Revealing A Six Pack As A Parent

As we often write about on this site, being a parent leads to not having a lot of free or personal time. Working out on a regular basis will require sacrifices in other areas of your life. However, it is definitely possible and can be well worth it in many aspects of your life.

Many people have different goals for why they workout. Some people may just want to live a healthier and more rounded life, some may want to get very strong, and others may be doing it in order to play some other sport or physical activity in their life.

Whatever your reason for working out may be, you may have some sub-goals as part of that. Your goals may also change over time. This is certainly the case for me. When I began, I wanted to get in shape and be able to run a 5K. I soon realized that while I didn’t really like to run (which has since changed again), I did like lifting weights, and I wanted to get stronger. After lifting weights for about a year, I realized that a sub-goal of mine would be to get a six pack that was visible.

However you may have arrived at your goal of getting a six pack that is visible, you are in for a bit of work. There are two sides to making this happen in your life. As a parent, neither of them are simple to accomplish.

Work out consistently

Photo by Cristian Baron on Unsplash

One of the sides of getting a visible six pack is that you need to workout on a consistent basis. You’re not going to get a visible six pack by doing no physical activity, obviously.

The good news though is that you’re not going to have to spend hours on hours in the gym - that is a common misconception about getting a six pack. In fact, you can spend a minimum amount of time working out, and still get a visible six pack.

However, if you really want to get a six-pack that pops, you are going to have to spend some time consistently working out your core muscles - these include your abdominal and lower back muscles. You’ll probably want to spend at least 10 minutes 3 times a week doing exercises that just focus on that section of your body if you're not doing regular weightlifting. I include these exercises as part of my regular workouts in the morning while resting in between other lifts. Many people prefer to do this work at the end of their workout session. Whatever it is, you’ll need to spend some time working those muscles out to really make them pop. 

Get your diet in line

Photo by Luigi Pozzoli on Unsplash

To get a visible six pack, having a diet that is well balanced is very important. Most importantly, you’ll need to make sure you are not over-eating. Eating too much food, and more critically too many calories, is going to make it impossible to get your abdominal muscles to show.

Eating correctly is hard enough when you’re not a parent. Adding kids into the equation will make this even harder. Your kids are likely not going to want to eat eggs everyday for breakfast, chicken and rice for dinner, and a piece of fish for dinner. If you’ve got your kids to eat like that consistently, that’s great, and this will be easier. Realistically though, your kids probably aren’t eating exactly that way.

What this means is that you’re going to have to find a way to balance your diet with your family's diet. If your kids aren’t already used to eating more healthy foods, then that is going to be your first challenge. Getting kids to eat less processed food is not a simple undertaking. You’ll have to take it slow - introduce new foods that are more healthy once or twice a week to start, and move from there.

Regardless of how your kids are eating, you’ll need to make sure that you’re eating correctly. The first thing this means is figuring out how many calories you should be eating in a day. Once you’ve figured that out, the next step is to figure out how many calories you are actually eating. Myfitnesspal is the most common app used for this, but there are many others.

If you’ve never tracked your calorie intake before, you might be surprised by how many calories are in everything you take in throughout the day. Before making any diet changes, you’ll want to spend some time understanding what you’re already eating and how it helps or hurts your goal of eating at the correct calorie level.

Once you’ve got a handle on your calorie intake, it will be time to eat less calories than you need in a day. This is how you will lose weight, and thus reveal your abdominal muscles. However, it won’t happen immediately. Some of the last fat on your body to go away is that stomach fat. In other words, if you want to show off a six pack, you’re going to have to consistently eat in a calorie deficit.

Switching to a healthy diet will have many additional benefits in your life - both from feeling better on a daily basis to helping you to live longer. A change in your diet should be something that is part of your life for the rest of your life, not just temporarily.

In our home, I do a diet called intermittent fasting. My wife prefers just to eat healthy throughout the day and watch how many calories she is eating at each meal. We also feed our children healthy throughout the day as well using basic ingredients for our meals. Our kids still eat things like chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and other common things kids eat, but we as parents generally don’t eat those things so do not have to worry about the calories in them.

We do keep snacking and sweets to a minimum in our house, but we still indulge in them sometimes, and we let our kids eat them as well. Getting a visible six pack will require that you abstain from those types of foods more often than not though - your kids will have to enjoy them for you.

Conclusion

Working out and dieting correctly will lead to a visible six pack over time. It won’t be quick though, so be prepared to be in it for the long haul.