April 19, 2023

Building Strong Bodies and Minds: Austin Wheeler's Guide For Healthy Families

Building Strong Bodies and Minds: Austin Wheeler's Guide For Healthy Families

Austin Wheeler is a passionate advocate for healthy living, who works with families and children to integrate healthier choices into their lifestyles. In this episode, Austin shared his unique approach to coaching, his challenges working with kids and...

Austin Wheeler is a passionate advocate for healthy living, who works with families and children to integrate healthier choices into their lifestyles.

In this episode, Austin shared his unique approach to coaching, his challenges working with kids and parents, and his tips for anyone looking to make healthier choices.

One of the biggest challenges that Austin faces is getting kids and parents on board with healthy living. He understands that it can be difficult to break old habits and create new ones, especially when it comes to food choices. Austin emphasizes the importance of education and making healthier choices accessible and fun for everyone in the family.

Austin believes that healthy living is a team effort. He works with families to create a culture of wellness, where everyone is involved in making healthy choices. He also emphasizes the importance of mindset, and how having a positive attitude can help to overcome any obstacles on the path to better health.

Austin's advice for anyone looking to make healthier choices is to start small, stay consistent, and make it fun. He recommends finding healthy activities that everyone in the family enjoys, such as hiking, biking, or playing sports. He also recommends involving children in the cooking process, so they can learn about healthy food choices and get excited about trying new things.

***Get The Newsletter*** 

Key takeaways:

  1. Small steps can lead to big changes: Austin emphasizes the importance of starting with achievable goals, such as drinking more water, eating more fruits and vegetables, or getting more sleep. These small steps build momentum and can lead to more significant changes over time.
  2. Healthy living is a team effort: Austin believes that healthy living is not just an individual endeavor, but a team effort. He works with families to create a culture of wellness where everyone is involved in making healthy choices.
  3. Education is key: One of the biggest challenges of health coaching is getting kids and parents on board with healthy living. Austin emphasizes the importance of education and making healthier choices accessible and fun for everyone in the family.
  4. Mindset matters: Having a positive attitude can help to overcome any obstacles on the path to better health. Austin emphasizes the importance of mindset and encourages his clients to focus on progress rather than perfection.
  5. Make it fun: To create sustainable habits, it's important to make healthy choices fun and enjoyable. Austin recommends finding healthy activities that everyone in the family enjoys and involving children in the cooking process to get them excited about trying new things.

Resources:

Guest Website

Transcript

[00:00:00] If you're a parent, you've done it. You made Mac and cheese or some other less than healthy option for dinner for your kids. Which they didn't eat. So you finish it for them. Then you beat yourself up because you're also not getting enough exercise because you always take care of them first.

Well today, you'll hear from Austin Wheeler, a health coach who is on a mission to make healthier choices, accessible to everyone, especially kids in parents. In this episode, we'll be talking to Austin about his unique approach to coaching the challenges he faces working with kids and parents and his advice for anyone looking to make healthier choices.

Zach: So I did a lot to prepare to be a parent. You know, I read books and I like went to sessions and [00:01:00] classes and I did all this stuff and it really is amazing. Like it turns out you can't just like put 'em in a room and walk away and just leave

Jeremy: What I, wait, I've, uh, I've, I've been doing this wrong for a while now.

Zach: Yeah, I don't know. Some people keep telling me that like, you, you gotta actually like pay attention and talk and like interact with 'em and do stuff like that. It's really, it's really weird outside of my I'm just trying to parent the way I was parented. Like, sit here, don't move for three days.

There's a bathroom there, there's raw hamburger in the fridge. Go.

Jeremy: Jeez.

Zach: Turns out, turns out there's a, there's a little bit more to it than that. Huh?

Jeremy: Yeah, well, you know, there are some days when that raw hamburger in the fridge that, that seems like it may be an upgrade from what I'm feeding my kids like this morning, you know, I, I didn't have it in me. Uh, I, I let them make some choices at the grocery store the other day about the foods they would want, and so the jumbo box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch got plopped down on the table next to the box of milk, and I said, go for it, kids.

Zach: Ooh. Cinnamon Toast Crunch.[00:02:00]

Jeremy: Right.

Zach: I mean, the cereal's good, but the cinnamon milk afterwards is even better.

Jeremy: it's gold. Pure gold.

Zach: oh my God. I'm, I'm going back to my childhood when I wasn't eating raw meat and I, the occasion when I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Yeah, no, yeah, it's, it is interesting, like they don't come out pre-program and they don't know what healthy choices are and.

Jeremy: This is, this is one of the things, right? Like we talk about all the time on the show, how much of a struggle it is to take care of yourself. But when you have to take care of your kids and you're still trying to figure it out for yourself. The hill gets even higher to climb. And I struggle with this all the time and, and I don't, you know, I don't think I'm alone.

I, I'm sure you go through this, you're trying to figure out what to pack for their school lunches and, , you put all these healthy choices in there and then at the end of the day, they bring their lunchbox home and everything you put in there, there in the morning is still there.

They didn't eat it because it's healthy and it doesn't taste like bread and cheese and sugar. So, you know, every day I try and find the compromise. What can I put in here that they're actually going to eat so that they don't come home starving [00:03:00] and angry, but what are they going to eat that isn't gonna basically have the same effect cuz it's complete garbage anyways.

Zach: See I've got a, an additional, piece to it too, because my daughter has a, you know, she's got her account at school so she can go get food from the cafeteria. So she goes in. With all the healthy stuff. And then she comes home with all the healthy stuff. I'm like, what did you eat today? And she's like, oh, well I got cookies and this and pizza.

And like I, I got all this garbagey stuff. So she's not hungry, but she's about to crash.

Jeremy: I fight this. I fight the same fight every day, and then they come home and , there will have recently been a holiday. Let's blame Easter this time for the boxes of chocolates and candies that they come home and that's the snack they want after school. And, you know, I constantly try to tell them, eat something real first.

Right? Go, go find something that grew outta the ground and eat that first, and then, and then we can do that. But it's a, it's a battle. I mean, like I said, we struggle with our own nutrition, let alone how to feed our kids . But I will say one of the things that's been successful [00:04:00] in the past has been incorporating them in the plan, in making their lunch and making dinner. When they get involved, even if it's a healthy meal, if they have their hands in it creating it, they tend to eat it more because it's something that they made and isn't something that, , mom and dad are forcing them to.

Zach: Yeah, making them part of the process is actually really important. The teams like, again, things I didn't know, things that I didn't have when I was growing up. I was given food. It was put down in front of me and I was told to eat it. And if I didn't eat it and I managed to sneak it into the garbage three hours later, it man, it, it showed up back on the table

Jeremy: Oh,

Zach: Manhattan to eat it anyway. And that, so that was my introduction to like healthy food was like, you will eat it no matter what because it was put in front of you. So, yeah, it, it's definitely a balancing act of like finding the right thing, getting them integrated, cuz they don't know the importance of the stuff, .

They just wanna play in the dirt and have fun and be. , unless you've got my daughter, then she wants to be like a businesswoman and start a business and [00:05:00] care

Jeremy: pro. That's a good problem to have. But that's interesting you point that out because the same thing I think applies to the physical activity part of it, right? I mean, my kids, they, they can't get enough screen time. They, they love the tablets, they love the video games, they love all the things.

And you know, trying to get them to be active is, is a bigger challenge. And so it's getting them involved in some sort of sport, some sort of afterschool thing where screens are not an option or where it's more than me asking them to do it or more than me telling them to do it. But another tip that we're about to get into with our interview here is the idea.

Making your physical fitness routine a part of their physical fitness routine. And that's not necessarily dragging them into the gym with you, and forcing them , to do squats or whatever, which, you know, I know that works for you, Zach, but,

Zach: I have done.

Jeremy: but there's also a lot to be said for just going outside and playing with them.

And, , we get so caught up in what the right kind of exercise is, what's the optimal way to do this thing? To perform better, to get the best results. But , as I've been discovering the last couple weeks, if you can just take [00:06:00] your skateboard outside and skate around with them in the neighborhood, that counts too.

Zach: You got a skateboard, didn't

Jeremy: I did get a skateboard. I'm very excited about this. If, if you have to have a midlife crisis, I mean, there's the Corvette or there's the skateboard and I went the skateboard route.

Zach: Both equally dangerous.

Jeremy: yeah. Very much so.

Zach: I broke way too many bones on skateboard when I was a kid, and I'm not jumping on. I'll go get the Corvette.

Jeremy: I believe that about you. I believe that about you.

Zach: Yeah, no, the physical activity part was definitely difficult until we were able to like really figure out like what that thing is. So like, my daughter likes being in the pool, so I jump in the pool with her and play with her. Like she won't go in by herself, but if I go in and play with her, she gets a lot of activity.

The other thing that we did that I think is really important is, is exposing her to as many different physical activities as we possibly could. So, , like she did gymnastics and lacrosse and bowling, , just all over the place. None of them really stuck. They were all, , one season and then she was done, [00:07:00] she did do gymnastics for quite some time, , , and when, , the dust settled right now she's 11 and , she's very much into volleyball and that's what she wants to do. So now she's like, well, I want to get better at volleyball.

I'm like, okay, well you need to strength train. You need to do this, you need to do that. You can't just go to volleyball practice. So now like the wheels are spinning because we were just like, Hey, try this. Hey, try this. Hey, try this. Hey, try. And she hated it every time. , the first day of whatever it was, she was trying, she was like, I hate it.

I hate it. And even volleyball, she didn't like it all that much, but like we just continued. We were like, Hey, try this. Hey, try this. Hey, try this. You don't have to stick with it, but just continuously exposing them to those different activities is super helpful.

Jeremy: Yeah, and, and like I said, the, the more that as a parent you can get involved with your kids in those activities, the more that. Tend to enjoy them. So it's an interesting idea along with others that we're about to learn from our guests. His name is Austin Wheeler. He is a personal trainer and health coach we partnered with him to help you make better choices for you and your family. But we started by [00:08:00] asking him about how he found this passion in the first place.

Austin: I started off as, as a youth coach, kind of coming outta high school and it really was just, you know, the youth football organization that I played in wanted me to come back and coach and that, that sort of thing, which in a weird way has, has snowballed and to. Kind of what I do now. So throughout youth coaching, right?

Then I started with football. I ended up coaching football, basketball, and track , from junior high to a high school level. Where I ended up with that was understanding like, okay, I, I can change so much, but I also can't change so much. Without going and talking to this kid's parents, at a certain point, I need them in bed at a certain time to get enough sleep, I need them eating certain foods.

Doritos and Cheeto puffs are not it.

Jeremy: They're so [00:09:00] delicious though. Am I right? I mean, come on.

Austin: you're right, you're right. Especially that, that big thing of. The giant tub

Jeremy: Oh yeah. It's endless.

Austin: Tree. And it's like, how do you get a five gallon tub of food for a dollar? And it, it doesn't make sense and it's all delicious. There's something wrong, right?

But we've all done it. It just can't be, it just can't be a regular thing. But what I, I guess where I started with, with all of these kids was like, truthfully, I cannot yell at an eight year old for what's in the pantry. Or she does not have a driver's license or any money or any, any of any of these options, right?

So if I'm going to, if I'm gonna start making changes, I need to start talking to parents. I ended up making, the switch fully into coaching parents when I started kind of seeing some of the first kids that I'd worked with come back and it was like, Hmm, I had a [00:10:00] conversation with your dad and you're bigger than me.

This might, this, we might be onto something here

Jeremy: right. Nice.

Austin: that that works better than I wanted it to. I didn't know if I wanted you six three and two 50, like I.

Jeremy: You can whip my ass all of a sudden, what's going on here?

Austin: It's, it's one of those things where it's like, my plan worked. It worked too well. I'm not happy. I'm happy, but I'm not happy. Like this is, I'm proud of you. This is bullshit. Why are.

Jeremy: That's awesome. , so cool. Tell me about the, these parents. What, what are some of the common mistakes that you're saying? I'm, I'm sure that we're, you know, as parents, we're all screwing up the same way. So what are some of the common things that you have to work with parents on?

Austin: Generally time blocking and multitasking, so, One of the, I, I think one of the experiences that I typically use, I really call on, I, I guess I would say, to try [00:11:00] and figure out how to help a parent is back to me when I was in college, just cause I had so many different things going on, plus my little brother and his friends would come visit.

So it's like I've got all this stuff going on and then I've gotta figure out how I'm gonna feed three 17 year olds for X amount of days at any given moment. so when I was in school, right, I ran track , was obviously a student, but I was also in a fraternity and worked and did extra research, kind of dissertation style papers, and traveled to gift presentations on set, extra research.

Like I was very busy. So time blocking and time management became like a, like a life or death sort of skill. One of those things I realized at that time was that truthfully, we all multitask. I think a lot of people get caught, and specifically parents. Parents that I work with, parents, if you're listening to this now, get caught with multitasking , as kind of a [00:12:00] reactionary response, right?

So there are things that you can do to kind of pair certain tasks Together. . . Like we can get some family bonding time in while we're making healthy food, while we're getting things organized for the next week , and kind of do all of these things in conjunction.

If we plan to multitask certain things we can kind of, in a weird way, earn back some of your hours. Because that's realistically what it is with me and parents. , I've gotta teach you how to get hours back so we can start making changes to, to benefit you and your family long term.

Jeremy: That's powerful. This is something my wife and I were just talking about is that , we've sort of fallen into the trap of, , kids , go in your room and, and read. We're making dinner, like sort of the like, We have to just do this thing really quick cuz we're out of time. So just, you know, sort of get out of the way.

Let us do our thing there. There's just this tendency to like separate from them rather than bringing them in to be a part of the solution. And then meanwhile, you know, there'll be other times when it's like, [00:13:00] okay, yes, you can have screen time if you , do these chores, go do these things.

And because we haven't like walked them through the start to finish of the chore, they sort of like half-ass it and shove the things under the bed and jam everything into their drawers. , and then we get furious like, how do you not know how to do this thing? I've never taught you how to do,

Austin: Right.

Jeremy: so how do we, how do we sort of get back to , getting on track?

Austin: It's gonna cost you a little bit of time now, or it's gonna cost you a lot of time later. You can decide , there's no magic way around it. That's, I think, a lot of kind of fitness industry right now.

And there are definitely a lot of coaches as well that I've heard from. that Like to, I think sell a, sell a magic solution. And truthfully, there is no magic bullet. If somebody's selling you a magic bullet, you should probably go ahead and raise your red flag and keep it moving.

Jeremy: Right.

, as a father who's, , balancing a lot of this stuff or trying to find the balance and all this stuff, , I'm in my forties finally trying to get stronger, get leaner, do all the [00:14:00] things. So , where are dads getting hung up? , what are the sort of, the common themes you're hearing from dads that are trying to get their act together?

Austin: How many hours do you sleep?

Jeremy: I generally get around seven. I'm, I'm pretty good about.

Austin: Okay. That's, that's one of the first things. And then when it comes to eating,

Jeremy: Yeah. The, the tub of Cheetos you mentioned? No, uh, it's, it's not quite that

Austin: well see, that's the tricky thing I realize , with working with dads especially. So how, how old are your

Jeremy: Uh uh, my kids are seven and 11.

Austin: Okay, so they're, they're kind of at that age where the younger kids are eating more the, the sugary snacks and having, I'm not gonna say weird tastes, but I'm, I I'm sure if you, you're at seven and 11 now, you've started to understand they're gonna go through just trying and liking and not liking things by the day at a point, it seems like

Jeremy: yep.

Austin: in your eating leftovers and random this and that.

Jeremy: That's, that's the hard part. Is it, it's a lot of like really simple [00:15:00] stuff, right? It's the mac and cheese, it's the pos, like the things that are, like, they're not super flavorful. There's not a ton of actual, , food in that food. But then you don't wanna throw it away. You're tired, you don't wanna make a separate meal.

So you end up eating that and then, , kicking yourself in the ass for it later because you know, you know better. You shouldn't have done that, but you know, what are you gonna do?

Austin: Well, it, it comes down to, so I, I typically operate on, on a three pillar sort of. Of understanding when I'm working with people. One of them, like I talked about, is that schedule, but the other one is gonna be, I call it fan food, but we're gonna look through your , family's taste bud catalog, so to speak, right?

The, the rolodexs of, of snacks that you and your family typically knows that you're not supposed to be eating. If we can find out how to, and typically it's, it's just Googling a different recipe, that's the biggest thing with a lot of our food now, is if we can go with foods that they're gonna like, that don't have a [00:16:00] lot of those kind of additives for the sake of shelf stability, we can come out with foods , that don't necessarily taste. Good for you, bro. Are good for you, right?

For example, you can take a blender, add chocolate protein powder, little bit of nest quick, maybe two, three cups a good amount of ice, right? Add a splash of almond milk and you can blend ice cream out of that. Add a touch of vanilla, right, and it'll start to taste like real ice cream when you add that touch of vanilla to your chocolate flavor.

So now your kids are basically eating protein and water, or you could do an orange sherbet with vanilla protein and instead of using a ton of ice, you use frozen oranges. Right. So now they're eating orange, sherre ice cream as far as they know, but they're getting vitamins, protein, and all of that. So when you eat that later, now you are [00:17:00] eating something that is actually in line with your goals, right?

Yeah. So if we take oatmeal, we put it in the blender, blend it into a fine powder, we can make flour, you can take cassin protein powder and O flour. You can replace brownie mix and regular flour and then bake brownies the same way with all of your other ingredients, the same amount of butter and everything else that you would use.

And they taste literally exactly the same. But that's Whole Foods, healthy Whole

Jeremy: So what I'm hearing is it doesn't have to be a complete overhaul. You don't have to burn down the entire pantry. You can make some small steps and, and sort of start gradually introducing some things in new ways, but that they're sort of packaged in a way that's familiar for the family.

Austin: Exactly. And it, it, truthfully, when we can package healthier food in an enjoyable fashion, you don't really have to one, separate yourself to eat. Unseasoned chicken, broccoli and rice that was all boiled [00:18:00] and steamed in the same water. And is, I, I think every, every fitness guy has tried this at some point in time.

It's absolutely repulsive. Like you,

Jeremy: it's horrible.

Austin: standard. You know what I'm talking about. Right. But it, it doesn't have to be that and. At this point realized I can pick and choose certain foods based on what the kids like, because I understand that based on certain ages I'm gonna have you ingesting a certain amount of realistically, what I call kid scraps and calories in a day. I'm, I truthfully, am getting to know people and trying to decide how many kids scrap calories am I gonna have to account for? I think that's, , one of the things that if I'm being honest, is just like, look, I don't expect you to be throwing all of this away all the time.

It's a lot of food. Cuz three year olds don't necessarily clean the plate super, super well. Right? [00:19:00] How, um, calculating a certain amount of kid calories, scraps, and, and trying to figure out how am I gonna. This food useful to all of you and beneficial and delicious to all of you.

That way, once you start having to kind of pick up the scrap, so to speak, I'm not feeding you with Lunchables and Cheeto puffs and, and all of this extra crap, right?

You get stronger, the kids get stronger. Everybody's spending time together. It just, it makes, it makes everything easier from then.

Jeremy: I imagine that addresses, and I'm, I'm assuming you've run into this a lot, addressing the, uh, the issue of the emotional eating when you're just like, for whatever reason, the whatever, whatever's hurting, whatever's in the pantry is gonna fix it. And so I imagine that sort of the end result of cleaning this stuff up sort of resolves some of that as well.

Austin: Well, it some, it somewhat can resolve it. Emotional eating can be very deeply psychological. So I'm, I'm, my degree was in psychology instead [00:20:00] of kinesiology.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Austin: So some of it to me truthfully is about understanding that I've maybe got somebody , with an eating habit and saying, all right, if I can get you to switch to these recipe, That are half of the calories and twice the protein.

Instead of eating what you normally would eat, chances are I'm gonna be able to get you on track to making your goals. We can still get you to get your goals right, but numerically, we're bringing calories down, bringing protein up without changing taste. That's what I'm thinking of when I'm looking through all of these recipe.

Jeremy: Yeah. And what is that magic number for protein? What do you recommend for.

Austin: It definitely depends on , what you're doing to yourself truthfully, in terms of how much you're wearing your muscles out.

Jeremy: Mm-hmm.

Austin: If you go with, I would say truthfully for most guys, if you can get 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body, [00:21:00] You're probably at a good point cause there's, there's like a lot of calculations that go into it as far as what you're actually burning, what you actually need to recover your lean muscle mass compared to your body fat. , that's probably , a good start. I, I would see you making gains if you haven't done anything. I could see you making significant progress with that number.

Jeremy: I've, I've also heard from nutritionists that, , the amount of protein that most people get, even if they aim for a hundred grams a day, tends to be a large improvement over what most people are eating , in a general day with the standard sort of western diet.

Austin: so I've, I've worked, looked with people through their diet before and it's like, You're a grown man eating 27 grams of protein a day. How does that make sense? I don't know, three year olds that could get by on 27 grams of protein a day, let alone. You at 35. That's not gonna work. It's not gonna work for me. It's not gonna work for you. It's not gonna work for he, it's not gonna work for she, it [00:22:00] won't work for anybody. This is crazy.

.

But it, it's, it's almost astounding how much our standard Western diet is protein deprived.

Jeremy: Yeah, no. We've all become cheese and vegetarians for the most part,

Austin: Bread's delicious. I

Jeremy: it is delicious, right.

Austin: it's a solid point. Hey, we're, we're a barbecue household. We do lots of sandwiches over here. I don't, I don't hate bread. I think you gotta pick a thing and, and, and enjoy your thing, man. I don't, I don't hate bread.

Jeremy: That's right. Uh, alright, well, talk to me about physical movement, uh, and just getting, getting enough exercise too. In trying to combine again, family time and, and fitness time. This is something that I've been doing more of with my kids. We've, we've all sort of taken up rock climbing lately.

Uh, and that's been a really fun way for us to sort of get out, move our bodies, and do something that we're all enjoying. Is that sort of the, another one of the, you know, I know we're not selling magic bullets, but is that one of the magic bullets that we can do is, is just find things that we can all do together?

Austin: It's, it's just building a habit, so. One thing, [00:23:00] for example, I've done with, when I hear about somebody, for example, say, oh, I have a seven year old. I don't have the time. It's like, uh, you've got a seven year old. That's the Chico. Here's, here's what we're gonna do. Right? And then you start asking questions about what, what this seven year old is interested at.

Maybe this isn't a seven year old that plays sports and he likes video games and figure out what games he likes. Oh, he likes Star Wars. Okay. What you're gonna do is you're gonna grab this seven year old, you're gonna go outside, you're gonna find two sticks. You're gonna give him one, you're gonna look him dead in the eyes, hold your stick like this and say, let's play Star Wars.

And then you're gonna follow his imagination wherever it goes for the next hour. And every time I've told somebody to do that, they typically make it about 15 to 20 minutes before they are completely out of breath. And it. Surprise. So now, now we understand how [00:24:00] that's gonna go,

Jeremy: The thing, the thing I love about that too is, we've talked about this on the show, is the, the sort of, the concept of being fit for task. Like, you don't necessarily have to have the, the six pack and be totally ripped and be, you know, ready, ready for the beach. You gotta be able to play Star Wars with your kids for an hour.

So if you find out you can make it 20 minutes now you've got something to work toward. You have a reason. There's your why, right? There's the thing that gets you outta bed and gets you

moving.

Austin: It makes the Y very easy,

Jeremy: Yeah.

Austin: very easy.

Jeremy: Absolutely. , cool man. We are running up against time here. Any final thoughts you wanna leave us with, uh, as we try and take on the task of taking better, care of ourselves while being parents at the same time?

Austin: Everybody typically sees something on Instagram that they like, and they want to want to go do that fad and this and that. Hey, your most successful fitness plan probably is gonna come more from your kids than it is from an Instagram account who doesn't know you.

Look at your fitness, your family as a unit. How are you guys all going to [00:25:00] look at maybe what the kids like doing and, and go do that, or what you guys like doing, or maybe skills you want the kids to have and go do that.

Jeremy: All right, our thanks to Austin Wheeler. You can find links to him and his work in the show notes for this episode@thefitmess.com. And Zach, I'm sure you don't need to be told twice to pick up a stick and go play Star Wars with your kids in the woods.

Zach: Absolutely not. I mean, I don't even think I need a kid for that. I would still go into the woods and play Star Wars and pretend all of that. , those were actually some of my fondest childhood memories was like pretending to play Star Wars out in the

Jeremy: Oh, who didn't, man. Like the, whenever it would snow, that's when you played Empire Strikes. Back when you were in the woods, that's when you played Return to the Jedi. And then, you know, in your basement, I guess is , where a new hope would happen because it's the only place you could turn the lights off and be in space.

Zach: Well, no, I would always do like all the tattooing, all the desert parts out in my driveway cuz it was dirt. quick little story. I was probably four and there's a scene in a new hope where Luke gets attacked by sand people and then they drag him and drop him on the floor. And I [00:26:00] went to my driveway when I was four and reenacted and laid in the exact same position that Luke was in. And then my mom almost hit me with the car.

Jeremy: On purpose.

Zach: Steve just didn't see me.

Jeremy: Uh, well that's not exactly getting your kids involved and, and playing meal prep, but you know, we'll call it close enough for your mom. Well, well done mom.

Zach: So yeah, I'm totally game whenever anyone who wants to go out into the woods and play Star Wars, I am down. I know it'll, you know, it'll be weird that I want to do that, but I would totally do that.

Jeremy: No, what's, what's weird is just how many lightsabers you will have and how much the, your costumes will look. Just like real movie replica.

Zach: Yeah, no, that's the thing. I, and you know what, I might actually do it this year, but like, I don't typically dress up for Halloween because what I want is like the $5,000, , full on Darth theater

outfit, like where you can't tell the difference. And I, I think I'm gonna do this, here

Jeremy: Wow, that's dedication or insanity. I'm not sure. It's one of the two.

Zach: , I'm gonna go with the.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think, I think that makes sense. All right. [00:27:00] But back to the topic, uh, aside from b playing with your kids and, and going all in on Star Wars, getting them involved in meal prep, getting them involved in all of the things that you're trying to do for yourself. Obviously if this is something that you struggle with like we do, then getting them involved at an early age will make it less of a struggle for them later in life.

So it's always a good. Rather than shoving them off to their room to, , have screen time or do whatever they're doing while you prepare everything for them and then serve it to them on a silver platter. Get them involved to get them in the kitchen with you. Get them helping make the foods so that they get a better education about exactly where their food is coming from, and they tend to be more involved in and interested and actually trying to eat that food that way.

Zach: Yeah, that's, it is a funny. Of that happens, they do get a little bit more interested when they prepare it themselves and when they realize it does taste good, , those reactions are always the best. And you're like, well, you know, it doesn't taste great, but you did make it so let's eat it in.

Jeremy: And like Austin said, feel free to manipulate those recipes. Look for ways to make what your family already enjoys a little bit healthier. Uh, he had some great [00:28:00] suggestions there. I've been googling some myself. Lots of great ideas that are out there that can, , really kind of feed your kids what they're already eating, but healthier versions of it to make them actually eat it and then to also help you.

So when you go to eat their leftovers, because you don't want to just throw them away, those leftovers will also be healthier options for you. , not just end up being in the garbage.

Zach: I love my, my child's leftovers. I actually feed myself half the time based on that. Like I'll make her something that I know I'll eat too. And then when she doesn't eat it all, I'm like, whew. Little extra snack for me.

Jeremy: Well that's gonna do it for this episode of the Fit Mess podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We do offer a newsletter. We hope you'll subscribe where we will expand on the topics that we brought up here and share a recipe or two in the next edition that comes out. You can subscribe to that@thefitmess.com.

That's where our next episode will be available in just a few days. Thanks so much for listening.

Zach: See everyone.

[00:29:00]

Austin WheelerProfile Photo

Austin Wheeler

Coach

Working with career-oriented fathers on balancing life, getting stronger, and getting leaner eating you and your family’s favorite foods. I got started as a youth coach a long time ago with the goal of helping kids in their respective sports and their training regiments along the way. After doing this for 6 years I started to see certain patterns amongst my athletes. I know what I was doing was useful but there was a more valuable way to do it.