Fitness Expert Heidi Powell On Finding Balance in Health, Motherhood and a Blended Family
It’s that time of year when we’re setting health and weight-loss goals. As a medical professional, I fully support health-related goals, but I also know our health includes our mental health, our family and our relationships.
I recently sat down with expert fitness trainer Heidi Powell on my Parenting Great Kids podcast to talk about all three of these things. As the former co-host of the hit TV show “Extreme Weight Loss,” Heidi knows a thing or two about physical health and wellness. But Heidi is also a transformation coach, mom, and wife. She and her husband, fellow fitness guru Chris Powell, have two children together, Cash and Ruby, and Heidi has two children from a previous marriage, Matix and Marley. Together, they are successfully navigating the blended family life.
I asked Heidi all about parenting in a blended family, how to really achieve your fitness goals and what challenges she’s faced personally and professionally and how she overcame them. You can listen to the full episode here, but here are a few highlights from our conversation.
Dr. Meg: You’ve seen a lot of people lose significant amounts of weight. When you’re working with a client on weight loss, are you focusing more on mental physical behavior?
Heidi: To most people’s surprise, what we do and what I’ve always done is 99.9% psychological and emotional. To the outside world, they see weight loss, and yeah, in order to lose weight, physiologically you must burn more calories than you consume on a daily basis. But we’ve always said there’s a difference between transformation and weight loss.
Weight loss is calories in and calories out. Transformation, though, is permanent. Weight loss can come and go. Most of the time when people learn how to eat, and they lose the weight, they gain it back. They yoyo. It’s because they never figured out why they gained the weight in the first place. They never realize that if you don’t love yourself now before you start reaching your goal, you’re never going to love yourself at the end. It really is rooted in self-love.
Dr. Meg: Let’s talk about your blended family. How do you and Chris make that work so that all four kids feel loved?
Heidi: I have to give credit to Chris. He has done such a phenomenal job doing his best to create balance between all four of the kids. Before he and I had kids together, the stepparent side was really difficult for him. He didn’t understand why Matix and Marley couldn’t love him as much as they loved me or their real dad.
It wasn’t until we had our own biological children that a lot of that started clicking for him. [What’s so important for] a stepparent walking into a relationship where kids existed before, is knowing that you don’t know it all. And Chris has been a shining example of that.