The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast
If you've tried all the fad diets and are sick and tired of not achieving your health and fitness goals long-term, you've come to the right place! Welcome to the Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast with me, Kristy Castillo. I'm here to help you break the annoying diet cycle, gain confidence, and reach your health and fitness goals.
This podcast will show you how to be proud of the body you have, build the body you want, and enjoy the process along the way. I'll cover topics like how to get the most from your workouts, the importance of feeding your body what it needs, and key mindset shifts that will empower you. I've broken through the BS surrounding diet culture and built my dream body, all while being a busy wife, Mom and business owner, and I know you can too!
Connect with me on Instagram at @kristycastillofit
Learn more about working together by visiting my website: https://www.kristycastillo.com/
The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast
105. How To Approach Health and Fitness With Your Kids
This episode is a great conversation about how to approach the topic of health and fitness with your kids. I get asked about this commonly and I feel like I can't give that advice since I don't know your kids. So instead, lets have a conversation about things to take into consideration when deciding how you want to handle to topic of food in your home.
I started lifting weights (little weights 😆) when my kids were 2 and 6 months old... that was 15 years ago. I have lived through my own fitness struggles and raised my kids through some of my messed up eating habits. Guess what?? They turned out fine!
There is no "right way", no "one size fits all" answer.
I suggest a few things:
- Fixing your relationship with food and your body so you can be an example.
- Deciding how you want your kids to view health and fitness.
- Realizing how you grew up and what you want to change for your family
Those are just a few of the things discussed in this episode! I hope this helps give you some things to think about, and keep in mind ... your family does not need to think or look like anyone else's family.
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Welcome to the Unfuck your Fitness podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to today's episode.
Speaker 2:This is going to be a really good conversation. I'm really excited to talk about it. Honestly, I get asked quite a bit my thoughts, or can I give my opinion, or can you create an episode on something to the effect of approaching health and fitness with my kids? How do I talk about nutrition with my kids? I have little kids. I'm trying to hit my macros. It's hard for me to make a dinner that I can eat, that my friend you know, or that my family can eat, so I can I get it asked in that sense, and then it can go anywhere in between up to.
Speaker 2:I'm a mom with two teenage girls and you know, christy, what are your thoughts on approaching health and fitness and nutrition and body image and positive self talk and confidence and things like that with my teenage girls, especially sometimes as a mom who isn't quite confident in herself right, I think, as moms, as women, well as men everyone we're not completely ever confident in ourselves and our body image and our self image needs work. So how am I supposed to raise my little children up to having a good relationship with food and their bodies and teach them about working out, when I don't know everything about that? Or how am I supposed to raise these teenage girls and send them off into the world with a good head on their shoulders and positive body image and, you know, hopefully not have them get into an eating disorder or compare themselves with other girls, which is, you know, some of that's just inevitable, like we're always going to compare. But it's like, as a mom, I sometimes feel like man, I'm not completely confident in myself. How am I supposed to raise my children to be completely confident in their selves? And, to be honest, you can't be perfect. So that's the first thing is like I just want to open up this conversation by saying I'm not perfect. These are my thoughts, these are my opinions. This is going to be a conversation that we're just going to be having me with you and kind of talking through it, because there's no way for you to be perfect. You're going to fuck it up, right. So, in that being said, don't fuck it up on purpose, but also, you're not going to do it perfectly, so don't put so much pressure on yourself.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot to be said for being vulnerable around your kids. I've been vulnerable around my kids a lot the last few years and with health and fitness. I think it's okay to like admit your wrongs, and even now, you know, my kids are teenagers. So I have a 15 year old son he will be 16 in July and I have an 18 year old daughter here for reference. So I and I started my fitness journey six months after I gave birth to my son. So I have navigated this, my own fitness journey, while I'm navigating everything else in life, let's be honest. But I'm navigating my own fitness journey with my body and trying to figure out how to eat and work out, while also, I guess, trying to teach them about foods and like all the things. So I've been through all of the stages.
Speaker 2:So I just want to talk about that and say that there's no way to be perfect. You're going to mess it up. Don't do it on purpose, but also, when you do mess it up, it's okay. Don't beat yourself up and be like wow, I really screwed up my kids forever, like no, there are ways to reverse it. Right, but I'm not what I'm not going to do in this podcast, and I've heard other podcasters or even other people on social media give advice, saying this is exactly how you should approach this with your children, and I don't think there is a right.
Speaker 2:I mean there are definitely some wrong ways, right, but we, as I, am different than you. Your kids are different than mine, your kids are different than each other, your kids are different than anyone else's kids, so there's not a right or wrong way to approach this, and that's just the truth. My goal with this conversation, my goal with this podcast, is to create these conversations and to create different ways to look at topics and the way you unfuck your fitness is by thinking for yourself, not always doing what other people are doing. And so this is going to be a conversation around that, where I'm just going to talk to you like I would this being a normal conversation if you were a friend of mine and asked me how can I approach fitness with my kids? Like, how do I raise them up to have a healthy relationship with their body, with food, with working out? This is kind of like what we would talk about, right? So I and let me also say, along with wanting to create conversations with actual thought, I want you to not even take what I'm saying and just go with it, right, Like, challenge it, look things up and, most importantly, a lot of information we gather on the internet, first of all, is incorrect and a lot of information we gather from other people is incorrect.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of people coming to me like my friend told me this, my trainer told me this, my doctor told me this. I read this. Most of it is like what Did you even think about that for yourself? I think a lot of times we take information from other people, other sources, and we take it for truth and what that causes us to do. I think, in general, this society of just consuming information, it causes us to forget to think for ourselves. We like forget rational thinking and ultimately we've been taken so far away.
Speaker 2:I think I learned a lot of this through therapy and just like slowing down in life and really thinking for myself like who am I, what do I want? What do I believe in my core? Who am I? I think we've gotten so far away from asking ourselves those things Like we don't even have. We don't even follow our own intuition anymore. We take what someone says on the internet and we start doing it in relation to our health and fitness this kind of what I'm talking about here, obviously. So we read that you should eat a certain thing, or you shouldn't eat a certain thing, or you should work out this way or you shouldn't, and you start just. You just do what people say. I wanna challenge you to get in touch with your intuition. You know your family when it comes to fitness and health. You know your family, you know yourself. So let's get back to that and that's kind of what this conversation is going to be about. Right, there's a lot.
Speaker 2:This is a tough topic how to approach fitness with your family, with your children, because there are many layers and there's many ways to approach it. For example, there are different factors like what are the age of your kids. If I'm talking to someone with teenagers, that's gonna be different. How they should approach, or my advice on that, how to approach working out with teenagers is going to be different than how I would approach working out with little kids. Are we also? Are we talking about nutrition? Are we talking about workouts? Are we talking about body image? There's a whole spectrum here of health and fitness.
Speaker 2:Also, this is important what is the goal of the family? I'm talking to you, as you know, the head of the household. Essentially, what is the goal of your family, lifestyle-wise? Don't think about other families. I want to really challenge you, not while you're listening to this episode, but honestly, in relation to this topic. I wanna challenge you to sit down and think about what do you want your family to look like? And please don't compare it to other families. I wish I would have done this when my kids were little and honestly all the way up through, because there's a lot of comparison with your friends and you know the other moms and PTO and the other moms at your work and there's a lot of influence there. But at the end of the day, this is your family, these are your kids. It's your responsibility. But you get to choose what that looks like and you get to set the boundaries there.
Speaker 2:So think about, okay, how you want your kids to grow up and view food, because the answer to how you approach health and fitness with your kids is going to rely on the answers to these questions. It's gonna come from the answers to these questions. How do you want your kids to grow up and view food? Think about what you want your days to look like at home. Think about what you want your vacations to be like. These are all gonna matter. Do you wanna go on vacation and like have your kids be or not even have your kids be, afraid of not expose your kids to pizza or ice cream because they're quote unquote bad foods. What do you want your days at home to look like? Do you wanna be stressed out about food yourself and working out? Do you want your kids to then see you stressed out about that? What do you want your days to look like? How do you want your kids to grow up and view food and their bodies and fitness? Because how you answer those questions is going to that's gonna result in how you navigate through this right. So think for your family and honestly, if you do that, I think it'll be really clear on how you will navigate this. So when I think back on that, I didn't necessarily sit down and ask myself those questions, but I think I have always been pretty good about like no, that's not how I want my family to be. I don't want my family to be certain ways or think certain things or I don't want my kids to be stressed out about X, y and Z, and I've always been pretty good about saying like no, we're not doing those things. When I think about health and fitness and the mistakes that I made when my kids were little. There were many, but I don't think that they remember that or really were affected. Maybe I should sit down and ask them.
Speaker 2:When I did beach body workouts at home, I would have my. I would do them in the living room typically, or our dining room, or we had this little kind of like gym area. My kids were able to come out there. I would usually work out during the day sometimes. So they were. I have videos and pictures of them working out with me. They saw me working out and they would work out with me. For what? Five minutes tops right, they had terrible form, like it wasn't pretty. They probably drove me nuts, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2:I guess I, you know, I wanted to see like I didn't really have a choice but to do it at that time of day and it was good for them to see me doing it. Did I make them do it? Absolutely not. Sometimes I would make them get away from me and say, hey, I'm gonna turn on this video and start working out and exercising. And I would say to my kids here's a show, here's some snacks. We would make a little tent in the other room or whatever, and I'd be like don't talk to me. You know I'm off limits. Don't talk to me until this is over. This is my time. It's 30 minutes, okay so, but also, I do remember having times in my life where I had very unhealthy relationships with foods, but I don't think that they remember or were affected by that Again. I could be wrong, but since they've been older, my husband and I have displayed a pretty healthy relationship with working out and eating. I personally don't want my fitness to affect my kids.
Speaker 2:If I was ever on a diet or eating out of containers or counting macros, whatever I'm doing, whatever that looks like for me, my kids' meals weren't affected by that. I would make them something separate, because that's just what it is, I realized, for me. I would rather make my kids a meal and have them eat what they're eating, rather than have them eat protein pasta when they're 10. I just don't know if that's even good for them. I don't know. I would rather keep them on a pretty basic, kid, family friendly meal for dinner, even if I'm having a protein shake along with part of their dinner. If we're making tacos and I don't have enough carbs or I don't want to have the carbs for a taco, they're having tacos. I'm having a taco salad minus the taco and a protein shake. That's not bad.
Speaker 2:I've been pretty conscious about that and I've never made it a point to like, oh, mommy doesn't eat tacos. When they were little, I would never say like, oh, mom doesn't eat that, or mom doesn't eat this, or mom doesn't have Oreos or whatever. I never, ever, said anything like that, not deliberately, but I think I was just always aware of their kids. They don't have to eat how I eat and they don't have to obviously work out like I work out. Still, my kids are teenagers. They still don't eat like I eat. They eat Doritos all day and they eat cakesters all day and donuts and they eat Nutty Bar Like they're teenagers. They don't eat how I eat. So I personally just have never wanted that for them.
Speaker 2:I don't want them to think certain foods are good or bad, but I have been in mindsets, honestly, in spaces where I thought certain lifestyles were best. When I was doing auto immune stuff, I thought fully raw was best, plant based. I've thought meats were bad at one point in time. I've thought all of the things that you have thought, but I've never forced that on my kids, ever. I've never had them participate in my diets not saying that you are, of course, and I've never restricted my kids from any foods.
Speaker 2:I think that if you keep something away from kids, that's all they're going to want, just like that's natural. And I've had a lot of clients and even friends throughout the years that have really restricted, like, oh, my kids don't have Oreos because they're so processed and we just don't have that stuff in my house. Okay, cool, well, your kids probably do leave your house and they probably go to their friend's house and they probably go bananas on those Oreos because they don't get them at home. My kids have had friends over when they were little and they've said we can just take the Oreos in the other room. And I'm like, yeah, take the Oreos in the other room with you and have had it. I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2:Or they would say like we have to eat a certain thing, or I can't have these, or X, y and Z, and I'm like we just don't do that here. I don't want my kids to have an unhealthy relationship with food. That being said, my kids have never really struggled with their weight. My kids are very active in sports. It is what it is Like. We do have rules and my kids know like you have to eat something for dinner before you have something else and whatever. But they we talk about those things but I'm never going to force you can't have this or don't have this, or don't eat after a certain time of night or whatever. We keep a very healthy mindset around that and I think that's good. They have navigated through that very well.
Speaker 2:They also see myself and my husband working out. Often we do put ourselves first. In that sense it's not obsessive, but we are in the gym and they are around gym equipment. They do have a gym at home. They are around working out. They hear the words macros, protein, carbs, fats, build muscle strong, right, so my kids are. They're subjected to that. But my kids don't know what macros are. They don't. They know what a squat is, but I don't even know if it's from me or if it's from weightlifting at school. I don't push that on them because, again, I think that would be bad too.
Speaker 2:But I have had friends and I have had clients affected by their parents' relationship with fitness and health. I've had clients that have said, you know, my dad is obsessed with going to the gym. I never see my dad because he works all day and or I guess it would. They would say like growing up I never really saw my dad. He would work all day and then he would go to the gym at night for you know, three hours and then he would come home and meal prep and it was like a very obsessive relationship with working out and food, obsessive dieting. I've had clients say that their parents, you know, grew up. They grew up watching their moms, mostly, unfortunately, obsessively dieting, obsessing over their body, their how they look in a bathing suit, standing in front of the mirror, calling themselves fat. I look terrible, I can't have carbs, I can't eat this, I can't have pizza, I have to have salad. I'm fasting today, like all the things. I've had other clients say that their parents, you know, made them clear their plate before leaving the table. So now they feel like if they don't eat all the food on their plate, they're doing something wrong and therefore they're overeating, and this is like a vicious cycle and there's many more.
Speaker 2:So also, I want you to, while you're thinking about what you want your family to look like, what your kids, how you want them to grow up around food. Think about how you were subjected to diet, nutrition, weight loss, working out. Was it healthy for you? Did you have balance? Did your parents have awareness? Did they even know? Were they just selfish? They didn't care? Was it because of the way that they were raised? So think about how you grew up and the result that it had on you and then decide will you continue to change that or will you go along with the cycle? I don't really have many things growing up. My parents I don't really remember ever having conversations about food or about like. I don't have any trauma whatever you want to call it from growing up in those types of things, but I know a lot of my clients do and I think it's important that you take that into consideration Again. This is just like do you want to raise your kids how you were raised around health and fitness or do you want to change that? But also, just like every adult, every situation, every kid is different. Every family is different.
Speaker 2:Little kids don't need a lot of information about health and fitness and food. I think it's too much for them to say, I mean, it's fine to be like okay, come on from school, have a snack. We're going to wait till dinner. We have to eat dinner because it's good for us, and then after that, if you eat enough x, y and z off of your plate, you can have a snack like whatever that. You know. That's fine. That's pretty normal. I be honest, I don't really. We don't really do that at my house, but we have a different schedule over here, so you don't have to do it like that, though. Do it however you want.
Speaker 2:I will say this I can't sit here on this podcast episode and tell you how to raise your children around health and fitness. I don't know you. I don't know your family, I don't know your children. I can tell you that you inherently know what you want for your kids, what's right and wrong for your kids. You know your kids. You know how you can talk to them. I know how I can speak to my children around food and what I can say to them. That's going to be a really big trigger and they're going to be afraid of Oreos forever if I say it a certain way or I just kind of let them be like man every time I eat Oreos, I have the worst stomach ache and then I can say that's because they're not the most healthy for you. They should be eaten in smaller, smaller doses, right, or on an empty stomach. It's a lot of sugar and sugar doesn't make us feel the best. That's a good learning opportunity. That's how I would suggest going about it. Pay attention to how you feel after you have certain foods. That's how they learn is like in that moment.
Speaker 2:The best thing you can do and this is the only advice that I can give and the only like I know this for certain the best thing you can do is fix your relationship with food in your body. Fix your relationship with food and your body, because your kids watch you daily and, if you have a lot of work to do, be honest with your kids as they get older and say wow, you know, remember back when we went on vacation and I didn't eat any meal with you guys, I didn't eat any of the pizza at the pizza place. That's because I thought pizza was going to make me fat and it was really bad for you. But it turns out I was wrong and that was really silly. You're eating pizza and you're not overweight and unhealthy, right kids? So why would I think that that's silly? I'm changing that. I'm learning from that and now I know better. Like, just be honest, right, I have teens.
Speaker 2:I want to focus on certain things. I have a boy and a girl. Like I said, I want my daughter. She's 18 and I've wanted this for her for a long time.
Speaker 2:I want her to know that she needs food. She shouldn't starve herself. Starving yourself is not good. Looking in the mirror and like not seeing a belly or like looking perfect is not a thing. I want her to know that she needs to work out. She needs to go for a run, she needs to be active. She needs to go to the garage and work out if she's, if she has time, right. I need her to know that being bloated is normal when you're on your period. I want her to know that being super fit and healthy and feeling great about yourself all the time is not going to happen. That's not normal. You shouldn't feel like that. It's normal to not love your body every single day. It's normal for other people to talk shit about your body. It's normal for people to pick at things about you and that doesn't have any reflection on you. I want her to know that strong is better than skinny. I want her to know that muscle is good, muscle is amazing, muscle is healthy, muscle makes you badass. I want her to know that her body is special, that she can change her body, that it's perfect the way it is. She can change it if she wants to, that she's beautiful. I want her to know those types of things and I want to be that example for her. So I have to be that example for her. I can't pick myself apart in the mirror. I had to fix myself first and I did that.
Speaker 2:I want my son, 15, to know that he needs good food, that protein builds muscle, that we have protein shakes in the house, that he's allowed to have snacks, that he should also lift weights, he should be pushing himself in the gym and being a good person when he's at practice and being a good leader and moving, and that health is important All of those things right. I want him to know that he should not look at a woman's body and pick it apart, because girls are different, not even a woman's body. My son should not look at the girls in his school and make fun of someone for being a little bigger or being a little smaller or being smaller-chested or whatever right? I want him to also appreciate a female and be kind and to know that. I want them both to know that food is important. Food is fuel. You can work out, you can have good quote. You know foods. You can also have sugary foods, it's okay.
Speaker 2:I want them to know that sleep is important. I want them to know that drinking water is important. I want them to take care of themselves. But here's the other side of that they're teenagers. They're not going to do any of the things that I just said, but I'm going to keep saying it because what I'm saying and what I'm doing they're hearing on repeat and eventually they will. But I know they're teenagers and they're not gonna do anything. I say, let's be real, but we have to keep saying it, right?
Speaker 2:I think I get this question mostly in, like my daughter, right? I want to know how to raise daughters. How do I raise them to have good self-esteem and be confident in mamas? You do that by treating yourself well, having confidence in yourself, not picking yourself apart, eating things in good portions that they should be able to eat. You have to model what you want your daughters to model, because at the end of the day they will go out into the real world. They will get picked apart, they will see things, they will hear things, but they'll know my mom did this and it really worked for her. I trust her. She's been through a lot with her health and fitness. She told me she struggled and now she's doing better. Right. Walk through it with them.
Speaker 2:I think that means the world to any of us is that connection and seeing that authenticity and someone can mess up and change and that's beautiful. And I think, as a female, what I've learned is just myself making those changes in that effort and displaying hard work and displaying certain things about how I treat my body and talk about my body and that I'm actually living the way that I'm saying to her and I'm not just saying that she's beautiful and she should be strong and she should be confident, but that I am also the same thing. I think there's a lot to be said for just that authenticity there. But generally, just to kind of wrap this up again, I don't there's no way for me to tell you how to raise your family, how to raise your children, how to speak to your own children about this. What you need to do is find that authenticity in yourself and really think about those questions. How were you raised and how do you want your family, your kids to be raised? How do you want them to feel around food and nutrition and their bodies? And really envelope that and really go with that feeling, because, at the end of the day, that's how they're going to learn best is live through it and watch you live through it.
Speaker 2:So I really hope that this conversation was helpful. I hope it was insightful, I hope that it got you thinking and I hope that you appreciate the fact that I didn't just give you instructions on how to teach your children, because I could be telling you to teach your children in a way that isn't great for your children. At the end of the day, on fucking your fitness is really about what do you want that to look like? You have to be able to think for yourself. So I hope this conversation was eye-opening, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you share this episode with all of your friends because I think it's such a good conversation and, at the end of the day, I do want you to think about what is authentic to you and your family and to really put the time in to discover that.
Speaker 2:Because I think what makes me the most upset about these types of things is that I in the past have listened to people tell me to do it this way. I've done it that way for myself and then later on thought that was not the right way. I shouldn't have done that. Not only did I do that for myself, but then I subjected my kids to this mentality and that's crazy and that's on me.
Speaker 2:So, just putting a little bit more thought into it and I think these conversations are really important and can be very eye-opening, and I think conversations are important and asking yourself those questions rather than just taking some random person's input on how you should be teaching your kids about health and fitness, because ultimately, it is a really big part of life, but it shouldn't be the main part of life. Your kids should be able to enjoy foods and enjoy exercise and nothing should be mandatory. I don't like that. I do think it's our job to do that as they get older and for us to teach them about foods and teach them about macros and all the things If you have the knowledge to do that. If not, then don't do that, because if you don't have the knowledge to be preaching to someone else about something, please don't, because that's misinformation and that's not good either. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I will talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much If you came to connect with me over on Instagram at Christy Castillo Fit. I will see you next time, hit.