The System That Keeps You on Track (Even When Life Isn’t)

Most moms think they’re inconsistent.

They start strong, feel motivated, and genuinely try to stay on track — only to feel like they “fall off” as the day unfolds.

But what if that’s not actually inconsistency?

In this episode, we break down a different truth: you can do things right. You do have structure in the morning. You do make solid choices. The problem is that your plan only works when life is calm enough to support it.

And your life isn’t calm.

We explore why traditional ideas of consistency don’t hold up for busy moms and introduce a more realistic, sustainable approach: containment.

Instead of trying to manage your entire day perfectly, you’ll learn how to build a system that holds when life gets messy.

You’ll walk away understanding:

• Why you don’t actually have a consistency problem
• What “containment” really means in daily life
• And how to use my 3 anchor system to stop the daily unraveling

Because consistency isn’t about being perfect all day.

It’s about making sure no single chaotic moment can take everything down with it.

If you’re tired of restarting every week, this episode will reframe everything.

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Transcript

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Hey, I'm Kelsey, and welcome to the Mama Wellness Hour, a place for moms who want to lose weight, but don't want to lose themselves, their sanity, or their life in the process. This is a space for real mom life: the highs, the lows, and the messy middle. No pressure, no perfection, just simple tools, real support, and the reminder that you are not alone in this. If you're ready to start moving forward at your pace, on your terms, I'm right here with you. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Mama Wellness Hour. I have my coffee in hand after an almost disastrous morning when I woke up and got a notification from Amazon that my coffee delivery was delayed and I had absolutely no other coffee in the house. I know that's such a first-world problem. But if you know me, you know I live and breathe by my morning coffee. The taste, the caffeine, the routine of it. I just need my coffee in the morning. But luckily, my husband saved the day and went out at 5:45 this morning to get me coffee from Bredco or Panera if you're not from St. Louis. And all is right in the world again. But that is just one thing in like this sequence of what the heck is happening that has been going on in my life the past week or so. And it's not that it's even been these big, drastic things that have happened in my life the past week. It's just been a constant sequence of these little moments of life just being life and in the moment. They don't feel very little. They feel like these big things that just keep throwing wrench after wrench in your day, in your plans. And man, I just want to be like, hey life, hey universe, can we just have a day where everything goes smoothly, where like nothing comes up, no inconvenience happens, just things go to plan that day. But unfortunately, I know life, I know being a mom, I know the chaos that is my day, and I don't think that's happening anytime soon. What makes this even more ironic, cue the Alana Morissette song, is that literally 12 hours before this cascade of events all started happening, I set new goals for myself. I set a new goal to start running again because now that I'm playing volleyball and pickleball more frequently, I want to really build up my endurance for those sports. So I've been starting to run again. And I also set a goal to really establish a solid morning routine. I'm not gonna bore you with my long story about my morning routine over the past few months, but I knew that something needed to change in my mornings to really help me feel more prepared, more productive, more set up to go into my day and really be able to manage all of the things that I need to get done every day for my life as a mom, for my life as a wife, for my work, for all of the things and keeping the house together. So I really set out to create a solid morning routine. I had those goals set. I was excited. The first day went great. I crushed it, and then life was like, ha ha ha. Here you go. Here's some barriers after barriers, some inconveniences, some wrenches in your plan because we are going to make sure you want this. And what's interesting is that's actually a known phenomenon. It's called the universe testing your resolve. And I actually talked about this on an Instagram live I did last week. But if you missed it, essentially what this phenomenon is is that when you decide to pursue a change or you set a goal, the universe is gonna test you a little bit. You're going to encounter a surge of obstacles, resistance, or chaos meant to test if your desire is real, if you actually are ready for the breakthrough that's going to come from the changes you're trying to make or from the goals that you have. And man, I have seen that play out this week. Up all night because Brian was traveling home in a huge storm we had last week, didn't land on time, couldn't get in touch with him, being worried about him, you know, landing safely and making it home. Then Braden was up all night with I think allergies. I don't know what is going on with him. He stayed home from school the next day. I had a nail in my tire, so things had to shift around there. I ran out of coffee, so I didn't have that in my morning routine. And in and of themselves, like I said, these aren't these big, drastic, horrible things that happen in my life, thank God. But they were just things that the universe threw in my way to test my desire to change, to test the goals that I had in place for myself. And that kind of brings me to what I want to talk about today. Because one of the most common things I've heard over my past almost 10 years in the coaching space, coaching moms on weight loss, is that most moms feel like they're inconsistent. They'll say things like, I just can't stick with anything, I start off strong and then I fall off. But that's not actually what's happening. Because if you're honest, you can do things right. You do have good days, you do make solid choices, you do go to the gym and do the workout, you do make the healthy breakfast, you do hit your protein goal sometimes. The real problem is, is it doesn't hold when your life expands. And what I mean by that is when the day gets busy, when all of these barriers pop up, when chaos ensues, when work runs late, when your kids get sick, when vacation happens, when real life shows up. And when that happens, it's like suddenly everything unravels. Not because you suddenly don't care about your weight loss goal, you do, not because you lack the discipline or you'll never be able to stay consistent, you will. It's because nothing you are doing right now is built to hold you through that version of your day, the version of your day where someone needs you immediately, where your schedule shifts, where you're more tired than expected, where dinner gets pushed late, when you finally get a moment alone and you are mentally done. And we've been taught that consistency is a personality trait. Like some people just have the ability to stay consistent and some people don't. But for busy moms, that is not true. Consistency is not about effort, it's about containment. And here's what I mean by containment: what holds your habits in place when your day gets messy? What keeps things from slipping when your energy drops? What still works when life stops cooperating? If you don't have something built for that, everything is gonna leak because you have nothing in place to hold your system together. So the goal here isn't to be more consistent or to magically become this version of yourself that is suddenly consistent. The goal here is to build a system that holds you even when your day doesn't, even when all hell breaks loose. And we don't do that by trying to control our whole day or make sure that everything we do that day is consistent. We do it by protecting a few key pieces in your day. And so that's what I want to walk you through today. I want to walk you through my three-anchor system to help you create some guardrails on your day while still allowing yourself to be flexible when you need it. I want you to think of these guardrails kind of like bumpers when you are bowling. When you have those bumpers up and you roll the ball down the lane, those bumpers are going to keep that ball from veering too far off track. They're not going to keep you perfectly straight, but they're going to contain you to that lane that's moving you towards your goals. And so we want to have these guardrails in our day to keep us contained, to keep us moving forward on the track that is going to get us to our goals eventually, while also still providing that ball, yourself, your habits to move around a little bit, to be flexible in the path that it takes to get there. So, first and foremost, anchor one is going to be the start of your day. This really sets the direction and the tone of your day. This is not going to be some big, grand, full routine that takes 90 minutes in your morning. We don't have time for that as busy moms. I want you to just pick one decision that's going to stabilize your day. So a few examples of this could be a protein-focused breakfast, predeciding your first meal, tracking that first meal, a short walk, even something as simple as drinking 10 ounces of water before your coffee. This really helps to, like I said, set the tone and the direction for your day. You're starting with a simple anchor that is going to guide you to the goals that you have. And it really is like the first domino you play. If that domino is strong, is sturdy, it's going to be easier for the rest of the domino pieces to stand strong and sturdy as well. Now, anchor two is probably the most important one. This anchor is going to be your midday reset. I really want you to think about it as something that you can pause, check in with yourself, reset, and stop the drift that often happens in this midday period where life is starting to pick up a little steam, things get a little crazy, you're feeling the stress of the day, maybe cravings are starting to kick in, and you're starting to panic a little bit about being able to stay on track. So I want you to have a set anchor for your midday. That can be eating lunch before you're starving. It can be pausing for five minutes to check in with yourself. How are you feeling? What does the rest of your day need from you to stay on track towards your goals? It could be planning dinner before you get home from work. It could be drinking water and deciding what your next best step is. What is important here is this really helps to interrupt the autopilot before that evening becomes survival mode. Going back to that bowling analogy, it really helps to contain you back to the lane that you're trying to stay in so the rest of the evening can be successful as well. And lastly, anchor three is going to be your evening guardrail. I want you to think about it as protecting your hardest moments. Because when you think about your day as a mom, the evening time is often the hardest because of the exhaustion, the decision fatigue, the stress, the chaos that ensues as soon as you step in the door from work and you're trying to do dinner, bathtime, bedtime, activities, all of the things in this short period of time. And we often see a lot of barriers creep up, like stress eating, cravings, overeating, snacking, and really losing all direction and control that we had earlier in the day. So anchoring yourself into a specific habit here is again going to contain you to the track that you are trying to stay on. Now, this isn't about some perfect evening routine or hitting your goals perfectly. It's about setting a boundary. Think back to the bowling example that I gave. We are creating guardrails on your day so you don't veer too far off track, but we are also allowing for the flexibility needed, for the grace needed, for the pivoting that might need to happen. And so some examples of your evening anchor could be predefining what done eating looks like. So after you eat dinner, you already have in mind what done looks like. You set a simple kitchen closed cue. You pre-plan a snack for after the kids go to bed. You have a simple self-care activity ready as soon as you sit down on the couch to enjoy. Having that anchor is so important because you're helping to reduce the biggest leak point in your day. Now I want to make this abundantly clear. The goal of having these anchors in place is not to try and be perfect all day. It's really making sure that not a single chaotic moment can take the entire system down. Because even if work gets busy and stressful in the morning or plans change in the afternoon where you have to get your kid from school early, you have those anchor points to pull you back, to contain you, to give you guardrails toward your goals while still, again, allowing for that movement, that pivoting, that flexibility that you need as a mom. That is what creates consistency, not perfection, not motivation, not discipline, not trying to force yourself into a life or a plan that is suddenly consistent when that's just not your reality as a mom. It all comes down to containment, to having these anchors in your day to guide you to your goals, to keep you moving forward, to keep you on the bowling lane track without veering too far one way or the other. So if you are a mom on your weight loss journey and you feel like you're constantly restarting, you're doing good for a day, then you fall off track. You do good for a couple days, then you fall off track again. It's not because you're inconsistent. It's because right now your plan is only existing when life is calm enough to support it. So instead of trying to force yourself into consistency or white knuckle your way through a plan that just doesn't make sense for you, I want you to pick three anchors. Write down your anchor number one, write down your anchor number two, write down your anchor number three, and start there. Practice checking in with, falling back on, and getting really good at steadying yourself in those anchors. Because I promise you, when you do that, it's going to feel a lot easier to move through your day consistently because you have a system in place to hold you no matter what life brings your way as a mom. These anchor points are exactly what have helped me keep moving forward on my running goal, on my morning routine goal that I set last week when I have had all of these little inconveniences pop up in my way. I could have let a night of terrible sleep keep me from doing my morning routine. I could have let not having my coffee this morning keep me from doing my morning routine. I could have let all of these little inconveniences keep me from going out and running or keep me from keeping the promises to myself. But because I have these anchors in place, I was able to keep moving forward on those goals, not perfectly, but consistently, because I had guardrails to keep me in my journey, to keep me in my goals, to keep me moving forward. Well, I think that's all I have for you on today's episode. I hope you found this helpful. I really, really encourage you to think about what those three anchors for you could be in your day. Write them down, protect them, hold steady with them, and watch how much that impacts your ability to stay consistent and see weight loss results. If you missed it over on Instagram, I actually did let you guys in on a little secret that Hot Mom Hustle is officially coming back. Doors are going to open at the end of May, and we officially kick off that first Monday of June. If you are interested in Hot Mom Hustle, want to learn more about it, feel free to send me a DM over on Instagram and I can send you all of the early deeds on the program. I'm also offering an early access secret bonus if you message me. So this is your sign to do that if you're even the slightest bit interested. But Hot Mom Hustle is my four-step weight loss system for moms with no time who are done starting over and want to feel hot again. We really focus on speeding up your weight loss by removing everything that takes extra time, extra thinking, or extra effort to maintain. So, really, Hot Mom Hustle is your fast pass to weight loss. And I'm so excited to open doors again, ride as summer kicks off. So you can go into summer shedding some unwanted weight and starting to feel hot again because you deserve that this year. If you have any questions on the program, want more info, like I said, message me over on Instagram and I'd be happy to send that your way. And remember, when you do, you get the early access secret bonus. I think that's all I have for you guys today. Last but not least, if you enjoyed this episode, I would absolutely love it if you shared it with the moms in your life on social media, on Facebook, on Instagram with the moms in your corner so I can continue to get the mama wellness hour out to all of the moms out there who are wanting to lose weight without losing themselves in the process. I will chat with you in the next episode. Bye.