How many of us remember what it was like to have an infant?–the joy and the exhaustion, the amazement and the worry.  I know I didn’t have time to consider my waistline in the first few months.   As a mom, my concern was for my little one, 24-7.   I had help for the first few days, but after that I was on my own with the feedings, diaper changes, ear infections, teething and sleepless nights.  I imagine your experience was similar to mine where your spouse or partner helped in varying degrees, but you were the main address for all the little human’s needs.   Most of us just walked the walk and the baby fat came off over time, especially if we already had other small children at home.  Thank goodness for tankinis!

Our workout routine consisted of all-around maintenance of our children’s needs, while also running a home or business.  Did you know that basic housekeeping and childcare tasks burn an average of 180-200 calories per hour?  (Livestrong.com) I bet you didn’t think about that when you were vacuuming, doing the laundry, or unloading the dishwasher with one child on your hip, while you were speaking on the phone and feeding the dog.  All of this on an average of five hours of sleep a night, if you were lucky.  No, we weren’t thinking about that cardio circuit or spin class we used to love at the gym.  Exercise was taking the baby to the grocery store or with us when we carpooled the older kids. 

Then somehow children grow up.  A mother of six once said to me, “The days pass slowly but the years fly.”  One day we wake up and they’re away at college, and then they’re in their first jobs, getting married and having children of their own.  How does “Grandma” or “Nana” sound to you?  Somehow it’s you getting into a car or onto a plane and going to help your daughter or daughter-in-law during those first tough and joyful days with a newborn.  And the cycle continues, but we’re happy to play a secondary role and come for visits, leaving the sleepless nights to the new parents!

Abigail Adams, one of our Founding Mothers, is best known for being the wife of our second president, John Adams.  In a recently published biography by Woody Holton, her influence as a mother, farmer, investor, war-time merchant and proto-feminist is demonstrated through letters and other documents of the period.  When Mrs. Adams was young, caring for children while managing the farm and her import business, she was burning a lot of calories!   In later years, as the wife of a diplomat in France, she had so many servants that she was entirely freed from physical labor.  She even resisted taking walks because the streets were so muddy.  In a letter home to her sister she wrote, “I suffer through want of exercise, and grow too fat.” (Holton, 215) Interesting how times change, how things nevertheless remain the same.

A farmer in our times, Patricia Becker, kept trim in her earlier years by “raising horses, chickens, and children”.  Mrs. Becker reports, “I also can tell you of a Mother’s Day gift I received from my late husband many years ago:  a wonderful hydrostatic Simplicity tractor with many attachments:  a dozer blade, front end loader, dump trailer etc. adorned with a huge red bow!!  This was the time Simplicity advertised their equipment with a chick dressed in an evening gown as she quickly changed attachments from one to another as the job required.  Needless to say I never mucked stalls in an evening gown!!” [sic]  Today, at 79, her activities include managing her farm, swimming, and keeping up with her grandkids’ baseball games.  When it’s cold or rainy, she takes out her Resistance Chair for a chair-based exercise routine. 

Exercise becomes an activity we have to plan as we grow older.  No longer woven into the fabric of our lives by virtue of our many roles, taking care of ourselves means finding safe, effective, fun ways to get the exercise we need to stay healthy.  For many of us, there are still other family members depending on us for help, but we don’t burn the calories we used to in our younger years.  It’s fortunate, because we couldn’t keep up that pace anymore!   We practice yoga, we walk or run, we participate in chair exercise classes.   Some of us golf, bowl or garden.  Keeping the fun in the routine is essential, otherwise the excuses line up and we find ourselves on the couch.  Sitting still is a recipe for weight gain and stiff joints.  Don’t let it happen to you!

It’s never too late to make changes.  Susan Braun Levine, author of 50 is the New Fifty, points out in the chapter entitled ‘Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes’: “…most of us can only manage small changes at first…[but] big or small, moving forward or retreating, a change of any kind gets the currents moving.” (Levine, 24) This can be applied to increasing the type and duration of exercise we do on a weekly basis. If you’re still working and you’re a “desk jockey”, try sitting on a stability ball instead of an office chair, go for a brisk walk during lunch, and get to a yoga class once a week.  If you’re currently retired and quite sedentary, start out slowly by taking up an activity twice a week for 30 minutes. Any fitness activity creates the momentum for still more exercise.  Work out using the same consistency and discipline you used when raising children, running a household, or pursuing career goals. I’ve incorporated exercise into my life by running at lunch, going to spin classes and cycling to work when the weather allows. I also eat healthy and I can tell you that the new fifty feels great! Remember that exercise promotes good health, and good health enables you to continue enjoying your children and grandchildren.

 Happy Mother’s Day!

Carolyn Nutovic is a certified personal trainer with the National Academy of Sports Medicine and a customer service representative for The Resistance Chair at VQ ActionCare. For more information please visit, http://www.vqactioncare.com/. Carolyn may be contacted at (877) 368-6800 or via email at cnutovic@vqactioncare.com. 

Works Cited

“Calories Burned in an Hour.” LIVESTRONG.COM – Health, Fitness, Lifestyle | LIVESTRONG.COM. 18 Apr. 2010. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. <http://livestrong.com/>.

Holton, Woody. Abigail Adams. New York: Free, 2009. p 215.

Levine, Suzanne. Fifty Is the New Fifty: Ten Life Lessons from Women in Second Adulthood. New York: Viking, 2009. p 24.