Episode 97: Where Do I Even Start? Fitting Exercise Into Real Life as a Working Mom
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You know it's important to exercise, and actually, you want to because you feel so much better when you do. But as a busy working mom, the question is where does it fit??
In this episode, I’m walking you through exactly how I coach women to start (or restart) a movement routine in a season where time feels tight, kids need you, and work is full.
I talk about:
Why auditing your time is the first step
How to let go of all-or-nothing thinking
What it really means to “expand your definition” of exercise
How to use 1–5% improvements to build momentum
Why you should experiment at least three times before deciding something “doesn’t work”
From 10-minute living room workouts to lifting heavy weights years later, I’m sharing what this has looked like in my own life — and how you can plant the seeds now for the routine you want long-term.
If movement is one of your goals this year, this episode will help you start — without waiting for more time, more energy, or a different season.
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am so tired of talking about the weather. I just have to say, after seeing my kids in shorts last week, it was feeling like spring and then this morning, , woke up to Snow and Slick roads, and I know it's this time of year and I really do try to embrace winter and.
You know, I can't say that I'm loving it, but it is Monday when I'm recording this. I still got up, I still went to the gym. I traipsed outside and my snow boots and my big coat, , just to get there. And that is what I wanna talk to you about today. Exercise.
As I've mentioned here many times on the podcast, I do work out with a trainer that is one of my newer additions to my workout routine, and I do that every Wednesday. Last week. In between sets in the gym, working out with him, he asked me, do you ever coach women on fitness? And I said, first of all, I don't think any of them would use the word fitness.
And he said, okay, well what do they use? And I said, I hear the words either exercise or movement come up most. And yes, I coach women on that all the time because I think it is one of the top goals that I see for any of the women that I work with. I should run. I should run the numbers on that.
It has to be, this is just my guess, but it has to be like 90 some percent of the women who work with me, either one-on-one or in one of my group programs, have movement or exercise, whether it's starting a routine or being more consistent with their routine that is somewhere in their top goals.
I just started this winter cohort of my Beyond Balance group, and I think there as well, it came up on the majority. Of the goal setting worksheets that they submit as we get started in terms of what does success look like in this program? What do they want to walk away with? And so whether, again, that is starting something because you haven't moved in a while or since becoming a mom, or you've gone in and out of a movement or exercise routine and just really want that to be more consistent.
Absolutely. That is something that I coach on now. I hope this goes without saying, but I'll say it just in case. I am not a physical trainer. I am not here to tell you what movement to do or what type of exercise you should be doing. I am here to help you make the time for it, to set it up in a way that feels.
Doable in your life that is flexible enough to roll with all of the changes that we navigate with kids and work and life, and then to help you think about and put practices in place that you can be accountable to. So that it is something that you do consistently. So again, back to my training session as we were talking, I said, absolutely.
That is something that I coach on all of the time. He said, well, how do you get someone started? Like what is the first thing that you tell them to do? I thought, that's such a good question. I have to come in here and talk about this because again, it is so common and I'm guessing that maybe so many of you that are listening.
To this podcast , are asking the same questions of yourself. Where do I start? So I thought I would walk you through my answer here, and whether you are in the newborn or baby stage where you are feeling very strapped for time, maybe your schedule is very inconsistent and you are tired. Maybe your kids are a little bit more independent, but life feels really busy.
Or you are someone who has had some success with exercise or you exercise in spurts here and there, but it's not something that you stick with consistently. This episode is for you. I promise. You'll find something in here to help you along the way no matter what stage you are in.
So one of the first things that you need to do is to look at your time. This is the first step that I do with so many of my clients, private or beyond balanced clients, is to look at how you are spending your time. What are you doing with your time?
This helps us understand what is available to you. Is there time there already that exists and we just need to
plug in the movement that feels right for you? The type of exercise that feels right for you? Or is there no visible spot where we could see to just plug and play? So that is going to inform maybe how creative you need to be when it comes to fitting it in how, where, when.
Because before I help any of my clients create a routine, a schedule a system for exercise.
We're actually looking at everything else that's in their time log. We are identifying the other areas of life that are taking up too much time and energy. I will say often that red flag shows up around meals, meal planning, cooking, shopping for food, or tidying and cleaning up.
Our aim is to make all of those other things that we have to do in life faster, to make them more streamlined, or to just make them more predictable.
So we're looking at the other things that we do to see if by tightening those routines and those systems and those processes , can we perhaps create some other pockets of time where exercise might slide in?
I'm starting work with a new one-on-one client who admitted in our initial conversation to being very sedentary. This is a very common theme. If this is you as well. You're not alone. She is sitting at a desk all day seeing clients and doing her work.
She is driving in the car to drop off and pick up kids, and other than standing to make meals or maybe walking to and from the car or occasionally chasing after kids, she's just not really moving at all and definitely not moving intentionally. So right now as her first item, we will be doing her time audit, looking at her time, and I can't wait to see what the results bring back, but my guess is I could be wrong, but my guess is she's not going to have a lot of time to play with during her workday.
Her workday are very full back to back. Any sacrifice of time during the work? Day would just mean more work time that needs to be made up in the evenings or on the weekends, and that is not what we're looking to do. And so we'll be looking at her mornings, her evenings, and her weekends as options for movement.
Now that does get tricky and maybe this thought popped into your head as you heard me say, morning, evening, and weekend, because that's also our kid time. That's also family time.
And there's this tension between, wanting to maximize and spend as much time as we can with our kids because we're already working. Yeah, but also knowing that movement and exercise and taking care of ourselves is really important. So before this client or you who's listening can fall into despair or say, I don't wanna give up that time with my family, or I don't have any place for them to go, or someone to watch them, while I would go work out, if I chose to do that, I'm gonna remind her.
And I will remind you as well to remain open and creative. Which brings me to the next step in how I would walk someone through fitting exercise in or creating a more consistent habit, and that is a step that is often the hardest for so many women that is to let go of black and white thinking or all or nothing thinking.
The way that you worked out in the past, if you worked out before kids, it might not work for you right now in this season, and that can be a hard pill to swallow. Now I have seen some working moms who. For example, have flexibility in their workday, and so they can do a lunchtime workout, or they are able to wake up early because they have really good sleepers or they have nanny coverage.
That makes it easier to go to a workout class or get to the gym and fit that in.
For those women, it is then just a matter of finding the thing that's going to feel good, that's going to feel exciting and fun, and then holding yourself accountable to that. What does accountability look like to whom or what do you need to be accountable to actually use this time that you have and prioritize the movement and the exercise that you want?
For many of the women that I work with, that is not the case where it is just easy to fit it in during the workday or in the morning while the kids are still sleeping if they are great sleepers, so we have to, in those instances, expand the definition of what quote unquote working out means.
What does exercise look like? And it also is the stage where we have to accept and remind ourselves that it won't or doesn't have to be this way forever. This is a season after my first was born. It took me a while to get back into working out. I struggled like so many of you to find the time and the space between.
Getting my work done, pumping nursing, and also having a terrible sleeper. We lived at that time in a very narrow row house. I think the whole house width was maybe 14 and a half feet, so very narrow. All this to say, there wasn't a lot of extra space. We didn't have a basement.
It was a crawl space. There wasn't room for a bunch of weights or even a stationary bike or anything like that. I had at the time, 10 pound dumbbells that I had since college and had moved with me all over the place. I should have just gotten rid of them and bought new ones, but you live and learn. And then I had also purchased a set of five pound dumbbells because at the time my strength was just shot after having a kid I signed up during that first year, probably closer to the end. I'll admit, I, I would start earlier if I could go back, but that, that was my experience. I signed up for Beachbody. I signed up for Beachbody because they had the app and I could do it at home, and there were options for shorter workouts, things that got my heart rate up.
That just felt good after. You've not been moving for a while, I just. I just wanted to sweat. I just wanted to get my heart rate up and in a little sliver of our living room, I would do those workouts in the morning. I would tiptoe downstairs, try not to wake anyone. I would keep the volume on the workout like almost to muted.
I could barely hear what they were telling me to do, and sometimes I would have to pause my workout to nurse and I would never get back to it. If I got 10 minutes in and then had to stop, that was it. That was all I got in for the day. Other times I would luck out and I would be able to complete a full workout 20 minutes.
Other times I could change a diaper and then put my son later, my daughter into the Xer saucer or onto the play mat for as long as I could stretch it until they lost it or it was too much to manage both. I did a lot of at-home workouts in those days because it was easier to fit in. I also. I did a group training session once a week on my lunch hour with two other coworkers who were also moms, and this was right around the one year mark.
I remember for me, because I finished pumping. At that point, and I felt like I had so much time back in my workday because I wasn't taking those pump breaks. And so for me to do a one hour session, it was 10 minutes down the road, so we would carpool there, 10 minute drive, get changed really quickly, and then, oh my gosh, I wouldn't even shower to come back to the office, whatever.
It's fine. , that felt so doable compared to all of the time that we had been stepping away for pump breaks throughout that first year. It also in those early days, looked like yoga in my pajamas or squats and pushups in the hallway while my kids were brushing their teeth. It looked like walks with the kids with strollers.
And then when we moved into this house where we have now an unfinished basement, at least it's a basement, I could put a few workout items downstairs alongside the spiders. They're my little workout buddies, and I could do things like ride a stationary bike in the basement.
This weekend actually, I did an afternoon workout , in our basement lifting weights, and my daughter, who is nine now, she hung out with me. She sat on the bench , sat on the exercise ball and chatted almost the whole time. She even did a little bit of lifting with my three pound weights just to see what she could do.
And just to continue to expand your definition of what working out can look like. I will never forget a series on Instagram that Simmy Boic did. I will link to her Instagram. It's just so delightful. I was on her podcast as well. She's an intuitive eating ev and movement coach, but she did this series of quick bar exercises that you can do in your pajamas with a mug of coffee holding onto the kitchen counter.
And that, along with so many other examples, really just boils down to permission. Permission to show up in small ways with coffee instead of, a pre-workout drink or a protein shake to show up in your pajamas to show up on the living room floor, on the carpet, on a yoga mat with some light dumbbells.
To a neighborhood walk to whatever you can fit in permission to let it all count. Actually, it just dawned on me this funny story, which is just another great example of working out and how to fit this in. On Monday mornings I go to my friend's gym and we do leg day together, and there's a guy that we always see there.
He's like shadow boxing around the gym, right? Where you're going through the motions as if you were boxing with. A partner, an opponent, and she actually ran into him outside the gym. It's my friend Brooke, who's been on the podcast before. She does head shots for a couple of local companies, and he happened to be on the team that was getting their head shots that day, and he told her that he actually does that around the office as well.
In between his meetings and calls, he's, punching and jabbing and doing the shadow boxing. It's a whole. Vibe that he has going on. He could totally, I can see it, he can totally pull that off. But I thought, how creative, right? How creative to fit something that is important to you, something that feels good into your day.
So maybe that looks like walking a couple of laps up and down the stairs at your office or your house, or lapse around the parking lot. If you have a more private office, or you're working from home doing a wall sit, or some pushups or tricep dips in between calls or while you're listening in on a meeting, at home, it could be keeping your weights near your desk and doing a set or two as a brain break between all of the other things that you're doing.
Would we love to complete a 45 minute weight training session that's progressive overload. Absolutely yes, that feels so good, and you can get there. I am proof of that from my 10 minutes of beach body in my living room to now squatting and lifting really, really heavy weights. But to go from nothing to that in a season where time is short is a big ask.
So where can you start in the interim?
How can you expand your definition of exercise and movement?
So you've taken a look at your time, you understand where it's going, and you're starting to think about where it might fit or what changes you might need to make to open up some time. You're expanding or broadening your definition of what is possible. Getting creative, thinking about what does count.
Now, it's about choosing where to start. What is the thing? How much time, what is the frequency? And so I would ask you to think about what are you currently doing? Are you doing anything at all? Are you doing a few things, but it is sporadic or inconsistent? How much are you walking each day?
What does movement or exercise actually look like right now? And then how can you make a one to 5% improvement from there? If you are walking 2000 steps a day right now, on average, what would it take to add a thousand and walk 3000 steps a day? Or if you're not lifting any weights and you want to be lifting weights.
What's a 10 minute arm workout, or what are three key body weight exercises that you can do in 10 or 15 minutes? And where could that fit? Is it in the morning while you're standing at the counter waiting for the coffee to finish? Is it at lunch? Is it in between calls in the evening, on the weekend? Is it maybe in the presence of kids?
Or if you are maybe doing some stretching and you're ready for some yoga, is there a place that offers maybe a 60 minute class instead of 90? As I see so many of them are.
What would it take in terms of childcare to make that commitment once a week? Or is there a yoga YouTuber you like and can you do that in a shorter period of time? I used to do the 20 minute yoga flows on the Peloton app, and I remember thinking as someone who's done yoga in a studio for like a 90 minute class, oh, 20 minutes, that doesn't count.
That's not a real flow. That's not yoga. But I actually really enjoyed it and thought, you know, sure I might get a little bit quote unquote better workout if I did it for a full 90 minutes. But I feel limber, I feel stretched. I feel more centered and grounded and wow, I could do that for 20 minutes while my kids were watching 'cause they thought it was super fun to watch.
It counts. Now so many women that I talk to are afraid to take that time away from their family. They are afraid to sacrifice what little time they have to do something for themselves that takes them away from their kids or out of the house. Maybe to ask to go to an orange theory fitness class, which is all the rage it seems like, or a dance class, or to go to yoga or bar or a bootcamp class.
If you start small, you take this one to 5% improvement approach. Maybe you're asking for once a week, and so depending on how far the class is, if it's an hour long class, maybe you have 15 to 20 minutes on either side, so you're looking at upwards of maybe two hours max, depending on where you live. Well, are you willing to test it out?
Could you experiment? And see what it feels like to do a class like that once a week. Make a bigger commitment, but not go at it three times a week or something outrageous. Can you arrange for your partner or someone else to watch the kids while you do that once a week? Or is there childcare on site as so many of these boot camps offer or gyms offer?
Test it out. You don't have to commit to it forever. If you really do miss that time with your family or feel like it's taking away, well, you've tried it and now you know, and then you can go back to thinking of other creative approaches for movement, because in this season that one to two hour commitment is not going to work.
But I will say you need to try it. I would say at least three weeks or three times, because if you just do it once. It will feel uncomfortable. It will probably bring up some stuff, maybe some guilt. Maybe your kids will complain if they're talking, or babies will cry and miss you, and it can be really hard to leave when you're feeling that way.
But if you do it three times. That gives you enough data to say whether or not you like it, whether or not it feels worth it, whether or not this works for you and your family. My kids are now 11, nine and seven, and even just this year at the start of the school year when I started going to the gym on Monday mornings with my friend after exclusively doing lifting in our basement where my kids could come down and find me anytime they needed me.
My kids didn't love it. And, and they are, you know, independent kids. They're not babies anymore. I would get home and I do on Mondays. I get home just in time to rush through getting everyone, including me, ready for school. And they would say, where were you? Right? They would wake up while I was gone and come down and couldn't find me.
You weren't in the basement. Mom. Why do you have to do that? I don't like it when you're gone.
Fast forward. I've been doing it now for months, and I walked in this morning. They were happily eating breakfast and it is just what we do. It's just what I do every Monday, no matter what, even when it's freezing cold and snowing.
So it does take some time and you can't do it once and decide this doesn't work. You can do it three times and then decide, that's fine. But make a commitment to do it at least three times and for all of the other things that you want to try from the small low hanging fruit to these bigger commitments.
Let your kids see you trying. They do adjust and what a great thing for them to see modeled. So I've mentioned little snippets of my workout history. I thought I just , for me, it's been kind of fun walk through what it has looked like and what the evolution has been for working out, right? I mentioned beach body in my living room with my little five and 10 pound weights.
Then adding in that trainer once a week over my lunchtime when I was no longer pumping that I did more beach body in my home. When we moved and I was able to fit a stationary bike in our unfinished basement that looked like riding the bike, using the Peloton app and doing some Peloton yoga in the living room with my kids.
It's looked like lots of walking. And then when my youngest was about, oh, I think he was between two and three. I started seeing a personal trainer and I do that on my lunch hour on Wednesdays. I did that even in my corporate days and continue that. Now as self-employed, it is someone I see who's in my neighborhood, so commuting is easy, and that was an intentional choice on my part.
If I was already gonna be gone for an hour, I didn't wanna have to commute a lot on either side. I've added in pelvic floor therapy work at home. And now, all of these years in, of doing lots of little things. Of course, having three babies along the way, pumping and nursing for a year each, and job changes.
Schedule changes. House changes. I now do Monday mornings in the gym with my friend lifting heavy weights Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. I take long walks in the neighborhood with friends before my kids are up on Wednesday at lunch, I do my trainer. Thursday mornings I wake up and do some pelvic floor therapy as well as a solo walk.
And then on Friday morning at home, I lift weights in my basement. I also do that on Sunday, sometime either morning, afternoon, whatever the day allows for. And my goal this year is to add in more cardio. I do not do much cardio outside of lifting weights. That's what I love to do. So my challenge is to find, again, I'm starting small, 10 minutes on the bike at a time, 10 minutes on the rower.
We also have rings that hang from the ceiling in our upstairs where the kids play on those. My husband and I use those for workouts. It is very common in our house to see exercise equipment as accessories in the living room in other rooms. So there's an AB roller. We'll sometimes see bands or a yoga mat.
It is just a part of what we do and my kids have grown up seeing that. So to recap, fitting exercise in, I want you to first audit your time, know where your time is going so you can start to identify where it might fit, expand your definition of movement and exercise and let go of that all or nothing thinking every little bit counts.
Get creative. Think about one to 5% improvements from where you are starting today. And then experiment. Give something at least three tries before you say it won't work. You are planting seeds. I wouldn't have the workout schedule I have today if I hadn't been willing to squeeze any little bit in that I could and to be flexible with what it looks like.
Seasons do change and so do our workout routines. The only thing that hasn't changed is that working out is a priority. Exercise is a priority. The outcome, the way I do that, it looks different depending on how old the kids are, what your schedule looks like, how much sleep you're getting, or how intense work is.
But it is so important, and I can't imagine my life without it. I want to age well, yes, and support myself, but I also want to be able to be active, to have energy to play with my kids, and I want them to see what it looks like to prioritize this in your life. If this is one of your goals for 2026, coaching can absolutely help you.
So many of my clients are focused on a movement and exercise goal, and my job as your coach is to help you find the time, create the routine, and build in your own accountability so that you can follow through and stay consistent. Even when life throws you curve balls, exercise is just something that you do.
It's a part of who you are. If that sounds like something that you want, you can head to themothernurture.com/apply to submit your application. I'll follow up with more details and an opportunity for us to map out your plan together. I have one-on-one spots open right now, and I would love to hear from you.
Again, that's themothernurture.com/apply. All right. I hope you get moving just 1% more this week and until the next episode, I hope you take care. I'll talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening and as always, for being a part of this working mom community. You can find everything related to this episode in the show notes at themothernurture.com/podcast,
you can also find information about how I support working moms just like you through one-on-one, and group coaching, as well as access a number of resources and articles all on my website at themothernurture.com.
I will see you again next week for another episode of the podcast.
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