My sister was quite surprised and astonished when she saw her daughter sitting up, just a baby sitting up typing on her turned off laptop *type type, type, type type* and just leaning forward and staring at the screen and then *type type type* again. Well guess what, just like the typing, exercise and nutrition are learned behaviors that are innate because kids learn a lot of what they do by modeling their parents behaviors. So when kids see that it's not just a kid thing to be running around and exercising and that it's also something that everybody does, and you’ve ingrained in your day to day life, these are things that can mean that kids will want to participate and want to be doing things in their day to day life that will be around activity, exercise, staying fit, and eating healthy. They also aren't going to be picking up the habits of say, ignoring their health until it becomes an issue: because actions speak louder than words. Kids learn in school from the teacher that they need to exercise every day and they need to eat healthy. What they see that you give them healthy food and you eat whatever the heck you want, and you get them to exercise but you actually don't exercise yourself. Well, the action that you're showing, for them, is that you really don't want to do it, well then they learn that they probably don't want to do it either. So having that opportunity to role model the behavior that you want to see in them and to be able to promote the basis of their lives. That's a really great investment.
My own father told me that the habits that you have as a teenager and in your 20s are the ones that are going to stay with you for life. So I learned from him about exercise and he would participate in it regularly. Then the things that I had learned in my teens meant that I knew what to do when I was in my 20s. Then in my 20s I continued to exercise at the level that I had learned from exercising in my teens, so it had the knock on effect. Good health is wealth. So investing in your health and investing in your fitness is never going to be a waste of time, energy or money.
When it comes to getting an exercise regime and a diet regime, there are many ways that you can find out more about the type of foods you should be eating for your body and type of exercises you should be doing for your body, but not necessarily how those two relate to each other. Check out my post on the ultimate guide to eating healthy without being miserable.
What a lot of fitness professionals who are straight out of doing their cert three and cert four may not understand how to incorporate into your specific circumstance is: what is your maximum recoverable volume. What I mean by that is, taking into account:
1. the fact you may have kids,
2. the amount of hours that you work, such as if you are a shift worker, for instance, and do your shift patterns change often?
3.Or are you a light versus heavy sleeper?
4. How much sleep are you getting?
5. What sort of activity do you work each day
6. and what sort of family or emotional stress do you have as a result of, for instance, divorce, moving house?
Some of these big factors that cause people to be more stressed or less stressed can affect the amount of exercise you can recover from and the level of calorie deficit that your body can handle and still get your results. Beyond this point, if you were to have a greater calorie deficit your body may not actually respond in the way you expect it to or not recovering from your exercise sessions may actually mean that your “excellent exercise program” is working against you and not for you: and therefore it is betraying you. So not all of these things are created equal and it does depend on what exactly you need and what your lifestyle is.
Another thing is to be mindful if you have enough energy to be able to keep up with your kids. The investment of a little bit more time spent on your nutrition and your exercise pays off dividends in terms of the amount of quality time that you can spend with your kids. When you're able to keep up with them, and they ask you to play tag with them or when they ask you to join in the game of soccer. On top of that, given that a lot of kids these days just want to play on screens a lot of the behaviors that they have, can often be promoted or dispelled, based on what they see you do. Also, see my post on exercising for teens.
Any good plan needs to take into consideration your lifestyle as well. So your lifestyle will dictate how, when, and what types of food you eat as well, and on top of that, your age dictates different hormone function fluctuations across your life. Also, the amount of energy you expend based on your age. These are things to be taken into consideration when moving forward and getting you results based on your goals.
Often it's good to go in-house to either one company or set of individuals that work closely together or one person that knows both of those things, so that you can ensure that the exercise is right for the nutrition that you have and vice versa because they do play into each other. Get the knowledge and skills to set you up for life, and continue to prioritise your health.
If any of what I said resonated with you, we would love to have conversations around this sort of thing. So do reach out, send us an email or let us know what we can help you with.
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