It’s a delicate balance between indulgence and exercise, especially with the kids in tow. Making healthy choices takes effort, especially when quick-and-easy processed food abounds! Amid hectic schedules, life can fall into a sedentary routine. Can we really have it all in terms of keeping healthy as a family while still loving the process?
In the fourth episode of the latest season of Growing Pains, Coach Amanda Lim and Dr. Tyler Lim, who jointly run LIFT Clinic, discuss ways to balance healthy eating and exercise as a family and share useful tips to make a healthy lifestyle a family affair.
Discover ways to nurture prenatal fitness, insights into kids’ diets, the ideal diet for sustainable weight management, as well as the underrated role sleep plays in our overall health, and more!
Time codes for key talking points in this podcast episode
00:00 – Welcome to Growing Pains
01:12 – Coach Amanda’s journey into fitness and nutrition coaching
04:32 – On the topic of exercise during pregnancy
10:49 – Simple ways to exercise with the family
13:10 – On the topic of sleep for kids and parents
17:20 – Vitamins and supplements for kids (featuring Dr Tyler)
20:40 – Should we eliminate sugar and gluten from our kids’ diet?
25:38 – Balancing work and couple time when working together
30:00 – Reflection on the conversation
Further reading
Featured Voices
- Angela Neo, host of the Growing Pains podcast and mother of two.
- Sufyan Saad is a lifestyle writer at The Honeycombers. He was previously at HoneyKids Asia.
- Amanda Lim is a certified fitness and nutrition coach, perinatal specialist, and self-proclaimed “chill mom” of two. Follow her on Instagram.
- Dr Tyler Lim is a physician with a keen interest in metabolic health and weight management, as well as a proud papa to one daddy’s girl and one mini-me son.
- They jointly run the LIFT Clinic, a comprehensive metabolic health facility in Pasir Panjang offering medical weight management, aesthetics, exercise testing, hormone replacement, nutrition therapy, professional coaching, and other optimal wellness services – a “one-stop shop” for total well-being.
Growing Pains is a modern parenting podcast where we tackle the constantly changing landscape of parenting in Singapore. This season, we dive deep into modern parenting challenges: navigating the digital age, teen mental health and more during our candid conversations with parents and experts on this Little Red Dot. Tune in now! Follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Full Transcript
Angela Neo
As parents, it’s always difficult to find the balance between being healthy vs. treating ourselves, aspiring to exercise every day when, in reality, we haven’t gotten off the couch. But it is possible to bring healthy eating and exercise into your routine in a way that’s enjoyable for the whole family.
Welcome to Growing Pains, a podcast by HoneyKids Asia that explores the challenges of modern parenting and provides a safe space for parents to navigate the ever-changing landscape of parenthood. My name is Ange, I’m a mum to two boys – Xavier, who’s 11 and Marcel, who’s 9.
In this episode, we chat with wife and husband duo Coach Amanda Lim and her husband Dr. Tyler Lim. They work together at LIFT clinic to help women with metabolic health, anti-ageing and more. We’re going to learn that a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be out of reach for all families. Hello Amanda. It’s so lovely to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us. First up, for our listeners, tell us a little about you.
Amanda Lim
I’ve been in the coaching business for quite some time. I started 17 years ago as a personal trainer. That kind of sparked the fire to learn more about different elements of wellness. So, I became a certified nutritionist a few years later. I got my prenatal and postpartum certification a few years after that.
Then, I got my health coaching certification most recently, and it all came together in the brand that is now Coach Amanda Lim.
Angela Neo
How did you initially come into this fitness and nutrition sphere?
Amanda Lim
So I grew up doing gymnastics, [and] playing soccer. I was a diver. I did all sorts of different sports. Gymnastics was my main sport. So, I always had a passion for physical activity. So, when I was in graduate school, I needed to make some extra cash. And I was like, ‘yo, training is the thing, right? Because I know how to train, right? I’ve been coached, I’ve been in a training programme since I was three years old, I can do this.’
And I did. And it was wonderful. So, it became a side gig just to fund my graduate studies. But through doing that, I started realising that more and more clientele were asking me about different aspects of wellness, nutrition, lifestyle, [and] exercise as a woman in my 20s and 30s.
And I was like, ‘there’s something to this, you know, this could be a business and not just a side gig.’ So after I finished my second Master’s degree, I founded my first company, Benefit, [which] was in Los Angeles. I operated under Benefit until I moved to Singapore. So it was something that, you know, was a side gig but then became a full-time gig very shortly after my Master’s degree.
Angela Neo
So I love your mission around lifting women [and] uplifting women. How are you doing that? Both, I guess, literally and figuratively.
Amanda Lim
Yeah, I think what’s different about the way that I coach maybe from some other, you know, trainer and nutritionist styles is that, of course, everything that I do is backed in the science, right? I don’t just have, you know, broad generalisations of programmes that I give out, you know, willy nilly, everything is customised to the person, and everything is evidence-based.
But what the missing component in [many] of these programmes you get online or through an online coach like myself is accountability and behaviour change support. And that’s really what makes my programme different. That’s how I lift women, not [by just] handing them a nutrition or exercise plan. But by giving them the tools to make behaviour change that is sustainable and lifelong.
So I’m really positive. I, you know, I’m someone who cannot help but be positive. And my clients would probably laugh if they heard me say this, but I almost can’t be negative. It’s not in my spirit. So I lift women through—
Angela Neo
That’s what you need in a trainer.
Amanda Lim
Yeah. I think so. Well, you know, to be fair, though, it’s funny, if you think about how I like to be coached, I actually like to be coached a bit harshly.
Angela Neo
Interesting. Yeah.
Amanda Lim
And I think that’s because of how I grew up as an athlete and the coaching methodologies back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But yeah, so I coach really positively.
And I think that the way that I lift women is by empowering them with multiple tools to reach their goals. And, like I said, not just these cold, dead pieces of workouts and nutrition. It’s more of a holistic behavioural change approach.
Angela Neo
So, what are the common pregnancy and postpartum myths you’ve heard about and want to debunk? I remember when I got pregnant with Xavier, my first child, and I was like, ‘oh, can I still exercise, or after you have the baby?’ It’s like, well, after six weeks, you can exercise, but for some people, that was different.
Amanda Lim
First of all, there’s a lot of misinformation as well as a lot of just pure myth. You know, pure myth. One of [the] worst ones that I think is the most disservice to women is that you can’t do core work when you’re pregnant.
Angela Neo
Yes, and I’ve heard that.
Amanda Lim
[You’ve] heard that in this year, right? In the calendar year of 2023. That is still happening at the medical level. Right? And that’s the real danger because the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the authoritative source for standards on fitness, debunked that years ago, over a decade ago, they said, ‘hey, whatever exercise that a fit, active mother is doing in a normal pregnancy.’
I take obvious credence to high-risk pregnancies, but for a normal healthy mother [who] has been fit and active, she can continue the exercise she has been doing until physiological strain makes that impossible or not recommended. So, for example, you can do a plank, okay, as long as you haven’t developmentally reached the point where you can no longer fire the transverse abdominis functionally.
Angela Neo
Right.
Amanda Lim
And that might never actually occur. So you know, not to toot my own horn, but in a mom like myself, who you know, my training age is almost my real age, right?
Angela Neo
Right.
Amanda Lim
I’ve been trained for 37 years, you know, as an athlete. For someone like me, that day doesn’t exist, right? I can fire my core through my pregnancy for a mom in a different stage. The ability to fire her core in a plank might stop at one month. Okay, how do we fire the core differently after that one month?
It’s never to say we don’t do core exercise. And I think it’s really disempowering to women to be told either not to exercise categorically or to stick to certain forms of gentle exercise simply because the practitioner doesn’t have enough information about what is safe.
Angela Neo
And what about those women [who] are in their early stages of pregnancy, and they’re like, I kind of missed the boat on getting it before I got pregnant.
Amanda Lim
Yeah.
Angela Neo
Can you start exercising when you get pregnant? Because that’s another myth I heard of, ‘oh, you can do whatever you did before you were pregnant. But what if you’re pregnant, don’t start.’ And that, of course, for some women, it’s quite discouraging because your body’s changing so much. And sometimes it’s your motivation to say, ‘oh, I want to try and get healthy before the baby comes.’ What can they do?
Amanda Lim
Getting healthy before the baby comes is a wonderful goal to have. So, if you’ve never been active before, I always say pregnancy is an opportunity to start a new habit that can follow you through the postpartum period.
My biggest piece of advice in that case, for a woman who has not previously been active – two pieces of advice – [the first] is to get walking right, especially in that first trimester when the nausea might be [at] its strongest. The fatigue might be hitting the hardest if you can start getting some steps in to improve the symptoms and set you up for later activity.
The second piece of advice is to find a certified prenatal trainer. Find someone who can design a programme that meets you at the exact stage that you’re at, and then can develop that programme and progress it through your pregnancy specific to you. So, I really do recommend that a woman with no previous activity experience, find a certified professional.
Angela Neo
Why do you think it’s important for families to adopt a healthy lifestyle?
Amanda Lim
I see so many parents come to me and say, ‘you know, my kid is lazy; my kid doesn’t do enough exercise.’ What can they do better? And I honestly think the solution is, what can we do better as parents?
How can we model physical activity in a way that makes it fun and part, engaging, and part of a lifestyle for the kids? Right? There’s nothing you can tell a child that’s as powerful as what you show a child, so if you can get active together as a family, even if that’s just taking a walk on Sundays, or you know, something we love to do, renting those Anywheel bikes in Singapore.
Angela Neo
Oh, yes.
Amanda Lim
Oh, we’re like Anywheels’ number one customer, I’m pretty sure, especially now that they have the child seats on the back. Anywho, we are a fan of just using activity as a way to get from A to B, right?
So if you have a favourite brunch spot that you go [to] as a family, or if you have somewhere that you’d like to museum that you’d like to visit, why not walk there? Why not cycle there? Make activity a small part of the fabric of your family activities. And then that way, it doesn’t seem like a chore and extra.
Angela Neo
I also think that I’ve had this conversation with a number of guests on the podcast, which is if there’s something that we want our children to do, be it self-regulating on social media, having an understanding of consent and respecting others or exercise, we need to be able to show them.
And if again, if I’m sitting on the couch and saying, go and do your laps in the pool, the boys are gonna say to me, ‘well, Mom, what do you do?’ So, I need to be able to be a role model for that. Right?
Amanda Lim
Absolutely. And I think the reminder that activity is joyful and movement is human nature. Sometimes, we need that reminder as well.
Angela Neo
And we don’t all have to be athletes and amazing, right? We can just go and rent the bikes at East Coast Park for an hour and slowly pedal around, which is what I do.
Amanda Lim
Yeah. That’s it. I mean, hey, we’re also slowly pedalling around when we’re on those bikes. So, full disclosure.
Angela Neo
Now, on that note, I hate to break it to you. But some of us actually don’t like to exercise, so we’ll do it. But the motivation behind the thought of doing it is, ‘I know I need to do it, but I don’t like it.’ What are alternatives that families can take up in order to be physically active?
Amanda Lim
Well, in this case, I think there are a few options here. So, I think of the fact that most kids love being active. So it’s not usually something you have to force a kid to do. Sometimes, sure. I mean, it depends on your kid’s character, but many kids can’t wait to get out the door in the morning and do something outside, right? So for the parent, for example, if you have a kid who’s in sports, right? Say the kid is in soccer, you can say, ‘okay, when I drop my kid at soccer, I’m going to use that next 45 minutes to take a walk around the field.’
And that’s your commitment to fitness that parallels theirs. It’s not that you have to do it together necessarily. It’s that you know, your child is being active already. Why don’t you tack on your own better habit of being physically active to that child’s activities? So it’s kind of together but separate, you know, you can do [an] activity while the child does activity and then you both kind of feel the same way after that hour, and you can go enjoy a meal together, enjoy some quiet time together. So that’s one, one option.
Another option, to make it not feel like exercise, is to find a class or a sport that the whole family can do. So something I was just thinking about is my kids love, now, granted, my kids are very young, but my kids love watching the free aerobics classes [at] the community centre, so–
Angela Neo
Oh, Zumba!
Amanda Lim
Yes, exactly. Zumba or even tai chi or any of the group classes. My kids love it. And it’s free. And it’s down the street from our house. And, you know, we might feel like, oh gosh, or you know, are we doofuses doing the Zumba outside the park, but the kids love it.
So something like that, where there’s a free activity where you can all engage together. And it’s just really easy in your neighbourhood. That’s another way to do it.
Angela Neo
And for those new moms struggling to regain their fitness and an exercise schedule, we have toddlers running around, and we just haven’t been able to get back into things. What advice do you have for bringing exercise into their routine or back into their routine?
Amanda Lim
Well, I will circle back to my advice for first-trimester pregnant women, which is to get walking. The number one thing you can do to kind of re-enter the world of exercise is to get your step count up and get walking. So that’s my first bit of advice.
That’s something you can do with kids in a stroller. You can do that with kids on a push bike or even toddlers on a bike that they peddle themselves. You can do that at any time in any neighbourhood in almost any weather. It’s been so rainy here in Singapore. That’s one tip.
The second tip is to find workouts that you can do at home at home. I think one of the powerful things about my online programme is that I have entire programmes written that require no equipment that [can be] done in the privacy of your own home. And I think that, you know, when we think about exercise, going to a gym, registering for a class, thinking of [time] investment, big financial investment and location investment, leaving the house.
And I think that if you can visualise the activity as something that can happen in your house, and it doesn’t have to last for an hour, that is powerful. So, using the idea of incremental change rather than everything all at once.
Angela Neo
And being kind to yourself as well about it right that you just start with some walking and it doesn’t have to be seven days a week.
Amanda Lim
Sure, it doesn’t.
Angela Neo
Boot camps and all that.
Amanda Lim
No. Gosh, and I, in fact, you know, that whole boot camp-HIT trend is something that I would like to see kind of start to decline a bit, in my personal opinion. But yeah, walking is the most powerful thing moms can do to get started.
Angela Neo
Sleep is always tricky. For babies, toddlers, for the parents. How can we tell and encourage children to get more rest? And at what point do we tell adults to get more rest?
Amanda Lim
This is so you should know, full disclosure, that the Lim household is a sleep-training household. So we started sleep training our kids, and this is, you know, people are aghast when I say this at two weeks.
Angela Neo
Yeah.
Amanda Lim
So we really start from, you know, the bitterest beginning with our kids. And that’s because I know that sleep underlies all the other foundational wellness practices we value in our household. So, for example, if you’re getting poor sleep, it’s very difficult to hold on to lean muscle, it’s very difficult to motivate to get to the gym or to do exercise at the hunger, you know, the hunger cues are stronger when you’re under-slept all these things. So, for us, sleep is a non-negotiable.
What we can learn or what we can do better in terms of sleep is [to] learn from our kids’ bedtime routines. All of us who have had toddlers, even if you don’t, even if they aren’t great sleepers, at least we try with a routine, right? We have a bedtime, we have maybe a story of a song, a bath, et cetera. Why don’t we do that for ourselves as adults? Why don’t we have a designated wind-down period as adults that puts us in that same mindset?
All the parenting books and sleep training books tell you to do that because it works. Something consistent, ritualistic, and, again, encourages sleep. So you don’t see us putting screens in front of our kids at 8 pm, right? Absolutely not. We draw the shades, we read a quiet story, so maybe sing a song and lights out. That’s something we can absolutely apply as adults.
Angela Neo
Yeah, I’m so bad for having the screen before bed.
Amanda Lim
Yeah, most are. And again, sometimes, us included, we try.
Angela Neo
Yeah, I try reading, but then some nights. It’s just like, Oh, I could just look at this one thing. And then, next thing you know, it’s way past my bedtime. I go to bed very early. It’s way past my bedtime. It’s like 11 o’clock.
Amanda Lim
Yeah. Well, isn’t it funny though? Reading actually does tend to induce sleep for most of us simply because it is way less stimulating than looking at a screen. It’s a great swap.
Angela Neo
I’ll work on that one. So, let’s move on to one of Singapore’s favourite pastimes, which is eating. There are plenty of fad diets out there. So there’s keto. There’s paleo. There’s intermittent fasting. And then there’s also five and two all these different kinds of diets, which are the ones that people should follow, and which are the ones they should steer away from?
Amanda Lim
Well, here’s what I’ll say about any diet, any diet that you’re trying to get on, particularly if weight loss is the goal. If weight loss is the goal, then calorie deficit is the goal. So, whatever diet is going to help you achieve a calorie deficit is probably going to be the best one for you. Now, [there are] three most common ways to achieve calorie deficit: either you restrict overall calories, so you take whatever food you’re currently eating, and take the calories down so that it becomes less than the calories you’re burning.
The second way is to eliminate a macronutrient group. So that’s like what a keto diet is; it says we’re going to take out carbohydrates. And in doing so, naturally, most folks will bring their caloric load down. And then the third is to restrict the time with which you have to eat. So that’s what intermittent fasting is, right? You only have eight hours to eat or even fewer hours to eat. So, within those hours, it’s harder to get into a caloric surplus, right? [It’s] easier to maintain a deficit. So you can either play with time, type, or overall calories. Any of those will yield weight loss results.
Angela Neo
Should families consider switching their current diet to a plant-based diet? Why or why not?
Amanda Lim
I would not recommend plant-based diets as a general rule, especially for families with children. Children need protein developmentally. Protein from animals is the easiest and most complete source of protein.
So, in our household, we are plant-forward but not plant-based. We try to have plants at every meal, but we also have a majority of animal proteins at every meal as well.
Angela Neo
Amanda’s husband, Dr Tyler, also chimes in on kids’ diets with expert advice!
How about vitamins and supplements because they’re everywhere, and many children are very fussy. There’s a lot of anxiety when your child won’t, for instance, eat enough dairy or consume enough dairy to what is recommended.
And that’s when many parents lean on vitamins and supplements because they think, ‘well, this is a way to supplement the deficiencies that they have in their diet.’
Do you believe that that’s something that parents should be doing for their children? Is that helpful?
Dr Tyler Lim
I should start that as a parent myself, I do not supplement my kids with anything. I do believe that a healthy child, for that matter, should not have to be supplemented with any form of vitamins, really. And if you can just give them a varied diet, those vitamins will come from natural food sources.
So unless your child has specific medical issues that your doctor brings up and may require supplementation, you should consider vitamin supplementation. But with regards to parents worrying about the child being a fussy Ethan, that’s why, you know, certain vitamins are not there and whatnot.
Angela Neo
They don’t eat any vegetables. Tyler, what do we do?
Dr Tyler Lim
The vitamins you get from vegetables may come from fruits, too, so if your kids are eating fruits, then I think it’s fine. But I think parents tend to worry when their kids are fussy or picky and then tend to resort to vitamin supplementation to relieve their own anxiety rather than what the children need.
In my experience as a practising physician, I feel that it is some form of parental anxiety most of the time. If the kids are growing well, and you’re seeing that their height is normal, there’s really no need for supplementation because you are doing things right.
Angela Neo
Kourtney Kardashian apparently cuts out gluten, dairy and sugar for her kids’ consumption.
I know that when I had my first child, I was a lot stricter regarding sugar and treats than when Marcel was one or two [years old]. He had a lot more treats than Xavier did. On a scale of that’s totally normal to cut out all those things to it’s very extreme, where do we sit? Where do you sit?
Amanda Lim
I’m pretty close to the one that is so extreme that almost no one should be doing [it]. Of course, if you have children with food intolerances or [have been] diagnosed [with] food allergies, you’ll need to be more careful about their consumption. And overconsumption of sugar is not great at any age, right?
So, that being said, kids need a tonne of carbohydrates. Their carbohydrate and energy demands are very high. So, to eliminate something like gluten, which is common in many carbohydrate foods, not necessarily sugary foods, it would be difficult to navigate that for a child.
Angela Neo
If they didn’t have a tolerance.
Amanda Lim
Exactly. And [even eliminating] dairy, that’s almost shocking to me because children need calcium at this crucial development stage for their bone health.
So, for me, that would be, like I said, almost extreme to the point of being contraindicated. I think that’s crazy.
Dr Tyler Lim
So food is a very controversial topic that’s close to home for almost everybody. Everyone has their preference on how to feed their kids; it’s a really personal issue. It’s very hard to do. As controversial as the science gets, a whole body of literature may even support whatever Khloe Kardashian is doing, right?
I’m not going to get into that. But like I said, as a parent, I probably would not ‘food restrict’ in terms of certain categories of food. Just to alleviate my own expectations of how food should be. Because I recognise that growing kids need exposure.
Let’s say allergies, for example, the more you [avoid exposing] your children to allergens in general, the more likely they are that they will develop some form of allergies because they have never been exposed to those things before.
So, even for infections, if your kids grew up in a completely septic environment, whether they know germs, the likelihood that they come out as healthy adults is very low because they are not exposed to all these antigens. The immune system doesn’t know what they do. So to me, I take the same approach when it comes to food.
And I feel that kids should be exposed to all sorts of food, regardless of whether you think it’s good [or] bad. Say it is bad, and you find that your kids only want to eat that, and that’s when you, as a parent, can step in and see how you could develop coping strategies for them.
I would rather they eat bad food under my watch than when they’re 15 or 16 and eating all this bad food out there, and I can no longer talk sense or teach them any form of coping strategies to deal with it. So, I am more flexible in that, and I agree with the body of literature that too much added sugar is probably bad.
Dr Tyler Lim
So, I would introduce sugar in their diet only because it’s a healthy exposure. And I do recognise if they become overly indulgent, and that’s where I should step in and stop it.
But eliminating added sugar entirely and expecting them to go through their whole lives without added sugar is improbable. And probably, you’re devoiding them of coping strategies in the future. It’s good to expose them to anything and see how they respond.
Angela Neo
I do this quite a lot. I’ll look at cereal or something for myself. And I’ll look at the nutritional values. I look at the sugars because we all know that cereals can have a crazy high number of sugars, even though it says it’s healthy on the front.
Is that something people should be doing and looking at and instilling in their food choices when they are at the supermarket?
Amanda Lim
Absolutely. Knowledge is power, just like in any other context where you’re trying to have a positive outcome. So, for example, a budget right if you’re trying to stick to a budget, if you don’t look at the transaction record and your bank account, how will you ever be able to stick to it? You won’t. And then how will you ever have the outcome of a balanced financial life? You won’t?
How would you not know anything about calories, macronutrients, nutrition facts, fibre and sugar and yet expect a healthy outcome or a balanced diet? It’s nearly impossible. So yeah, I definitely recommend empowering yourself with knowledge about food and examining food labels for what they are. If there’s one thing that you look at a food label and take away from it, it should be the serving size.
Angela Neo
Right.
Amanda Lim
I think the thing that most people are shocked by is when they have a bag of chips, for example, that looks small. They eat the whole thing and say it’s only 150 calories, and I say that’s one serving. There are three [servings] in the bag.
Angela Neo
My favourite chocolate always says six servings, and I’m telling you now it isn’t six servings.
Amanda Lim
For you, that’s completely normal.
Angela Neo
So then, what should we look for when we look at that nutritional value apart from the serving size?
Amanda Lim
Yeah, serving size. First and foremost, make sure that you’re looking at one serving, or if it isn’t one serving, [find out] how many servings are in the pack.
Angela Neo
Right.
Amanda Lim
That’s number one. Number two is the sugar. When you look at the nutrition label, there are carbohydrates, sugars, and added sugars/ Added sugars are really dangerous, all right, because sugars could include fruit-based sugars, which, you know, are another issue entirely.
For the sake of ease, let’s say that added sugars are the ones you want to keep as close to zero as possible. So if you look at food [item], especially for your children, and the added sugars are five grams or above per serving, I would rethink whether that’s the best food choice.
Angela Neo
You and your husband work out together every day. That’s inspirational. Is this your version of couple time? Is it part of your job? Is it something that you enjoy doing?
Amanda Lim
Can I say it’s all three? Is there an all the above option? For us, it’s absolutely couple time. So the way that our studio is situated is that we have the gym in our studio. So we work in the place where our gym is right there. So when we’re working out, it’s a combination of work time and conversation time. We listen to [a] podcast during that time, and we hash out some things we need to do for work.
We also just have personal conversations about the kids, maybe about our daughter’s upcoming enrollment in school; we have chats during those times. So I would say absolutely as couple time, it is also, in a way, work time. You know, as a coach, a lot of what I do is produce content. So you know, we do a lot of content production during that time. We’ll do a set of weights, and then we’ll film a set of weights, right?
It’s definitely work time for me as well. And then it’s also something we enjoy. I don’t think we would choose to do all of our workouts together if it was truly a drudgery or if it was stressful for us to be together during that time. It’s, it’s really not.
Angela Neo
What changed for you when you had your children in terms of your approach to fitness?
Amanda Lim
It was interesting because I got certified as [a] pre and postpartum fitness trainer in 2009.
Angela Neo
So, way before your kids.
Amanda Lim
Yeah, so I didn’t have my kids until 2020. Yeah, so there was a big, large bit of time where I was practising, where I had not yet had the experience of pregnancy.
So, I will say how I have practised pre and postpartum fitness has changed since having my kids, particularly because I’ve gone through a C-section recovery and a VBAC recovery.
Angela Neo
Oh, right.
Amanda Lim
So I’ve had both types of births, which has informed the way that I particularly practise with my postpartum women very much because now I truly understand what it feels like to heal a scar or truly understand what it feels like to have gone through the physical labour of a vaginal birth.
That has completely changed how I practise in that it’s made me more sensitive to the intricacies of the issues. Previously, I knew categorically what to do, right? You should get a scar massage if you’ve had a C-section, but having gone through it, I know what that tenderness feels like.
And I know that even the feeling of putting your gym clothes on after a C-section could deter exercise. So, it has made me more sensitive to the nuances of postpartum fitness. But in terms of what I did for my own training before and after. I would say that I have been so much more focused on rebuilding functionality, range of motion, and flexibility. These are priorities that I have at the forefront. Previously, [they were] just strength, speed, and power.
I’ve [also] brought in these other elements to my programme. In this calendar year, I’ve started doing callisthenics as a way to kind of further refine my body’s functionality without just adding more load. You know, as I approach 40, I’ve found that while loading is still fun, and I still love my strength training, [however] my body is telling me to seek a different path.
Angela Neo
What’s the one thing in Singapore that you can’t resist? And I’m assuming it will be something to do with food, right?
Amanda Lim
Oh, it absolutely has something to do with food. Two words: roti prata.
Angela Neo
Oh my gosh.
Amanda Lim
It is my favourite. We have it every Sunday. That is an indulgence that I work into my week.
Angela Neo
Yeah. [Do you have] any final advice or thoughts for new moms or parents hoping to kickstart a healthier lifestyle?
Amanda Lim
I think the biggest advice I can give to busy parents or new parents who are stressed by parenting transition is that something is better than nothing. Any bit you can do if you can do a five-minute stretch while your baby’s sleeping.
If you can commit to doing 10 minutes of walking out in the sunshine with your newborn, that is better than nothing. So start small and get that momentum to build.
Angela Neo
Fantastic advice. Thank you so much, Amanda, for joining us.
Amanda Lim
You’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Angela Neo
Thank you, Amanda, for our chat today. I am now joined by our podcast producer, Suf, to chat a little about today’s episode. Hi Suf.
Sufyan Saad
Hihi.
Angela Neo
So, what have you learned from today’s episode? Are you inspired to become more active?
Sufyan Saad
As you know, I came up with all the questions, and I snuck in that question about hating exercise because I am one of those people who don’t like to exercise, and the last time I went exercising was before Covid, so that’s around 2019.
And then Covid was just a good but very long excuse not to exercise. So, it’s been a while. One of my goals this year is to return to the gym. So, getting the tips from Amanda and listening to her speak, I’m just inspired, and they’ve all been very valuable tips and advice. The other one that I thought was really something that I needed to hear was about sleep. Yea.
Angela Neo
Yes!
Sufyan Saad
Because, as adults, we think we get enough sleep, or we purposefully don’t get enough sleep because we’re staying up, because of our phones, or we’re on Netflix, so hearing that establishing a good sleep routine is something that I needed.
Angela Neo
I’m always teased in the office because I go to bed so early.
Sufyan Saad
Laughs. Yes! Laughs.
Angela Neo
Everyone finds it quite shocking because I’m usually in bed between 9:30 and 10. But it’s because I actually need sleep. If I don’t have sleep, I’m just not as good a parent; I am not as good a partner, and I’m definitely not as good a work colleague. So when I sleep, I’m just operating at a better level.
Sufyan Saad
I think that’s a good habit to get enough sleep because then you can function better. Like you said, you’re just an all-around nicer person, as opposed to when you [do] not get enough sleep and are cranky. Then, everyone else gets affected by your crankiness.
Angela Neo
Exactly.
Sufyan Saad
Besides sleep, I know you’re also very active, Ange.
Angela Neo
Laughs
Sufyan Saad
You do a lot of tennis weekly. Is that on your own and with your friends? What about as a family with you and the boys and Mark? What do you do to keep active?
Angela Neo
So, we actually all play tennis. I got inspired to play tennis because of all of them, the boys and Mark. They’re all really good at tennis, and I couldn’t play, so that was my little motivation to learn. So we actually go and play tennis together once every week, every two weeks, as a family.
We love walking together, and we invariably go to East Coast Park. The boys have bikes, but Mark and I don’t, so we would rent bikes there and do bike rides as a family. We love going to the beach and beach holidays and swimming together, so we are quite active. I think also because with kids, if you’re active with them, and in Singapore, we don’t have big backyards—
Sufyan Saad
Yeah.
Angela Neo
Or things like that. So, if you don’t go out with them, they don’t exercise as much, and they don’t get as much outside time, and they may end up on screens and things which we’re trying [to avoid].
But also when you’re outside with them, like if we go to the local park to kick a soccer ball around if I’m just sitting and watching, it’s pretty boring for me.
Sufyan Saad
Yeah.
Angela Neo
It’s so much more fun if I’m involved as well.
Sufyan Saad
That’s true.
Angela Neo
So, I try to be. Yeah.
Sufyan Saad
Okay, I’m inspired now. I’m going to the gym after this.
Angela Neo
Amazing. Good job, Suf. Well, that’s it for this episode of Growing Pains. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Amanda for inspiring Suf and [me].
Sufyan Saad
Yes!
Angela Neo
And we will see you next time.
We hope you enjoyed this episode! Let us know what you think at [email protected]. Tune into the next episode next week.