Handy Hints for busy Mums

Handy fitness hints for busy mums

This month I am issuing a "call to arms" to Mums on behalf of Mums. Throughout my week I seem to have been inundated with the same resounding plea from Mums regarding their fitness regime.

Mums have been crying out:

"I don't have time"

As one Mum encapsulates:

"With the pressures of family life I can't make the time to get fit. Its just all too hard"

Is fitness really just too hard to achieve? Is it that mums are too time poor? Or is it that us Mums are a little too quick to bow down to our nurturing instinct and reactively respond to the needs of children and husband at the expense of fitness goals.

With a myriad of multi tasking with various duties including work, school lunches, canteen duty, little athletics, midnight children's nightmares, poor Mum's needs sadly often go by the wayside. Sometimes Mum can become her own worst enemy as the first to willingly give up her own needs in order to rush to the nurture and care of the rest of the family.

Calling all Mums:

Mum -Put your health first and your kids will benefit...let's make fitness achievable.

You are the family helm, the rock, and the one who reads the School newsletter.

You are the stoic keystone to the family structure. The family ship would surely start to sink without you.

In the name of Mums rights I am focusing on handy hints and words of wisdom for the busy working Mum.

1. Fitness is about being fit for life. Make time for fitness so your kids will benefit from your happier healthier disposition.
2. A healthy fit mum is more likely to be a calm Mum. Do a weekly yoga class. Or an aqua class.
3. Make your fitness regime achievable, realistic, and fun.... no more than 20 minutes exercise 4-5 times per week
4. When life goes haywire and time is quickly escaping try 100 skips with a jumping rope to increase the metabolic rate, encourage blood flow and endorphins.
5. Do a short twenty minutes of resistance training 1 or 2 times per week to decrease the chance of osteoporosis, increase the metabolic rate and increase muscular density. Research shows that a resistance program of once per week increases strength.
6. Upon rising in the morning start your day with 10 - 20 push ups to give you an instant lift and increase your core stability
7. Remember the power of sleep; a rested mother is a better mother. The hours slept before 12 are the hours, which count.
8. Eat a balanced food plan. Don't diet. Diets just don't work.
9. Eat your 3 types of fruits and 5 types of vegetables per day for health and vitality.
10. Drink Green tea for antioxidants
11. Be grateful. Appreciate each step you take as you take it. Try not to focus on the future or dwell on the mistakes of the past.

Enjoy your week.

Lauren Ostrowski Fenton