Pre-kids, “exercise guilt” might have been induced by a long weekend morning reading The Times rather than jogging around Central Park, or sabotaging a 6 p.m. spin class with a second piece of conference-room birthday cake. Barring a seriously pressing work assignment, whether I worked out or not on most days stemmed from a simple question: Do I feel like it?
Nowadays, there are so many compelling reasons to bag exercise, starting with the two big hazel eyes that tear up as soon as I start 
to lace up my running shoes on a Saturday or Sunday morning. With three kids, an extra-busy husband, writing assignments, school commitments, and a household to manage, even a short run around the neighborhood can feel like a selfish luxury. Exercise guilt comes not from skipping a workout, but making (precious) time for it.
On the weekends, my husband and I try to trade off, shoehorning exercise between hockey practices or during Dora. Weekdays, I usually make it work on two mornings when all the three boys are in school, an alignment of stars that would have seemed freaking incredible to my newer-mom self a few years ago, when I once actually tried to do calf raises while nursing one day, in a moment of sleep-deprived delirium. But everything is relative, of course, and these days, I often find myself filling that time with extra writing, extra school volunteer projects, or extra time trying to figure out whether Pull-ups are a better deal at Target or Amazon. Before I know it, I’m late to toddler time pickup, and by day’s end, those exercise pants I pulled on that morning will have been pointless.
I realize that this is a first-world problem, and a much bigger issue for full-time working parents with inflexible work schedules. And yet, exercise guilt is incredibly common, says Happy Healthy Kids’s adviser Monique Tello, M.D. A mom of two who specializes in women’s health in her primary care practice in Boston, Dr. Tello deals with exercise guilt on a personal and professional level. Her kids, too, grab her legs when she’s about to head out the door for a run, and her patients often reveal that when they say they’re “too busy to exercise,” they really mean that they feel guilty for taking time that could be spent with their family or at their job.
“Believe it or not, this has actually been studied,” says Dr. Tello, who’s also writing on the topic this week in her own blog, Generally Medicine. “Research has shown that physical activity consistently declines with parenthood.” In a study just last month, Kansas State researchers asked parents why that they think that’s the case, and both dads and moms pointed mainly to a lack of time and, yes, guilt. (One interesting difference: While all parents felt that fitness cut into family time, dads were more likely to feel guilty about exercising in the evening, because it took away from time with their spouse; moms were more likely to feel guilty about exercising during the workday, because it took time away from their job.)
The thing is, while it may seem that “just one more story” or an extra half-hour fielding work emails can feel critical in the moment, a long run might be better for the whole family in the, well, long run. Fitness can help protect against all sort of health problems, from heart failure to depression, and, by and large, happy, healthy parents raise happy, healthy kids. If missing a run or a boot camp class is going to make you cranky, you won’t be a fun person to be around, no matter how many pancakes or Rainbow Loom bracelets you make.
Which doesn’t mean that some very real obstacles—sick kids, traveling spouses, pressing deadlines, pregnancy—aren’t going to prevent you from maintaining the type of hardcore exercise regimen you might have followed as a singleton. But this, says Dr. Tello, is where a little can go a long way, especially when it comes to exercise’s mental benefits. On days she’s unavoidably busy, she’ll do, say, 5 minutes of core work on her bedroom floor after the kids fall asleep, and take the stairs rather than the elevator at the hospital where she works. “When kids see their parents value exercise, they are more likely to value exercise,” she says. “We sometimes do things as a family, like hiking, or kicking a soccer ball around. Someday, I hope we can all run races. Thinking about all that doesn’t just ease the guilt, it erases it.”
I like that line of thinking. During the crazy-busy month ahead, I’m going to resolve to keep doing at least just a little bit most days, no matter how much I have on my plate. (Especially if that plate contains extra Christmas cookies.) Because no one really gains anything if I skip exercise, except for maybe me, and not in a good way.
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk via Photo Pin, cc
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