5 Ways to Safeguard your Health as a Mom

This one is for you, sis, who has let things get a little out of hand with putting everyone else first. Thank me later ;)

Take care of yourself!

Meg

thebesthealthcoaching.com
IG: @Best_Life_Health_Coaching
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Transcript

 I had to figure out when my babies came home, how to take care of myself because I knew if I put all of my , energy into keeping these children alive, I'd have nothing left for myself.

And then where are we at? There are three children with no mother.

  

  Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of Her Second Mother podcast. Today I am going to be talking about my top ways to safeguard your health.  as a mom, and this is coming from the experience of being a registered nurse, a integrative nutrition health coach, a mom of almost seven year old triplets.

So these are my top truth bombs essentially, of how to keep your shit together because let's be real, nowadays, it's hard to do with all the things we're supposed to be. . We have to take care of the family. We have to be successful in our careers. We have to raise healthy, happy, productive children. We have to have, have sex with our husbands,

So many things that we as women are responsible for. And yeah, at the end of the day, we also need to take care of ourselves because without us, there is nothing without us. There is no center to the family without us, let's be real. The groceries will not be bought, the dinners will not be made. So the woman is the foundation to the home.

Therefore, you must safeguard said woman. Safeguard yourself. Numer. Uno starting from the top. Actually, I'm gonna take you back. Before I get into these, I'm gonna take you back. I'm gonna paint a picture of where this whole thing started.  how I got here, how I am speaking to you about this topic. I had my children.

 When I was about, okay, my husband's gonna make fun of me because I'm horrible with remembering how old I am and years and timeline information. I'm gonna say I was roughly 29 years old, cuz honestly, I blacked out. I don't remember. I don't remember. I barely remember what my name was back then, but anywho, , I'll say I was about 29 years old when my three babies were.

I was in the hospital for pre-eclampsia. I had, you dunno what pre-eclampsia is. It's essentially a severe blood pressure condition related to pregnancy. So I was in the hospital when my doctor decided, Megan, today is the day these babies are coming out because you're not getting any better and it's better for them to be growing on the outside.

So I had my C-section.  and they were born on February 24th, 2016. Yes. That means their seventh birthday is coming up next week. And I was thrust into the role of mom and I had no clue what to expect. Like I read all the books about getting pregnant.  and how you should be living a healthy lifestyle in order to get pregnant.

And I did all the things that they quote they told me to do to get pregnant, but yet nobody told me about how to be a mom. And I did not read the book about how to be a mom. So I was thrust into this world of mother.  and I had horrific back pain after my pregnancy. C-section was piece of cake, barely popped a Motrin and maybe a few Norco for my C-section.

It was my motherfucking back that I was hobbling around like a gremlin, like a hobbit, like schmiegel from Lord of the Rings, like hobb. Like I could not stand up straight. If I stood up straight, I'd have this like shooting pain. It was. . But anyways, I had to figure out when my babies came home, how to take care of myself because I knew if I put all of my , energy into keeping these children alive, I'd have nothing left for myself.

And then where are we at? There are three children with no mother. So it took a few years, but slowly and surely I figured out a system for.  in order to keep my mental sanity, my physical health, and my marriage intact. So these are, I'm gonna break 'em down to five tips, five things that I myself focus on and encourage my clients to focus on, to keep their sanity and keep their livelihood, keep their health on track.

Number one, take a. . Yeah, this is a big one, and it can be hard to do, especially if you are the doer of all. If you volunteer in your kids' classrooms, you work your full-time job, you do all these extra stuff, you take the kids to their 17 sports, you look back and you're like, I haven't had a girl's. Since like 2020.

Actually, no I didn't in 2020. Cause there was a lockdown in 2020. . I haven't had a date night with my husband and I can't tell you how long these are red flags that you have gone too far. ,

and this is gonna take practice if you're not a regular doer of taking a break. But just like you would schedule a doctor's appointment, you need to schedule in your respite care, your break. Schedule it like a break. If you, you know, you could shoot for once a month where you have a day clear and you are not responsible for anybody but yourself, no kids.

Or if you wanna do a shorter little break once a week where you go get your nails done, take yourself out for lunch. You need to just be with. That is tip number one. Tip number two, sleep. Yeah, girl, ain't no rest for the wicked, but also you gonna be dead pretty early if you don't focus on your sleep. So studies are showing if you sleep consistently less than seven hours, your risk of chronic disease goes up.

Tremend. So if you are not getting consistently seven, seven hours of sleep and more, you are putting yourself at risk of getting all of these complications, early death, high risk of diabetes. , basically, essentially any chronic disease is associated with poor sleep. But it's also kind of a vicious cycle because what came first, the chicken or the egg, the poor sleep or the chronic disease.

people with chronic diseases don't sleep well, but also if you don't sleep well, you're high risk of getting chronic disease. That make sense? So fix it. Look at your nighttime routine. Start going to bed, you. Shoot for like small wins, 15 minutes earlier, one week. Then maybe the next week you try to go to bed 30 minutes earlier, put your phones down, turn the TV off, all of this digital stimulation to your brain.

It's not helping you. Your brain needs to calm the F down. It needs to decompress. After all the bullshit you put it through the during the day journal. Do some quiet breathing. Start turning off your lights around your house a couple hours before you go to sleep. I'm always frantically running around  that my house around 7:00 PM because the kids leave every mother truck and light on in my house.

So I'm like turning off all the lights. I'm dimming the hall light. Like you gotta like set the tone for bedtime. So get your sleep. Super important. And if you work night shift, this is obviously incredibly hard and a lot of times you don't have a choice working the graveyard shift, but be mindful and that know that you making that choice to only get three or four hours of sleep because you wanna get up and do other activities or do family activities and things like that, that's creeping into your lifes.

and you are making a conscious choice to essentially die early. So I don't wanna be the bearer of morbid news there, but every choice we make has a consequence. So I just wanna plant that seed for you. I'm sure it's been planted, but you know, 

number three. Make room for home cooking. I might be saying, Megan, I don't have time.

Have for home cooking. Home cooking. I don't have time for that. That's why I said, make room for it. It's not gonna be easy. You're not gonna have hours in the kitchen to slave over a stove every day. But making a conscious choice to cook a little more often at home has a huge impact on your health. I always recommend having a grounding day, one day during the week.

Usually for most people it's on Sundays, but depending on your work schedule, pick a day of the week that you can use to ground yourself for the week to come. This is the day you're gonna be planning, looking at your calendar, planning your appointments, getting with your spouse, and looking at like their work schedule and.

Figuring out like, Hey, what days are the crazy days that maybe if you're not planning correctly, you're more likely to go grab like fast food or something. But hey, what can I do to prepare for these crazy days ahead and still have nutritious meals? And this could be when you incorporate, you know, like air fryer, meals, crock pott meals, pressure cooker meals.

Really plan, like what foods can you have in the refrigerator for quick, easy meals so that you're not scrambling and running and just getting Chipotle every single night. Not saying Chipotle is bad, but Chipotle every day gets a little, gets a little over the top, you know what I'm saying? Number four, read labels and ask questions.

I don't wanna get too high on my soapbox, tall on my soapbox. I don't wanna get on my soapbox for too long. Hey, both. How about that? I don't wanna be on my soapbox too long about not trusting what people tell you, but the American food industry is not out to protect your health. The American food industry is there to make a profit just like the American pharmaceutical industry.

Again, I'll get off my soapbox briefly. I challenge you. If you're gonna be consuming something with a label on it, flip it over, read the ingredients list. If you can't pronounce the ingredient or you don't know what it is, you probably should not be eating it. You probably should. Not putting it to your face, I have a challenge for you.

Next time you buy something with a label, if you don't know an ingredient, just Google it. Just do a quick little Google. See what it's about. And most likely, if you have to Google it, it's probably not a great ingredient. And see if you can find other foods that you've been eating with those ingredients.

And it's just a nice eye-opening challenge to do for yourself to kind of start being more aware and mindful of the foods that you're consum.  because honestly, like I tell my clients, half of the work that you do with nutrition is being mindful, mindful of portion sizes, mindful of  how your body feels after you consume these foods.

 . So mindfulness is, is huge. And that just goes with being an educated consumer because we can't trust that they, meaning the food producers are gonna be informing us as consumers cuz they're not. All they care about is getting paid. So invest in your health.

Take a few minutes, read your labels. Simpler the better if you can pronounce them probably better than the ones you cannot pronou. And go from there. All right, number five.

This one honestly saved my mental health and that is move your body in a way

That not only fulfills you.

but do it in a way that you can also teach your children.

This one's important for two reasons. This one's a two-prong. One I know for me kind of goes with number one, take a break. But exercise for me is, for me, it is my physical outlet.  to not only feel good through exercise because of like the amazing endorphin release that happens, and that's kind of what's addictive about it, is like the amazing feeling after a workout, but also showing your kids that you do things for your body and you have to take care of your body to keep it healthy.

So part of that is the nutrition.  and fueling your body with good foods that your body actually needs and craves and moving your body to take care of your body. I always think of like the caveman, right? Like  millennials ago, um, you know, the caveman was built

to traverse. Miles and miles to find food and lift boulders and fight bears and , , protect the family unit from sabertooth, tiger attacks and all that shit. Um, our bodies were meant to move

and so we need to protect our bodies by doing so by moving. , when we're sitting at a desk all day or sitting on the couch, it's not doing us. It's not doing us any favors. It's only decreasing our lifespan again.

So get moving. Show your kids what that means to get moving, even if it's going for a walk and telling them that, you know, our bodies love sunshine and our bodies do really well. Getting sunshine helps us sleep better, and then when we sleep better. . We make better choices. We make better choices, we eat better, we sleep better.

It's all an amazing cycle. So these are my top five ways to , safeguard your health, especially as a mom. Number one was, take a break, two, sleep. Three, make room for cooking at home. Four, read your food labels and ask questions. And five, show your kids what exercise is and the amazing benefits that can come from it.

All right guys. I'm gonna wrap this up and mentally prepare myself for having three seven year olds next week. And, uh, we're gonna be heading to Disneyland. So pray for me , pray for short lines and um, safe travel. On that note, I love you all. Thank you for listen, and I'll cut you on the next one.