Whether you have realised that you are not taking care of yourself quite as well as you should be, or whether you are trying to over-come burn out – self-care is the best place to start.
Regardless of why you have decided to focus on your self-care a bit more – the basics are always the best place to start.
If we scroll the wellness side of instagram for long enough, it’s easy to get caught up in the ‘sexy’ side of it – the green smoothies, the gym sessions, the electrolytes.
But we actually don’t need most of those things – and the most important part are the basics.
Just focusing on the few basics of self-care is going to make a huge difference to the way you feel.
What are the basics of self-care?
There are four main pillars of self-care or wellness:
- Eating well
- Movement
- Sleep
- Managing stress
Even just focusing on one of those pillars is going to make us feel so much better and more like us.
Not only will making changes in these areas help us feel better, they will also help improve our health.
Start with the one that you feel if the less daunting.
The ripple effect
Usually, making improvements in one area of our life, has a ripple effect and causes improvements in another area of our life.
For example, if we start going to bed a bit earlier, the next day we have more energy and are more likely to move our bodies a bit more.
Or if we go to bed a bit earlier, the next day we will be less likely to reach for quite as many sugary snacks as we have a bit more energy from sleeping better.
If I had to tell you to start anywhere, I would probably choose sleep because it has the most impact on all areas of our life.
But choose the one that makes the most sense to you.
That is how thing stick.
Don’t decide to change absolutely everything at the same time either – choose one thing at a time and then add in another.
That is how we create actual change in our life that sticks.
Eating well for self-care
When we decide that we want to feel better or that we need to take better care of ourselves, our minds tend to automatically go to ‘I am going on a diet’ or ‘I need to go on a health kick and only eat clean’.
That isn’t actually that helpful, or what I would recommend.
It might help for a few days while our motivation is high, but after that it’s going to be back the same again.
Or we are going to restrict too much and then end up binge eating.
What I recommend you do is to become an intuitive eater.
That doesn’t mean eating whatever, whenever you like.
It means learning to listen to your body and eating more mindfully.
Sounds like self-care doesn’t it?
Which is exactly what we all need more of!
Things like understanding your hunger and fullness levels, learning when it’s actual hunger and when it’s emotional eating and making balanced plates for meals are the things that are going to make the most difference when it comes to taking better care of you.
If this is something you want to learn more about, let me know in the comments and I’ll write some more blog posts on it.
Movement for self-care
I think that movement is one of the best ways and the quickest ways to help us feel more like us again.
Especially if we are choosing an exercise that we actually enjoy and that leaves us feeling good.
If you have higher stress levels – you are better doing lower-impact workouts as these won’t raise our cortisol levels quite as high (they are already higher than they should be if you are stressed).
Movement like walking, pilates, yoga, swimming, walking workouts etc are lower impact.
Just because they are lower impact and might not get you quite as sweaty and out of breath, doesn’t mean that they have less of an effect on our health.
Walking and pilates are currently my favourite go-to workouts.
They leave me feeling good, but not worn out and I’m seeing lots of benefits from doing the two together.
Higher intensity exercises – like running for example, leave me feeling tired and drained and like I don’t want to do anything else that day.
So in this stage of motherhood, lower intensity works better for me and that is more than okay.
If you prefer a higher impact exercise and it leaves you feeling good – keep doing that.
Different things do work for different people.
Movement helps us in a lot of different ways:
- gives us more confidence
- gives us a feel-good boost
- reduces stress
- improves mental health
- improves our health
- helps with our brain health
- helps with long-term health
We need to move more, if you feel like you hate exercise – you haven’t found one that works for you yet.
Just walking more everyday is a good place to start.
Sleep
As much as we are fed up of hearing it – sleep is really important.
It is probably the most important thing that we can do for our health.
It is also the one thing our kids don’t want us to have!
It can be really difficult prioritising sleep when you are a mum.
We don’t really have much say in how often or how long we are awake in the night with the kids.
So while I do encourage you to try and get as much sleep as you possibly can, focusing on the quality of your sleep is going to be more beneficial for you than focusing on the quantity.
Even then, trying to get extra sleep is really important – go to bed a little bit earlier.
Having a bedtime routine that helps you to switch off and go into a deeper sleep is a good place to start.
Have a warm bath or shower, read a book or do something that helps you wind down rather than doom scrolling right before bed.
If you are very stressed out, doing a brain dump or journalling before bed can be helpful – so your brain doesn’t have to think about all the million things you need to do or that are on your mind before going to sleep.
Avoid caffeine and too many sweet treats to close to bedtime.
Keep your bedroom calm.
There are lots of things that we can do to improve our sleep quality.
Improving our sleep has a knock on effect on the other areas of our life as well.
Benefits of sleeping well
When we sleep well we:
- have more patience
- are less likely to over-eat or emotionally eat
- have more stable moods
- more likely to do some exercise
- are able to cope much better with stress
- are happier
- just feel better
I recommend starting with sleep, because having a good sleep has such a big influence on all the other areas of your life.
But if sleep is a struggle for you or if you are a sen mum and sleep just doesn’t happen – don’t stress out about this part.
Focus on improving sleep where you can straight away, but more focus on to one of the other sections if it’s just not your season of sleeping well.
Managing stress
The best way to manage stress and prevent burning out is to prioritise self-care.
Making sure you are getting enough sleep or at least trying to improve the quality of the sleep you are having.
Eating regular, balanced meals.
Not restrictive meals – balanced meals.
Everything fits in a balanced diet.
Making sure you are listening to your body and resting when you need to, or doing whatever it is that your body needs that day.
Everything that has been mentioned above really.
Manage stress by making time for you
Our needs tend to be put to the end of the todo list – but it is so important, especially when we are in a busy season, that we make the time to do things for us.
Make time to do the things that you enjoy – like reading, or crafting or exercising or whatever it is that makes you feel like you.
We need to be making time to go and meet our friends for a coffee or a walk, or get them to come over for a cuppa if it’s easier.
Making time to do the things we enjoy – like going out and browsing a book shop or making time for our hobbies and doing things for us plays a huge part in helping us manage our stress.
If you need a bit of inspiration for hobbies, have a look at this blog post where I’ve given you 60 ideas!
Routines to reduce stress
One way of reducing stress, that we may not automatically think of is to have rhythms and routines to help you keep on top of your home and your life.
Having routines allows us to be able to stop constantly thinking about all the things that we need to do all of the time, because there is a plan for them.
We don’t constantly need to be stressing about how we need to clean the bathroom, because we know that on a Monday it will get done.
It relieves an incredible amount of stress just having a plan.
Another way of relieving stress is to make a point of regularly decluttering your home.
The less stuff that we have, the calmer our home feels and the calmer we feel.
The less stuff we have, the less we need to manage and the less we need to do.
Conclusion
Taking care of ourselves as mums is so important.
Not only does it help us to feel better, it helps us to feel more like ourselves and helps prevent us from burning out.
You don’t need to overhaul your entire life, just making little changes is going to add up really quickly.
If you are not sure where to start, I’d suggest starting with sleep if that makes sense for you or start with the section that you feel that you could do with the most help in.
Remember that I have also got this freebie about the basics of taking care of you if you want to read some more!
DOWNLOAD THE FREEBIE BY CLICKING HERE!
Beth x