The Default Parent Weight Loss Struggle No One Talks About

Motherhood can make you tired in a way sleep doesn’t fix.

In this episode, I’m talking about the mental load of being the default parent — the constant planning, remembering, organizing, anticipating, and carrying everyone else’s needs all day long… and how that invisible exhaustion impacts weight loss more than most people realize.

Because the truth is weight loss gets a whole lot harder when your brain is already overloaded before food and fitness even enter the picture.

I’m sharing the biggest mindset shifts that helped me finally made weight loss feel sustainable in real mom life:

• simplifying meals instead of overcomplicating food
• reducing decision fatigue
• creating repeatable routines
• letting go of “perfect conditions”
• and building habits that actually survive hard weeks

If you’ve ever felt like you’re failing because you can’t stay consistent during the chaos of motherhood… this episode is for you.

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Instagram: @sassybrunettefitness

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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'm gonna be really honest with you guys right now. Lately, I have been so tired and tired in a way that really has nothing to do with my sleep. Okay, maybe just a little bit, because I've been low-key staying up a little bit too late watching TV, and it's really affecting my sleep, but also tired in the sense of the constant thinking, the planning, the remembering for everything and everyone else that happens this time of year as we are only a few weeks away from the last day of school. And I've really been feeling that default parent title. Don't get me wrong, my husband helps with so much with the kids, with the house, with the decisions, the to-dos, the all of the things in between. But I'm also the default parent, especially right now when he is working two different jobs and in the middle of transitioning to a new career completely. A lot more has been falling on me lately, and it's just exhausting. And we're just really in a season of constant activities for the kids, appointments, school pickups, field days, field trips, numbering teacher gifts, and the week-long celebrations that feel like happen every single month lately. Like literally the other night was school pickup, straight to a dentist appointment, straight to dance class, then leaving dance class early, then straight to a baseball game. And I'm packing snacks, grabbing water bottles, answering 500 million questions, trying to remember who needs what. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized that like I hadn't even thought about myself for a good four hours at that point. And this is really, I think, the part of motherhood that no one talks about when it comes to weight loss. Because it's not just about the little time you have in your day to devote to workouts, to devote to meal prepping, to devote to cooking, to devote to yourself. It's really about capacity. Because when you think about motherhood and really being the default parent as most moms are, it goes so much further than just our physical time. We're constantly thinking about who needs to bring what to school, what events are going on, where we need to be, who needs to be at this practice, who needs to be at that practice, how long it takes to get from point A to point B, the planning, the remembering, all of that just takes up so much space in our brains. And it becomes a capacity issue as a default parent. And to be honest, I don't think you can fully understand that unless you are the default parent because so much falls on our shoulders, on our plates, on our minds, and trying to even think about what we need to do for ourselves, for our weight loss goals, it can feel like the one thing that's going to break it all, that's going to make that plate that you're holding collapse at any moment. And so today, I really just first and foremost want to sit with you. If you're a default parent, if you are struggling with the end of the year chaos, the May Sumber of it all, as they call it. I just want to sit with you and tell you like you're not alone. It is hard, it is challenging. And oh my gosh, sometimes I feel like a chicken running around with not just its head cut off, but with its legs cut off, with its arms cut off, just trying to make it through the day without losing it, without screaming one too many times. And I also want to give you some words of encouragement and let you know that just because you're the default parent, just because you are carrying the weight of the world, the weight of your family on your that doesn't mean that you can't lose weight. It doesn't mean that you're in a season where you need to stop taking care of yourself just to take care of everyone and everything else. There are ways that we can do both, that we can be the default parent, that we can carry all that we need to carry. We can prioritize all of the things that we need to prioritize on a daily basis and also take care of ourselves and also do the things that we need to do in order to lose weight successfully. And I will say the things I'm going to give you in this episode, they are things that I practice every single day on my own weight loss journey. They're what have helped me lose 15 pounds in the past few months on my busy mom weight loss era and doing all of that while being the default parent and carrying so much more on my plate these past few months. So buckle up, grab your coffee, grab your water, whatever you're drinking right now, and we're gonna dive right in. One of the most important and impactful things that I have done on my weight loss journey is I don't make food harder than it needs to be. Trust me, as a girl who used to live and breathe hours-long meal prep where it was all laid out perfectly on the table, I would cook from scratch, I would have these Pinterest-worthy meals, the recipes that took me 45 minutes and all of these ingredients. And I absolutely loved cooking, don't get me wrong. But right now, as the default parent with no time and no capacity, food cannot be challenging. Recipes cannot take me longer than 10, 20 minutes. Because if it does, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to stay consistent with the foods that I need to be eating to help me reach my weight loss goals. And I think one of the biggest reasons weight loss feels impossible as the default parent is because your brain is already overloaded before food even enters the picture. Like by dinner time, I have already managed everyone else's needs all day long. I've answered questions, I've solved problems, I've remembered things that nobody else remembers. I've thought ahead for everyone. So if I am then expecting myself to calculate macros, to make some elaborate, healthy dinner, to resist cravings perfectly, to have tons of willpower left, that's just not realistic. That's not going to happen. So what I really focus on now is making food take less mental energy. When I am making my meals, I'm not asking, what's the perfect meal here? Like, what's the perfect meal for weight loss? What does this influencer say I need to be eating? Or what does that meal plan have that I need to be focusing on? I don't worry about any of that. I simply ask, what's a simple meal that supports my goals and does not overwhelm me? And I follow my four-piece meal framework. This meal framework is something that I can use at home. It's something that I can use with frozen food when I have not made it to the grocery store yet. It's something that I can use when we're eating out, when I'm grabbing food really quick before heading to the baseball game. I can take this meal framework anywhere and it works for my weight loss goals. What this meal framework is, is it has four pieces protein first, fruit or vegetable second, carbs, fats. That's it. I just focus on having those pieces on my plate. And that removes so much stress, so much thinking, so much worrying from my meals. Because when you have a simple framework that you can fall back on, no matter where you are eating, what you are eating, it becomes a lot easier and a lot faster to build your meals for your weight loss goals. Even when you've been momming all day long and you have zero brain cells left to think about it. It's easy to remember, it's repeatable, and you can take it anywhere. And that's what I think a lot of moms miss. In this era of social media, it's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to eat like these fitness influencers, the ones that you see spending hours in the kitchen making these elaborate meals that while yes, they look great, you are never going to have the time or the energy to actually cook them. So you save all these recipes, hoping that you're going to one day have the motivation, the energy to put that into practice, but you never end up doing it. And so you end up continuing to wing your nutrition. And winging it doesn't get you to your weight loss goals. But when you have a simple meal framework to fall back on, that is something that you can implement in the life that you are living right now, and the life that requires the mental load of three full-time jobs. Another important shift that I made here is I really stopped treating movement like it only counted if it was this perfect ideal workout. I think moms especially struggle here because we've been conditioned to believe that workouts only count if we burn so many calories, if they're intense enough, if we leave it feeling sore, if they're long enough, if they're hard enough. And honestly, that mindset is going to keep you stuck. Because as the default parent, there are days where I genuinely do not have an uninterrupted five, 10 minutes to myself. So I had to stop seeing that as a failure. Is it amazing when I can make it to the gym and get through a 15 to 20 minute workout uninterrupted? Absolutely. But guess what? My workouts are rarely longer than that because I got other things that I need to be doing with my time during the day. And I also know on those busy days where I don't have extra time to make it to the gym, I know that walks count and even just moving throughout my day counts. Because what actually changes your body over time is what you can keep doing. So if you're the default parent and you're relying on being able to make it to the gym for an hour, five, six days a week, you're always going to feel like you're failing, like you're falling off track, like you're restarting. Because that system, that goal for your workouts is not matching the reality that you live in right now. And trust me, as a girl who used to work out six days a week for nearly two hours, do the Murph every weekend, kill myself to hit 10,000 steps, leave the gym literally with no energy left in the tank. I know this might feel like a million steps backwards, like it's not enough, like it's not going to get you to your goals. But guess what? Is what you're trying to do getting you to your goals? Probably not because you're not able to stay consistent with it. You're either trying to force these hour-long really hard workouts, or you're not doing anything at all. So finding that middle ground where you are focusing on the movement you can do that day, movement that's going to meet your time, your energy, your capacity, that is what keeps you moving forward. That is what gets you to your results. I talked about this a little bit already when it comes to nutrition, but honestly, the biggest shift that I think I have made is really giving myself less decisions. As the default parent, you are already making a million decisions every single day. So if you are trying to make even more decisions for your weight loss goals, it's not going to work. You're always going to feel overwhelmed, you're going to feel frustrated, you're going to stay inconsistent and feel stuck in your weight loss journey because there's only so much thinking, so much capacity you have to give. And you're already giving so much of that to the remembering, the thinking, the decisions you have to make for everyone else. And now I know you might be sitting there thinking, hey, Kelsey, I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say I need to meal prep. You're gonna say I need to meal plan. You're gonna say I need to have these perfect plans going into every week. Yes and no. Because yes, we do need a plan. We do need some structure. And trust me, I used to think that structure felt very restrictive. But what's actually restrictive is constantly thinking about food, constantly thinking about when you're gonna work out, constantly thinking about what you need to do and what you shouldn't do for your weight loss goals. When you're constantly in this mode of what should I eat? Do we have groceries? Is this healthy enough? Did I already ruin the day? Should I just restart Monday? Oh my gosh, I just got exhausted. Listing off those questions. And that's only a small snippet of the questions that I know are running through your brain at any given moment on any given day because you don't have some structure in place. And no, I'm not gonna tell you that you need to have this perfect plan. I'm not gonna tell you that you need to meal prep or you need to meal plan these big elaborate meals, but we do need to have a system in place to combat the constant decision making because that constant decision making is exhausting. So I want you to start thinking about some decisions you can take off your plate, some things that you can stop overthinking by implementing some repeatable actions by making things simpler and creating some type of structure when it comes to your weight loss goals. For example, I'm gonna I want to give you a few examples of how I do this so you can really see that I am not spending hours planning every Sunday. I'm not spending hours meal prepping every Sunday. I just have a few simple systems in place that set my week up for success. So I'm not constantly thinking about what I need to be eating, when I should be working out, what I should do, what I shouldn't do, all of that stuff. So first and foremost, when it comes to nutrition, I plan our meals for the week, but I make them super simple and I make sure these meals are things that are going to fit into our schedule that coming week. So right now we have dance class, we have baseball practices, we have baseball games, I have volleyball games, Brian is coaching pickleball, his hail work season is picking up. And so we have a lot of moving parts and busy nights. And so I look at our week ahead of time and I'm like, okay, what meals are realistic for me to plan for this week? Lately, I have not been trying any new fancy meals. I think the most cooking I have done recently is making taco beef for our taco salads that we had on Cinco de Maya. And I do this on purpose because I know at 5 p.m. when I'm trying to get dinner on the table quickly before we head to a baseball game, I'm not going to have the time, the energy, the capacity to read a recipe on Pinterest that has a million ads that I'm trying to scroll between. Oh my gosh, totally off topic, but that is the most annoying thing ever. Like, just give me the recipe and let's move on. I don't need to see a million ads for deodorant or for some insurance that I'm never gonna buy. So I focus on easy meals that I can throw together fast: breakfast for dinner, pasta, burgers, taco night, sheet pan meals, crock pot meals. If you are not utilizing the crock pot, oh my gosh, it's a lifesaver, it's a time saver. You need to be using the crock pot right now. And I also have systems in place to make that even easier. I utilize leftovers. I only cook about three nights a week because each meal I cook, I'm making enough for at least one night of leftovers. I also batch cook protein. So if I'm making beef, I make extra beef so we can use it for tacos, for spaghetti, for different bowls that we might have later in the week. It really makes dinners a lot easier because a lot of things are already made ahead of time. I also have a few go-to breakfasts that I rotate through. I have a few go-to lunches that I rotate through. And I just map out when I'm going to work out each day. Does that always happen? No, sometimes things change. Like yesterday, I skipped my workout because I had a lot of extra work I needed to get done. And that's okay. I skipped it and I focused on a long walk with Raylan instead. But having some type of plan, some type of structure for what you're going to be eating, when you're going to be moving your body, going into your week, or even just going into your day is going to take so much of the decision making out of the process. You're going to go in with a plan instead of trying to wing it. And that piece alone makes all of the difference as a mom, as a default parent. I think a lot of times moms feel like they don't have time for their weight loss goals. They don't have time to devote to weight loss, to working out, to cooking because they are trying to wing it every day. When you go in with a system in place, when you go in with some type of structure, you're not having to spend so much time making these decisions. And things just start running on autopilot in the background. Right now, yes, I am the default parent. Yes, I am working to lose weight, but weight loss isn't something that I manage all day long. It runs in the background of my life because I take a little bit of time on the weekends. And when I say a little bit, I mean 10, 15 minutes to think about what meals we're going to be eating that week, to think about when I'm going to work out how I'm going to reach my goals. So, yes, structure is important. But I also want you to know when I say structure, that doesn't mean spending hours creating some perfect plan or that it's putting you into this box that you have to follow in order to lose weight. What we really want here is to just start giving yourself less decisions to make. Because as a mom, I value my time, I value my mental energy. And doing this saves me time. It saves me that mental energy. So I have the capacity to do everything else that I need to do on a daily basis. And when you are the default parent, your brain is already carrying so much invisible labor that you literally cannot afford to turn every meal, to turn every workout into another mental task. That's why we create structure. That's why we create systems, because structure and systems equal more certainty. And that certainty is going to get you to your weight loss goals faster and easier. If you feel mentally exhausted around your meals, around your workouts, I want to challenge you to pick one breakfast this week, one lunch, one specific time that you are going to move your body and repeat that. I promise you, you are going to quickly see how much easier things feel. And before you say, Kelsey, I can't eat the same thing every day. That's okay. I can't eat the same thing forever either. But what I do do is I have one breakfast and one lunch for the week, and then I change it the next week. And then now I have two breakfasts and two lunches that I know work. So then I can rotate them. And then maybe I have a third one that I add in. So then I start rotating those. Having a bank of breakfast and lunches that you know you can fall back on makes it so easy to repeat them, to rotate them so things feel easy. And also you never get bored of what you're eating. The last thing I want to mention here too is kind of going back to what I talked about a little bit earlier in the episode about my four-step meal framework: protein first, fruits or vegetable second, carbs and fats. That is how I focus on planning my meals. So when we're doing something like breakfast for dinner, I plan: is there a protein there? Is there a fruit or vegetable there? Is there a carb and a fat? And that makes meal planning a lot easier because I can just add those pieces to that meal. And I want to make that even easier for you as you start creating the system for yourself. So if you would like my balanced plate toolbox, DM me over on Instagram, say, hey, I listened to your episode. I want the balanced plate toolbox, and I will send that over to you. It is a list of different protein options, different fruit and vegetable options, different carbs and different fats. So when you are starting to create a system for your meals, when you're starting to create that structure for your meals, you can just pick a protein, pick a fruit or vegetable, pick a carb and pick a fat and be on your way. So, like I said, if you want that toolbox, DM me over on Instagram and I will send it your way. I know that's going to take even more decisions off your plate because you just have a list to choose from and you can plan your meals accordingly. Woo! I've already covered so much in this episode, and it's going to be probably a lot longer than I intended it to be. But I just have one more really important key point that I want to talk about, and then we'll wrap up this episode. I need you to hear me loud and clear. I'm gonna say this twice because I want you to really ingrain this in your brain. You need to stop expecting perfect conditions. If you are the default parent, which as a mom, you most likely are, you need to stop expecting perfect conditions. Now, this was the hardest mindset shift for me because, like so many of you, I was taught that consistency means everything going according to plan, hitting my goals perfectly. Plan A happening every single day. And motherhood will humble that idea real fast. Let me tell you, I can look back at the past few months and I can maybe, maybe count on one hand, maybe, maybe two hands, the amount of days that my plan A happened, that everything went according to plan. Because the truth of the matter is you're going to have sick kids, you're going to have sport schedules, you're going to have late nights, you're going to eat in the car, you're going to have chaos. Your husband might travel. You might travel. You're going to have vacations. You're going to have little inconveniences come up. And I used to treat those moments like proof that I couldn't stay consistent. But now I see them as normal. I'm going to say that again. I see them as normal. That distinction matters. Because once I made that, the goal stopped being how do I avoid hard weeks? And it became how do I keep taking care of myself? How do I keep going after my weight loss goals during hard weeks? Because the hard weeks happen. The hard weeks are our reality as a mom. If your weight loss only works when life is calm, if your weight loss only works when plan A happens, when everything goes according to plan, it is not built for motherhood. It is not going to last. It is not going to help you lose weight in the short term or keep it off in the long term. I could say that and screen that from a rooftop until I'm blue in the face. If you want to lose weight successfully as a mom, your plan, what you are doing, has to work during the hard weeks. It has to keep you moving when there are so many barriers in your way. It has to be something that you can repeat, fall back on, keep up with no matter what comes your way. And I'm just going to give you a few examples of how this has played out in my life in the past few weeks, where I've had a lot of barriers. I've had a lot of chaos. I've had a lot of things come up. For me, it's looked like getting up and moving during baseball practice. It's looked like planning some meals while Raylan was taking dance class. It looks like stopping at the drive-thru and still ordering a balanced meal. It's looked like having easy food options that I can throw together quickly to make a meal for my family, for my weight loss goals. It's looked like having repeatable breakfasts and lunches so I don't have to think about what I'm eating. It's looked like 15 minutes in the gym and that's it because that's all I have time for. It's looked like just moving throughout my day when I am slammed with work and I don't have time for anything else. It's looked like skipping a workout because work needed to be done, but then walking to pick my child up from school instead of driving. It's looked like looking for the opportunities in my day to keep moving forward. What can I still do? What's my next best step instead of riding the whole day off because something came up? We have to stop treating weight loss like something that only can happen when our life is easy, when our life is calm, because the reality of it is busy is going to always be a part of your life as a mom. So you have to learn how to work inside it, how to work inside the pockets of the time that you do have in the reality that you do live. I think so many moms, so many default parents are trying to lose weight in a way that requires them to become someone they're not, someone with tons of free time, with tons of energy, with tons of mental space. And that's why it keeps feeling so hard for you. Not because you're incapable, not because you can't lose weight, not because you don't have time or motivation or the willpower or the discipline to lose weight, but because your systems don't match your reality. The breakthrough for me as the default parent wasn't becoming more disciplined. It was finally building habits, building systems that could survive my real life, no matter what came my way that day. Because as a mom myself, I know how hard it is. I know how difficult it can be to be the default parent, the one who does everything on a daily basis, who carries so much, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. And it can feel like you literally do not have the time, the energy, the capacity to even think about weight loss. But if you're a mom with a weight loss goal, I want you to see that it is possible, that you can do it, that there are ways to make it work inside the busy life that you live right now. Inside the program, we really, and that is exactly why I built Hot Mom Hustle. It's for moms with no time who are done starting over and want to lose weight and feel hot again. Inside the program, we really work on getting you on the fast track to weight loss with a simplified weight loss system designed to speed up results by removing everything that takes extra time, extra thinking, or extra effort to maintain. Because when you're a mom, when you're the default parent, complexity, winging it, starting over every day is what slows everything down. Inside the program, we are going to simply focus on the fast track foundations that actually move the needle on your weight loss goals and also work inside the reality that you are living right now. We focus on that balance plate method that I talked about with you. We focus on simple daily movement, whether it's a 15-minute workout at the gym or at home when you can make it work, or just moving throughout your day. And we focus on water and self-care built into the pockets of your day, built into your routine that you live right now as a mom. School drop-offs, school pickups, running errands, going to work, coming home to do dinner time, bathtime, bedtime. We work these simple habits into your life now. And when you only focus on what actually matters for weight loss and remove everything else, remove all that stuff that we've been talking about that takes more time than you have, that takes more thinking, that takes more effort, you get on the fast track for weight loss. Your results speed up because we are turning small daily actions into real lasting weight loss. So Hot Mom Hustle is coming back very, very soon. Doors officially open on May 27th and we start June 1st. That first Monday of June, it falls on the first. What a perfect time to start Hot Mom Hustle. If you are interested in the program, I'm going to drop the link for more information in the show notes of this episode. If you have questions on Hot Mom Hustle, want to chat about it more, figure out if it's the right next step for you, ask questions, anything you need and want to know about the program, please message me over on Instagram. And I would be happy to chat with you and figure out if Hot Mom Hustle is right for you. I think that is all I have for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it gave you a sense of relief, a sense of clarity and understanding. And also knowing that if you're the default parent right now, you are not alone. We are in this together. We can do this. The end of the school year is almost near, but then of course we have summer, which brings its own kind of chaos. But I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you loved it, but I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, I would absolutely love it if you shared it with all of the moms in your life on social media, on Facebook, on Instagram with the moms in your circle. 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 guys in the next episode. Bye.