Many people find themselves stuck in an unhealthy cycle. Bogged down with the demands of work and family, they don’t bother finding the time or energy to take better care of themselves. This is especially true for mothers.

Vicissitudes of Motherhood

Are you a mom who has to simultaneously deal with work, household chores, childcare, and so much more every day? Do you end up dealing by eating your exhaustion, frustration, and other overwhelming feelings away?

• You probably feel there’s nothing else you can do to get some energy. Your sleep isn’t long enough and what little you get isn’t any quality at all.

• You think you don’t have time to work out. Chasing after kids and taking care of the chores should be enough of a workout as tiring as they are, but, no, they don’t seem to shave inches and pounds anywhere off of you. Then again, you do end up indulging in a sweet treat to recover and to cheer yourself up.

• You believe dieting to be virtually impossible because you’re not about to prepare a different meal for yourself on top of everything else you have to do. In any case, you don’t want to let your kids suffer through all the lite, fat-free, low-sodium, sugarless mess your diet would have consisted of. You’re not even going to imagine the complaints you would have gotten from your husband.

• As far as you’re concerned, pampering yourself is automatically out of the question. That would have started with sleep, and nobody’s offering to let you escape your reality so you can grab a solid seven hours of deep slumber.

These may all be true, but they’re also all excuses.

Finding Inspiration

You’re clearly not alone in these travails. The happy news is that many a mother has found herself in the same miserable rut and gotten herself out. You can have the same inspirational story of success. Find the will, and you’ll come up with a way.

You have to start taking care of yourself. This is true for everybody, but especially for parents. You want to raise happy and healthy kids? You need to expose them to a happy and healthy you.

That should be one of your strongest motivators.

To get you started, here are some suggestions to inspire you.

1.      Practice mindfulness.

This helps positively influence metabolism, clarify your thought process, increase perceived happiness, and decrease perceived stress, which all in all puts you in a better frame of mind to achieve more goals today. It doesn’t have to take more than five minutes of your time.

2.      Get in some exercise.

Again, this doesn’t have to take too long, but even a short fitness routine boosts your metabolism, gets your heart rate up, and progresses your conditioning. It definitely gets you better prepared to face a long, challenging day.

3.      Make your diet more natural.

Consume more plant-based meals and start shunning refined and processed foods. Artificial additives and other chemicals negatively impact your health, so it’s best to stick to whole foods with strong leanings toward vegetarian fare. Alter your snacking habit to replace packaged treats with fresh fruits and veggies.

4.      Commit to homemade and homegrown.

This helps you be more conscious of what’s going in your body. You know the ingredients you used. You also know how your produce was grown.

If you don’t have a garden, just choose to buy locally. This way, you can buy in-season fruits and vegetables that were picked at peak ripeness when they are the most nutrient-dense.

5.      Stay away from screens as much as possible.

Excessive mobile device use has more nefarious side effects than many people are aware of. If you use them too much, you become more sedentary. You may also develop eyestrain. If you use them at night, then you mess up your sleep.

6.      Get more active.

Consciously move around. Playing with your kids, cooking, cleaning, gardening, doing the laundry, etc. also help, but spend some time moving for the sole purpose of getting your blood pumping and limbering up your body. Walking is a great bet for this, so make a daily or nightly constitutional part of your routine.

7.      Take multivitamins for women’s health.

You need to support these new practices with better nutrition. Your healthier diet may still have some nutritional gaps, so your food supplement should cover all these areas. It’s a proactive measure.

Everyday Resolutions

It’s not easy to change your ways, especially when you feel significantly limited by circumstances and encumbered with responsibilities, but with enough resolve, you can do it.

You know there are others besides yourself who will also benefit from a healthier version of you, so wait no longer to get started.