Why Mom Need to Care For Themselves

I had an interesting conversation with a friend recently, who is a mom of a grown adult. She is at a point of dealing with some health issues in her own life and she expressed the concern that it is hard to take the time and spend the money to help herself, ie self-care. It reminded me again of how difficult it is for moms to justify spending time and money on ourselves. We are so used to caring for everyone else that we don’t have anything left for ourselves, or we don’t see the need or use of doing anything significant for ourselves. I am writing this post to argue that caring for our own health is yet another way to care for our families and communicate our care and love for them. If we care for ourselves and work to improve our own health, we will be around longer with a higher quality of life in order to share the lives of those we love.

Obstacles to caring for ourselves

Time 

Let’s face it; as a mom there is never extra time. It seems like whatever time we have gets filled in, whether we work outside the home, work on a business inside our homes, or spend full time caring for our families and homeschooling. One important principle here to remember is that what is most important to us will get done. A helpful exercise in this area can be to sit down and think through your priorities. It can also be helpful to keep a time log for a few days to see where your time does really go.

There are certainly seasons when there will not be time to go to a gym, but you can probably find time to grab a walk a few times a week or do an exercise DVD twice a week. It can take more time to come up with healthy non processed meals but if you do that it will not only benefit yourself, but also your family. They don’t need that processed junk or lots of sugar anymore than you do. You want your children to learn healthy eating habits now, so they don’t have to fight the same fight that you are when they get to your age.

Taking time to get educated is another obstacle in the time category. Again, you will not be able to spend hours researching, but find some good sources of website and books that are reliable. Find people in your life who can get you on the right path. Find a good health coach to get you going in the direction you want to go. There are so many opportunities out there. Surely you can find something that can fit your time and money budget.

Money

Self-care often seems to involve spending extra money on a gym, special foods, and or pampering activities like hair, nails, and massages. Again looking at where money does get spent is helpful to begin. Most of us do spend money on things that are not necessities. So first step here is to look at where you are spending and see if you can shift some money away from things that are extras. Instead shift that money toward your larger goals of getting healthy. 

Often time is money. There is much free information on the internet and you can do free workouts and get free meal plans. But sometimes if you put money into something you are much more likely to follow through and actually get real value out of what you spent your money on. 

Self-Sabotage

Many of us are very good at self-sabotage. We can talk ourselves out or into anything and lose sight of our larger goals and how smaller steps feed into those. It can be really helpful to sit down and write our where you want to be in six months or a year. Then break that down into smaller steps and goals. So if you want to lose 30 lbs in a year then it is important to break that down into how we are going to do that and what works into that. You are going to have to look at eating habits, exercise habits, stress management, sleep habits, and gut health among others. Write out how each of these works to help or work against your big goal. Now keep this easily accessible and read it daily to help you keep perspective on what you want and how you are going to get there.

I have help for you

If you really want to make sustainable changes, sometimes you do need some help for a time. I love to do this with women and am available in many different ways to help. I  do private one on one coaching with a general program and then a specific blood sugar management program. Contact me to see how I can help you today to get real change that will last. Sign up for my email list to be notified when various programs are open for sign up.

Take care of your health for those you love most.