3 Ways to Prioritize Your Health Between Your Hectic Schedule as a Mum

Being a mum is a full-time job and you hardly get time for yourself. However, while you stay tangled in managing and maintaining your home, taking care of your babies and your family, you somehow put yourself last. But we all know that we need to put our own health first so we can be fit and healthy enough to look after everyone, stay sane and also be a good example to our kids. Much easier said than done!  But it really should be at the top of our list of priorities.

Finding the necessary time to dedicate to your health and fitness between your busy and hectic schedules with your children and jobs can be really difficult. But it’s not impossible.

Here are some of my tips to prioritize your health over everything else you do as a mum.

How to Prioritize Your Health Between Your Busy Schedule?

Often I think that we feel we have to set aside precious time to exercise and meal prep, but this doesn’t have to be the case.

Plan Healthy and Nutritious Meals

Your meals are very important for maintaining your health and fitness. A balanced and nutritious diet is the key to a healthy and happy life. You know this, but how do you make it easy.

I’m guessing that you are the one who plans the meals and prepares the food for your family.  It takes one hour to sit down and write out a 2 week plan of healthy and quick meal options that you can use all year.  You can keep this on the fridge and keep repeating every 2 weeks. This way, you know what food to buy each week, you have some healthy recipes up your sleeve that can be your quick go too.

Get even smarter with this; make twice the amount for the 1st two weeks, freeze it and then wk 3 and 4 you don’t have to do as much cooking. This way you can prioritize your own health and your children as well.  Make sure you choose healthy recipes that everyone can and will eat.

Healthier meals don’t have to be uninteresting. In fact, you can prepare some delicious meals that are yummy.  I find that kids love food that they can pick up and eat.

Try this yummy chicken larb wrap, you can do the cabbage whilst the kids could do a wrap if they are not into veggies! Adjust the spice load to suit your kids and away you go. Click here for the recipe

Work on increasing your NEAT training

I personally love adding a bit of me time into the day and fit in 10-20 minutes of workout time.  Either a quick run round the block, or a few minutes of yoga, or a quick workout. However if the thought of even doing 10-20 mins of exercise seems daunting then you should increase your NEAT instead!

NEAT stands for Non-Exercise activity thermogenisis.  It’s the energy that you expend for everything that you do, from sleeping, eating, walking to work, cleaning the house, playing with your kids all the way to just fidgeting.  So this is where you can increase the calories that you burn with your everyday activities.  Include your children in this, when you take them to the playground, instead of watching them play you can either play with them or take that time to catch up on some walking or exercise. When you watch them playing sports, walk laps around the field. This way, your children can be active, you can keep an eye on them, and also prioritize your health.

Keep Yourself Hydrated

Keeping yourself hydrated is important for your health. Water helps with fat burning, skin health as well as keeping your body energised and feeling strong. That directly makes you feel better about yourself. It’s a happy viscous circle, you feel more energised so then its easier to do more which also helps you feel energised.

Set yourself a water goal.  Use your body weight as a guide.  Divide your body weight by 33 to get the litres you should be drinking each day. Increase this if you are doing exercise or if it’s a hot day.  ie. 60kg / 33 = 1.81 litres of water a day.

Once you know your magic number, fill water bottles at the beginning of the day with this amount of make sure you have finished them before the end of the day. Try to avoid drinking it all before bed!  Last thing you need is to be waking up in the middle of the night!

So, When Are You Prioritizing Your Health?

I’d love to know if you do some of these easy tricks?   Some extra lunges whilst hoovering or calf raises whilst brushing your teeth, small changes all add up. Let me know what you do to help improve your health?

If you don’t know where to start or you want some quick 20 minute video workouts where you can copy me, then try my 4 Week Challenges that I run.  There is a different theme each month.  This month (March 2021) we are going to be focusing on Upper and Abs, an easy way to get into exercising again.  For more info on challenges click here.  I’m offering a Week Free Trial this month, as I know you are going to love it!

For more fitness related tips or help in planning your workouts, please get in touch for a health consult. nicki@fitnessfaster.com.au