Sneaky ways to exercise with young kids at home

First-time moms may be overwhelmed with their new busy schedule managing the household and another whole human while new moms of any number of children struggle with finding time in their daily routine for home workouts that are uninterrupted and effective. I am a stay at home mom of three (soon-to-be-four) little kids and have been for the last six years off and on. Busy moms know my struggle that finding a block of time throughout the day for a quick workout is usually interrupted by the children waking up earlier than normal, not falling asleep for nap time that I was counting on, or sleeping through the alarm because you’re so dang exhausted.

Though not all of us have a stay-at-home mom schedule, we all have a full-time job that prevents us from spending every minute in our daily schedule doing the things we want to do. So how do we create a busy mom workout schedule that includes a reasonable, but effective exercise routine and increased energy levels? 

Please hear me when I say I am not looking to be a mom that wears a bikini to show off her six pack of abs. If that is you or your goals, I applaud you, woman. You are brave. But I have resigned that my body is NEVER looking the same and therefore I am not looking to be in the best shape of my life for physical appearance. I have struggled with mental health and postpartum depression after every one of my pregnancies and I have found a great way to improve my overall health: a healthy lifestyle and taking time for me through physical activity with a workout routine that I can stick to. 

In order to reach my fitness goals, I had to find a way to work alongside my children to get some physical activity with the little time to myself that I generally have. My daily routine greatly changed when we welcomed our first child into the world and each addition to the family has brought another transition. I have found the best way to incorporate a workout routine into my daily schedule is to simply do that. Let me explain how I came to that conclusion and the steps I’ve taken since.

My weight gain and weight loss journey(s)

I am currently pregnant with our fourth child. Each pregnancy I seem to be disillusioned that I will stay fit and healthy the entire time, only to be staring at myself in the mirror well into my third trimester fifty or more pounds heavier and wondering, “What in the heck happened?” The tips I share at the end of this post are the things I have actually done to recover who I am as Paige after each pregnancy. But before I share what those are, I want to share where I have been. Perhaps you can relate.

When I was pregnant with my first, I gained seventy pounds. I had pregnancy edema so I lost thirty pounds of fluid within two weeks of giving birth, but I still had a stubborn forty pounds of “baby weight” to shed. I was a working mom for the first eight months and struggled to complete my daily to-do list, provide for the family, spend quality time with my daughter, and fit in a great workout. It became easier when we made the decision for me to transition into being a stay-at-home mom, but I still needed to establish boundaries and create healthier habits. I was able to do that through making sustainable changes and slowly implementing new challenges to push me to the next step in the journey.

Eighteen months after our first daughter was born, I weighed ninety pounds less than my delivery weight. I hit my “goal weight” the week I found out I was pregnant with #2. 

So the cycle continues. 

With my second pregnancy, I gained fifty pounds and was back to pre-pregnancy weight fifteen months later. I implemented the same workout plan (if you can call it that) as I had after my first but spent a lot more time focusing on strength training, as we knew we would have another child in the future.

My body was starting to feel worn down and weak and I knew to carry a third baby, I needed my entire body to be strong. I began focusing a lot of time on full-body workouts with ankle weights and hand weights. The Heather Robertson and Tone It Up YouTube channels were incredibly helpful in achieving this goal. I had a light pair of ankle weights at three pounds and a six pound pair of hand weights and YouTube videos at my disposal.

While the kids were still very young, before homeschooling, I would prepare their breakfast and then do a short video while they were eating. I would do the same for lunch and during nap time. I was committed to my goals, we had a small house and therefore I didn’t have many daily responsibilities, and my girls were very accommodating. I think because they enjoyed watching Mommy do funny moves! With my third pregnancy and postpartum period, this was not the case.

I gained sixty five pounds during my third pregnancy and did not lose all of it before getting pregnant for a fourth time. The past two years have been wrought with mental health struggles for me and therefore I have not dedicated time or energy to a healthy diet or regular fitness routine. Some of you may know that when we are depressed, we tend to neglect ourselves and our own health. This only perpetuates the cycle.

As for the last two years, we put our house on the market in late 2021 the same day I found out I was pregnant with baby number three. The entire pregnancy was focused on transitions and renovations. We tripled our living space and increased our acreage drastically. We overhauled the house top to bottom and dealt with family health issues. While we did find a good local church, it still took us a year and a half to feel like strong roots were put down in our new community. Lastly, Dillan and I have been married eight years and the year we had our third daughter was a very rocky one. Thankfully we are on solid ground now and a strong foundation is being rebuilt. However, all of these struggles compounded in one very difficult year and a half. All of these finally caught up to me and I became severely depressed and unmotivated.

I finally humbled myself and invited God into my hopelessness and He has been working miracles of hope ever since. This time last year, I wasn’t sure that I would be here another day. Now I am carrying our fourth child and am thankful for new mercies and the breath of life every day.

I am just a few months shy of delivering our fourth child and then I will be back, for the fourth time, on my journey to becoming a fit mom again. I am determined to not let postpartum depression win and therefore I am planning a good schedule now to help me balance taking care of kids and becoming the best version of myself once more.

A healthy, strong, and fit mom is able to take care of her family and I want to do that more than anything. Here are my best tips for you to become the healthiest you to care for your family.

My top tips for becoming a healthier mom

1. The best time to start is now

If you wait until you have enough sleep, get child care, or even purchase new workout clothes, you will never start. There will always be something else that takes priority. The first step in becoming healthier is deciding that you will and committing to it. You CAN do this. I believe in you. Do not let the enemy convince you that you are incapable or you will never be able to meet your goals. There will never be enough time for you unless you make it. 

2. What you consume is what you put out

We have all heard that becoming healthy and in great shape is 80% diet and 20% exercise. Therefore, you need to be taking care of yourself and eating healthy meals. I am a grazer by nature. I will eat small meals multiple times throughout the day and also snack in between. I had to make a conscious choice to change what I was eating and find excitement in it. I can’t look at those carrot sticks when I really want a bowl of ice cream and grumble and complain and expect them to satisfy my needs. I had to give myself some grace and recognize that it would take time for my palate to change and be appreciative of more natural, healthy foods and in time it did. Though in the beginning I ate a ton of fruit and generally still do. 

I also didn’t spend a ton of time counting calories though I know that works for some people. I have a history of binging and purging and therefore I didn’t want to feed into the need for control over my food. Rather, I focused on making healthy substitutes and stopping when my stomach said it was full, which took practice. A lot of the time we overeat to fulfill emotional needs or because we are numb to our bodies saying when we’ve had enough. It took practice and lots of grace in learning more about my body. But the more I filled my time with a quick workout rather than a quick sneak to the pantry, I found my emotional needs were met somewhere else. What an incredible life change. No longer was food my ruler, but I was ruling what I was consuming for probably the first time. It felt really good. 

3. You don’t have to be spending time with a personal trainer or doing high-intensity interval training to be successful

It’s not about the pace, though it helps. It’s about keeping your body and mind active. That doesn’t seem to be too difficult when you have multiple young kids. However, it is much more difficult to lose weight and gain muscle when you are not INTENTIONAL about the ways you are moving your body.

As you become stronger, you will have to adjust your workout plan to accommodate your new strength and fitness. These tips may no longer work and you will need more. You will have to find new ways to move your body that you haven’t before. Increase the intensity. Add to the weights. But in the beginning, we’re just looking for low-effort and easy ways to incorporate any sort of exercise into our busy schedule, right?

Now that our mindset is in a healthy place, it’s time to get our bodies moving to be strong, healthy, and fit moms for our babies!

My quick & easy workout tips for stay-at-home moms

1. Buy a pair of ankle weights

These babies seriously changed my home workouts. I found from some of the free online trainings I watched that, after a time, they became less effective. I found this is because my body adapted to the moves and my muscles were stronger so I needed more to get over my plateau. Ankle weights then entered the equation and everything changed. They add additional resistance and burn more energy without much effort. 

I will wear these around the house all day and don’t even change into gym clothes to strengthen my body and become healthier. I literally get dressed for the day and just strap a six pound pair to my ankles before making breakfast and wear them throughout the day. Wearing ankle weights does not interfere with my daily household tasks like setting aside time for a specific workout, but does still provide extra energy exertion and increased muscle strength.

Now that I am in the third trimester I have found that I do need to take them off around nap time due to pelvic floor strain. The good news is they still provide an extremely low-effort way to get my lower body into better shape even during pregnancy! 

2. Find a workout personality you enjoy watching

During my first and second postpartum periods, Leslie Sansone’s Walk at Home videos on YouTube became one of my kids’ favorite shows it was on so often. If the kids got bored in the middle of the workout, I would pause the video and quickly grab them a snack to eat on the couch or at the kitchen table while I finished in the living room. Other times, the girls joined in with me to “burn some energy.” Still to this day I will hear them say “Go legs go!” when running around the house. It is adorable. It just goes to show they truly are absorbing a lot more than what we give them credit for. This was at least three years ago and they still regurgitate information from that time period!

Now in our new house the only TV is down in the basement, so it requires additional prep to bring everything down with us before starting. Despite this, I still find it to be the best way to stay consistent in my workout routine. Rather than waiting for my children and daily routine to be in the most desirable attitudes/conditions, I create a time within our busy schedule and a conducive environment to commit to a great daily workout.

This type of workout routine works for me, but it may not work for you. You may have to do a trial and error until you find one that does. I do not like other people watching me (aside from my own kids), so a gym has never been an option for me. My husband on the other hand must make time for him to go to the gym after work two times a week. Whatever works for you the best way to start because that’s what you’re more likely to stick with. The tips I have are for those beginning their health and fitness journey, but as you move along you will need to bring in more resources.

Prioritizing specific times throughout the day for short bursts of exercise is a must for me. It is not simply enough for me to do low intensity walking. I have too much aggression, stress, and overwhelm pent up inside of me and I recognize that. Therefore, a lot of the time my quick mom workout is pushing myself to my breaking point while screaming at the enemy to leave me alone and claiming victory in Christ. Yes, my physical health and fitness journey is also a spiritual one. Maybe yours is too and you know exactly what I mean. If not, you definitely think I’m crazy and probably traumatizing my kids. We all have our “things” and I want to be honest with you. Again, what works for one may not work for another.

3. Value making time for yourself & write out the benefits

Mom guilt is real. Whether a stay-at-home mom or a working mom, we all love our children deeply and tenderly. With that love can come the lie that the only way to show that love to our children is giving them all of our free quality time and lavish upon them without restraint. As Jordan Peterson says in this video, it is good to be a usefully neglectful parent. It is absolutely okay and is actually beneficial to your children for you to not be their all-in-all every minute of every day. You have permission and should be encouraged to let your kids see you do something that makes you a person outside of the role of “Mom,” “Wife,” or “Homemaker.” These are some of your roles in your current season of life, but that is not who you are.

Value yourself for what you are. You are uniquely and specially created with a specific purpose. In order to fulfill that purpose, you need to be healthy. Mentally healthy and physically healthy. It is not selfish to prioritize your health. If you are not healthy, you will not be able to accomplish what you have been made to accomplish. There is only one you. Take care of you.

Therefore, I want you to write out the reasons you want to become healthier all around and the ways you are going to get there. How are you going to spend your time during the quiet moments to become a stronger, healthier mom? What are you spending time and energy on throughout your day that is focused on you? These things will benefit the entire family, so throw those guilty mom lies in the trash that you are not doing your job. Your job is to take care of your husband, your kids, and yourself to be healthy and strong, physically and mentally. We can’t have one without the other. Choose a happy, healthy family by creating healthy habits for yourself!

Are you ready for more?

Daily tasks and household chores can quickly build up if we do not set aside different times in our busy days to burn calories and get our heart rate pumping, even if we have to do it in more creative ways! I have created a free eBook on more sneaky ways to exercise when you don’t feel like you have the time.

The main reason for this eBook is for you to learn how to create mini routines throughout your day that are easy and low-effort enough for you to be able to stick to them. While these tips may not take you all of the way to the end of your health journey, they are a great place to start when you are busy moms serving your family members day in and day out and don’t know how to fit in any time for you. 

Sign up below to receive my freebie “Sneaky ways to exercise when you don’t feel like you have the time” and commit to becoming a healthier, happier mom today! My hope is that these four simple tips will create habits that propel you forward in your health journey.

Let me know in the comments how these tips help you and if you have any others to share! We all need encouragement and more ideas on how to be a well-rounded, healthy & fit mom!

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