How to Lose Weight When You’re Too Busy Being a Parent
No matter what stage of parenthood you’re at, devoting adequate time and attention to your children can make it more challenging to care for yourself. Between work and ensuring that everything at home goes smoothly, it can be especially difficult to squeeze in a couple of hours for working out.
But the truth is being a good parent necessitates self-care— and exercising and maintaining your weight is an important part of that. When you’re unhappy with your physical health and looks, it can affect your mood and how you care for your family. So, if you’re concerned about weight loss as a busy parent, here are some things you can do.
Try meal planning
On days when the family’s particularly busy and you have to divide your time between everyone, it might be tempting to reach for that pack of microwave mac and cheese. In times like these, you’ll wish you’d prepared your food ahead so that you can provide the family with a more nutritious meal. This is where meal planning comes in handy.
Meal planning allows you to save time and money on shopping and decreases food waste. Preparing your family’s meals ahead of time on slower days can also help you get more rest and efficiency throughout the rest of your week. Most importantly, it allows you to control how healthy your meals are and incorporate nutritious ingredients into your recipes.
Get enough sleep
When you have to divide your time between your kids and yourself, finding the time to wind down and rest can be difficult. But while you’re busy during the day, one thing you should never sacrifice is getting your 7-8 hours of sleep a night.
Studies have discovered that a lack of sleep is associated with a greater risk of weight gain. This is because losing sleep can disrupt neurotransmitters that regulate your appetite. Lacking rest also reduces your energy for exercise and physical activity. Because of this, weight loss plans are more effective when you get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. You avoid feeling more hungry throughout the day and avoid common obstacles like stress-eating.
Involve your kids in physical activities
Can’t sneak away from your kids to exercise? Let them join in! Not only does this instill values of health and self-care in your children, but they can also help you spend quality time together. (Plus, you get to multitask by keeping an eye on them while burning a couple of calories.)
Some exercises you can do as a family include yoga and swimming. If you have younger children, you can also practice homeschool fitness exercises, which are easy physical activities you can do at any time of the day.
Be more flexible with yourself
In sustaining our weight loss goals, the most important thing is for you to avoid discouragement and being demoralized by supposed failures. If you give into the occasional indulgence or skip your exercise for a day to sneak in a few more hours of sleep, that’s perfectly fine! Remember: any progress is good progress, and doing little is better than doing nothing.
Putting too much pressure on perfection can cause mental barriers that lower your motivation to work out. This is why it’s important to overcome the all-or-nothing mentality or the thinking that you’ll lose all your progress when you have to adjust the intensity or duration of your exercise.
You're still moving towards your goals as long as you’re doing whatever your time and energy will allow. So go easy on yourself when it comes to your fluctuations in weight or consistency — it’s all part of the process!
