5 Easy Self-Care Ideas for Moms with Chanelle Neilson

Chanelle Neilson is the host of Moms Who Know Podcast, in addition, she is also a wife, a mom to 5 kiddos, and has a passion for family, health, fitness, and personal growth. I wanted to have her on the podcast today because sometimes momming can become very overwhelming; therefore, wonder, “What have I gotten myself into?” Sometimes, in order for moms to love their life, they may need a little change. That change can sometimes be something as simple as just taking better care of themselves in small, practical ways and, most importantly, not feeling guilty for it. Chanelle has 5 easy self-care ideas for moms who want to be the best they can be. 

Chanelle has a “self-care challenge” that is based on the idea that “when moms take care of themselves they can take better care of everyone else. She says, “When we take care of ourselves in these areas, we feel better and serve from a better place.”

She defined different categories of self-care for moms:

  • Physical:
  • Mental:
  • Relaxation/Pampering:
  • Nourishment: “80/20 Rule”
  • Social:

Sign up for Chanelle’s Step-by-Step guide to An Amazing Morning Routine: https://chanelle-neilson.mykajabi.com/p/morning%20routine.

Chanelle’s Blog Post: “Why Moms Need Self Care (and how to get it)” https://momswhoknowpodcast.com/2018/06/03/why-moms-need-self-care-and-how-to-get-it/.

Check out Chanelle’s podcast, Moms Who Know Podcast. There, you will find conversations and encouragement that is sure to meet you exactly where you are in your momming adventure.

Join Chanelle and the rest of the Moms Who Know Community in the Moms Who Know Private Facebook Discussion Group.

Fill your own cup self-care challenge: momswhoknowpodcast.com/selfcare/

Moms Who Know Podcast: 5 Easy Self-Care Ideas for Moms

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Show Transcript:

Welcome to the TEA of Life Podcast. Where our mission is to transform every attitude of life by encouraging and equipping you to live the life you love and love the life you live. I am your host, Tiffany Thompson. Today, we have Chanelle Neilson on the podcast. Hello, Chanelle, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Tiffany. I am so excited to be here. Chanelle and I know each other because we are in a podcasting mastermind group together along with other great podcasters such as Merritt Onsa, with the Devoted Dreamers Podcast. We have Ashley Carroll with It Takes A Village Podcast, Corine Sandifer with Rising Stories, and Larissa Bowland with the Castle and Cloud Travel Podcast. So, I know that that’s not really relevant to today’s podcast, but I just wanted to give a shout out to them because if it weren’t for it that Mastermind group, you and I probably would not know each other. It’s so fun to recognize other people in the Mastermind is so fun cuz we get to go behind the scenes of know each other in a different way, so I’m glad you mentioned all of them. Absolutely! Chanelle is the host of Moms Who Know Podcast which is a podcast dedicated to moms who want to take care of themselves so that they can take care of their families even better. And she says that being a mom can sometimes feel overwhelming sometimes it feels like there is no time for you amen sister it’s true It’s true that is very true kiddos and has a passion for Family Health Fitness and personal growth and I wanted to have her on the podcast today because sometimes Momming can be very overwhelming we can sometimes wonder what have I gotten myself into and sometimes in order for moms to love their life they may need to change and that change can sometimes mean something as simple as just taking better care of themselves in small practical ways and not feeling guilty for it. Oh, that wonderful mom guilt! We all have it we do if I’m taking care of myself and someone else is suffering you know but it’s really not true Chanelle we are so excited to have you here with us today and have you talked about your self-care Challenge on our podcast thanks I’m excited to jump into it I think we’ll have a lot of fun so you say that when we take care of ourselves in these areas we feel better and serve I’m a better place and you Can you define different areas of self-care for moms you have a physical mental pamper relaxation nourishment and social so I’d love to go through those individually and talked about that for sure so we can just jump right in then and talk about those so i feel that sometimes self-care Like you know sometimes I think the first thing that we jump to is kind of that relaxation and pampering one we think of if I’m doing self-care is getting a massage or Getting my nails done or something like that that’s you know kind of bigger and kind of not your everyday but what I really like for moms to know is self-care is a daily thing and needs to be a daily thing because we have to take care of ourselves well so that we can take care of other people better the first one is physical self care so when you think of physical self most of our minds go straight to exercise And that is definitely a part but it doesn’t always have to mean say going for a run And you’ve got shin splints while that day physical self care is not going to mean going for a run because we really take the time to see what we need physically then we’re going to tune in and say you know what my legs need a break I’m going to do something else I’m going to do some yoga or I’m going to sit and do some deep breathing and just let my physical body rest for the day that might be the physical self care that we need another another aspect of physical self care is our surroundings You know what I’ve never liked that picture I did this recently we had a picture in the dining room when we moved here at my husband worked for a home builder and we were lucky enough to go to a model home sale and get to buy stuff from the model home which was awesome because it was so inexpensive we bought our bedroom set for $95 oh such a good deal quality furniture Quality Furniture we have a big we just got rid of it we had a big picture that was probably like I don’t know 6 feet by 4 feet just a big huge picture we got fir $25 You know everything was so inexpensive these pictures they’re just pictures of flowers we bought them 15 years ago when we moved here and they were in a model home for a few years before that so they were dated and I was so ready to be done and so one thing that I felt that was good for my physical self care was to update the picture I want to look Like I want to look at something beautiful and that’s okay I can do that for myself and to go ahead and do that and I think you mentioned guilt I think that’s a thing like sometimes we feel this well I’ll just make do and say I’ll just look at these for 10 years so instead of saying no it’s okay to want these things for myself it’s okay to want to beautify my home Absolutely one of the things that my husband and I ventured on a few years ago was actually kind of minimizing the things that we had in our house because it was just so overwhelming everything was pretty but it was just clutter we minimized the visual clutter in our home to wear now when you walk in it’s like we have this physical space that we feel like we can actually breathe in. That makes a huge difference and that’s another one in physical self-care is simplifying and sounds like the kondo method oh yes marie kondo konmarie method See if everything’s right so are you or looking at it adding stress to your life then you want to get rid of it or if you’re missing something that you want to add into your life and kind of goes up both ways I mean just making your physical surrounding work for you so physical body physical surroundings those are all part of our physical self care cleaning up I am not a huge fan of cleaning I’m not a big I’m not one that you know is going to spend hours and hours cleaning my house everyday Level of cleaning my house that contributes to my self care that you know if there’s stuff on the floor it adds stress to my life it makes me frustrated and I just I’m not as happy of a person so recognizing okay I need just this little bit of cleanliness is going to make me better make me happier and so it’s good for me to take care of that and putting it Makes it so it’s on me like what I mean by that is I can say I’m doing this for me it’s not so that I have a picture perfect house it’s because I want it and then I don’t have that resentment things get messed up again it’s like that was worth it for me because I feel better for having done it right Physical mental self care so in mental self care it’s things that are going to help our mind so this might be listening to a podcast with a new project Maybe for mental we want to turn everything off I know some some houses they have music on all the time or TV on in the background and you don’t realize what that’s doing to your mental state until you turn it off and once you turn it off you go oh i can hear my thoughts i have this space in my mind and Oh I have the space in my mind into sometimes mentally that’s what we need and so recognizing that and a big part of this so here is recognizing what you need at the end and being aware of that and letting yourself take that step to get it Part of this is actually had to take a break from listening to different things are reading different articles or visiting different websites because I fell to the point to where I was overwhelmed because I couldn’t keep up it was pushing me down physically and these are the things that are really important to me some starting to add different things back in again so yeah I totally understand what you’re saying I think one thing that we can all relate to that similar to that is with Facebook or other social media we think you know it’s just part of our lives were on it and we don’t realize that weight that it sometimes has on us and so sometimes if we take a break from it if we step back that’s when we realized oh you know when I’m on Facebook I don’t feel as happy but you can’t realize that unless you step back from because youre so in it you know its very subtle You know it’s very subtle and I don’t know we’ll see what’s happening in the moment it is and it’s a habit to because I figure out that I’m watching TV at night or not doing something with my family and I will reach over for my phone to see what’s going on on Facebook and I realize that I need to kind of put this aside and take a mental break that way maybe for a while yeah definitely I think a lot of us have that habit alot of us think I’ll check really quick and our brain that’s the first thing we go to so rewriting those pathways in the brain reworking those habits so that they’re conscious it’s social media Yeah I check it but what I try to do what I hope to do is do it consciously and to make sure it’s not controlling me and that I don’t spend too much time or energy on things that are bringing me down right Okay so the next one number 3 on the self-care challenges nourish so this one’s talking about nourishing your body taking care of the things that you put into your body The things that you put into your body I am a huge fan of green smoothies have a green smoothie everyday I love my vegetables I hate my kids make a lot of fun of me they always say like what’s Mom’s favorite dessert a green smoothie and no it’s not that I do and you actually have a recipe for your favorite green smoothie on your website right I do yes it’s something I love I drink I do yes and I eat something I love I drink it every single day because I love it and because I feel like it’s nourishing my body and my particular green smoothie recipe is pretty low and sugar which is kind of hard to find a lot of green smoothies people drink have a lot of sugar to your system all at once so I like this smoothie cuz it doesn’t have a ton of sugar and it still gives you that boost of energy from So that might be nursing yourself might mean that might be eating healthy but it might mean something else entirely it might mean you are to focus on dieting and weight loss and maybe to nurse yourself what you really need is a hot fudge sundae maybe that’s what made yeah I think that yeah I think you’re right I think I do need that Give us two as moms we want that and our bodies like just give me some sugar I want to treat and so what do we do we go hide in the pantry with a sleeve of Oreos or you know the pint of ice cream eating it really fast they’re going to want them to our bodies we can feel the difference even talking about that you know sitting down with a spoon in a hot fudge sundae is a lot different feeling than standing up eating Chips Ahoy in the pantry right Do you want the thing that is going to get whatever it is that is going to us whether it’s more on the Eno green green leafy vegetable side or the indulgent side wherever it is we need to do it without guilt because we can do either of those things with you sure it’s easy to be guilty for the Indulgence but we can also be drinking a green smoothie this is all I deserve because I’m fat and I can’t I’m not worthy of the cheesecake but I just actually experienced this yesterday just going Yesterday just going to the grocery store because I ran in for a couple items and I’m at the checkout and I’ll look over and I see like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups which is one of my favorite thing and my mom guilt totally came in and I said no I’m not going to eat those because I know that my kids would love to have those two if I’m eating it I’m not sharing it with them then I totally passed on the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups I’m not sharing it with them then and I totally passed on the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and did not get some but I still thinking about it today absolutely I am because sometimes we need a little treat so one thing that I talked about a lot is the 80-20 rule and this is what I really believe with nutrition I studied at the Institute of nutritional leadership with dr josh axe But there’s some wiggle room the other 20% have the Reese’s peanut butter cups without guilt know that you’re eating good things most of the time and that’s not that’s not super healthy not really