96. Back-to-School, Not Back to Chaos: 5 Sanity-Saving Systems for Fall

August doesn’t mess around—and if your house is feeling the pressure of new routines, school supplies, and suddenly remembering how to pack a lunch again, this episode is for you.

In this week’s episode of Weight Loss Made Simple, Dr. Stacy shares five realistic, brain-friendly systems to help your whole family transition into fall with more calm, fewer meltdowns, and actual food on the dinner table. Whether you’re a parent or just someone craving a fresh start, these back-to-school habits will help you reset your routines and reduce stress in the process.

You’ll learn:

🎵 How to create dopamine-friendly mornings (without screens!)

🌮 Why theme nights make dinner planning ridiculously easier

🧠 How to sneak in healthy habits using "cue stacking"

🌙 The secret to evening wind-down routines that reduce nighttime snacking

📅 How to run a 10-minute Sunday Family Reset that actually works

✨ This episode is packed with practical tips, family-tested systems, and a dose of MD-bestie wisdom to help you take advantage of this natural “New Year” moment.

Whether you're managing drop-offs or just craving more structure in your day, this episode will help you reset your habits—without adding more overwhelm.

Free 2-Pound Plan Call!
Want to jump start your weight loss? Schedule a free call where Dr. Stacy Heimburger will work with you to create a personalized plan to lose 2 pounds in one week, factoring in your unique circumstances, challenges, and aspirations. Schedule now! www.sugarfreemd.com/2pound

This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Dr. Stacy Heimburger, and I want to talk about the craziness that is August. So if your house is anything like mine, August is a bit bananas. New schedules, back to school, new routines, everyone's a little bit sad summer is over, and just a lot starts getting packed in. We go from this sort of one thing a day to now getting ready for school and sports, and no one has their water bottle, and no one remembered to pack a lunch or order lunch.

And it's really hard for the kids to get back in school. My kids—I always get phone calls about behavior the first week. But I'm here with good news, because this can be a real fresh start for us. And I love that idea. I read somewhere that back to school is like New Year’s for moms, and I thought that was kind of fun.

So we're going to hit the reset button with a new schedule, new routine for back to school. And I'm going to give you a couple of friendly systems, a couple of tactical things that will hopefully make that transition a little bit smoother for you.

The first thing I want to talk about is mornings. Actually, let me backtrack. The first thing I want to talk about is this is really a time to reset any behaviors that you don't want, right?

So I know screen time is a big deal with kids, and it's always a fight. And I've just heard from so many parents, like they're so disappointed in how much screen time their kids have. You know, we sort of built this habit and we wish we hadn't. I think these transitions—these back-to-school or start-of-summer transitions—are a great time to just do a hard reset. And it's going to be hard... or not, right?

I mean, setting up a new system, getting into a new routine, can be hard no matter what. So if we think limiting screen time is going to be hard, let's just wrap it all in. Let's take all our hard at one time. And while everyone's adjusting to change, let's put in some things that we would like to see—kind of that ideal schedule, that ideal day that we have in our mind. Let's aim for that and see how close we can get.

So I love this idea that we can just start over, and we can change as much as we want during these transition times.

So the first thing I want to talk about is our mornings. We want a little bit of dopamine in the morning, but we don't necessarily want a ton of dopamine in the morning. So one of the things that always kind of sneaks back into our routine that we're always trying to sneak back out is this idea of the kids having TV in the morning.

My kids are little sneakers, right? They will sneak in and find where we hid the remotes. And we hide the remotes in different spots every night. They are just so good at it. We are teaching them to be the best hide-and-seek players on the continent.

But when we don't let them have TV in the morning, their behavior is night and day. Getting ready for school: easy versus hard—night and day. If they have TV, they are so sucked into it, their little brains are so hijacked, that getting ready for school becomes just a disaster.

So a little bit of dopamine—but for us, that's going to be no TV in the morning, right? So they get a little bit now in the summer. That is done. No TV. Maybe they'll do music, and mine know how to use all the Alexas in the house, so they will just tell Alexa to start playing their favorite music.

So we can do music. Music, movement—those were the two things. Let's get our dopamine there.

So I have made them a list of little exercises and stretches I think they should do in the morning. That does not always work—very rarely works. I actually spent a lot of time doing this last year—this little stretch routine they can do in the mornings—and it changed every morning. If they did it five times, I would be shocked. But the idea is to just keep presenting them these things and see what sticks for them.

But if I can help them build the lifelong habit of getting up, not going right to a screen, maybe using music or even journaling or reading something first, and a little bit of body movement, I feel like I'm really setting them up for success. I'm not perfect at those things, but that's my perfect morning too, right?

And then something—some little win, right? So if we can just get them a win. Lots of places will say like making your bed, right? You have that one thing, that one project that you've completed, that gives you this feeling of satisfaction, and that little victory just wires our brain for momentum.

So I think what we ended up getting ours to at the end of the year—and hopefully it won't take too long to transition back—is they pack their own lunch. And that independence, that success that they get from doing that, it gives them a little victory, a little win first thing in the morning.

So again, we want a little bit of dopamine, not too much—so preferably no screens. We want to teach them to wake up: no screens, a little bit of music, a little bit of movement, and then some little win.

And we want that for ourselves as well. So if you don't have kids—listen, this is your episode too, okay? Those are things we should do for ourselves. Put that phone down. Do not look at it first thing. Get a little music. Get a little movement. Get a little win for the day. And that just—your momentum wheel just starts turning. It's such a good start to the day.

My second tip is dinner on autopilot.

So y'all know I love planning dinner for the week. And part of this autopilot is something that I use, which is just making it as simple as possible. So theme nights—you've heard me talk about.

We have tacos every single Tuesday in this house. Mondays are red beans. Tacos are Tuesday. So pasta Thursday, or sheet pan Saturday, or whatever ChatGPT can help you find, all right? Come up with some theme so it just doesn’t even cause you any brain space to figure out what’s for dinner.

If you have theme nights for dinner, your dinner planning becomes exponentially easier, and everyone knows what to expect.

Dinner planning in general—we just want to have an idea of what we're having for dinner every night. We want to look at our obstacles and see if we need to adjust at all. And maybe that just means we change how we're cooking it, right?

So if I’m doing Taco Tuesday but I know we've got sports until late, maybe I do taco soup. Maybe we go out for tacos. Maybe I make everything ahead of time and we do just quick nachos instead of actually making tacos. But maybe I make the meat on Monday.

So theme nights make it much, much easier. And then looking at your obstacles and adjusting accordingly, so that you're not getting home late at night, when everyone is in this new routine, so tired, so worn out, and the idea of starting dinner is just putting you over the edge.

If we have those things in place, it helps our grocery list be nice and short and easy, and it helps cooking be short and easy.

And I love getting the kids involved, right? My ladies—you’re welcome. My children—my gentlemen—will be able to make you tacos by the time they're 15, okay? So they can have you over for date night, and they can make you tacos. They already are cooking tacos. They love it so much. They love to help. So get them involved.

Okay—or maybe that's one of your themes, like “kids pick.” Doesn't have to be gourmet. It just needs to be on the table. Done dinner is better than no dinner, right? It doesn't need to be fancy.

New habits—tip number three. When our routine shifts, it is an opportunity to look for a new pattern to shove a new little habit into your system, okay? So we can layer in these new healthy habits—or our old healthy habits that have maybe fallen to the wayside—we can layer them into the routine.

So that might mean something like if you normally do a morning walk but you haven't been doing that, maybe you do it right after school drop-off. Maybe you drop them off, or the bus picks them up, and you do just a quick lap and then you go.

Okay—maybe while you're packing the kids' lunch, you pack yourself a lunch. So we get these little habits that we can stick in, right? Maybe if we're doing morning vitamins for the kids, that helps us remember our morning vitamin. Maybe if we're teaching them about music and mindfulness in the morning, we can reinvigorate our habits of mindfulness in the morning.

My kids—we get like—and y'all know my older one is an early riser—will sometimes walk the dog together in the morning. So we'll do that movement in the morning before school. We've got plenty of time, right? The whole house has been up for an hour and a half before we have to leave for school.

So find something that this new routine—find your new system, your new routine—and think about what healthy habit you can kind of habit stack, like sandwich in there into something that’s already happening.

So if you know you’re going to be packing lunches, maybe pack your own. If you know you want to teach the kids a little bit of movement in the morning, maybe you participate—or you do it after drop-off. Whatever, okay?

Maybe we all drink a glass of water to start our day, and then everyone’s a little more hydrated before we start. So just think of anything—some new pattern is a perfect time to layer in a new healthy habit.

Tip number four: wind-down rituals.

So let's talk about the evenings. It's going to be hard, right? They haven't been doing homework in a long time, so they're not going to be... I don't know, maybe they're going to be great. Maybe they're going to love it. Let's be optimistic—but probably not, right?

They're going to come home, they're tired, they have not been able to run around. We probably have had a little bit busier of a morning than we're used to. We're getting into the new routine of drop-offs and pickups and everything else. And so the end of the day can really be like meltdown city, okay? It can hit a breaking point where no one is on their best behavior, because everyone’s a little bit just frazzled at the end, okay? Everyone's a little bit overstimulated.

And I really do think it is overstimulation. Some people call it like a cortisol crash. I think it's just—we've been so overstimulated all day. Maybe we've been forced on good behavior all day, with the kids especially. Sitting in a seat, listening to a teacher, is not always easy, right?

So everyone is a little bit frazzled, a little bit overstimulated. And so what can we do to establish a new pattern, a new wind-down routine that would really just change the momentum for everyone?

So maybe that is lowering the lights. Maybe it's soft music during dinner. Maybe it's switching from TV—maybe we don't do TV after dinner. Maybe we do quiet play. Some predictable cue is really helpful here.

So for us—I mean, I think since they were born—we have done a dinner-bath-bed routine. So they are dirty little boys. They get bathed every day. They get dinner, they get a bath, they get bed. The only alteration in that is depending on when we have eaten dinner, there might be some lag time between bath and bed.

So we do something as a family. They actually love to watch Jeopardy, which I don't really have a problem with. I don’t think that's the same screen time that we're concerned about. It's not YouTube, right? A little Jeopardy is not a problem. So we might watch something together as a family. We might just have quiet time. We might do a puzzle, might let the kids play LEGO—something.

But these predictable cues, these schedules, can be really soothing when you have been just frazzled and overstimulated all day long. So it’s just creating a calm environment, and then maybe just a simple routine. It's not an eight-step routine, right? It's a three-step routine: we're going to eat dinner, we're going to take a bath, we're going to wind down and go to bed.

So it doesn't need to be like 15 pieces to this bedtime routine, but some sort of routine. And if we can kind of preface the routine by just setting a calm and relaxing space, that's really great for everyone.

And I can tell you—for you—the bonus here, for just as far as eating and weight loss and being your best healthy self: the more you can turn down this cortisol crash, or whatever, the more we can wind down, the better chance we have of not nighttime snacking.

Okay? Most of our after-dinner snacking comes from this restless feeling—this overstimulated feeling—that our brain is just like, I just need a little snacky. I need a little something, right? I need a little taste of something. It wants that because it is feeling overstimulated, and it knows that food will help it get rid of that negative feeling—get rid of that uncomfortable feeling.

So if we can really start this—just wind everything down after school or after we get home from work, whatever time you want to start—the better that wind-down routine is, the more we can create that calm and lower our cortisol and feel less frazzled, the more mindful we can be, the less we’re going to want a nighttime snack.

So everybody wins here, right? Everyone gets better sleep. Everyone’s a little bit calmer. Less fighting. Less stress. And then we’re not nighttime snacking.

Tip number five is a family reset on Sundays.

We don’t do this as a formal event right now, but I think I might, right? It sounds fun. And for all my moms that are carrying most of the mental load out there—which is most of you, right?—this is a great opportunity to start teaching other people how to carry some of that mental load.

So a Sunday reset is that everybody comes together in a quiet space and talks about what next week looks like. So we have to look ahead at the next week. We talk about what we’re having for dinners—maybe we assign them, maybe this is where we let the kids pick. Maybe we plan our groceries.

And then we go through the folders, and we check permission slips and uniforms, and—does everyone have clean clothes? And all those 8,000 to-dos that we have for a Monday morning to be successful in our house—let’s start sharing that load with an entire family reset.

I don’t think that should take very long. Like, maybe the first few times it could take up to 30 minutes, but I really think you could do this in 10 minutes.

So the 10-minute Sunday Family Reset—I think it has so many benefits.

Not only will everyone sort of have a goal for the week, sort of have their GPS set for what needs to be done, everyone goes into the week feeling a little bit calmer. There’s no Monday craziness, I forgot this, I don’t have clean clothes, whatever, right? We've settled that. Dinner is planned for the week, so when we are frazzled at the end of the day, we’ve already made a plan for that.

And then we start to teach everyone in our house that they need to own part of the mental load of running the ship—which I just think is priceless, and really important for our children as they grow up, right?

Everyone needs to understand what it takes to run a business. And the business of family is a business, right? Everyone needs to understand what that looks like and what part they need to take.

So—with the school year coming in hot, okay? It’s coming in whether you want it to or not, and routines are going to change whether you want them to or not—they can be chaotic and stressful, or they can be thought out, mindful, and planned.

I just think these systems—and this—is such a good opportunity for sanity. So: systems = sanity.

We have a perfect breaking point, a perfect decision point, right? This is happening. A change of routine is coming. So let’s take advantage of it.

And if you don’t have kids—still—before I had kids, I loved this time of year. I loved seeing all the school books and the notebooks and everything. I love it, okay?

So just decide—whatever day in August is your first day of school—and your chance to make a new routine.

So just pick one, or pick them all. I think a hard reset is—I think this is the perfect opportunity. Change is hard no matter what, whether it’s small or big. So whatever you want to change in your routines right now, put it on the list, and let’s make it happen.

Let’s make this back-to-school routine work for us.

So again—we want to kind of keep us calm in the morning. We want to have some sort of morning calmness: music, movement, make a plan.

Number two, get some dinners on autopilot with theme nights and planning ahead.

Number three, any new habits we want—we’re going to sort of stack them in and sneak them in when we create this new routine.

We’re going to have a nice evening wind-down ritual.

And then we are going to do a full family reset on Sunday.

All right. I hope that this really helped. I hope this helps you start back-to-school a little bit calmer, a little bit more organized, a little bit more planned. It’s coming for us no matter what, so let’s just make the best of it.

All right. I hope this really, really helps. Please share this with a friend, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.