so that you can catch the all or nothing mentality at work and try to stop that habit. Okay. The next one, number four is to enjoy movement where you can, even if it's not at the same caliber of intensity as your pre kiddo workouts were. And again, this is hard for me. Like some of you might be really intense exercisers. You might love pushing yourself, going super hard, and you might find that that's not feasible in this season of life. Um. But enjoying movement where you can. So going for long walks, going for hikes with your kiddo, doing some like floor exercises where they're like rolling around with you or they're doing the workout with you, but you're kind of having to stop now and then. If that's all that you can do, do it. Like those are awesome memories in the making and it's still better than doing nothing at all. So trying to find some active ways that you can enjoy movement, even if it's not a super intense, quote unquote workout in the way that you used to frame your workouts. Number five is to make time for yourself. And I know that this is so much easier said than done. It gets harder and harder as a mom, but ultimately it's up to you to prioritize your health so that your cup doesn't run dry. And I know that that's like a very cliche thing. Like you have to fill your cup in order to pour into others. But I truly have never experienced the reality of that, saying until becoming a mom because. It's really easy to be selfless over and over and over and over again until you reach a breaking point and you realize I've been pouring into my kid, my marriage, my house, my job, all of these different relationships. But I haven't done anything that makes me feel good. Anything that makes me feel like I used to feel, you know, healthy and vibrant and strong and exercise is so beneficial even for our mental health, if anything. So having to carve out that time, yes, it's harder as you have kids, but it is absolutely essential. So really taking a realistic look at your schedule and saying, where can I fit this in this week? And then maybe having a conversation with your partner to say, Hey, how can we make this work? I really need to get these workouts in and do the same for them if that's really important to them. And they're wanting to work out, then that's a conversation that you two definitely need to have. All right. The final one is focusing on maintaining versus trying to reach all these crazy goals. Um, and yes, this one might be a bit controversial. Not to say that you can't reach these goals as a new mom. However, what I found is that it's a whole lot easier to just try to maintain during certain seasons of craziness than it is to try to put all this pressure on yourself to start all these new habits. So if you are, you know, thinking about becoming a parent currently pregnant, I can't emphasize this enough. Start doing the things that you want to be able to maintain now because it's not going to get easier. It's only going to get a little bit harder. And it's also going to be super hard to implement new habits when you're also trying to figure out your new life and your new routine as a parent. So this isn't to say that you shouldn't ever pursue goals after you have a kid. When I'm speaking to mainly is like when you're in survival mode, when you're in those first few months, maybe even the first few years, like for instance, right now, I'm not the strongest I've ever been. I'm not the fastest I've ever been. I'm not crushing hikes at the same caliber that I used to. Um, I'm lean, I'm strong. I still have muscle definition, but I don't have, like, a six pack abs. My body's fine, but it's not the best it's ever been. And that's okay. I'm more so focusing on maintaining as much as I can, maintaining as much strength, maintaining my aerobic capacity for the hikes that I want to do, and maintaining as much of a lean physique as I can in this season of life where that's not my main priority. I'm not trying to get chiseled right now. I'm not trying to get the the lowest body fat percentage I've ever been or, you know, do these crazy things. I ran a half marathon a few months ago, which I've talked about a little bit. And to me that was like a big deal because I was putting myself out there. I was prioritizing training as much as I could, but I wasn't trying to necessarily even PR for that because I knew I'm not going to have as much training time. So I wanted to set realistic standards for myself. I wanted to enjoy the training and not feel like I had to be the best possible, fastest version of myself for this race when it's a lot different than when I used to train for half marathons when I didn't have a kid. So this isn't to say to have low standards for yourself or to never pursue goals, but this is to say give yourself grace that in certain seasons you're going to be more focused on maintenance and just trying to do what you can to still stay strong, lean, fit, but not necessarily crush these crazy big goals in those certain times when you are really just trying to get by and survive because you're in a major change season, things are hard. You're not sleeping as much, things like that. So to wrap it all up, it is absolutely possible to still be fit, to still prioritize your health and fitness, to still crush goals. As a mom, it just is going to take some mental adjustments, some schedule adjustments, some tweaking. And it's it's all a work in progress. Like this is always going to be shifting and changing because your kids never stay the same for very long. One thing that works for a while might not work in a few more months. That's definitely been my experience. So being flexible with it is probably the number one thing that if you could take anything away from this episode, it's that you need to hold loosely to the expectations that you have of yourself in this time so that you can still enjoy the exercise that you're able to do. Still view it as fun, not look at yourself as a failure because you're not doing things the same way that you were pre-baby. So I hope that this has been helpful and encouraging to any new mamas out there, anybody who is maybe about to step into a season of motherhood. You've got this. I'm here to support you. If you have any questions about what this could look like for you, how to make it work. Feel free to send me a message at the fit underscore for hiking Instagram page. As always, if you really want some added support and accountability, the link for our mountain metabolic coaching is in the show notes. Definitely check that out. If you have been thinking about it and you're kind of on the fence and want to learn more. And thanks so much for tuning in today. I will see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands for more content like this. Be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail underscore on a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking and find more free resources at ponytail on a trail happy and healthy trails.