The Busy Girl’s Guide to Healthy Habits That Actually Save You Time

Hey girlfriend!

If your days feel like a constant race from one thing to the next… this episode is for you.

If you’ve ever thought:
“I want to be healthy, I just don’t have the time.”
“I feel behind before my day even starts.”
“Why does everything feel so chaotic and rushed?”

I get it because I used to feel that way too.

And here’s the truth most people won’t tell you:
It’s not that you need more time.
It’s that you need less friction in your day.

In this episode, we’re talking about the small, realistic habits that actually give you time back, not take more of it away.

We’re not adding more to your already full plate.
We’re simplifying it.

Inside this episode, we dive into:

• How small weekly habits can eliminate the daily “what am I eating?” stress and help you feel calmer and more in control during the week
• Why a simple night routine can completely change how your mornings feel
• How to stop wasting mental energy on workouts
• Easy ways to pair movement with your daily life so you’re not trying to “fit in” exercise

Because healthy habits shouldn’t feel like another chore on your to-do list.

They should make your life feel easier.

If you’ve been stuck in the cycle of feeling like there’s never enough time for yourself, this episode will help you rethink what’s actually possible with the life you have right now.

Press play, and let’s make your days feel lighter, calmer, and a whole lot more doable.

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WORK WITH ME: 

• Seismic Shift: Group Health Coaching (code POWERFUL for 10% off)
• 1:1 Coaching

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💌 Connect With Laura:

1. Website: Health Coach for Teachers & Busy, Working Women
2. Instagram: LAURA B. | Teacher turned Health Coach | Podcaster🎙️ (@laura.b.healthy) • Instagram photos and videos
3. TikTok: Laura B. | Health Coach (@laura.b.healthy) | TikTok

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If this episode resonates with you, share it with a friend who always says they “just don’t have time.” 💛

And if you haven’t already, be sure to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode designed to help you build a healthy lifestyle that actually fits your life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Isn't She Powerful Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today because I'm going to be sharing with you a few things that you can do weekly and daily that will help you feel like time has been added back into your busy schedule. The truth is, is when done the right way, healthy habits can support you in a way to where they don't feel so overwhelming. They don't feel like another thing on the to-do list and something that you have to do and make time for. And instead, they can be something that supports you and gives you more time back in your day to do the things that you want to do, such as spend time with your kids or go do whatever, whatever hobbies you like. You can have more time to do those things if you do these healthy habits the right way. And so I'm so excited to be sharing with you what these healthy habits are and how to start implementing them. With that being said though, before I even get into it, I want to be crystal clear on something. Your mindset has to be in the right place in order for these healthy habits to stick. In order for you to hear these and accept these and say, okay, I can start doing those things. I want to start doing those things. And when I do those things, then I'll have more time in my life. Because at first, when you hear this, you're gonna feel like great, that's just another thing she's telling me to do. It's something else that I have to add into my schedule. But I'm telling you that by adding in these things, you are going to feel like more time is given back to you. But you have to be accepting of that. So my invitation to you is before you even get into the rest of this episode, you do a little quick mental check-in and you say, okay, I'm gonna accept these things, I'm gonna hear these things, and I'm going to take the initiative to start implementing at least one of the things after this episode and just see how does it make my life feel. Do I feel like I have more time? As a reminder, I host my group coaching program, Seismic Shift. It is available for you to join right now, and I would love so much to have you in the program. You can learn everything that you need to about the program by visiting thehealthyhabits.com slash seismic dash shift, or you can use the link down below. Again, the group coaching program is named Seismic Shift because we are doing very tiny things to make seismic shifts in your day-to-day life. All right, let's get into this episode. Welcome to the Isn't You Powerful Podcast. I'm your host, Laura B, health coach, educator, and founder of the Be Healthy Lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

I'm here to bring you all of the health education and motivation so that you can sign off each week feeling equipped and empowered to tackle all of your health goals. Come along with me as I teach you the basics of healthy living so that you can have everyone in your life say, Isn't she powerful?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

So, as I said, we are going to talk about weekly and daily habits. And I have just one habit that I'm going to ask you to start doing weekly. And again, I'm only asking that you do one of these things. After you get done listening to this episode, I only am asking that you take one thing and start doing that one thing. I understand that this one is a big one. And for some people, you have some resistance to it. Other people are like, I've been doing that for years and it's no big deal. Because once you start doing it, you realize one the benefit of it. You realize how much time it does give you back in your day-to-day life. You realize how much mental space you get back by doing this one thing. But for some people, it feels like a very big, taunting task to do. What I'm talking about is meal planning. And I'm not even asking that you do meal prep, that you do anything along those lines. Now, I do feel like meal planning and meal prepping does bring a lot of free time to your day-to-day life during the week. But I also know that sometimes it can make it feel like that one day that you're doing the meal prep is super overwhelming and time consuming. So we won't even go there right now. For now, writing down what you are going to have is the only step that I am speaking about. What I'm telling you to do is get a notebook. You could do it in a notes app in your phone if that's what feels good for you, and start listing out. This is what I'm having for breakfast this week. This is what we'll have for lunch, this is dinner, these are a few snacks. And if you write down what you're going to have, number one, you can make sure that you actually have that food in your refrigerator or freezer or pantry so that the day doesn't come and you're like, we're supposed to have tacos. We don't even have taco, like literal taco shells. And so we can't have tacos. I guess we're gonna go out to eat. That helps you avoid that situation. So it saves you that situation where it's saving you time, it's saving you energy, it's saving you money. But it also is so beneficial because now you can have it planned in advance so that you can stay on track with the healthy meals and the healthy things that you are trying to eat. On that one day that you have to write down what it is that you're gonna be eating, it can feel like, oh my gosh, this is taking so much time and mental energy. But on the day to day, you're gonna see that you're not having to figure out every single night. You know that phone call that you get whenever you clock off work and then somebody from home calls you, your kids, your husband, and he's like, hey, what are we having for dinner tonight? And all of a sudden, all of the pressure is on you to figure out what we are having for dinner tonight? I don't know. Why do I always have to make the decision? If it's a lot of pressure, it can cause a lot of resentment in you. And so instead, if you have something written down, you know it, your family knows it, that phone call goes away. Now, so does all of the question of what are we gonna have? You have food in your house already ready for this meal. Somebody could even start cooking it before you come home if you're lucky. And so now you have a really easy day to day. The day that you're making the meal plan, it might feel a little overwhelming in the beginning, but eventually you're gonna understand the true benefits of it, and it's going to be one of those things that you're like, we have to know what we're having in advance. So, my invitation to you is to start meal planning. Something that I have my clients do is make a list of all of their favorite meals. What are those meals? And in my program size make shift, you get a lot of recipes given to you already. They're healthy, they're already well balanced, all of those good things. But there's also meals that you guys like to have that aren't a part of the program that you're still allowed to have. And so make a list of everything that you and your family like to eat. That way, when you're making the meal plan, you can reference the list versus having to come up with it from scratch every single time. So that helps take away some of that meal planning anxiety. And also the meal planning takes away the day-to-day anxiety, and you're gonna find that you have so much more time in your day-to-day life, and you're not having to run out and go to the grocery store to grab that one thing or get everybody in the car so that we can go out to eat. It's gonna simplify your day-to-day life drastically. So that's the one weekly routine that I invite you to set up. The next thing I'm gonna talk about is a few things you could do nightly. I have three things that will bring you a lot of time and space back into your life whenever you start doing these things in the evenings. Number one, set out your clothes for the next day before you even go to bed. So my husband does this every single night before we go to bed. He sets out his gym clothes for the next day and he just kind of rotates through the same few outfits for work. So they're also already set out. And so that takes away so much of his stress in the morning. He doesn't have to think about, oh my goodness, I don't have a pair of underwear. Let me run across the house, go see if there's any in the dryer and shift through all the dryer clothes and pull something out. Instead, he just has the clothes already set out in the morning. He just has to put them on and get going. So setting your clothes out at night, it might take a couple of minutes at night, but it saves you so much time in the morning and it saves you a lot of the frustration in the morning. You have a lot more patience to get these things done before going to bed than you're gonna have in the morning when you're trying to rush yourself and everybody else out of the door. Maybe you've heard of my group coaching program, Seismic Shift, and you've thought, I mean, it sounds great, but I just don't have any extra time in my life. Or, well, I've tried other programs and they didn't work, and I'm sure this one's not gonna be any different. Or even I just don't have the extra money to be wasting right now, and I'm not gonna spend my money on something that probably isn't going to work for me. I hear you. I've had those exact same thoughts many times in my life, and so have every single one of the women who have decided to join Seismic Shift. They're busy just like you. They've tried everything else, just like you, and they don't trust themselves to follow through anymore, just like you. And that's why I designed Seismic Shift to be different. When you work with me, you are no longer relying on willpower or motivation. We focus on creating small, realistic habits that fit the life that you currently live. We're not overhauling your entire life, we're just building new routines step by step in a way that you can actually keep up with. And believe me when I say you are not doing it alone. There is live coaching in the chat, there's live coaching in all of our calls, and there's so much accountability. I recently had someone say, I'd love to join, but I joined a program before and the coach did not actually keep up with me. It was like I got lost in the crowd. So I said, let me prove to you that I can be different. And that's exactly what I've done. I've checked in with her personally. I have made sure that she is on track with this program, just like I would do for you. This isn't about doing it perfectly, it's about doing something that actually sticks. So if you're tired of starting over, this is your next step. You can join me inside of seismic shift right now by visiting Behealthyhabits.com slash seismic dash shift or visiting the link down in the show notes. Again, that's behealthyhabits.com slash seismic dash shift, or heading down to the link in the show notes and easily finding us there. And because you are a podcast listener, I have a special discount code for you that gets you 10% off for life. You can use the code POWEFL. Again, that's the code POWEFL at checkout for 10% off for life. The other thing to do at night is plan for or set out and prepare the food that you need for the following day. Whenever I worked outside of my home, I would make sure that I had my breakfast and my lunch already ready in the refrigerator. They had their own little section. This is Laura's lunch for tomorrow. I would just grab it and put it in a lunchbox and then walk out of the door in the mornings. And that saves me so much time and effort in the morning. I didn't have to worry about, oh my goodness, I'm running out of time. I still need to get ready and I have to eat my breakfast and I have to get lunch together. And instead, I could just have it. It's already done. I'm just putting it in the lunchbox and walking out of the door. Because what happens a lot of times is you end up skipping meals because you're like, I don't have the time for it. So you end up skipping the mails and saying, well, screw it, it's not worth it. I've got to go to work. And now we're skipping meals and we're not feeling good and all of those negative things. We all all, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, then you know the dangers of skipping meals. So we're not doing that around here. So make sure that you have your food prepared or set out or planned for, done what you can the night before. And along those same lines, the third thing to do at night is fill your water bottle up. This is not like a hundred percent necessary, but if you really struggle with remembering to fill your water, remembering to bring it with you, remembering to get your water in during the day, having that water bottle already full the night before. So you just have to grab it and go, or you could put it beside your bed so that you can grab it first thing in the morning and walk around with it during the morning while you're getting ready and then take it with you during the day. That can be very beneficial to you. So I recommend having a water bottle. I use my brewmate, this is the one that I carry around with me all the time. It keeps the ice in there for a very long time. So if you're somebody who really struggles to remember to have your water or get in enough water, fill that water bottle up the night before. That way it's one less thing you have to do in the morning and one less thing you have to think about in the mornings. Now, the final thing that I want to touch on is exercise. And this obviously is a somewhat daily thing. I'm not saying that you need to go to the gym daily, but you should be moving your body in some way every single day, whether that just be taking the dog for a walk or whether that be getting up and going to the gym or doing a workout at your house or whatever it may be, your body should be moved in some way every single day. And I have a couple of things that you could do because I know that exercise is one of those that's the first thing to go. Like when you don't have a lot of time, you're like, yeah, well, exercise, uh-uh, I'm not doing that. I don't have the time for that. We that's just not a priority whenever life is busy. And I totally understand that. And whenever I transitioned away from teaching into owning my own business, my schedule surprisingly filled up more. Like I was more busy trying to do everything to start my own business. And so that ended up making it to where exercising wasn't as big of a priority for me, and so I did less of that. What I finally had to do was go back and connect the dots. Why was I being so consistent with exercise previously? And what do I need to do now to make myself consistent with exercise again? And there were a couple things that stood out to me that I'm gonna share with you. Number one is if you really struggle with I don't have time to go to the gym and figure out what to do there and you know, navigate all of the machines and all of that stuff. To me, the big the thing that made the biggest difference was having somebody tell me what to do. For so long, I followed either YouTube or Beach Body workouts, and now I go to an actual gym, I go to the YMCA and I go to the classes. I don't even go down into the area with the machines. I don't know what to do there, and I'm not gonna take the time to figure it out. That's the last thing on my mind. It is not a priority, but if I can walk into a room and somebody can tell me what to do, it makes it so much easier for me to actually get up and go and do it because I just have to show up and do it. I don't have to think. So, my invitation to you is if that is your your downfall, you're like, yeah, I I would be fine doing the workout and I would be fine making the time, the 30 minutes to 40 minutes to do the workout, but I don't know what to do during this workout. Find a way to have somebody tell you what to do. That's what it is. That's a point blank period. Find someone find a way for somebody to tell you what to do. Whether that be a video that you follow, I used to get those little there, they're just like little things that you can follow on Pinterest's pictures of what workouts to do, what exercise moves to do at the gym. So I used to follow those. Or, like I said, now I have a gym membership where I go to a class and somebody tells me what to do. But that takes away so much of the the time that I was spending figuring out what to do. Now I don't have to use that time. And so it gave me time back into my life. If you're like, I don't even have time to do that, I don't have time to go to the gym, I don't have time to show up to something like that, or do it even at my house. I don't have that. There's an idea that I have for you where you could take walks, but pair those with something else that you have to do. So if, for example, in the evenings you like to do like a sit-down and catch up with your kids and your husband, do that while on a walk. If you like to talk on the phone with your friends or your family members, take that phone call on a walk. So find things that you're doing during your day that you could pair with a walk, whether that walk be outside or that walk be on a walking pad at your house, pair it with something that you have to do so that it again is giving you a little time back into your life. By pairing these two activities, you're utilizing your time a little bit better. So these are some things that I invite you to start doing. Weekly, write down what you guys are gonna eat for your meals. You can start small, start with just dinner, or start with just your breakfast, whatever you feel is the most priority one for you to do. Start there, write that down and have a plan for it, have the groceries, and then if you have the time, even go as far as making something in advance so that you don't have to worry about it throughout the week. You could just grab it and go. Daily, have some nighttime routines. Set your clothes out, set your food out, get your water done before you go to bed. That way your morning is so much less stressful. And then whenever it comes to exercise, find a way for somebody to tell you what to do and or pair those workouts with something else that you already have to do. I hope that these habits hit home for you. I hope that they were things that you can take and immediately start implementing. And I challenge you to do the things that I talked about, even though your mind might be telling you that that's still more to do. There's still more that she's asking me to do. I invite you to say, I know that if I trust this, then I'm gonna get some time back into my life and it really is going to benefit me. So keep your mindset in check. And don't forget that if you would love to work with me, I would love to work with you too. You can visit behealthyhabits.com slash seismic dash shift to learn how to work with me in my group coaching program. I would be honored to have you there. I cannot wait to see you guys in another episode of the Isn't She Powerful Podcast. Make sure you have subscribed to the show wherever you are watching or listening. Make sure that you share this episode. It means so much to me whenever I see you guys sharing the episodes. And if you haven't already left a rating or review in the past, it would be so helpful for me if you would do that. So thank you all for being here. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. And until then, please never forget how powerful you are. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. And always remember the more you know, the more you grow.