Wendy Griffith is a certified health & wellness coach, who helps busy career mums thrive with the juggle of mum life through building sustainable health habits. Her health and lifestyle coaching addresses; stress, nutrition, exercise, time management and sleep, where it’s her mission to help career mums build healthier habits, which serve the unique life of each mum.
I invited Wendy to join us on Kids Nutrition Podcast as I knew she helped busy mums juggle the everyday life of motherhood whilst also supporting them to build healthy habits that stick.
In out interview we discuss:
- what busy mums typically struggle with and why
- what are some of the best ways to set personal nutrition goals for adults?
- How to navigate menu planning with ease
- Tips for managing special diets such as dairy free diets as a family
- The good, the bad and the ugly about setting healthy habits and nutrition goals in a way that’s right for you as a mother
Here’s a glance at this Kids Nutrition Podcast episode:
Can you tell me a little bit more about the lovely mums you work with?
Yes, so I work a lot of the time with busy career mums in particular, and it’s just really around the juggle of all the things so working and family life and you know, the mental overload that comes with it.
So as a health and wellness coach, it’s not just the health side of things that I help mums with and that the wellness side really leans into the mental health side.
So it’s really how you cope with the overwhelm the mum guilt, all the stuff that goes into working parents.
What do you think mums typically struggle with?
Definitely overwhelmed. That is just the common thread that runs through every conversation with every mum that I chat to in the playground, or client that I have a call with.
And that’s often related to the issue of not having enough time.
So we are, I don’t need to tell anyone that we are very time poor nation culture generation where we, you know, we just struggle for time.
And there are never enough hours in the day to do all the things that are on our list of things to do. Especially as working moms.
And why do you think that is? Do you think we just pile on too much? And then feel guilty if we don’t try and achieve everything we want? And then think we’ve failed?
I think it’s a bit of both, to be honest. I think we are inherently made as women to put and prioritize everyone ahead of ourselves.
So find the one mum that would put their hand up and say, “Yeah, I’m going to put me first”. I’m waiting! Tick tock, I’m waiting. Show me that mom.
You wouldn’t be able to find one.
So I think genetically inherently and also the way that, you know we’re nurtured to nurture and care for. It’s a real sort of societal gem, you know, the way we’re brought up.
And so there is that there is the fact that we want to look after everybody and inherently put people before ourselves in our own self-care.
And then there was also this society that we now live in where our lives are lived out on social media, and it’s all their best version of you and you know, highlight reels.
And as mums, we’ve sat there looking at people’s best days and comparing them to our worst days.
It’s just this whole, you know, the pressure that we put on ourselves. So yes, there is the target around there is a lot as a society that we are expected to do so much.
And when you consider that working mums often have the challenge of the shortest six-hour day in which their kids are at school, and then they’ve got to fit in all the extra curriculum.
And they’ve got to do all the homework and then they’ve got to put these healthy meals on.
This is what society makes us feel like we’ve got to so put all these meals on the table and do all the things and then we’ve still got to maintain our relationships and be the best Daughter and Sister and best friend to that person who’s going through a hard time and there’s just so much.
And what I see happening more and more every day and it’s really why I’m so called into this career and this desire to help mums. Is because I was that that mum who felt really stressed out really burnt out alone.
When I had my little girl who’s now five, I didn’t have my parents living in the same country as me. I didn’t have any family support. And so I was running a business at the time and I just felt so alone and so overwhelmed and I just didn’t know where to turn.
I just I didn’t know who to talk to about how I was feeling. I didn’t know how to voice the fact that even though my little girl was this precious IVF miracle that I was so grateful to have, I felt so torn because I still wanted to enjoy my career and continue to run my business.
And have that to be successful and just that constant push and pull between the two desires. I also wanted to get healthier again and get my strength and my fitness back post being pregnant and just all the factors.
I just there was no way to turn there was nobody that could help me and it was really where I just thought well, I love to let my hindsight the people’s foresight to be able to say you don’t have to get to the point of mom burnout which is a really real syndrome in this day and age. We have got a pandemic on our hands that I don’t mean that that pandemic, but I actually mean them on burnout pandemic and I feel really passionate about that.
Want to know what else she said about setting nutrition goals and healthy habits for mums?
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