my hope is that I am able to spread the message to as many people as possible that food can do wonderful, amazing, glorious things. For your body, for your health, for your family's health. If you give it half a chance, it can heal you in so many ways more than just giving you a six pack.
Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Hurts Like a Mother. I am Megan, your host this evening, this morning, whatever time of day it is. Wherever you are listening. I hope you're doing well and I'm super glad that you could take a few minutes to join me cause I always have fun. I hope you have fun.
So I'm very excited because I just released my very first free mini course. This one is on combating emotional eating or stress eating and how to start building a healthier relationship with food. If you know me, I could talk about food all day long till the cows come home. I love food, food.
Obviously can make you happy, but it also has the ability to build you up as well as tear you down, and my hope is that I am able to spread the message to as many people as possible that food can do wonderful, amazing, glorious things. For your body, for your health, for your family's health. If you give it half a chance, it can heal you in so many ways more than just giving you a six pack.
I'm sure some of us want that, but there is more to life than a six pack, my friend. Let me tell you, I've had it and. A six pack is glorious. I, I will, I will say, but so is the ability to have a healthy relationship with food. And I'm not saying if you have a six pack, you do not have a healthy relationship with food, but there is a line that you cross on your journey to have a six pack that starts to mess with your mind a little bit.
But that is a topic for another day. If you're interested in that, let me know and I can record that for you. Anyhow, so I released this super cool mini course. I love it. It's about 25 minutes of tangible tips and my thoughts on stress eating and what you can do to change it. So I hope some people get a lot out of that.
And if you are interested in that free mini course, let me know. Send me a message. Be happy to share it with you, or if you have a friend who could benefit, I could. I can get it their way. It got me thinking someone talked about four reasons why it's so easy to stress eat as a mom. Reason number one, kids'. You're already making it for your family. Depending on the age of your kids, they may or may not be able to cook for themselves or prepare food for themselves. So , your physical proximity to food is great because you are preparing food for your kids.
And reason number two brings me to this is stress parenthood is ultimately very stressful for a lot of people. If you don't think Parenthood's stress, I'd like to talk to you, but, but in all honesty, especially if you have a three teenager or a three-year-old who, who is going through, I'll call it the change, the three teenager is going through the change where they're acting like the 13, or if you actually have a 13 year old and they're having true hormonal swings and identity crisises crisis.
Crisis or crises. That's it. That's an interesting one. You let me know about that. But raising children is inherently stressful. So the combination of children's food, which is generally yummy tasting, you know, between the chicken nuggets and the SpaghettiOs and the pre-packaged snack foods that you might have in your pantry, you're kind of surrounded by a lot of accessible.
So the combination of the readily accessible food with the stress is a perfect storm for stress eating. Reason number three, why Cs? Do stress eat As a mom, you might say you have no time to eat or prepare food for yourself because you're all worries. Worried about feeding the family, feeding the children.
You have no time to eat. I've talked to many women who maybe they have some coffee in the morning. Shovel something from their kids breakfast plates into their mouth,
and then they go about their business until they're starving, come 4:00 PM and then they shovel all sorts of things down their throat because they're intensely starving at this point because they've waited so long to eat. But I have news for you. It does not have to be this way. You can feed your family and still carve out a few minutes.
During the week, during each day, you can carve out time to focus on your needs, your nutrition, but it takes mindfulness to do so. Mindfulness to start the habit of looking up for yourself, and also mindfulness to recognize when you need to do so more often. Fourth reason of why it's so easy.
Kind of piggybacks on the last one, but there's no time for self. You might tell yourself, I don't have time to worry about my needs. I have so many things going on. I have so many kids activities to take them to. I'm like, I'm homeschooling them. Hats off to you, girlfriend.
Um, all the things, right? Like I can come up with a list of 50 excuses, but that's what they are. Those. Excuses, and I'm not saying this to point the blame, point the finger and say, you're actually not busy. I'm not saying that at all. You are. You are busy. I get it. But there comes a point when you become too busy, not only to the detriment of yourself, but also your family.
Your kids need a strong role model in the home to show them. Yes. Is selflessness important? Should you care about other people? Yes. But also how wonderful would it be if you can be a role model to them to show them what self-care and self-compassion truly looks like? And it might be hard for them. Like my son Chris, has a super hard time.
On the mornings that I go to the gym and I take care of myself, I have me time. He actually is fine in the morning. It's the night before. If I tell him I'm going to the gym in the morning, he gets very sad and he's like, but you went to the gym yesterday. And I get it. So yes, there's gonna be hard times, but ultimately I know when I get my time away, I'm a better mom.
When I come back, I'm excited. I'm refreshed, I'm rejuvenated. I have energy. When I have several days in a row of not having my me time, I'm not a nice person, period. I have zero patience. I have less energy and motivation to do all the things. It is life changing to invest some time in yourself. The dividends on that investment are enormous.
And it's hard for me to tell you about this, except just to tell you it's possible. So
I don't say this to point the finger at anyone, , but just to create more awareness of, of stress eating, and I want you to think of me the next time. You're popping a chicken nugget in your mouth and that's not, that's not a bad thing, but there are ways to have your chicken nugget, but also meet your goals.
For example, yes, you can have some chicken nuggets, not a problem. I love chicken nuggets. They're delicious, but that does not make a full meal that is going to nourish you and fuel you for your job as caretaker for your family. It's not. You might think so, but then you're gonna be reaching for other ways to energize yourself, like the kids packaged snacks and candies and coffee.
How much coffee do you have each day? What if you spent a few more minutes actually fueling your body with sustenance and nourishment instead of reaching for an artificial means of energy?
All right, I'm off my soapbox. I appreciate you joining me on the soapbox. I have, this is actually episode number 22, I believe. I am super proud to stick with it. I do have some announcements coming up though. I do have one or two guest podcasts coming up that I'm super duper excited about. , One that should be coming out within the next week is actually about my experiences with domestic violence, with my relationship in my twenties.
So once that comes out, I'm gonna be posting that hopefully as well, and I'm also having another. Friend in the fitness industry, come on. And I met her at a conference and I'm super, I just, I'm a super fan girl of this chick, so I'm excited to introduce you guys to her. And she just pumps me up so much. So I know that she's gonna pump you guys up as well.
So I'm excited for those coming up. I, my other announcement is on a more personal level, I. Accepting a part-time position. Going back to the hospital, I'll be working in labor and delivery and postpartum as a float nurse. This decision was an extremely difficult one to make because my business is something incredibly important to me and.
I did not want to commit to something outside of the business that would take away time from the business, but I wish I would say that this new part-time job was just to be keeping up on my skills and I miss my patience and I miss labor and delivery. And are those wonderful things accurate? A little bit.
As a small business owner, there are many ebbs and flows with income, and as this is my first time in in business, I am discovering that I need to be a little bit better prepared for the ebbs. And so as much as I would love to say that I'm going back to nursing because I'm thinking only of my future patients, I do love helping people and caring for people, but that's not.
Soul motivation. My, my motivation is to invest in myself and my business with a side income. So I'm gonna be doing that by getting a part-time job. Um, so this is gonna be my challenge for myself because I preach so many things about being prepared, planning, scheduling. Still doing all the things right.
Whatever all the things means to you. I preach you can do all the things you wanna do. It's just gonna take a little work, and that's exactly what I'm gonna be doing. I'm gonna be grinding, I'm gonna be entering a new season, starting an early May, and I'm ready for it. Is it gonna be hard? Yeah, it is.
Mostly because I'm going back to night shift, y'all. having more income, as some of you know, alleviates a lot of stress and pressure in various ways, and I will be able to use this extra income to invest more into my business, more into my marketing, so I can still, . Bring the best me to my clients. So that's what's coming up.
I am planning on taking a little podcast break over the summertime when the kids are out of school. So I will let you know about what that's all about. And I'm just excited right now that the, that spring break is over because that's why I didn't have a podcast last week is because of spring break. So, Halle, To back to school.
I'll just say that. Okay guys, I love you and thank you for tuning in and have a kick ass week.
