Now that I’m out of what I call a holiday hole that I dig myself every year, I decided to write a post about my mom burnout to wellness journey.Before I get into all of the things I’ve learned, studied, googled, and read this past two months, I want to talk about holiday stress.

From November 25 to December 25, I tend to go MIA from the world. Shopping, wrapping, hiding, and then trying to remember where you hid the presents is a job in itself. For the person playing “Santa,” it can be quite literally exhausting. After the last gift goes under the tree, my first instinct is to throw my arms in the air and scream hallelujah.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy every moment of the entire experience. Christmas is and will always be magical for kids. Their imagination runs wild the whole month of December, and their innocence shines so bright it’s hard not to love these precious moments. But, every year, I find myself more and more exhausted.

From Christmas Day to New Years’, I’m both mentally and physically exhausted, wondering why I feel this way? Why don’t I enjoy the holidays, did my parents feel like this? I don’t remember the holiday seeming so stressful as a kid. Maybe this is normal, and if it is, how can I create a new normal. In a perfect world, I would gift all of my kid’s experiences to enjoy over the next year. But, a big part of Christmas is the excitement of waking up Christmas morning with a bunch of presents under the tree.

As parents, we set a lot of expectations on how we want motherhood to go. I’m fully aware that I place too high of expectations on myself. I refuse to take into account that I’m a single mom of four young boys. My non-negotiable was to never change who I wanted to be as a mom because of outside circumstances. Is it easy? No, it’s not. Is it a daily struggle? Yes. But, in order to stay on the correct path of my wellness journey something needed to change. 

I want to make Christmas as magical as my kids imagine it to be. Bake Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses, ice skating, look at Christmas lights, visit the DC Christmas tree, holiday markets, and shows. But such as life, sometimes things don’t go as planned.

The gingerbread house got termed “epic fail,” followed by many more “epic fails.” Like taking 7 kids to Tysons Corner mall on the day before Christmas Eve.  Half of the Christmas cookies weren’t decorated; we drove around looking at Christmas lights on the way to pick up a last-minute gift at 8 o’clock on Christmas Eve.

At the end of the day, we still experienced most of what we wanted to do. But, most importantly, we all learned a great life lesson. Focus on the journey and the experiences, not the outcome, and just like that, the gingerbread house went in the trash. If I was stuck on wanting everything perfect, I wouldn’t have made it out in one piece by the end of Christmas.

New Year’s Day was also different this year. Usually, I would sit down and make my resolutions, but I didn’t, and I felt good about it. I wanted to take a different approach because just like Albert Einstein says,

Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to guide my wellness journey; modified version

Using the principle behind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I thought my own order of needs towards my own wellness journey. Everyone has their own version hierarchy of needs outside of the basics Maslow’s provides.

Some people may need to get their financials in order before becoming mentally ready to start a diet and exercise program. You have to know what works for you. When you know yourself, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. Knowing what works for you is your internal guide to being who you want to be. 

I remember recently listening to a Demi Lovato song, Love me, and the below lyrics describe me to a T.

The self-talk that can start simply by putting on a pair of jeans is kind of crazy. If they don’t fit, the negative self-talk begins. Saying things like, I can never follow through, I’m the worst, I have zero self-discipline, I can’t trust my own word, etc. But, if they fit, it contains my negative self talk dead in its tracks.

I know that when I feel my best and look my best, I am my best which I talk more about in this post.  So the first Tier of the Hierarchy of needs is to get to my goal weight, but more importantly, making it a lifestyle change. My old ways of losing weight had to be thrown out the window. They weren’t sustainable. Yes, I could lose a quick 10lbs following the Keto diet, but this year I wanted to create long term healthy habits that would stay with me for life.

I’m tired of having separate piles of jeans labeled based on how they fit. I’m tired of researching the next best diet fad diet to lose a quick 10 pounds. This way kept me going in circles. To walk a straight path on my wellness journey and never look back, I needed to jump off the diet hamster wheel.

Step 1: Viewing food as fuel, creating a lifestyle change on my wellness journey 

The first step on my wellness journey was to change my mindset.  Instead of eating to lose weight, I needed to focus on providing my body with the nutrients it needs to operate as a whole. I decided to hire a health coach, but not your average bodybuilder, hardcore fitness trainer coach.

This time around, I knew I needed to tap into the spiritual, self-care mindset part of the process. Finding someone who understood half the battle with diet and exercise is mental. Not in the “commit and surrender” way. I wanted to find someone who spoke the language of self-limiting beliefs, energetic blocks, and intuitive eating.

Following my intuition, I hired Lindsay. We didn’t talk about macros, calories, etc. Instead, we talked about foods that are high nutrient-dense. Her focus was to find things that I enjoy, such as waffles or French toast, and altering the recipe to satisfy those needs. It was adding cinnamon, not for the taste but because cinnamon provides antioxidants.

Finding recipes that my kids liked, such as meatloaf and finding a healthier version. At the end of the day, trying to make two meals, one for myself one for my kids, isn’t sustainable. If I want to make this a lifestyle change, I need to learn to find a healthy balance.

At first, I found myself being caught in my old ways, asking questions like, am I going to lose weight? Are you going to give me a meal plan to follow to the T? I had to stop myself and understand these are my old ways of doing things. How will I know what my body needs if I’m not the one making those decisions? What happens when I’m done with her program? Like every other diet, eventually, I would give in and go back to my old ways.

Wellness as a whole is feeling and being the best version of yourself. If that means losing weight to get there, then your focus should be on diet and exercise. In the past, I would focus on eating 1200 calories a day. I could eat a Snickers bar, and as long as it stayed within my 1200, I could still lose weight. But I wasn’t feeding my body what it needed, and now I’m facing the consequences.

My mind wasn’t focused on being the best version of myself. My mind was focused on losing weight. Those are two different mindsets that come with two different results.  Like they say with parenting, the most challenging way is usually the right way.  Following a strict 1200 calorie diet, you will lose weight 2 pounds a week. It works. Eating healthy in moderation and feeding your body what it needs doesn’t come with quick weight loss. But to walk in a straight line forward, I had to shift my mindset to get on the correct path of my wellness journey.

Did the weight come off as quickly as some other fad diets? No. But not because I wasn’t staying on track. Deciding to get a divorce meant my life was going to be flipped upside down and sideways. The stress of the process created blocks, burnouts, and exhaustion within my physical body.

Lindsay held me accountable for creating a bedtime routine that would help reset my hormone imbalances. She helped me paint a clearer picture with my vision moving forward with work. She’s quite literally the reason I am writing this blog post right now.

Turkey Chilli Recipe link

Paleo Meatloaf Recipe link 

How chronic stress affects the body and how it impacts weight loss

Knowing I was eating the healthiest I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, but not losing weight, led me down another rabbit hole of google searches. A couple of years ago, I went to see a naturopathic doctor, where I became aware I had both B12 and iron deficiency anemia. I also had a hormone imbalance, low thyroid, elevated blood sugar, and cholesterol.

One of the benefits of seeing a holistic physician is looking at the full picture of your physical, mental, and emotional status when dissecting your lab results. They look for a common theme or the problem that could be causing the issue at hand.

Saying someone has high cholesterol or a low thyroid without looking at the entire picture is like putting a band-aid over an infection. If you never fix the root of the problem, the issues will persist. So after a two-hour-long appointment going through my lab results, everything pointed to chronic stress and burnout.

A term frequently used for this is adrenal fatigue/burnout. In Western medicine, adrenal fatigue isn’t considered a medical diagnosis, but it’s a trendy topic in alternative medicine.

This is where you have to decide who your views align with most, Eastern vs. Western medicine. I’m right in the middle, but my views align more with Eastern medicine. If I had to bet on medicine’s future, I would bet on moving towards a combination of both western and eastern medicine. I think a lot still has to be learned about the effects our mind, thoughts, and emotions have on our physical body. Certain things such as “tricking” our brain at the subconscious level can heal many of the world’s issues through hypnosis.

There’s so much information out there, and it can be hard to know which works in which doesn’t. Part of the reason I started this blog was to share the million hours of research that I do daily towards my own wellness journey and lifestyle goals. I’m in no way saying this information is correct, and I’m not a physician. As a Registered Nurse, the human body has always been fascinating. So, I’m going to try and sum up how the body deals with stress below.

Our bodies have something called the autonomic nervous system made up of two main divisions; Sympathetic and Parasympathetic. Both of these systems work together to make sure our bodies are responding appropriately to different situations. The sympathetic division prepares us for stressful or emergency situations— known as our “fight or flight” system. The parasympathetic nervous system controls ordinary conditions and is known as our “rest and digest.”

Anything our body or minds consider stressful begins a cascade of physiological responses. The first reaction is the release of epinephrine. This is what causes our heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate to increase. Once the epinephrine runs out, the system activates a second component — known as the HPA axis, consisting of the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands.

Chronic low-level stress keeps the HPA axis activated, which then causes a chain reaction where hormones are released, like cortisol. When the body continues in a continued state of stress, hormones such as cortisol begin to create hormone imbalances in the body. When cortisol is elevated long term, it begins to produce glucose, which causes our blood sugar levels to increase and eventually causes weight gain.

The above paragraph is just the very basics of how the human body works. I could go on forever about this topic, so I’ll stop there and get back to why I started talking about this to begin with.

A big part of my wellness journey is fixing the long term effects on my body from my divorce and mom burnout. Correcting imbalances within our body start with living a healthier life through diet, nutrition, exercise, and mindfulness.

Supplements to help balance your hormones and reduce stress naturally

This article written by Sara Gottfried on the Goop has a lot of great information on hormone imbalances, which is where I recently found three new supplements to add to my page-long list of supplements.

When I say supplements, there are different categories within that term. Most everyone knows and likely takes vitamins, but there are also others known as minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, animal-derived products, hormones, etc. I’m going to list the ones I currently take and why they are helpful towards my wellness journey. 

Wow, that was a lot of information. I decided to split this post into two parts because there’s so much to say. Wellness is a big topic, with an abundance of information. Every day I find a new product released geared towards the wellness industry. Meditation and mindfulness are starting to lose their once attached stigma. Understanding the effects electronics have on our brains, hopefully more people will open their minds to finding a way to calm their minds.

I found this article very interesting written in Millennial Magazine,

“The General Social Survey says that young adults are twice as like now to experience constant exhaustion than they were two decades ago. According to research from the American Psychological Association, millennials are the most stressed generation, which means loss of sleep due to anxiety.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Millennials are the first generation to grow up when technology is constant. Technology has a significant impact on fatigue in general. There’s a reason The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no electronics AT LEAST 2 hours before bed. Easier said than done.

As a parent, this is a strict rule I enforce on my kids but not myself. But, if I continue on this way, I’m not only setting a bad example for my kids but soon I won’t have the energy to enforce any rules at all. There’s no strong enough word to describe this type of danger with four boys, lol.

In part 2 of my wellness journey, I talk about sleep, reducing stress, mind-body connection, decreasing inflammation, and helping a sluggish lymphatic system. I have a lot of fun gadgets I’m excited to share along with some non-invasive ways to stay healthy from the inside out.

Xoxo,

Sketched by a HauteMess Mom of 4