Ten Ways to Exercise With Your Child

This is an article I wrote for Beverly Hills Child Magazine in their September 2010 issue.

As parents, we can be full of excuses for why we aren’t getting enough exercise. One of those excuses, often enough, is our children. We say that we don’t have enough time to exercise because our children take up so much of our time. We complain that we don’t get enough time to spend with our children as it is so how are we supposed to give some of that time up in order to go to a gym?

But we aren’t the only ones for whom getting enough exercise is important. Obesity is becoming a growing epidemic in many first world countries, and it is up to us as parents, to make sure that our children don’t become one of those statistics.

So how do we give up the excuses and make sure that we, and our children, get enough exercise? Here are ten suggestions.

1. Take your child on a picnic at the park. Bring along healthy snacks. Picnics at the park are the perfect environment for playing, running and being active.

2. Take nature walks with your child. Children love to go for walks and try to spot different animals and birds along the way. It’s also a great way to spend some real quality time with your child while she talks to you.

3. Dance with your child. Turn on the radio or find a music channel on the television and let yourself be silly. It will get your child moving and also create a wonderful memory for your child in the process.

4. Plant a garden with your child. Digging in the soil, watering the plants, pulling weeds and pruning the plants is all physical activity that helps to raise the heart rate and makes a great way to exercise while helping the environment and, if growing your own fruit and vegetables, saving money too.

5. Play ball with your child. Something as simple as throwing a ball back and forth with your child is a great way to get him exercising without him even realizing that he is doing any.

6. Sign you and your child up to learn something new such as dance or karate. These clubs are great ways to exercise while learning a new skill and spending time with your child.

7. Have your child join a sports team such as soccer or baseball. Team sports are a great way for kids to get some exercise. Many team sports allow parents to volunteer as coaches, team moms or just to help out during practices, and going to your child’s games will show your child you support her. Don’t just sit and watch her play though. Follow your child up and down the field from the sidelines and cheer for her!

8. Walk your child to and from school each day. Walking your child to school each morning is a great way to spend some time with your child before the school and workday begins, and you will also get to hear about your child’s day while walking home. Not only that, but by not driving, you will be cutting down on pollution and creating less traffic congestion near the school.

9. Take your child swimming. Not everyone has a pool in their backyard, but there are many public places where you and your child can go swimming. If neither of you know how, then you can take lessons together. Swimming is a fun way to get some exercise that works out the whole body.

10. Just play. Kids love it when a parent is willing to run around and play games with them. Play a game of tag or “Duck, Duck, Goose.” There are so many children’s games that will get both of you active. Just get out there and PLAY!



Tweet

Finding Time For Walking Despite A Busy Schedule

Walking is one of the easiest ways to exercise throughout
the day. Experts recommend taking 10,000 steps a day for optimal health benefits. You don't have to set aside a large chunk of time and go out for a long walk to get your walking fitness done. There are some easy ways to fit walking into a busy schedule.

Park at the far end of the parking lot when going to work or shopping. You can even park a block away. The few minutes that it will take you to walk that little bit further will increase the amount of steps you take for the day without eating into a large bite of your time.

Use the stairs. If a building you work in or a store you visit has a choice between stairs or elevator, take the stairs. You'll get a quick boost to your heart rate and help get more of your daily steps completed.

Take short ten-minute walks. Just go outside and walk around the block or walk around the building you are working in. Doing this a few times a day adds up to a lot of walking without interfering with your other daily activities.

Walk early in the morning or late in the evening. Setting aside time to walk before your day has begun or once your other activities have been completed means you can spend more time just walking and enjoying the sights around you.

Walk your children to school. Cars can be a hazard near schools anyway, so take the simple approach and walk your children to school. It will help with traffic congestion around the school and will benefit your children’s health as well as your own. If you live too far away, just drive part of the way to the school and walk the rest.

Making Choices

If you’re struggling to lose weight or to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it’s important to think about your choices. Losing weight would be easy if making the right choices was easy. But too often, it’s easier to choose to eat what we want instead of what’s good for us and to choose to sit and watch tv instead of getting up and doing some exercise.

We make these little choices all the time, throughout the day, and though each choice made has a small impact, if we continually choose these things, they add up to having a big effect on our waistlines and health. Choosing the high-in-fat dessert once in a while won’t do any permanent damage to our health, but if we make these choices on a regular basis, the result can be harmful.

Sometimes, the easier choice doesn’t even feel like you’re making one. You just go on automatic and reach for something salty to munch when you’re bored. Or you get home from work, and tired from a busy day, plunk yourself down in front of the tv for a bit of relaxation.

But each thing you do in your life is a choice. You can choose to walk to the store instead of driving there. You can choose to take the stairs at work instead of the elevator. You can choose to grab an apple when you feel like munching something or to go for a run when you’re bored.

Think about the things you do and the choices you are making by doing them. Are those choices helping you make it to your goal or are they hurting your progress? How important is your goal to you? Is that slice of cake and the few moments of pleasure you get as you scarf it down more important to you than feeling healthy and fit or than getting to your goal weight?

Thinking about your choices, once you start to really do it, can lead to helping you in areas of your life other than just health, fitness and weight loss too. Do you really want to chat with friends on Facebook? Or would your time be better spent catching up on writing the novel you dreamed of writing or knitting the scarf you promised yourself you would knit? Does sitting in front of the tv or computer screen mean more to you than spending time playing with your kids?

It’s okay to choose to socialize on the computer, play video games and watch tv sometimes. It’s only when those choices start to take up more of your life and take away from other areas that you have to begin to make different choices. What are your goals? What is it you really want to achieve? If you know what your goals are, then the majority of the choices you make throughout your day should be ones that help you get closer to them.