Sophie Okolo, MPH

The overexposure to information when it comes to keeping healthy is doing a lot to ensure that we are more cognizant of what it takes to look after ourselves. The sheer variety of health technology around means that we are more aware of what it takes to look after ourselves than ever. But lifestyle can easily undo all of your hard efforts; one of the toughest areas of life when it comes to looking after your health is when you are a parent. Everybody is overworked in the modern world, and a lot of parents just accept the fact that they are in for years of rough sleep and that their health will consist of low-level colds for years to come. But it doesn’t need to be like this. 

In order for parents to be healthier, they must recognize the importance of getting back to a specific baseline, especially if they are not sleeping well or they are overexerting in other areas of their lives. What can parents reading this do to ensure that they have a better baseline of health?

Check Your Key Markers

We cannot underestimate the importance of check-ups. Ensuring that we are fighting fit is partly to do with visiting the doctor. There is a lot that doctors can do to check we are all doing our best, but we can also check a lot of these things ourselves. If you want to get a baseline level of help you’ve got to understand some of the basics. These include:

• VO2 max
• BMI
• HDL and LDL cholesterol 
• Blood sugar
• Blood pressure

When you have an understanding of the things that make you function at your optimum, when something isn’t right, this means you have a better understanding of the tools that it takes to get yourself back to a better state of health.

Learn How To Exercise Smartly

Everybody knows they should be exercising more, but the problem is that many parents just don’t have the time. Exercising is not just about lifting weights every now and again. There’s a lot of information out there that tells you you need to do exercise three times a week or you need to be hitting a specific threshold. 

For example, the recent information that you should be aiming for 150 to 180 minutes of Zone 2 cardio can be a lot to cram in. Zone 2 cardio is classed as light cardiovascular exercise and tends to refer to the intensity where your heart rate is operating between 60 to 70 percent of your maximum. Doing this for between 150 minutes and 180 minutes every week can be difficult to achieve. Therefore, you need to break down the 150 minutes into seven days, which results in just over 21 minutes per day. If you could aim for 10.5 minutes in the morning and 10.5 minutes in the evening, this might start you in the right direction. But there’s also a lot to be said for exercising in a way that gives you the best bang for your buck. 

For busy parents that can’t lift weights because they can’t get to the gym, this is where something like isometric workouts can make a massive difference. Isometric workouts can get the heart rate going just as intensely, and without causing injuries. A lot of the concerns of many parents, especially when they are lifting up their children and carrying them all the time, is the risk of injury. For any parent to become healthier, the one key marker for longevity is strength, and isometric exercise is the best way to increase strength quickly.

Weigh Up Your Stress

Being a parent means having to endure a lot of stress. Panics about your children in school or the classic concerns of new parents when the baby has gone silent can all add up to a cauldron of concern, which can have a major impact on stress levels. A lot of parents need to get into the habit of lowering their stress levels, which is easier said than done. 

The best way to begin would be for you to test your stress levels. But we also need to understand the impact of stress in combination with other detrimental habits. Stress is now being placed on a pedestal as one of the biggest killers because of its impact on our immune system and predisposes us to a variety of diseases. Therefore, a health-conscious parent that’s trying to eat better, but still experiences a higher level of stress could find their good habits being undone by the stress they’re going through. 

Practices such as deep breathing, meditation, and visualization have been able to lower blood pressure, heart rates, and help an individual deal with the impacts of stress.

Understanding the Importance of Small Habits

Undoubtedly, the reason many parents struggle to get a baseline level of health is that they are overwhelmed by the prospect of making changes to their lives. For example, the pressure of setting goals like new year ones can be enough to undo any form of hard work. The notion that people leave the gym by the end of January because they have set the bar too high is all-too-common. 

For anybody to change their health and, therefore, their life, they must recognize that small habits are the best way to start building a better life. Rather than making major overhauls, parents need to start implementing small habits. Many parents have experience in embedding small habits because this is what they had to do to ensure that their children are eating better. The same applies to us as human beings.