If you’re a busy parent and fitness feels like the one thing you can’t figure out, you’re not alone, and you don’t need an ideal routine to start.
You need a plan for the chaotic days.
Take five minutes and write down one emergency backup meal and two or three “movement snacks” you can fit anywhere in your day.
That’s the starting point.
Here’s why that’s enough, and a story about the night I realized how many of us are quietly carrying the same thing.
A while back, as we headed into back-to-school season, I sent out a quick call-out to the busy parents in our community.
I expected a handful of replies.
I got hundreds.
Parents from all over the world, writing in about all the hats they’re juggling – work, kids’ schedules, aging parents, packed calendars – doing their best to make fitness work in their crazy routine.
Reading through them, I kept thinking about something unexpected that happened to me a few weeks earlier.
“Raise your hand if…”
My wife and I took our kids to their first ever concert this summer: Alex Warren. (You’ve probably heard this song, but this one’s actually my favorite ~ warning, it’s emotional!)
If you don’t know Alex, he jokes that he’s a two-trick pony: he writes songs about his wife and songs about his parents who passed away. (Case in point from the two music videos I shared above.
We’ve listened to his album front to back dozens of times in the car, so we knew what to expect from his music.
What I didn’t expect was all the people in the crowd holding up signs about the loved ones they’d lost.
Alex paused multiple times in his show to read them out loud, and talk to the crowd about them.
He shared how grief made him feel completely isolated growing up – like he was the only one carrying it. It wasn’t until he started writing music about it that he realized losing someone is one of the most human experiences there is. It’s something that unites us.
At one point, he asked everyone who had lost someone close to them to raise their hand.