Is Hot Mess Mom Culture giving you a Hot Mess Gut? Here's how to know ...

Is "Hot Mess Mom" culture a driving factor of your Hot Mess Gut? Find out how and why and what to do about it!

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Transcript

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And together we're gonna cancel hot mess, mom culture. I love it. Whenever you do all of this, here's the gut health tie-in that I promised you guys, whenever you start to shift away from hot mess, mom mode. You're actually going to feel more in control. By relinquishing control of so many things. Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Nourished and Thriving Show. I'm your host, Katie Lovitt. I'm a registered dietitian on a mission to help you increase your impact and legacy on the world while healing your gut and reducing your IBS symptoms. I'm so grateful to have you here. Each week I'll inspire you to live vibrantly and provide valuable resources and information that empowers you to take bold action towards your health goals. Before we dive in, make sure you follow or subscribe to my show wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode. Ready? Let's go! Did you grow up watching your mom, put her health and wellbeing on the back burner to care for everyone else around her? And now that you're a mom. You find that you're in the exact same place. You're definitely not alone. And this is something that I really want to speak to today. And it's what I call hot mess, mom culture. And you've probably heard this term before, too. I didn't coin it. It's a whole thing. And honestly, it's funny, right? Like it all makes us laugh. It's it's funny. I'm hot mess, mom. I'm completely out of control. My kids are out of control. It's a circus. This is my circus. These are my monkeys type of situation. We've all been there. And it helps us bond. It helps us feel a sense of comradery. It helps us. Laugh at this just feeling of too much and feeling of a sense of a failure. And a lot of this as women, it was just something that we've watched being modeled to us for generations. And. You know, I want to say it is a balance. I'm not saying that as a mother, you should not have sacrificial love for your family. 100%. I think that like my aunt texted me the other day. Your home is holy ground. You know, where you are serving and loving your family and pouring yourself out for them. You will then get poured into. But there's a distinction between hot mess, mom and sacrificial love. There's a difference between, you know, Sacrificially loving your family and putting their needs before your own. And completely not caring for your own body and yourself. It's just like, you know, there's the, the second Redis commandment that Jesus gave was to love your neighbor as yourself. But he didn't set say, love your neighbor instead of yourself. He said, love your neighbor as yourself. So yes, you should still love yourself. You should still care for yourself. That doesn't mean that it's one or the other. It's both. And. And I think so much of the time we almost martyr ourselves. And I've talked about this before. And it leads to bitterness and resentment, ultimately, which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to do. It leads to you feeling bloated, exhausted. You can't lose weight. Your whole body hurts. And maybe you're telling yourself, it's just part of being a mom and you just have to power through it. Doesn't really seem like there's even another option because things still need to get time. Right? Like you're just on this hamster wheel of life. But friends, this is a lie. Your family, your friends, your coworkers, maybe you're not even a hot mess. Mom. Maybe you're just a hot mess of a person. Like maybe you don't even have kids, but you're just still can like relate to what I'm saying here. Everyone around you needs you to be at your best. And right now, if you're in this. You aren't. And so, like I said, at the beginning, I really just want to cancel hot mess mom culture. Okay. It's funny. But we can laugh at other things. We need to be able to care for ourselves so that we can do the work that we are meant to do. So. That's what it is. That's what we're talking about today. Just. Putting too much on our plates, not being able to possibly handle it. All right. You're like jokingly saying, oh, I wish I had like six more hands or six more arms to carry all that I'm carrying literally and figuratively here. But then I think it goes a step further from just being overwhelmed or being over committed or over extended. And accepting and celebrating that. And I don't think it's something that we as a culture should except in celebrate. Now. B. A hot mess mom or feeling overextended is absolutely true in. In certain seasons. Things are going to feel a little bit out of control sometimes without a way to calm the storm. So seasons of brand new babies maybe have really busy work schedules, or maybe there's a couple of weeks where extracurricular activities overlap, where one season is ending and one is already beginning and you just. Are a little bit overextended for a short period of time. Every, you know, even like just an occasional day may feel like this was a hot mess of the day. Like nothing went according to plan. Everything is like, feels chaotic and all of that, but it's different from it being the norm where you just feel like you can never get ahead and you're just putting out fires constantly. It's exhausting. Right. I think a lot of this comes from our society. Expecting. Without even being intentional about it, it's just happened. Expecting moms or women to carry the burden of everything. More and more women are working outside of the home, you know, 70 years ago now, which feels like it's way longer ago than it should be. I'm getting old, but like the societal roles were more clearly defined where the husband would go out of the home and work and provide the money and all of that. And the wife would stay home and be the main like caretaker and home maintenance like provider and. Who manager, I guess is what I'm trying to say. She stays home and is the caretaker and home manager or manager. She stays home when kids are sick and takes care of their stuff at school and takes care of meals, which is still a lot. But what we've done is mom and wife still does all of those things. And also works outside of the home. There's not been this transfer of responsibility. Moms are still typically the ones that are managing the mental calendar and the task list of who needs to be where and when and what groceries we need to purchase. And. When school dress up days are what projects are going on right now. Whose friends have birthday parties, what family birthdays are going on? Not to mention most of just the home management and maintenance tasks, like laundry and cleaning. And our partners are absolutely stepping up and helping out more and more and contributing more. And, you know, we really view each other as a team and a partnership in a different way than, you know, generations in the past. Have. I think that this is something that our generation is actually doing a really great job at anything gets super cool. But it can still feel imbalanced at times, you know, and I don't think it's all on women. I don't think. Sometimes I don't, I don't think that the tables are always slanted to where women are always taking on more. Maybe sometimes the man is taking on more. I do work with some men and, you know, I've had some guys where they're like, man, I feel like I'm the only one, like planning meals and like really trying to make these changes. And needing to get their wives on board, you know, with this. If you're in this space and you're like, I feel like I'm a hot mess. I feel like it's every day, it's not just a season. What you said really resonated around about running around, putting out fires constantly and never really getting ahead. I actually have a few tips to help you help things come more into balance. And then we're going to tie it all together into gut health at the end, because that's what you're all here for. Right. It's got health. I promise there's a connection. And just speaking to, like, why am I an expert on this? Why can I share my perspective on this? Like, what is my. I don't want to say authority here, but like, why am I the one here who can tell you about this and talk about it. It's because I've been there. I have three young ish kids. They're getting older by the day. And. I'm totally not ready for it, but they're young. I have a very, very old sweet dog who requires a lot of care. I am president of a volunteer organization in our community. And my husband is our precinct chair. Politically. So he's busy with that. We go to church we're in home group. We volunteer, our kids are in a lot of activities. I run my own business. My husband also works for himself. We have a lot going on. And in seasons, it has felt overwhelming. And I have had to do all of this work on myself. So I've walked these steps and I've done it and I've seen what a huge, positive improvement it can make on the quality of our lives. Am I perfect? No. Do I have it all figured out? No. Does it change? And things need to be adjusted as things change 100%. Like you're never going to be able to do these tips one time. And be set up forever. Like life changes, themes, evolve, people, evolve, all of that. So this is really something that needs to be consistently incorporated into your lifestyle so that you can make those adjustments. As you need to make them. So tip number one is asking the question why now, if you've been around for very long, you've heard me say this before, as it goes for your health and your gut health with health and gut health is why is this important to me? Why are these things happening? All of that, really trying to understand. The why and the, how the context behind certain symptoms. Well, your hot mess. Hot hot mess, gut hot. That's what I talk about in gut health stuff. Hot mess, mom. See the like parallel. They're your hot mess, mom status symptoms. Have the same. Underlying issues a lot of the time as gut issues and asking that question of why. Can be really, really powerful and starting to piece a part. The motivation behind this and the reasons why you're here in this place. And can help you put effective strategies and solutions into place. So you're ever curious about how we work in gut health. This is like a similar process, actually. So the first question is asking why. Why are you carrying this load? Why is it happening? Why is such a great place to start? It could be that you've just taken it on as a default without really thinking about it. You know, like. You lived by yourself, your spouse looked by himself, you guys moved in together and you just did things. And maybe you fell into a good routine of systems. Maybe it was a divided, evenly divided system or set of chores or roles or responsibilities. Maybe it wasn't, maybe it was like imbalanced from the get-go. Maybe it became imbalanced for a certain season while he was super busy with work or traveling a lot. But now that's changed and you guys never intentionally changed, you know, your systems or your balance to match that. So it could have just been as. As a default, you know, women tend to be. Action takers. Right? We're the ones that are pretty quick to jump in a lot of the time. And. Fix problems. And so you noticed something needed to be done and you did it and you took action towards it and you continue doing it and you continue taking action towards it. And it just became something you took on yourself. If that's the case, you really need to think about everything that you're carrying on and have a conversation with whoever you share your house with. Maybe it's a roommate, maybe it's your spouse. Maybe it's just your kids. If you're a single parent, And really think through how you can delegate and divide it to where it's more evenly split. Maybe you were in a season where you were staying at home, you know, before, and you were doing all of these things and now you've returned to work. And you, you can't continue to manage all that you were managing before. And so In different situations, call for different. You know, assignments have different tasks and responsibilities. We're going to come back to this in just a minute. Something you really also need to ask whenever you're asking yourself why, and kind of check yourself on is, is your pride or your ego keeping you in the hot mess, mom category. This could be something like, are you subconsciously believing that you're the hero that has to do at all? You know, like you're a superhero mom, you're a super mom. We hear those phrases a lot. And you're feeling like you're rising to that occasion a little bit. Do you keep it on your plate as a way to grasp at security or control in a world that can feel very out of control? You know, if you've ever heard of like, oh, I'm going to go anxiety clean because it's something I can control whenever everything feels out of control. You know, we like to hold on to things so that we can control them. Whenever the outside world appeals uncontrollable or out of control ask yourself that question. Do you maybe believe that nobody else can do it as well as you can do it, so they shouldn't do it at all. My way is the right way. So nobody else can do this. I know that those are really tough questions and you're probably not going to have an answer to those right now on this podcast. So. Go back and re-listen to the last like minute. And jot those questions down and come back to them. And you can think about it. But all of those things can really be the root causes of this hot mess mom epidemic that are keeping you from being your best and healthiest self. And you can bet just like I touched on, they have very real physical symptoms that can come alongside these things. There are, everything has a cost, right? I always say this, everything costs something. So your need to control, or your lack of planning and delegation, or lack of really being thoughtful about the systems that. You have in place are costing you things. And in this case it can be quality relationships. It can be your health and wellbeing, all of that. So it's really important, you know, that you really think about this. So first tip is ask yourself why it's happening. Second tip is set up systems. Think through your day in a week. Where do these themes typically fall off the rails? Right? What tasks seem to lead to a spiral of chaos in your house? If they go on done for us, it's the dishes in the library. There's five of us in this house, my husband and I are home all the time. If those two things get behind everything else falls apart too. It's like, okay, well, if I didn't load the dishwasher, we forgot to run the dishwasher the night before. Then we're running it during the day, or if I didn't unload it in the morning because I was busy. Okay. Then we're like accumulating then dirty dishes throughout the day, you know? And then we pick up kids and go to kid activities and go to cook dinner in the evening. And we have a dishwasher full of clean dishes, a sink full of dirty dishes. Maybe a cluttered kitchen counter, because we've had the, like, we'll leave things on the counter now because nothing's put up. And so then before you can even make dinner, you're having to clean your kitchen. So just really, you know, spending five to 10 minutes in the morning, making sure that we are unloading the dishwasher is going to just set the rest of our day up for success, because then we can just. Add things to, you know, our dishwasher throughout the day. We're more cognizant of any messages or dishes that we're leaving out. All of that. So think through what the things are. It's like, if this doesn't happen, everything else falls apart and then create a system or, you know, create a new habit around how are we going to do this? How are we going to make sure that this gets done every day so that everything else doesn't spiral. My third tip is delegate. Do you have kids? If you have kids. You need to give them some responsibility and teach them how to do these tasks. It's not going to be perfect at first. It's going to take. Five times as long, it would have been easier in that moment for you to just done it yourself. I promise you that. But eventually, and faster than you might be within a couple of weeks, they're going to be so proud to be contributing to the home maintenance. They're going to start doing it a lot better. And they're going to start to be more responsible for other things, and they're going to notice, so my five-year-old lately has been really into picking up their bathroom, their bathroom. The kids' bathroom is also our guest bathroom, which is never a good arrangement, but If we have company over that's, the bathroom may have to use. And so there's. Dirty clothes thrown all over the floor, or maybe someone took a shower in there and didn't close the shower curtain all the way. And there's water all over the floor. They got toothpaste on the counter. Like it. Kids in bathrooms, right? Like bright. But she has started really taking pride in picking up the bathroom. Her brother and sister seems to wiping down the counters, all of that. And if somebody makes a mess on the counter after she has just cleaned it, or if her sister goes in there to shower after she's just cleaned up her sister's dirty clothes for her. She's the one. Now making comments and telling that person, Hey, I just cleaned that counter and you got toothpaste. All over it. And so it's helping that mental burden shift of like, I'm now not the one who's like harping on this bathroom situation. Adeline is because she's invested because she spent her time. Cleaning it up. And so then the other kids are invested in it too, because then they're having to really be held accountable and mom, isn't having to hold them accountable for as many things. And that frees up my mental space and all of that. The other bonus to this is your kid is not going to be the one who goes to college and doesn't know how to do their laundry or cook themselves a meal. Let's face it. We've all had a roommate that didn't know how to do the use the washing machine. Right. Didn't know the cook themselves a meal, and you don't want your kid to be that, you know, we're really preparing our kids to be adults. Like we don't want to have, we don't want to just raise good kids. We want to raise independent, highly functioning. It's all two are well balanced and know how to care for themselves. And. All of that. And so by you holding everything tight and wanting everything done a certain way. You're really not giving them the opportunity to do all of that. So it can definitely require a lot of patients in the beginning, but it's so worth it. So those are my biggest three tips to get you started. And I just want to say, chances are at your family, doesn't realize how you've been feeling or they don't realize that maybe there's another option either that they can do things differently. Right. So the last thing I'm going to give you a tip on here is set some family priorities. And some self priorities here. Whether the handful of themes that are the most important to you and your family call a family meeting. I think this is really fun to do, you know, any time of year, you can do it at the beginning of the year, around new year's and everyone's setting goals. You can do it quarterly at family meeting. How are we doing, what are our priorities right now? But do we want to. You know, try this year. What do we want to like go of activity-wise that we're just not enjoying as much and really bring your family in together in this and invest in this together. And that's going to go a lot farther. We can't do everything and I know sometimes we have kids or we want to do it all. And we live in a world where there are more and more options and opportunities than we've ever had before. And if you don't have a north star guiding you, that's your priorities. You're going to say yes to way too many things and naturally be overwhelmed and overextended. And it's just too much to manage. So once you have your priorities set saying no to things that aren't in line with those priorities becomes a lot easier. You have a clear reason to say, no, it's not a priority for me right now. That's not really anything you can argue with, right? If somebody says that to you, if somebody, if I'm talking with somebody on Instagram about joining my gut rehab program, And they come back and they're like, yeah, I'm really miserable every single day. But honestly, focusing on my health, isn't a priority for my knee right now. Okay. That's not what I would choose for you. Obviously I really care about people's got help, but it's not a priority for you. And I respect and appreciate you being upfront and transparent with me about that. You know? It's a priority for someone else. The volunteer thing at school. If it's not a priority for you right now, it's a priority for someone else. Someone else is going to have being more present in my kids' school. As a priority for them. And that's great for them. It's going to keep you from resenting people in situations. It's going to keep you from being better and it's going to help you have joy as you show up, you know, and as you're setting these boundaries and being clear about priorities with other moms, you're going to have a ripple effect and they're going to realize, oh, I can have priorities too. And I can say no to things that aren't priorities for me. And together we're gonna cancel hot mess, mom culture. I love it. Whenever you do all of this, here's the gut health tie-in that I promised you guys, whenever you start to shift away from hot mess, mom mode. You're actually going to feel more in control. By relinquishing control of so many things. I know that sounds really counterintuitive, but it's so true. You're going to be less stressed. Lust in that fight flight or freeze mode. And that actually means good things for your gut health and overall health. Your Vegas nerve is based in the part of your brain where this fight flight or freeze mode is housed in that nerve goes all throughout your gut and controls that gut motility. So getting out of this and into a more restful state is going to help improve your digestion. Also possibly free up some time so that you can incorporate other habits that are beneficial for your gut health and overall health. That you decide are priorities for you, such as getting enough sleep meal, prepping and exercise. So. I hope that this episode leaves you feeling inspired and encouraged and like you're not alone in this because you're not, I know it can feel very lonely, you know, as a mom, if you're feeling overwhelmed. But I'd love for you to go back and re-listen write some notes down if you've been driving or anything like that, whenever you requesting the first time. And tell me which action you're going to take. First, which tip are you going to incorporate first? Probably starting with the why is the one that I would recommend, which I know can be sticky. So maybe it's setting some family priorities together. And maybe that's your first baby step, but I can't wait to hear what you're doing. I can't wait to hear about the difference it's making in your life and looking forward to talking with you soon. Thank you so much for listening to the entire episode. I hope you are feeling inspired and empowered to take bold action towards your health goals. If you enjoy what you heard, don't forget to follow my show so you never miss a new episode. And it would mean the world to me, if you left me a review, so others know what to expect from my show. Last, get in touch. Let me know what bold action you're taking. Let me know how you're inspired. Follow me on Instagram@the_healthygut_dietitian. I've put a link in my show notes for you, so you can simply click and follow. Come say hi, I respond to all my messages and I can't wait to get in touch.