Health and fitness guru Laura Hulley discusses the challenges of juggling a busy home life with work, while still prioritising health and fitness.

I often hear the phrase “I don’t have enough time”. I understand that as a working mum, my experience of being time-poor is a lot different to a driver’s experience of being time-poor. Everyone is busy in their own right, and the idea of not having enough time to do everything is relative. For example, I felt that I have always had a hectic life with working full-time, being involved in community theatre, training for endurance events, performing gigs etc. But now, as a mum, I obviously don’t have the flexibility to do all of those things, and my plate is perceptively less full – with one massive exception: I have a child under one who is still extremely reliant on me. I’m sure truckies with young kids can understand the absolute overwhelm that is/was the first year of your child’s life.

Before I had my child, I worked at a gym as a personal trainer and would train up to 10 times a week with different classes, cardio and strength workouts. I absolutely lived and breathed health and fitness, and it was also my livelihood. Nowadays, I am a stay-at- home mum for another three weeks before I head into the journey of juggling full-time work and a toddler. You’re probably thinking, cool story, why do we need to know this. Fair point. I will land the plane. What I’m trying to get at is that life is full of different phases, seasons and obstacles. I successfully put a huge amount of my time, energy and effort into my health and fitness prior to motherhood – but for the past 11 months, I have been focused on raising and caring for my son.

It is obviously a rewarding and incredible thing to do – but the priority of looking after yourself, exercising and eating healthy seems to go down the toilet. You guys may be able to relate to this when you’ve changed jobs, gone from bulk to cattle, taken on new opportunities or had your time guzzled up by a new endeavour. The harsh reality is, you will never have enough time to exercise if it is not a priority. I have had to swallow humble pie as I thought I understood my clients who were mothers and felt that they were a bit more time-poor but could still easily exercise – boy, was I wrong. I didn’t realise having a permanent shadow/ attachment would severely limit your ability to exercise and pour into your own cup. Of course, it gets easier and more manageable as they get older – but initially, how the heck do you leave the house without baby and have the chance to exercise?

But enough of the mum chat, let’s talk about the fact that we only have time for the things that we prioritise. How often have you heard yourself say, “I don’t have time to catch up with my mate for a beer,” “I don’t have time to go out fishing” or “I don’t have time to go hunting this weekend.” If you’re not a great fishermen or hunter, replace your cherished hobby in the above sentences because these things are enjoyable, fill your cup and enrich your life. You carve out the time to see friends and family and crack into your favourite hobbies because it makes you happy. Why can this same principle not then be applied to exercise? Because exercise isn’t as enjoyable? Fair. But if you have that perspective like a lot of us do (myself included right now), how can we shift that perspective to “I will exercise because it’s a priority and I enjoy it?”

First, what kinds of exercise do you enjoy and not enjoy? If you don’t like running, then don’t do it. If you like to be social while you work out, join a local sports team or group fitness class. There are plenty of community sports clubs and different group classes to try, from bootcamps to MMA. If being able to leave the house is a barrier (as it is for many mums), there are many online workout programmes you can follow at home. Or if you prefer strength or equipment-based workouts, you can get basic exercise equipment like dumbbells, kettlebells and exercycles second-hand fairly cheap. If you have a basic home gym set up in the garage, that may enable you to work out and combat the excuse that you can’t leave the house easily as you have family commitments (note to self, this is a good idea for me).

I encourage you to write a list with two columns. One column should have all the reasons or excuses why you cannot exercise or what types of exercises you don’t like and – from there – you can acknowledge your barriers, preferences and limitations. In the other column, you can attempt to rectify or find a solution for each barrier that you’ve identified.

The table above is an example of what mine would look like.