One of the biggest struggles most women have is not enough time.
I know, you get it.
You’re trying to juggle work, kids, partner, and time for yourself seems to be at the bottom of the pile.
Today I want to share 3 Steps to help you FIND time for yourself.
First Step – You need to ask yourself a few questions.
- Do I want to spend time on myself?
- Are my health/fitness goals important enough to me?
- Am I prepared to MAKE time for me?
Next Step – You need to FIND time.
I know you’ve heard this one many times before.
We ALL have the same amount of time. Right now, you are making a CHOICE on how you spend time.
I know. I hear you!
But I don’t have time.
Between work, kids and running the house I honestly don’t have time.
This is the part you might not like.
YOU DO.
You are CHOOSING where to spend your time and making a CHOICE that your health and wellbeing is not high on the list.
Imagine if you wanted your child to get better at reading or playing a musical instrument but you didn’t let them have any time doing that activity.
They won’t get better.
You cannot and will not improve your health and wellbeing unless you make it a priority.
Harsh, but true!
Practical tips to FIND TIME
Write down all the activities you do in a week. Work, dropping the kids at school, watching Netflix, sleeping, making dinner.
Delegate or ditch any tasks that aren’t bringing you closer to your goal. Are the 3 hours of Netflix at night stopping you from getting up early and exercising?
Are your evening meals taking too long to prepare? Can you do some bulk cooking or simplify your meals?
Step 3 – MAKE time with effective planning and preparation
At first you might feel like planning and spending time preparing food in advance takes time, BUT it actually GIVES YOU TIME during the week.
You might spend 1-2 hours on a Sunday planning out your coming week and doing some basic food prep which can give you so much more time during the week.
When you wing it, don’t have a plan, and put no effort into organising your time, you waste more time.
You have to think about what’s for dinner every night.
You get to the end of the day and feel guilty that you haven’t exercised.
PLANNING 101
The benefit of planning is that it takes the stress and confusion out of taking action.
Plan out your weekly meals in advance. Winging your meals and not having a plan actually takes longer. When you plan out your meals, it’s easy to have a set shopping list, you can do an online shop and then it’s just a matter of following the plan.
Do a cook up on Sundays – Spend 1-2 hours setting yourself up for an amazing week. You might just cook up a couple of meals in advance for busy days. Cook up some protein (chicken, boiled eggs) to have on hand for lunches and snacks.
Plan your exercise routine for the week. I work out how many sessions I am trying to fit in and then I work out when I can fit them in. For me, it’s different times most days. It means that I don’t sit up watching Netflix as I need 8 hours sleep and it means I need to be in bed by 9pm. This is a CHOICE I make. Doing my exercise and following my morning routine is MORE important to me than a couple of hours on the couch with Netflix. I do schedule in some Netflix time but it’s not when I know I have to get up early.
Keep things simple! What I find interesting is that many women go from having the same breakfast every day, toast or some cereal, and then when they try and eat healthy, for some reason they feel like it needs to be different every day 😕. It doesn’t. I have two breakfasts and two lunches I rotate. I like them, they make me feel great and they can all be prepared in less than 5 minutes. If you do want more variety, then you MUST get good at some prior food preparation. Pre-cook some meals, freeze them or allocate the time to preparing fancy recipes each night. This is a CHOICE you make.
Example of our evening meals:
Roast Chicken – Maybe 10 minutes prep cutting up veggies. The rest of the time it sits in the oven (whole family will eat this meal).
Chicken & Roast Veggie Salad – Uses leftovers from Roast Chicken. 5 Minutes preparation time. (My son will have it in components as he doesn’t like food mixed together, doesn’t take longer than 5 minutes).
Spaghetti Bolognese – Quite often the sauce is precooked and frozen. Takes about 10 minutes for the pasta for my son. I steam some veggies to have with mine, takes about 5 minutes.
Salmon & Kaleslaw – Salmon cooked on BBQ – 5 minutes, bag of Kaleslaw 1 minute. (My son will have baked crumbed fish with vegetables and rice or pasta, place fish in oven and simply steam some veggies, rice might be pre-cooked otherwise takes about 10 minutes)
Steak & Veggies – Cook steak on BBQ – 5 minutes. Steam veggies and add some avocado. (My son will have the steak thinly sliced with rice or pasta and some veggies).
We mix it up on the weekends. It might be a treat meal, curry, frittata, chicken patties or a share platter.
Each week I have a plan in advance as one of us is working every night until 6:45-7pm. If an evening meal takes me more than 10 minutes, it’s not part of my weekly routine. This is what works for OUR FAMILY. If you love cooking and want to make different meals every night, then ALLOCATE time and realise it is a CHOICE you are making.
Time does not have to be an issue.
You just need to value yourself enough to MAKE TIME for yourself.
I learnt this the hard way when I got diagnosed with cancer. Every week I’d spend hours and hours either driving to the hospital or sitting in the hospital waiting room.
Many days I sat there and thought “Imagine if I had allocated this much time to doing nice things for myself, how amazing would I feel”.
I was one of the worst offenders of the “I don’t have time” excuse. In reality it’s simply a negative and damaging reason to attempt to justify why we don’t feel like we are good enough to spend time on ourselves.
All women need to MAKE time for themselves. It is so important, not just for us but if you have children, it’s setting an example for them.
No one wants a cranky, tired mum, wife or friend. Spending time on yourself makes you a nicer person to be around.
It’s not selfish.
It’s essential!
💗 Hilds
