How I think about health and fitness as a parent
What's changed, what's the same, and goals for the year
Partially inspired by Johnny Strides video about getting fit in his 40s and Reece Martin’s post about figuring out the right balance with fitness and nutrition, I wanted to share a bit of my thinking about balancing fitness and having a baby, as well as some more general thoughts.
For the past 8 years or so of being interested in strength training and general fitness, I’ve been leaning into prioritizing strength and mobility goals over aesthetics and weight loss. Obviously it’s a balance, and I’m not completely enlightened on this. I still have days of not liking the number on the scale or critiquing aspects of my body that I want to change. However, I’ve found that shifting to a focus of trying to meet strength and mobility goals rather than focusing on a goal weight or aesthetic goal is a lot more satisfying and keeps me interested in pursuing the endpoint longer. I’ve found this approach has come in handy as I’ve been regaining my fitness after having a baby—focusing on what your body can do rather than what it looks like fits in pretty naturally after having a child (which is a lot of what the pregnancy and giving birth process was about!).
This isn’t to say that I think there is anything necessarily wrong with pursuing aesthetic or weight loss goals, I think these goals have their place depending on the context. It makes sense to want to get back to a weight that you felt good at after having a baby, for example, and that’s a goal of mine. But these aesthetic goals can also lead to more obsessing and nitpicking than a focus on, say, getting your first chin-up, does. Aesthetic goals have a way of morphing and increasing that strength goals just don’t. You either get the chin-up or you don’t. Whereas with aesthetic goals it’s a lot more subjective and you’ll never really know if you “made it”. Now I think often weight loss goals can complement strength goals, for example, if you’re regularly strength training using progressive overload and modestly losing weight, chin-ups are going to become easier. But I still think it makes more sense to prioritize strength goals for their more objective nature and just because they make you feel really strong and capable.
All this to say not too much has changed for me in terms of how I think about fitness; what’s changed is that strength goals have become even more salient for me. When I’m crunched for time, I want to make sure I’m working toward big, objective goals, rather than more subjective do I look good goals (though as I mentioned, I’m human, and I still have these moments sometimes). But I care more about not wasting my time and doing exercise that is going to give me more energy and confidence, rather than focusing on things that are going to drain me of energy and not have a big payoff (for me, examples of this would be having a very restrictive calorie count or doing a lot of HIIT).
So, what am I focusing on now to improve my health and fitness now that time is more truncated?
Focusing on high impact, objective strength or mobility goals, like getting back to being able to do as many chin-ups as I could do before and being able to do a pistol squat.
Focusing on protein intake to help with satiety and muscle retention (a good day for me would be 100g of protein, and for reference, I weigh 160 pounds). Many fitness people would advise more protein, but I feel pretty good if I get this amount.
Prioritizing sleep as much as possible (probably a bit of a laughable goal to some parents out there), but I think it’s worth turning up the dial on sleep as much as you can.
Having a moderate daily calorie goal (I usually like to have a calorie range for a day, like 2000-2200 calories, for example).
Having a daily step count goal of 8,000–10,000.
For me, these things work pretty well for being simple enough to incorporate on a day to day basis without being really extreme and making me burn out. It’s still a work in progress and I’m still adjusting to being really solid at meeting these goals every day with a baby, because sometimes parenting just comes first, but it’s helpful to have these general goals so that you can always jump right back on the horse the next day.
This was good! Nice to hear your thought process!