Three Ways to Workout With Your Kids

As a mom of young kids (read: kids not in school yet) or a working mom of kids at any age it can be hard to find time to workout.  Sure, you can get up before your husband leaves for work, crawl to the car, drive to the gym and get in a bleary-eyed power workout.  Or you can stay up late and ride your bike on the bike trainer while watching your favorite television show (my choice for days where my regular routine is pushed aside).  But, most days you’d prefer to work it into your schedule with ease.

Well, there is good news – you can get in a workout most any day of the week if you follow this one rule: do your workout while your kids are awake.

Sound ambitious? Sound impossible?  Sound unnecessary?  Think about it – when kids are sleeping moms are usually trying to be productive with something that requires little or no interruption.  That is a LONG list.  And “get in a workout today” usually gets sloughed off to the side of our “to-do” lists when we finally get a few minutes to ourselves.  Not to mention there are variables you can’t count on – your baby is teething and has a restless night, your toddler has a cold and can’t sleep, your preschooler won’t lie down for nap time, your child has out grown naps and is bored, your husband needs some quality time with you since you rarely get to talk these days, or you need rest/downtime because of all the aforementioned things.

So, to help my fellow Seattle moms out I am passing on my Three Easy Ways to Get a Workout in with Your Kids.  Keep in mind, there are lots of options, but these three are the tried-and-true ones you can repeat endlessly.

1) “Run Forest Run!” – Get on your jogging shoes, put the kid(s) in the jogging stroller and go!  If you get a shiver down your spine at the idea of jogging/running (like I used to) start out with 3 minutes of fast walking, 2 minutes of jogging back and forth for 30 minutes until you work into a longer time or faster pace.  Remember, it’s about moving with your kids not being Flo Jo right out of the gate.  In addition, your kids will love getting outside.  Birds, cats, other kids… they love to site see.  You get a mental escape, your child gets to explore the world around them, and your muscles get to party and feel refreshed – win, win, win!

2) Bike -Dream of leisurely riding down a country road on a vintage Schwinn with a basket in the front?  Well, keep the Schwinn, but put your leisure to the side because it’s go time – mommy style.  Strap on a bike trailer, load up your little ones and hit the pavement.  Seattle is FULL of amazing trails (some right outside you door) that you can go, go, go on for adventures.  (The Burke Gilman alone offers over 30 miles of paved trail!)  Be sure to pack a water, snacks and a bit of extra time as you head into the fresh air.  You’ll probably spot some fun places to explore for the ride home along your way.

3) Join the YMCA (or another organization like it!) – The YMCA is an amazing place to go if you have kids. Personally, my card hails from the Dale Turner YMCA in Shoreline (think swanky Bellevue gym only affordable!) but all of the Seattle area Y’s are amazing for families.  They offer FREE childcare for up to 90 minutes so you can get in a good workout.  That’s right, 90 minutes.  (9×10!)  And their staff is amazing.  They really take time with your children and invest in their learning.  In addition they offer a variety of physical activity options and classes as well as assistance to families who might need help with the monthly cost of membership. Oh! And they are a non-profit.  Wow… people willing to work at a non-profit because they care about health?  5 stars in my book!

Keep in mind – all of these activities can be very affordable family options.  You don’t have to buy new gear to get in a good workout.  Perhaps you have a neighbor you can share with – create a jogging stroller co-op if you will.  Or look on places like Craigslist.org for a nice used bike, bike trailer or jogging stroller.  New doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a better workout, so don’t worry if you need to stick to a budget.  Your body and your baby won’t care!  (And your hubby will be happy you are feeling better and not breaking the bank!)

Five Simple Ways to Improve Your Body Without Breaking The Bank

We are mothers.  We love our kids, we love being a mom, but no one (to my knowledge) has EVER longed to be what is often referred to as “mom-shape”.  Because, despite our needed sacrifice day-in and day-out, the long nights and sometimes mind-numbing days, and all the lists of reasons why we can’t POSSIBLY make it to the gym or make homemade dinners from scratch we really do want to be healthy and look great in some sassy mom-chic clothes. As a fashion designer once noted, we long to be what is coined as a “yummy mummy”.  (Think British accent, not Halloween candy).

We want to look svelte and quaff but we are restricted by our need to make our lives function and our kids thrive.  We put others first (as we should most of the time, to be honest) but in that we often push ourselves and our health aside.  But, for the sake of our sanity and our kids, we shouldn’t do it.  Because a healthy mama is a mentally-stable, energized, happier mama!

So, to help us out, I have come up with my “Better Body After Baby” short list of how you as a mom – no matter your budget or number or ages of your kids – can start integrating health with ease into your life.

1) Eat only real food – To help you body function at it’s best, you need to cut out boxed and canned foods that contain preservatives and chemicals.  Nix things like margarine and all pre-packaged “diet food” from your life (read: you CAN eat REAL butter). These things actually slow you down and zap energy.  Not to mention many are filled with simple, processed sugars that will store as fat pretty much instantly.  If it’s not actual food, found in nature, not in a lab, take it out of your cupboard and steer clear.  If you need help figuring this one out (and, trust me, I did!), start simple by shopping at Trader Joe’s – it’s an easy way to get you started and stick to a budget.

2) Eat when you are hungry, stop when you are no longer hungry – If you are hungry, eat a small amount.  Then check to see if you are no longer hungry before continuing.  Don’t eat until your stomach is full – that’s more than your body needs.  Learn to take smaller bites and enjoy every savory moment.  Then stop when you are satisfied.  Repeat when you are hungry again.  Our bodies are good at telling us their needs, we just have to retrain our eating habits and our brains to listen.

3) Drink enough pure water – I never knew how much water I needed to drink, but it turns our it’s a simple formula; you need half of your weight in ounces per day, minimum.  So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you need at least 75 ounces of water per day.  That amount will help regulate you AND keep you energized.

4) Workout when your kids are AWAKE – This is a huge one.  Try to find activities to do when your kids are actually awake. It’s much easier to schedule a workout if you don’t do it during their nap or sleep times; try and save those times to do other things (like sleep!)

5) If you miss #4, workout in conjunction with your “me” time rewards – Like to read books? Great, save your latest favorite for the gym. Like to watch TV?  Great!  Grab some weights and a resistance band and move, stretch, sit up and lift throughout your TV time.  Like movies?  Get our a “bike trainer”, load your bike onto it and go for it!  (Or load it onto your ipod and head for the gym).  If you save your “me” time/veg time rewards and combine it with your workout time you will NEVER, ever miss a workout.  (I went from a dismally boring 45 minutes a day to almost 1.5 hours when I made this switch… and it FLEW by!) Also, you will be gaining energy, snacking on less unnecessary calories, and getting a mental break all in one.

The bottom line is this: it takes adjustments to daily routines to maintain lifestyle health.  But, if you incorporate your kids into it and realize you are doing this for them as much as yourself, you will find motivation.  In addition, they will begin watching you and imitate your good habits.  Trust me, it is well worth the benefits to do what your body, mind and soul need.  Go for it mamas!  You are an elite group of self-sacrificing women and you deserve the healthiest body you can attain.

Make One Change A Day

If getting healthy seems overwhelming, try breaking it down into one decision at a time.  If you make one decision a day (or a week!) you will incorporate between 52 and 365 healthy adjustments to your life which will change your entire body in a year.  So, start today… with this one: Learn What is in Your Food.  Read the ingredient labels and make sure your food is REAL food.  No more chemicals, preservatives, or “food-like” substances.  Eat real only.  Your body will work more efficiently and more effectively.

Eat Your Bright-Colored Fruits and Veggies

I read this in Mark’s Daily Apple Today… fantastic!  Enjoy.

Why should we eat bright-colored fruits and veggies?  Mark Sisson scratches the surface for you (and me!):

Blueberries – Anthocyanin-rich blueberry juice improved cognitive function and memory in aging adult humans.

Raspberries (black and red) – Raspberry juice shows anti-atherosclerotic effects in hyperlipidemic rodents, and although human studies are lacking, there is a strong basis for considering them a healthful food.

Blackberries – Perhaps my favorite berry, blackberries are rich in flavonoid pigments with in vivo evidence of protection against neurological degeneration and bone loss.

Purple sweet potatoes – Tons of references in my sweet potato post (that’s my post about sweet potatoes, not my sweet post about potatoes). Same goes for regular purple potatoes.

Eggplants – Nasunin, a potent eggplant anthocyanin that is strongly absorbed in the GI tract, displays antioxidant effects. Make sure to eat the peel, though.

Cherries – Although (again) human studies are lacking, the considerable anthocyanin content of cherries suggests that their efficacy in animal models may well carry over to us.

Cranberries – Cranberry juice, whose anthocyanins are bioavailable in humans after drinking, improved vascular function in heart disease patients.

Purple tomatoes – In addition to carotenoids (more on those below), purple tomatoes also contain significant levels of anthocyanins.

Purple carrots – Same goes for purple carrots.

There are even vegetables that have feet (roots?) both in the colorful camp and the sulfur-rich or leafy-green camps. Like:

Red leaf lettuce – Leafy green and colorful.

Radicchio – Leafy green and colorful.

Red cabbage – Sulfur-rich and colorful (with 36 different anthocyanins).

Purple cauliflower – Sulfur-rich and colorful.

Purple kale – Leafy green, sulfur-rich, and colorful.

I could go on, but I won’t. The point is that any plant with these colors is going to contain these compounds, because these compounds literally are the colors. That means I’ve missed the vast majority of anthocyanin sources, but it also means that you’ll have an easy time finding them out there in the world. Eat up (but rinse your mouth out after; they stain) and go for blues, reds, and purples.

Oh, yeah. There are a couple other relevant flavonoids. Anthocyanins get the most press, but there are other foods with potentially beneficial health effects due to flavonoid content.

Turmeric – Contains curcumin, which gives the spice its distinctive, persistent yellow color. I’ve written an entire piece on the health benefits of turmeric, and curcumin is responsible for the lion’s share of them.

Apples and onions – A light yellow pigment, quercetin is found in apples and onions (except for white onions). Red and yellow onions are high in quercetin (PDF), while most of the quercetin in apples resides in the skin.

Carotenoids

Carotenoids are pigments that provide the orange, yellow, and red colors found in foods like carrots (get it?), sweet potatoes, cantaloupes, bell peppers, squash, watermelon and tomatoes. You’ve got beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin, gamma-carotene, and beta-zeacarotene, which can be partially converted to retinol, the active (animal) form of vitamin A. You’ve also got lutein, lycopene, and zeaxanthin, which cannot be converted to vitamin A.

Don’t rely on carotenoids to fulfill your vitamin A requirements. Liver and egg yolks are much better, more reliable sources. Besides, beta-carotene supplementation doesn’t seem to work very well. In several studies, it has appeared to increase the risk of lung and prostate cancer, and a 2007 Cochrane review found that beta-carotene supplements were associated with an increase in general mortality. “Supplementation” of alpha-carotene, via carotenoid-rich fruits and vegetables, however, appears to have the opposite relationship. Huh, food’s good for you… who knew?

Get carotenes through orange vegetables and fruits, like squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, cantaloupes, and bell peppers.

The other carotenoids – the ones that don’t convert to vitamin A, like lutein, lycopene, and zeaxanthin – appear to be helpful. Both lutein and zeaxanthin accumulate in the retinas of our eyes, where they seem to play major roles. The more lutein and zeaxanthin you eat, the more it accumulates in your retina (although this is most pronounced in patients with low baseline pigment levels). Low dietary intake of lutein and zeaxanthin are associated with elevated incidences of age-related macular degeneration, and a similar relationship was found for cataracts.

Get lutein and zeaxanthin through spinach, kale (what doesn’t kale have?), dandelion greens, chard, collards, romaine lettuce, paprika, and turnip greens.

Lycopene does some cool stuff, too. It reduces lipid peroxidation in people with heart disease, as well as protects the skin against UV-related damage from the sun. There’s also a lot of research into the effect of lycopene intake on cancer.

The best sources of lycopene are cooked tomato products, like tomato paste or sauce, especially cooked with fat (but not sunflower oil!), but lower levels can be attained through raw tomatoes, pink grapefruit, pink guava, and watermelon. The absolute best source, however, is gac, a Vietnamese fruit that beats tomatoes by 70-fold. It also contains high levels of other carotenoids, all of which are bound by long chain fats, making them even more bioavailable. Anyone every try gac?

Betalains

Although betalain pigments are described as “deep red” and “purple” and sound similar to the anthocyanin family, they are not the same. They look different (just compare a beet to a strawberry – not quite the same). In fact, betalains and anthocyanins have never been found in the same plant; they appear to be mutually exclusive. Besides the beet (where “betalain” gets its name), rhubarb, and the stems of chard, there aren’t very many sources of readily edible betalains. I suppose you could throw together a floral salad of bougainvillea, amaranth, and purple cacti, but for the most part, you’re going to get your betalains from beets.

All beets contain all betalains, just in different ratios. In purple or red beets, betacyanins predominate. In yellow beets, betaxanthins predominate.

Possible benefits of betalains include:

Inhibition of lipid peroxidation.

A beet extract rich in betacyanins showed cytotoxic effects on human prostate and breast cancer lines.

Best Sugar Cookies EVER

Every holiday I try to make these in the appropriate holiday-themed shapes.  And, depending on the ages of your kids, they can help make, create and decorate them with you to hand out to friends!  Today… we made these into hearts and will hand them out to friends in our neighborhood.  Happy Valentine’s Day ladies!

2/3 cup butter

1/3 cup raw sugar

1/4 cup cup agave syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

4 teaspoons almond milk

2 cups flour

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Extra flour for rolling out the dough

1) Heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Cream together butter, sugar, agave and vanilla.  Add the egg and mix until blended.

2) Add baking powder, salt and milk and blend together.

3) Add flour 1 cup at a time, allowing it to be blended in completely before adding in the remainder.

4)Roll approx 1/3-1/2 of the dough into a ball.

5) Using a clean surface (or non-stick pie crust mat), place approximately 4 tablespoons of flour in a circle and roll the dough ball in it to coat it on all sides lightly.

6) Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to be about 1/4 inch thick.

7) Cut into shapes with cookie cutters.

Bake for 9-10 minutes until cooked but not browned.

9) Decorate with homemade icing, sprinkles or eat them as is!

What If You Just Want Sleep for Valentine’s Day?

It’s February 14th in three days.  Now, for some, this means chocolates and flowers and a movie date.  But, for me, it means the need to be sexy-ish for my hubby.  Now, he NEVER has put this on me per se, but, come on, it’s kind of an expectation for husbands in that their is lingerie everywhere you turn and hot models with crazy green eyes promising “yes, your wife will look THIS hot if you let her shop here”.  And, heck, I could use some new underwear and a cute bra…

So, what happens if you just want to go to bed for Valentines Day eve?  Like, for real – nothing extracurricular, just actual sleep.  After all a working mama needs her rest or else all bets are off on a good attitude.  But, I realize that’s sort of selfish, too.  There are two people in this relationship after all. So, I have come up with a motivator to get me through the day and on into the night.  (One which I happily pass onto you).

In addition to paying him (and you) some loving attention you surely could both use, think of your time together as a work out.  Bonus.  Two-for-one!  Heart-pumping, relationship-building bliss. It might make it fun and challenging in the best of ways.

So, pick the music play list now and get some new candles for the bedroom. You’ve got 72 hours until “love day”.

False Foods Are Arrogant Intruders

Picking up my sons the other day from their play area at the Y, I walked in to see the lights low and hear the sound of a voice playing from a tape recorder (or so it sounded).  A caregiver of a child had brought in a slide show story for the kids to enjoy, which they were.  Seated like school children, they watched the lighted images flip and tell the story on the wall of the play room.  It was quiet, except for the noise of the recorder, and it was calming to watch them all intently focusing.

Just then, a women came through the door and started talking loudly.  Ignoring the clear signs of the mood of the room, she squawked to the worker and called out for her son to come to her.  She was verbose and, to be frank, rude.  It was strange to me that she would take no note of the lights being dim, the slideshow on the wall and the voice from the recorder.  It annoyed me, but I said nothing as she gathered things, chuckling and carrying on for what felt like several minutes.

To be fair, I realize I sound like a snob of sorts.  And, I fought judging my own attitude toward her.  However, her strange behavior and disregard for basic observation was baffling to me.  And then, in that moment (odd though it seems) I made a correlation: her behavior was like that of an unwanted, misplaced guest much like fake “food” is to our body.

Now, bear with my stretch for a good metaphor of the event (it really was what I thought about in that moment).  Her disregard to how the play room was operating was the same as the way chemicals and preservatives act in our body.  It is misplaced, in the wrong environment – and it reeks havoc on it’s surrounding.  It upsets the body and is unwanted, yet, it doesn’t leave until it has passed through – jarring things and affecting attitudes.  Then, and only then, does it leave.  But the damage is done.

Because it is upset, the body does not operate to its full capacity.  It’s jarred, altered, and distracted.  Why?  Because what happened is not in flow with how things ought to be – it’s not how our bodies are set up to function. But, if you are apt to eat quite a bit of “false foods” you have slowly grown accustomed to how your body operates with the interruptions, frustrations, and annoyances (I speak from thorough experience, my friends… decades of it!).  You don’t fully know the difference and so the disturbances – fatigue, stress, weight gain – seem to be “situation normal” when really it’s a massive snafu and we need to change it.

And, with that, I urge you to incorporate real food into your diet.  Strive for 100%, but if you are just beginning, shoot for 80% to start.  Read the ingredients – on EVERYTHING – and learn what you are up against.  Stop the insanity – the crabby irritations chemicals and preservatives cause can be cured!  Trust me, you have no clue until you clear them out how much more serene your body can be.  And how peaceful it will seem.

80/20 Squat

This month, work this move for improved glutes and quads.  AND for increased calorie burn (these squats include more muscle groups which = more calorie burn).  So, get ready to get toned and feel the burn!

1) Stand with feet hip distance apart

2) Lean into your right foot – placing 80% of your weight on that foot, leaving only 20% on the left.

3) Squat down and back (as if you are trying to sit in a chair) until you have a 90 degree angle at your knees.   Then slowly come back up into a standing position.  Make sure not to take a long time – speed is your friend.  HOWEVER, take your time to do it right – correct form is always #1 on these or any other exercise.

4) Repeat 20 times on the right.  Than switch to the left foot.

5) Do 3 sets on each side.

The Month of Love: Chocolate(s) Even Cupid Would Embrace!

Did someone say Valentine’s Day?  Here is the pick of the month to say “I love you” in more than one way!  Aphrodisiacs, caramel, chocolate… nothing more to say.

Know What Is in Your Vitamins

It seems like “a vitamin is a vitamin” but if you knew how many vitamins, coated in synthetics, are simply passed through bodies year after year it may astound you.  Our bodies can not break down synthetics, much less absorb them.  In addition, most vitamins use minerals found in the ground – meaning rocks – instead of plant-based minerals (the kind humans absorb) as a short cut.  So, you eat synthetic materials and rocks instead of actual food… thus the non-absorption.  Therefore, know what’s in your vitamin!  Is it plant-based?  Does it use synthetics?  (Chemicals like petroleum- !!)  If so, you aren’t absorbing it and you are wasting your money and your healthy habit on some pretty pricey poo.

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