Episode 82- How to Make Nutrition and Fitness a Priority with a House Full of Kids
Episode 82 Show Notes
In this conversation, Tiffany Wickes shares her insights on how to prioritize fitness and nutrition while managing a busy household with seven children. She emphasizes the importance of self-care for mothers, providing practical tips for meal prep, creating effective workout habits, and overcoming the guilt associated with taking time for oneself.
The discussion highlights the need for simplicity in nutrition and the power of establishing non-negotiable habits to ensure a healthy lifestyle for both mothers and their families.
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Tiffany Wickes (00:00.93)
Hello friends, welcome back. Let's chat a minute about how to prioritize your fitness and nutrition with a full house. Let's go. All right, I have seven kids and they range in age from one all the way up to 17. The biggest challenge I face as a mom with a house full of kids, four of which now, I did homeschool all seven, but three of them, the oldest three have gone to public school.
I homeschool the four youngest. I have multiple businesses. My husband is gone about 85 % of the time. The biggest challenge I face is making the time to do that, like get my fitness in and make the whole foods versus doing anything else. I am right now looking at a room that is completely trashed. The kids pull the blankets off my bed and my bed becomes a WWE mat.
They throw each other around on it. Like, I don't love this, but I can't really stop it. Otherwise, that's all I'd be doing is chasing them around. It's winter outside. So while I always have them go outside for a time during the day, I can't really ethically kick them out all day long in 20 degree weather. what could I, I mean, there's a thousand things I could be doing instead of
doing fitness and nutrition, but those two things are the priority because I understand that if I am not fit, if I'm not capable, I can't be effective in my home. I can't lift up the kids. I can't play with them. I can't squat. I won't have energy to later clean up the house, run the homeschool, cart people around town. I won't have energy for any of that if I don't keep myself fit. Now that goes hand in hand with nutrition.
The biggest challenge that a lot of moms say that they face is having the time to create healthy meals. don't... Okay, if you make the recipes complicated and cuisine, know, five-star hotel cuisine kind of stuff, then I can see that being challenging. But if you just stick with simple principles of nutrition, get some healthy fat, get some protein and get some quality carbohydrates in there,
Tiffany Wickes (02:24.842)
it really doesn't need to be difficult. There are plenty of guides. I mean, I've got a ton of guides. I'll put some in the comments or the show notes section for you. You can download the protein guide, quick easy meal guide, the Crock-Pot guide. mean, tons of very simple recipes. And you know, if you're looking for like a macro split, you can practice a 40, 30, 30. Most people do pretty well with that split. So 40 %...
of your calories on your plate are gonna come from protein and then the other 30 and 30 are equally going to come from carbohydrates and fat.
Tiffany Wickes (03:05.805)
Hold on a sec.
Tiffany Wickes (03:28.428)
Yeah, sorry, I thought I had said that incorrectly, but I didn't. I can hear my kids like screaming downstairs and I hope it's not picking up, but anyway, back to the episode. So the biggest challenges mom face, mom's face with fitness and nutrition is finding the time to do it. All right, the importance of taking care of yourself first, as I mentioned, is to be effective in your home.
So if you're not effective in your home, then your kids suffer, your husband suffers. If you're working from home, your business is gonna suffer. If you work outside of the home, you'll be less effective in that capacity. So all in all, you have to be fit and you have to feed yourself well so that your brain functions and your body functions when you need it to. And you have to really shift your mindset around the guilt about I'm gonna go work out right now.
Personally, I don't understand it. I have never felt guilty. So maybe I just can't relate, but I've never felt guilty for working out instead of, know, maybe I felt guilty for working out instead of cleaning because I cannot stand being in a dirty house. I know that I've said this on the podcast a hundred times. I really don't like my house being messy and dirty. It's almost impossible to keep it clean with seven kids here, but I really don't like it. It impairs my mentality, right?
So oftentimes I will have to put that on the side, but I don't ever feel guilty in terms of my children. Like, my gosh, like, you know, like people say, mom guilt, like I've got mom guilt for taking time out to work out because I know that me working out directly affects them in a positive way. It is never bad for them when mom is fit and capable. So you have, if that's you, you have to ditch the guilt around lifting weights and working out because a strong mom is a better mom.
All right, next thing you have to change your mindset around is the power of having a habit of working out over being motivated to do it. know, motivation wanes, right? There are some days where you're to wake up, you had a long night, you know, you're like, I'm not really feeling it. Maybe I'd rather just shop online or, whatever. Like, that's OK. It's OK that you don't want to, but it's not OK that you call it in multiple times a week because you don't want to.
Tiffany Wickes (05:45.998)
Sometimes you're just gonna have to be a big girl about it and do the things you don't wanna do. And sometimes that looks like leg day. So you're going to have to create a habit over relying on motivation to get you over that hump when the motivation is like, where did you go? You left town. So here are some ways to save time and some nutrition hacks for busy moms. To work out and put yourself first is, so first off, get a 30 minute
Workout plan, all right, that will get you results. I have a program, if you don't wanna use mine, then fine, you can scour the internet. I'm sure somebody does. You can use high intensity interval training, just alternate muscle groups. When you lift, I mean, it's not a perfect strategy, but to start, you don't need perfection, you just need to have some progress, right? And if you've come from I do nothing to at least I'm doing something, then bravo. I'm definitely giving you a round of applause for that. So get an
effective lifting routine that doesn't take an hour and half to do. 30 minutes is fine. Next is you need to meal prep efficiently for both yourself and your family. Do not do the two meal bit or three meals depending on how many kids you have. Like this one only wants nuggies and fries. This one only eats macaroni and fruit cups. And then I'm going to create this meal for myself. Like don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. I mean, with the rare exception that kids legitimately have
some sort of texture issue or whatever. They've got some issues with food, like actual issues, not just trained in your kid issues because I mean, you guys, all right, I know someone's gonna hate me for this and that's okay, I welcome it. But when you choose to train your kids as taste buds to only eat macaroni and chicken nuggets because that's what you fed them because it's quick, it's easy, it's highly palatable.
Like you're training them to be picky eaters because when you go and put a plate of sauteed spinach in front of them, it's like, hey, we're changing our diet. They're going to look at you like you've done lost your damn mind and they're not going to want to eat it. And it's OK that they don't want to eat it. But I promise you, they will not starve themselves. So the first nutrition time saving hack is going to be don't be making three or four different meals at a time. You're not a short order chef. You will make one meal and they will eat it or they will be hungry. Hunger is a very strong motivator.
Tiffany Wickes (08:12.334)
Nobody died of feeling hungry. They die of starvation. But your kiddo, I promise, in the United States of America, they are not going to starve. They will eventually eat. And once it becomes habit over their happy motivation to eat something dipped in red dye 40 and tastes like a gummy bear, that's ketchup, if you don't know. Once they create a habit of healthy eating, they will actually come to prefer it.
and enjoy it. You just have to keep offering it over and over and over again. So have a meal plan that is already planned out for you. My program has a meal plan. It's already done. All you have to do is follow it. It is the easiest thing I have ever seen on the market and I am so happy to be able to coach that. first and next thing is you're going to have to create some non-negotiable daily habits. Okay. We will eat whole foods.
for at least, I mean, if you're brand new at this, start off with 50%. 50 % of our meals are going to be whole foods and then gradually increase that to at least 80 % of your meals are gonna be whole foods based. Like, did it have a mother? Did it swim in the ocean? Did it grow from the ground or did you pick it from a tree? Okay, that's the general basis of criterion for figuring out what your food should look like. Make that a non-negotiable daily habit. We will get our movement in and we will eat whole foods.
everything else will find a way to fit in. Parkinson's law means however much time you give something, it will fill every inch of that time. So if you give yourself an hour to work out, you can work out for an hour. If you say, I've only got 30 minutes, then these workout program means that we have will fit into 30 minutes with the exception of some warmup and cool down and stretching and then later get, you know, some additional steps in. But the core workout takes 30 minutes or less pretty much every single day. So there you are, my friends.
You need to prioritize fitness and nutrition even though you have a house full of kids because it's going to be better for everybody when you are effective, you are properly fueled, and you are strong. Don't call this in. Your family needs it, you need it. If you have any additional questions, make sure you reach out to me on all the socials. And as always, is a pleasure being here with you. Stay strong, mamas. We'll talk soon. Ciao.