Not supermum after all!

I love my job! I spend hours each week helping people make simple step-by-step changes that can fuel their family and themselves and help them find the energy, balance and health that we all strive for. I constantly get fabulous feedback from people that I really improve their lives and that of those around them. And I happen to think sometimes that I am a supermum that can do it all.

The problem in the last few weeks however, is that as I have been helping others to see how to find their rhythm, mine has been slipping away from me. I have been writing as many notes to myself during sessions with clients about things I need to work on as I have to them!

Between working with one-on-one clients, studying at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, preparing my fabulous new upcoming live event “But my child won’t eat that: tips for fuelling your fussy eater“, doing follow-up consults from my sell-out recent event “Fuel your children’s lunchbox“, and working on a very exciting guided wholefoods eat-to-nourish detox programme (details to be released very soon) I have had very little time to look after me. Remember I am also a full-time mum to 4 children under 8 with just 3 hours a week when I have no children at home. And to top it all off I have recently become the chairperson of my local school’s Board of Trustees which has also demanded a lot of my time of late.

It would be very easy for me to keep trudging along as I am, with the excuse that I just don’t have time for myself right now, but I am thankful that my body has sent me many signals that it is not happy with what I am doing to it, and that I know how to read those signals and have the tools to set things straight again.

Is your body sending you any these warnings that mine has sent me recently:

waking feeling unrefreshed
afternoon tiredness
sweet cravings
skin breakouts on my face
feeling less patient with the kids
more emotionally vulnerable
troublesome period

Yes, all of these things I have experienced in the last 3 weeks, and they are all things that are not usually part of how my body feels. I have also experienced my worst HS flare in months, which has been debilitatingly painful and will leave me with more scarring.

What I am grateful for is my amazing network through IIN, which is such an incredibly supportive, positive and caring group of people. They provide to me what I provide to my clients: someone that listens, cares, and helps you strategise to meet your goals.

I am thankful to the educators that love and care for my children and have helped me through some tough days as a mum helping them to be happy in their environments, been very understanding over some decisions I have made, and listened to me (Nadine, Maya, Katie, Bron, Ashley and Heather I am referring to you all, among others). Thank you.

I am grateful for an amazing husband, who thankfully thinks I am pretty special too.

I am grateful that I KNOW that I am the only one responsible for my own self-care (read more about that here), and that I can turn things around before I get too run down. Yes, I shouldn’t have let things get to this point, but I happen to be a slow learner with in relation to my workload, as I want to give everything I can to others, and forget to give to myself – know what I am talking about?

So now I am back on track. While there are some things outside of my control that are causing extra workload, and things causing extra planning and brain-usage, I am back in control of my rhythm and after just two focused days have turned things around already.

So what am I doing?

I have spent time setting up my planning templates again to reflect our current lives. For me feeling organised is the key to getting some control back. I still have the same workload but I can batch tasks, optimising the usage of my very precious time, and know that it is okay if I am not getting to something right now as I have time set aside for it tomorrow morning. I have planning templates for a typical day, my work planner, our family weekly overview, our meals etc. These plans also allow me to plan exercise and self-care and make it part of my everyday routine. When I leave these two things to chance it is easy for them to be crowded out by more pressing (but not more important) tasks.
I am going to bed at 9.30pm, no matter what else I would have like to achieve before bedtime. I am up at 5am everyday to study so I really need my beauty sleep.
Eating mindfully. I always eat clean, but I have not recently been paying as much attention to what I am eating, taking the time to savour it, chewing each mouthful fully etc.
I am exercising daily – something that I momentarily believed I didn’t have time for in the last few weeks – I was just too busy! Of course, that is never the case, and I have felt my energy draining as I have had less physical activity. Come on if the Prime Minister and the President of the US make time to exercise each day, I think I can too!
Tomorrow I start my own eat-to-nourish detox programme. What a better way to do a test-run before launching it than on someone who is feeling run-down and in need of a kick-start: ME. The programme has 3 phases: 4 days of preparation, 7 days of detox and 4 days of transition. I plan to complete the preparation phase while hubby is away for work, so we can test run the detox and transition phases together on his return. I am really excited about how this is going to get myself back on track, and he thinks it may be required after his trip!

Does any of this resonate with you? Do you ever let looking after yourself slip? What is your body trying to tell you right now? What is one nice thing you can do for yourself TODAY. Comment below or head on over to my Facebook page to discuss.