How to Prioritize Your Nutrition & Health When Life Gets Busy

Life can definitely get pretty wild at times making it difficult to prioritize best nutrition and health practices. We are no strangers to this, and have some tips and tools to help when facing hurdles or just a packed schedule. 

We recently had a death in the family, moved into a new house, celebrated an anniversary and had oral surgery all in the same week. While it could be easy to throw our hands up in the air, feel victimized by life circumstance or have feel like the stars were badly misaligned; we decided (after some grumbling) to find opportunity.

Many of you may be very busy and carry what feel like hectic schedules. Kids go back to school, new work changes or perhaps just regularly lead a packed life that makes it feel tough to get to the gym or find the energy to make a nutritious meal for yourself. After all, if it were as easy as just hopping in the car or flipping on a stove we would all have no issue. When things pile up with work, family, or other obligations and events; those self-care behaviors tend to be the first to go for a lot of us. That’s why it is important to highlight what are non-negotiables for you and your health and fitness. Truly- sometimes you need to take an actual inventory with pen and paper. What is the most important area of self-care and what can you do to still take care of yourself? Is there a way that you can pick specific items to make as non-negotiables like brushing your teeth?

I like to use a “slack with a cost” approach not only when life gets a little packed, but sometimes daily in running Resilient Body and being a new dad and the challenges and constraints, it imposes on my time to work out in particular. However, I think you can apply (and I have as well) the slack with a cost framework to MANY areas related to your health regimen. In fact, it can apply to most areas of life. 

SLACK WITH A COST REVISITED

Staying flexible with goals and habits

Rather than having rigid goals, the idea of “slack with a cost” is just that. You can have some slack built into your daily goals and habits that still allow you to achieve what you want to, but maybe not as quickly or in as ideal a fashion as you had hoped. For example, you have a goal of keeping in shape or improving your heart health and therefore set a routine of exercising for 45 minutes 5 days a week. However, you also have a built-in slack day off (or maybe it’s an alternative type of exercise like going for a long walk) in case life throws something at you. What this means is that you still hit your goal whether you make it all 5 or 4 because it was a wild week, but you still will reach your goals. Another good example would be a goal of improving health and body composition by cooking most meals; but you allow two meals to be take-out or at a restaurant with a built-in slack of a 3rd meal out. This works the same in that you are still having mostly home cooked meals without added surprises that can come while eating out, but your progress may have a slight cost if you have the extra meals out. 

This works best for most people because it is more realistic since life is most often…unpredictable! And therefore, you need to be able to have some built in flexibility to your goals, habits, and routines (as they can be along the same vein). If we are too rigid or perhaps think we should be rigid with ourselves, our goals and our routines, it is very easy to get into some black and white thinking and negative thought patterns if things don’t go exactly as planned. This in turn can lend itself to the feeling of “falling off the wagon” and further lead to just “abandoning ship” all together if we feel as though we have failed. It can be uncomfortable and also frustrating to feel like we aren’t getting ahead and then turn to what is easier or soothes us. 

You will have imperfect and even bad days and you need to learn to be comfortable with that as part of the long-term journey of continual growth and progress for long term health habits and in general. Sometimes you will even have many in a row…

POSITIVE GROWTH MINDSET

Seeing adversity as a learning and growth opportunity

What you can do to change that into a positive, besides allowing for intentional slack, is reframing adversity into opportunity. Many who are excellent at maintaining success have figured out how to find what can be learned from adversity. Instead of seeing the circumstances as a negative, they reframe it as a positive that they can learn from. You too can adopt this mindset by trying it out the next time something challenging comes your way. Take a moment to write down what things you can learn and grow from this circumstance. It really is as simple as reflecting for a moment and jotting down a few words or sentences. Research has shown that those who are able to do this will actually have better outlooks about things (think stress) weeks later. 

It can also be helpful to see some examples of how to prioritize outside of mindset shifts. We will outline some ways we like to use to make things work when things get a little wild and ways we also advise our clients. 

EXAMPLES AND TOOLS FOR WHEN CURVE BALLS HAPPEN

Shortened work out examples from Micah and Joey, for when there isn’t the opportunity for a normal session length.

Joey’s: Generic “Rotisserie Workout”

Joey: When I have no time for workouts I stick with 2 points. Keep it short. Keep it simple. I don’t have time to run around a gym for a set that involves multiple pieces of equipment which I may or may not have to work in with someone else. Keeping it short means, I cut the workout down to roughly 15-20min depending on how much available time I have. If I feel I need more time but don’t have a full hour to play with then I do 2 or 4 bouts of 15mins throughout the day during my down time. I keep things simple by doing what I like to call “the rotisserie”. I’m sure some of you have heard me use this term but picture a rotisserie chicken, rotating in one direction. That’s exactly how I do my quick and simple exercises. I grab a mat, some bands, and a variety of dumbbell options. Here’s some ideas without sets/reps/times for upper, lower or combined for full body with almost no equipment that you can let the time you have dictate:

Warm-up

·         8-point plank 

·         Right-side plank with hip thrust 

·         Floor bridges 

·         Left-side plank with hip thrust 

Upper Body

·         Renegade Row

·         Side lying Powell Raise R

·         Supine Floor Press

·         Side lying Powell Raise L

Lower Body

·         Banded Hamstring Curl

·         Copenhagen R

·         Dumbbell Hip Thrust

·         Copenhagen L       

Micah’s: “Dad Bod 2.0”

Micah: When I have a short session I still usually have about 30-45minutes to get in and out. I will typically shorten my warm-up but still get in at least a couple rounds of a warming up “open and activate” piece with a focus on quality. I then will either pick the biggest bang for the buck movements, shorten sets or combine movements in a way that allows me to shorten rests without sacrificing recovery, or a combination (example below):

Warm-up: 2x

·         ERG choice or crawls x 60

·         Perfect stretch x 5 per side

·         90/90 Hip rolls to extension

Main Strength Sets: 3-5 sets (time dependent)

·         Deadlift Variant x 6-8 (last set tough RPE 8 or so)

·         DB Bench Press x 6-8 (last set tough RPE 8 or so)

*Deadlifts are a big lift and elicit a big response from the body (more volume of muscle/tissue being worked). if I haven’t had much intensity that week and my nervous system feels up to it I may push above an RPE 8, but if it’s a crazy week I may back off a bit. The mind/body doesn’t compartmentalize stress (stress is stress)

Conditioning: Every 3 Minutes on the Minute x 3-5 rounds (time dependent)

·         12 Calorie Row

·         6 Split Stance Russian Kettlebell Swings per hand/stance

·         6 SA KB Rack Reverse Lunges/hand

·         12 KB Push Press

*This work is less intense than the main sets in this example, but it can be made more or less intense or challenging (or shorter) gauging by how you feel 

Cool Down: I always save 3-5 minutes to bring my heart rate (and nervous system) down with an intentional breath focus and/or stretch with the same idea

Simple Meal/Nutrition Priorities 

·         Prioritize quality protein on the plate whether at home or on the go 

·         Put lots of color on your plate with plants depending on what you prefer

·         Stay hydrated and do it early in the AM. Aim for ~50% oz/lb bodyweight

·         Acknowledge cravings may be higher when stressed and call them out, find substitutes if possible or allow it with slack rather than agonize over it (yes- that’s right).

Down time with no time

·         All we need is seconds/minutes to modulate the nervous system and stress response so take the smallest amount of time you have to just focus on breath and body sensations with eyes open or closed for a few minutes  

·         Pay attention to breath and focus on nasal breathing as the main way to breath and longer exhales

·         Breathing drills (double sigh is a BIG ONE) and alternate nasal breathing. Google these.

·         Take a visual break from the screen. Let your eyes see some natural light throughout the day

·         Take a 10 minute walk outside to reap similar meditative benefits and get blood and lymph flowing.

Back off intensity when you need to

·         The mind/body doesn’t always realize what type of stress you have or know how to compartmentalize stress. Stress is stress and it goes somewhere. Don’t push past physiological signs/barriers frequently.

·         Workouts when overly intense or matched on the wrong day can make things worse. Balance intensity through the week. Don’t make every day intense. While it can be okay to have an intense workout on an intense day (an overall intense day now), if the next day is less so and you do another intense workout you now have two intense days in a row that would not have been otherwise. Use this concept to find what is the right amount and balance for you

·         Listen to your body- keep it simple and see the long-term goals as not dictated by one workout

Long Game (Lifelong) Lens

·         Aim for 80%….That’s good enough for great long term progress. Remind yourself that maintaining health and fitness levels is a lifelong endeavor where consistency over months and years is what actually accumulates progress. We mentioned slack with a cost because it’s what is realistic for 99%+ of the people we work with and most humans and what will allow you to adhere to a lifelong maintenance of your best health and fitness goals. 

·         Doing what you can to be as consistent as possible when things aren’t ideal because the habits you practice likely won’t be ideal either. Acknowledge that is okay to not have it perfect and refocus on the long-term vs what wasn’t ideal on a given day when things are tough

·         Adversity is an opportunity to grow and the more you can reframe challenges as a learning opportunity the more you will grow.

These are of course suggested applications and tips from our experience of navigating life while prioritizing our health regimen. It is not always easy and it is not always perfect, but we have found these approaches a big help for ourselves and our clients when we feel like we’re in a pinch for various reasons. If you have any questions or want to know how to better navigate life while prioritizing yourself, we’d love to help.