Do you ever feel like:

• You start the day or week wanting to be healthy but you feel too busy, stressed and flustered to get a healthy meal on the table for yourself? Maybe you pick at the kids leftovers, make yourself a sandwich for dinner or throw some crackers in your mouth because running around for the kids and getting them ready for bed just TOO hectic?

• You just don't think it's possible to make time for yourself right now?

• You don't have time to exercise?

If you're relating, this episode is for you.

Kat has been working for me, full time now, for 2.5 years.

And, she has 2 young kids AND is a a body pump instructor.

It's safe to say her life is extremely busy. I honestly call her a superwoman ALL the time 😂

Despite her INSANELY busy life, she lost 20 kgs and has maintained her healthy lifestyle for nearly 3 years!

She has so many tips and tricks to share with you so that you too can stay on track with your goals, no matter how busy you are!

Links:

Download my FREE eBook with 4 15 minute meals: click here

Start your weight loss, gut healing and anti-inflammatory journey now with my 3 Week Body Reset

Continue your journey and figuring out YOUR own balance in the Health with Bec Tribe

Explore my free recipes & website: Click here 

Follow me on instagram: @health_with_bec

Read This Episode:

BM: Kat, I wanted to get you on the podcast because there's so many women in the Health with Bec Tribe (and who listen to this podcast) - about 70% are mums and especially with it now being school holiday time in Australia. A lot of people are starting to say - how do you fit in exercise when it's the school holidays? How do you juggle making sure that you still make the right food choices and how do you stay on track through the school holidays? Obviously, you are the perfect example of that. 

For anyone listening who doesn't know - Kat is my left hand woman in the business. She manages the staff members, lots of admin tasks for me and the list goes on. I don't think I would be able to survive without her and I get to see what she does and not just for me with work (she works full time for me). She also looks after her 2 kids who are very young, she’s a body pump instructor, keeps her own fitness up, cooks dinner for everyone every night and eats Health with Bec meals - breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

She is really juggling it all and you're literally a perfect example of someone that's doing it all. I call Kat a Super Woman. I wanted to bring her on because she is the perfect person to interview so that you can get all of her best tips to how she still keeps up with her healthy life and fitness whilst being a busy Mum … 

KW: It definitely takes a lot of planning. I wake up every day and I know what I need to do in order to make that day feel successful, otherwise as so many parents know, if you're not prepared, then you are prepared to fail. I have to make sure that I know where I need to be at certain times and what tasks we have on for the day.

I always start my day checking our emails, checking our conversations, asking myself - what's calling the loudest? I make sure I've got the books for the children, I make sure they've got breakfast. I make sure that my husband's making their lunch boxes. There's lots of time-limited things that I start my day with because I know I have to be at certain places at certain times.

Lunch is already ready to go. I'll always just eat what was dinner last night. Breakfast - I keep it really simple, I usually have a Before You Speak coffee. I do fast a lot because I like to go and train on an empty stomach and then I'll come home and have a nice big lunch after that, then the rest of the day just carries on from there.

I get to the end of the day and I need to know what's for dinner. I can't make it up on the spot because that's when disaster happens. The kids are tired, everyone's cranky, everyone's hungry, so I tend to know what we're having for dinner the morning of or maybe even a few days before I’ll know what's for dinner.

I have a big list on my fridge and I will l spend the weekend mapping out our day - when we've got swimming lessons, when I'm teaching a class, when I'm not going to be around and so I'll have it mapped out for the full 7 days, and I'll know exactly what we're eating that week. 

BM: Let's just rewind a bit - planning is key, prep is key and I can see that. Everyone that I interview that ends up really making the Health with Bec life a lifestyle has said that the biggest key is planning …

KW: Yes and to plan it, it needs to be a priority. 

BM: Obviously it's a priority to you! So let's go back to the weekend because it does start there and that's where I think a lot of people can get slipped up because they don't dedicate any time to taking an hour (or however long it takes on the weekend) and then the week can just be so busy and it can fall away. Tell us about what you do - how do you do it on the weekend? I know that you've just quickly said that you plan your 7 days of dinners, but how does that translate into who does the grocery shopping? Do you do the grocery shopping? How do you work that out for yourself, your husband and your two kids?

KW: I predominantly make all the meals in our house. I'm a little bit of a control freak in the kitchen, that's my space. So I figure if I'm going to be cooking, I'm going to be cooking things that I want to eat and my family can either choose to enjoy it with me or they can starve. That's their choice.

So I will sit there with a cup of tea (because I love cups of tea) and I will open up all of my recipe books that I've got of yours. Maybe I'll be drawing inspiration from some other chefs that I really like, and I will start to map out what I want to eat. More often than not, all of our meal plans will be open as PDFs on my iPad, and I'll be flicking through thinking - okay, this is what I want to eat! 

It's coming into April, so what was last year's meal plan for April? What recipes did I love from there? I'll pull those out, I'll write them down and then I'll start thinking - okay, that recipe is going to need this much pumpkin. What else can I use pumpkin in because I want to buy a whole pumpkin? It's cheaper. I probably spend 90 minutes on a Saturday with my books and PDFs open, and I will sit there pen and paper and map it out. 

BM: How do you go about getting all of the ingredients and knowing how much to buy? 

KW: Again, I know that my pantry is pretty well stocked with a lot of our staples.

BM: Another tip right there! 

KW: Yes! I have one shelf completely dedicated to spices and so I know I've got everything there that's going to flavor all of our recipes and I always make sure we've got the olive oils, the salt, the pepper, the soy sauce, the fish sauce. I've always got curry paste in the fridge. Always have the basics! I always check If I'm low in something before I go to the shops because they're the foundations to all the recipes. 

From there I will either do an online order for all of the basic food because that's time better spent doing something else. I do a lot of online click and collect, but I like to pick my fruit and veg and I like to pick my protein because again, control freak does not just stick to the kitchen - it's also at the supermarket. 

So, then I will go and spend another good hour at the shops, buying all of those things, picking what's in season, what's fresh, what's on special and then take that home so everything's ready to go for the week. 

BM: Perfect, when you look at a recipe, do you just times it by 4 so that it feeds everyone?

KW: Yeah, everything just gets times by four. I come from a big family, so I'm used to automatically doubling recipes because I have 4 brothers and sisters and I used to have to cook once or twice a week as one of my chores (as a teenager) for my entire family. So I'm used to just automatically doubling everything. I also figure that if a recipe already serves 4 but will be a great freezer meal, I'll double it anyway and I'll make 4 serves just for my freezer. 

BM: Yes, I love that and I'm glad that you brought that up because that's something that you do quite often, you'll have things in your freezer. Do you double or triple a recipe like that? Let's say it's a curry or a slow cooker meal … would you cook that on the weekend as an activity on the weekend or do you do it as you're cooking it on the night? 

KW: It depends on the recipe and it depends on the day. A lot of the time, if it's a slow cooked meal, I'll actually put it on at breakfast when I'm in the kitchen getting the kids ready for school.This morning, I just pulled out my slow cooker and chucked it all in there because that 15 minutes prep time is going to save me so much stress come 5:30pm at night when my kids are cranky and everyone's hungry. 

I might make 2 dinners at once too, so I'll make the dinner that we're eating that night (that's really quick) - something on the barbecue and in the meantime, I'm putting something in the oven, knowing that tomorrow, the next day, the next week, if it's going in the freezer, future Kat is going to be so grateful.

BM: Wow, okay! You inspire me so much too, because you're just so organised. When Kat arrived this morning, she was like - oh my gosh, it's 10am and I've already done so much. What did you do?

KW:  I started with teaching a class at 6am, then I came home and I did a couple hours of work for you and helped get the children ready (my husband does a lot of that, huge credit to him!) I got them both to school and then I had to go to the shops to buy the ingredients for tonight's dinner, then I had to pop to the post office so I could post something, came home, put the slow cooker on, got ready, came here. It was a busy morning! 

BM: And you said in the process of making that, you filmed a reel …

KW: Yeah, I also filmed it. So that slows it down a little bit, but also it's great behind the scenes content. 

BM: So, the tip there is that there absolutely is time in the morning because you show that there's time to fit in that exercise and you've saved yourself the stress of tonight because it took you 15 minutes to put everything in a slow cooker. If you don't have a slow cooker at home, I think if you have a family, that is a great way to put something on in the morning (especially if you're someone that also works and you're just super busy) because quite often at the end of the day, it's your least motivated time. Make that dinner time as easy as possible by doing that in the morning. 

If you know what you're having for dinner on a Tuesday night and it contains marinated meat, do you ever prep things the night before in that way or in the morning? 

KW: I do! If I know we're going to make my favourite, which is Thai Beef Salad, I will always marinate that again at breakfast time. I just pop all the ingredients in (because the staples are always in my fridge), pop it straight into a container then straight into the fridge. It sits there happily all day. If I stick it in the night before, happy days, it's an even tastier piece of meat and I know that all that fiddling around (getting out measurements, a bit of this and a bit of that etc.), I don't have to worry about that at the end of the day. It's just heating up a fry pan, cooking it and throwing together a salad. 

Often as well, say I've bought chicken breasts because I like to buy everything in bulk. I will separate it all out. I will marinate it with all of my different flavours that I like and then I'll pop them marinated straight into the freezer. 

BM: You are so organised. You teach me so much all the time, so many mum tips I get from you …

KW: It just saves time again. It might only save you ten minutes but that extra 10 minutes at the end of the day just means so much more when you are so tired.

BM: So you like to forward-think?

KW: Always. There are weeks when I haven't been organised and my household feels it. The stress is higher, I'm grumpier, my husband's sitting there thinking - oh, something's not right! It's because my organisation hasn't been optimal and it's meant that I've chased my tail the whole week. 

BM: Look, hearing that - it might sound like a lot to people in terms of the 90 minutes on the weekend, taking that time in the morning to put something in the slow cooker, prepping things the night before, cooking double batches … yes, that actually sounds quite complicated, but then what I like to think about is that time spent up front is far less hard, than the alternative.

So the alternative is getting to the end of the day and feeling frazzled and stressed. Maybe not cooking a healthy meal. Maybe getting Uber Eats and losing track of your health goals. So I think even if something seems a bit hard to people, it's always so good in your mind to think - okay, but what is the alternative?

You either keep going with your bad health habits and the trajectory of your health, it can keep going down or you take that time up front (which still feels a bit hard because nothing's easy) but then it's going to make you feel so much better and reduce your stress through the week.

KW: Absolutely, and my children are little, they're fussy and they don't particularly like when I serve them foods that they don't recognise. If I know that I keep my routine really similar, I keep dishing out the same meals, I know they're going to eat it as well because I don't cook them separate meals. If I can avoid it, they eat what we eat. 

BM: So do you try to choose from your huge array of Health with Bec recipes? Do you have an idea of what they're going to like and what they're not? 

KW: Yeah, absolutely! Even though I say that if I'm doing the cooking, I'm doing the picking, I know that my kids aren't going to love something with lots of mushrooms in it because they don't want to eat mushrooms, but I love mushrooms. So if we're going to do steak and mushroom sauce with broccoli on the side - I'm going to give them steak, then I'm going to give them plain boiled broccoli and then maybe I'll chuck in some carrots or maybe a piece of bread. 

BM: Simple. So, even if there's an ingredient that they don't like, you just leave it out?

KW: I just leave it out, get something else, then there’s more for me!

BM: Perfect, that's great. We've got Lemme here as well, who's also one of my team members and we've all been having a fun little day working and the topic came up about bone broth which you just gave a random little tip about because you make your own? 

KW: I will save all of my scraps from my vegetables and then I will stick them straight in the freezer and when I've got an extra couple of minutes or if I'm working from home that whole day, all of them will go into a pot, lots of water, spices and I've made veggie stock.

I try to waste as little as possible because everything's getting really expensive and it bugs me when I have to then waste the tops and tails of carrots or the peelings from something. So I think - okay, how else can I use this? How else can I make a meal? Whole chicken becomes chicken stock and then the meat becomes chicken soup. I'm always thinking of how I can make the one ingredient do double work. 

BM: One of the things that Kat does (which is so helpful) is always coming up with new recipes every week and I guess not everyone works for me, so this isn't really a tip for everyone but I think it's quite interesting. You said that you sometimes learn to adapt recipes from someone else's recipes …

That is so helpful to the business as well. We try to multitask in so many ways because you do that and then you're like - oh Bec, this could actually be a recipe that we can write up! Quite often that will be a new recipe that comes out in the Health with Bec Tribe meal plan. So Kat's also a bit of a recipe developer. You obviously enjoy cooking?

KW: Yeah, I really do. It's something that makes me really happy. I love being in the kitchen. I come from a family that knows good food, knows how to cook good food, and we just come together around delicious meals. 

BM: You also shared something last week about how you view time in the kitchen. I really think that mindset will help people want to do it more. You like to do it to wind down?

KW: I do, it's a time for me to really chill out. I don't have to think too much because I am confident in the kitchen and that came from a lot of practice. I didn't wake up one day as Jamie Oliver. I'd love to think I am, but that's never going to happen and so I had to really apply myself in that space to learn how to really nurture my body and sustain myself because I'd moved out of home and it was all on me.

So, I made that space something that was really welcoming to myself. I started experimenting, lots of failures, lots of interesting meals that my husband has had to eat over the years but with that comes a lot of confidence and so when I enter that space now, that's my time to relax. That's my time to put together something that I'm really looking forward to eating.

My love language is acts of service and so feeding my family and seeing them enjoy food that I've created for them really fills my cup and that's how I express my love to them as well. It's definitely a space where I feel my most calm because you put some things into a fry pan and out comes something super tasty. You mix things in a bowl, stick it in an oven - out comes a cake. How cool is that?!

BM: My recipes aren't complicated and have you standing in the kitchen for hours because I hate that. I don't like being in the kitchen for hours personally, but I do enjoy it when I really bring on the mindset of - okay, this is the time to be off my phone, to decompress from the day off my laptop, I play music which helps too. Sometimes I'll have a glass of wine or a shot of vodka after a stressful day but I like to have it as a nice practice and when you look at it in that way, it helps you want to cook healthy food as well. So I like that tip and that way of looking at cooking, rather than it feeling like a chore. 

To help it feel less like a chore as well, everything that we've been talking about so far helps, as in making sure that you plan on the weekend and then you have all the ingredients in your fridge and you know what you're cooking. Then when you get to night-time, you know what you’re doing and it's easy, that decision fatigue of cooking goes away. You've got the plan and it makes the whole process so much more manageable when you are tired because you don't feel like cooking every single day, but you're hungry every single day and so you have to cook to feed yourself. It's really important that you're as organised as you can be and enjoying what you can as well.

What about your kids? Let's talk specifically about a general week. Does it change at all in the school holidays with how they eat and how you do things? 

KW: I try to figure out what goes on in their heads when they're on school holidays because they are either bored or they're hungry. When they're at home, it’s Mum I'm hungry! Mum, I'm bored! Mum, can I have something to eat? 

It was driving me nuts that all they wanted to do was open the fridge and find something else to eat and so what I like to do is still pack their lunch boxes during school holidays, then I'll just say to them - here's your lunchbox! Here's what you can eat today - eat the sandwich, eat the fruit, eat the cake, eat the slice. This is your food for the day. Their whole routine is out of whack because they're not at school, so I like to do that and then keep my routine as similar as I can knowing that they're at home. 

We'll then start spending a lot of time out of the house as well together, so I'll work from the park or we'll go to a cafe and I'll take my laptop with me but again, out comes the lunchbox and it really helps.

BM: I love that and look, I'm not a Psychologist in this way, but it’s why I provide meal plans to people and try to encourage people to have a bit of a routine with how they eat and plan. I guess still giving them the lunch boxes sets them up to be like that - to eat at certain times of the day, not to just graze all day and just eat when you're hungry. Do you think it would help in that way rather than just opening the pantry and eating for boredom?

KW: Yes, absolutely and then they know they can eat whatever they like in that lunch box and it just sits in the fridge. It's easy. It's one less thing to think about. 

BM: How do you go about building their lunch boxes because I know that you have leftovers for lunch from dinner before? If you put a muffin or a slice in there, tell us how you do that because I'm guessing you eat that too because it's a Health with Bec recipe … when do you make that? 

KW: Again, I might find 20 minutes to put together some muffins because all of the recipes are really straightforward and I always have the staples on hand. So when the urge hits, I know that it's actually going to be really easy. All of my recipes are on my iPad. My iPad sits in the kitchen, so they're right there ready to go and then I know that I can also pop them into the lunchboxes for the children and it does double duty, some for me, some for the freezer and some for the lunch box.

They have favourites, they love anything with chocolate in it and that's fine by me, quite like chocolate myself. So if it's a brownie, we'll make brownies. Sometimes it'll turn into brownie muffins. Sometimes it's a brownie loaf - whatever is going to fit into the lunchbox, fill them up and keep me happy, is what I do. So it could be at breakfast time. It could be after they've gone to bed and I'm just in that nice quiet space and I'll put the brownie into the oven. 

BM: So you don't bake on a Sunday for the week?

KW: Sometimes, but it varies. We might have birthdays, family occasions or we might have sports activities. Our weekends go up in the air a little bit with all of their different requirements, so I try to think about where else in the week I could pop that in, which is why I'm always planning ahead, knowing what's coming up. Where are my pockets of opportunity? I will start slotting them in that way! 

BM: Having all those staples at home helps too, especially because a lot of the baking recipes that I have, use staples like your almond flour, always having eggs in the fridge, always having butter, olive oil, frozen berries etc. and then it does make baking actually quite simple.

I hope you are seeing the theme here. I really like what Kat does because when she bakes a snack, for instance, that'll be her snack through the week and the kids. When you're cooking dinners, it'll be yours and the kids because so many people have the belief that they have to eat separate meals or give the kids separate snacks and it doesn't have to be that way because your kids love the snacks and the dinners. 

KW: They do, my son particularly likes cookies and occasionally I have found him where he’s taken the entire box and he's hiding in the kitchen, just shoveling cookies into his mouth. I'm thinking - buddy that was meant to last us a week! It’s hilarious because he could be eating far worse things. 

BM: He wouldn't get a sugar high, that's for sure, just lots of nutrients and lots of fibre as well.

KW: It's great that they're happy to eat it and I still make other things on occasion, of course, but if that stuff's in the fridge or in the cupboard, then the urge to eat it is also there with it. So if I don't have it around, then I'm fighting a much easier battle in myself. 

BM: You did the 3 Week Body Reset in 2021, so it's been 3 years. I actually interviewed Kat on the podcast a year or so ago to talk about her journey and how she did it. She lost 20 kilos and has really maintained the lifestyle since, so if you want to hear about her journey in depth, check out Episode #60: Mum of 2 Loses 17kgs In 8 Months After Trying It All. 

There's lots more tips in there, but how long did it take you to work out this routine for you? I feel like you've really got it nailed with your plan on the weekend, what you do for dinners, baking the snacks for everyone etc. Did that take a while to figure that out for you and your family? 

KW: It does and like anything new, it can take time to find your groove and there's a little trial and error. When anything feels new, it can feel overwhelming and that goes with anything in life. So you know that the more you apply yourself, the more that you appreciate that this new feeling isn't going to last forever, it will start to become quite seamless in your routine. All of a sudden, instead of having to actively think about cooking your recipes, I just cook your recipes. 

It's the same with exercise - at some point you stop actively thinking - oh gosh, I need to move my body! because you've just seamlessly built it into your lifestyle and you don't think about it anymore but it takes time, it takes practice, it's not perfect and some days you get it wrong. 

BM: Absolutely and that's like any change in life, it's not easy to just do everything that Kat said today, which is why I do recommend 6 months minimum in the Health with Bec Tribe, because it takes people time to find what works for their body, what works for their family and what works for their lifestyle. How long in the Tribe did it take before you found this? 

KW: I think it was about month eight if I'm completely honest. About month eight I realised that it felt like less work in my brain. Not that it was “work”, cooking was never hard because I was cooking anyway, but the way that I was perceiving this lifestyle had completely shifted. 

It was one of those instances where you've realised that you're spending less time thinking about it and it just felt really natural. It felt really organic and it was a nice realisation. That's when I came to the conclusion that this is what I'm sticking to long-term because it's clearly been successful for me. I'm feeling amazing. I'm feeling a part of something that's really positive, it's working and it's able to transition as my children have got older and my family's needs have changed as well. It just keeps working with them. 

BM: Yeah, you've really built that habit now. That's really good to hear and for people to know that it's not just an overnight thing to form new habits and to start eating healthy consistently and prepping for your family. Are there any other tips that you want to share specifically to people that have kids juggling school holidays?

KW: Try not to stress too much about it. Keep what you can in your routine that you have control over. Everything else - the only thing you control, is how you feel about it. If the next 2 weeks are going to feel really chaotic because the kids are at home and you're trying to juggle working and them around, that's okay! It's temporary. It's not the end of the world. It's not going to be a disaster. It's only 2 weeks! 

BM: What about exercise? How do you find time to move your body when it's school holidays? Does it change?

KW: It changes a little bit. We will do a lot of outdoor time, so lots of walks on the beach and getting them on the bikes, because I know that if they're bored and asking for lots of food, they probably just need to move their bodies. So, lots of bike rides and we go to the park and I’ll grab a coffee with them. 

I cannot stress this enough, if you've got a gym membership, you need one with a crèche. If it comes with crèche, you can pop them in for 30/ 45 minutes. You then get that time to decompress, move your body and it shifts your mental health as well. I cannot stress that enough and you'll walk out feeling so much better. 

BM: They go into the crèche, they play, you exercise, everyone's happy, it's all good! Do you feel like you do more active exercise with them and a little less time at the gym when it's school holidays? 

KW: Absolutely, so it's very much more about what we can do as opposed to what I’m doing. What can we do? How can we make it a family activity where we're all moving around, making some memories, having fun and we're all incorporated in that. 

BM: I love that. It's all about getting everyone involved, so that your own health goals don't slip away. You really do prioritise your health! Kat is the kind of person that puts her work first, her kids first, but I've really seen over the years that you have really learnt to put your health first too. It's an example for any other mums that are listening because it's so easy for mums to put everyone else first.

To wrap up this episode, why did you make this a priority? Is there a certain feeling that this way of eating gives you or is there something that drives you every day to actually put the exercise in your calendar, eat the healthy food, what makes you keep it up consistently?

KW: Something that you said when I was back in my infancy of being a Tribe member was - Don't think about now, think about how you're going to feel after. 

So how are you going to feel after you reach for the big bag of chocolate? It must have been Easter when I first signed up because I was freaking out about how I was going to manage Easter and not eat all the chocolate and you said - how's it going to make you feel afterwards? That same quote is valid whether you're doing something that you know you're probably going to regret versus knowing that you're going to do something that's going to make you feel amazing. It's always about how you feel afterwards.

When I wasn't making time for myself or always putting my needs completely aside for the sake of my family (which I know every Mum does), I wasn't able to show up and be my best self and so I started to think - if I spend this half an hour at the gym, how am I going to feel afterwards? 

I'm going to feel amazing and that will have a ripple effect in my household, so it's not selfish to give to myself, in order to give to others, because I can give better if I'm filling up my cup first as well and I don't do that perfectly every day. I still get to the end of some days in tears that I'm the worst Mum in the world but if I give to myself, I know afterwards I'm going to feel better. 

BM: I love that so much and that's just the most beautiful piece of advice that I could not recommend anymore. I do try to say it on the podcast quite a bit and to the Tribe members. I also say it in my head all the time. It’s become a subconscious habit for me, who used to be an absolute workaholic. I just had coffee and I sat there watching the river and I don't feel guilty. I used to be someone that would just work every minute of every day for the first 4 years of my business. Now, the thing that's made me actually prioritise stillness, movement, talking to friends and filling my cup up is that I've really seen how much better of a person it makes me for the podcast, for my Instagram, for my work, for my staff, for the Tribe … I would not do good work, if I didn't fill my own cup up.

So that would be the same with mums - you'd just be a better mum if you give that time to yourself. I think that's a really beautiful place to end this episode. Thank you so much! 

I really hope you enjoyed this episode and find it inspiring. If you are keen to check out my programs, Step 1 is the 3 Week Body Reset and Step 2 is the Health with Bec Tribe, if you get results and you want to continue on and turn your new diet into a sustainable lifestyle. 

I hope you learnt lots of mind mindset tips and tricks to really help you and if you liked this episode, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It means more to me than anyone knows and it really helps other women find the podcast. Also, come and follow me on Instagram at @health_with_bec, if you're not already, because I share so many behind the scenes tips, tricks and motivation to really help you on your weight loss journey as well.