22 : Hot Mom Habits - Weekly and Daily Routines To Avoid A Crash Out

These are the foundational routines I come back to every single time I feel myself starting to crash out - the weekly and daily habits that keep me from spiraling as a mom, business owner, and wife.

From meal planning and grocery budgeting to morning workouts and pre-logging your food, these are simple, repeatable habits that add up to a week that feels manageable, productive, and leaves you at peace.

I also get personal about the habit that checks every single box on my list, and why I believe a confident mom is a hot mom.

If you have been feeling overwhelmed, scattered, or like you are always playing catch-up, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of the Daily Penny. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to mention that on Monday, April 27th, when this episode releases, we will be starting a brand new strength cycle in the app. That is my monthly ongoing training subscription. It's the workouts that I do on a weekly basis. So when you see me post exercise clips to stories, that is directly from the app workout that I did that day. We have a five-day program in the app called Split. That is Body Parts Split Training. And then we also have a three-day program called Foundations, which is three full body strength workouts each week. Both programs are yours for $19.99 per month. And if you use the code PodPod, when you sign up for your membership, that will get you a discount on month one. I'm your host, Carly Kaikendal, and this is the Daily Penny, the podcast about building sickening consistency through everyday habits. Being occasionally great does not get you very far, but being consistently good is what moves the needle forward. Every time you follow through for a workout, a meal in motherhood in your finances, in your business, or in your life, you're putting another penny in the jar of the person you want to become. One penny doesn't feel like much, but those daily deposits compound over time. This show is about fitness, nutrition, motherhood, money, business, and the systems that actually hold your life together in seasons where motivation is gone. Whether you're building habits, rebuilding confidence, or just simply trying not to quit, you're in the right place. Let's add another penny in the jar. Let's open today's episode by everyone listening, taking a collective deep breath together. I want you to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. We're gonna do each of these for three seconds, okay? Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Okay, now that our nervous system is 1% more regulated, let me give a disclaimer before this episode. This episode is meant to be aspirational, okay? And if you are currently doing zero of these hot mom habits, but your kids are loved, they are clothed, they are fed, you are doing a great job, okay? And if you're doing all of these habits, you're also doing a great job because the habits that we talk about today are habits that personally help my week run so much more smoothly. These habits are habits that when I do them consistently, week after week, they allow me to not feel anxious, they allow me to feel like a more present mom. They allow me to feel productive, they allow me to feel healthy, they allow me to feel at peace, they allow me to sleep better at night, they allow me to not have a million tabs open in my brain all at once, and so therefore they allow me to just avoid a spiraling crash out. But this does not mean that I do every single one of these habits every single week. It just means that after years and years of experience, these are the foundational blocks that I always come back to when I feel myself spiraling. I've been in the quote unquote real world for 15 years now, and I'm about four and a half years into motherhood. And so these are the habits that kind of keep me grounded, keep me anchored. And we have two different categories that we're going to cover. One is weekly habits, and then one is daily routines. We are going to start with the weekly habits category. Weekly habit number one is creating a grocery budget. So I want you to determine what your budget looks like because this is going to help you avoid feeling anxious and crashing out from tight finances, from wasting money every single month. And if you've been following me for about a year or more, you know how I used to do those grocery hauls where I would challenge myself to only spend $600 total each month on groceries for our family of four. And at the time, this also included a lot of our toiletries as well, and then like diapers and things. But unfortunately, when I don't publicly hold myself to that goal, meaning I'm not filming the clips, I'm not posting them, I'm not updating you on my budget each week, I am not as meticulous about sticking to it. Now I'm still landing somewhere between $600 to $750 each month. But as a shocker to absolutely no one, public accountability actually does hold you accountable. So since I haven't been posting those, I've let the budget slide a little bit. However, I can confirm that having a budget not only relieves anxiety, but it also makes you feel so satisfied and accomplished when you set that goal and then you stick to it. And like I said, I'm preaching to myself because I want to get back to hitting my budget precisely like I did for so long. So that one grocery budget kind of spills into weekly habit number two, which is scanning your fridge and pantry. So this is gonna allow you to see what you actually need and then what you can make it one more week without. So that's a question I'm constantly asking myself, especially when I'm doing those grocery budget challenges for myself. I look through my fridge, I look through my pantry. So, like even if we're running low on peanut butter, I'm like looking in the jar, I'm like, okay, can we make it one more week without that? And a lot of times the answer is yes. So you can immediately take that thing off your grocery list and then you can just buy it the next week. Now you might run out one day before it's time to buy groceries, but like, what is one day? You know, like you can go one day without that item. And if you keep asking yourself, can we make it one more week? You would be shocked at how much that also helps you cut back on your grocery budget. So number two was scanning your fridge and pantry. Habit number three is grocery shopping itself. So we're gonna do this on the same day every week because it's gonna help you stick to your budget more easily. And it's also just gonna create a reliable routine. So sometimes, like for me, I love grocery shopping on Saturday mornings, but sometimes we are out of town and so that doesn't happen. So sometimes it's Sunday mornings or Sunday afternoons, or sometimes if I'm thinking ahead far enough in advance, I will go on Fridays versus going on the weekend. So if you really try to keep it within that three-day window of a reliable time that you're going every single week, that's gonna help you stick to that budget more easily because what I do when I'm looking at my budget is I look at what my total is for the month and then I divide that by the number of weeks there are in that month, whether that be a four-week month, a four-week month, or a five-week month. I divide our monthly grocery budget by that whenever I am trying to decide, okay, when am I going shopping? I know that I either have like, you know, $150 that week or a little bit less. So grocery shopping was that weekly habit number three. Try to have a reliable day that you generally buy groceries. Habit number four is planning out your meals. So you don't have to plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner every week if that feels overwhelming. In fact, I don't even personally do that. But I do want to encourage you to at least plan out what your dinners are going to be, especially if you work outside the home, and especially even more if you have kids who play sports. And we start with dinner because it's usual the most stressful meal because it's the one where we're most likely to give up and order takeout at the slightest inconvenience, because it's the meal where everyone's eating together. We're responsible for more people than just ourselves. But keep in mind that dinner does not mean a hot meal served seven nights a week. Okay. It can mean anywhere from like two to three high protein dinners planned in advance. And then we can just utilize leftovers and freezer options or minimally cooked items for our other meals. So I want you to sit down on either Saturday or Sunday and open up a paper planner. Or if you're not a paper girly, maybe you're a digital girly, just plan out when you are going to make those meals. So, like this is what I do. When I sit down on Saturday or Sunday, I open up my paper planner and I'm reminded of what we have that upcoming week. So there might be a night where my husband Eric is at a school event and I know it's just me and the boys solo for dinner. And then maybe one night Rafe has a 6 p.m. T-ball practice that would require a more simple dinner, maybe like a freezer option or leftovers from the night before. Or maybe Eric and I have a date night scheduled. So I know I'm not gonna be cooking that night, but I need to think about what the boys will have whenever we have the babysitter come. So knowing what's ahead that week is gonna allow you to allow you to know what nights that it makes the most sense to cook a fresh hot meal, and then what nights it makes the most sense to have a convenience dinner option, like something in the freezer or leftovers. And in case you need to hear this, planning to have leftovers is still you planning meals out for the week, okay? And unless you've been meal planning for years, planning anything more than two to three meals at a time is actually going to leave you feeling a little overwhelmed. So I love having a few things planned plus freezer staples like just bare nuggets, frozen turkey burgers. And then we also always have breakfast items on hand too. And we love a good breakfast-for-dinner situation, you know. So I keep deli meat on hand as well, just in case one night you want to do sandwiches, you know, like, and I will say this I am so lucky to be married to someone who loves a good sandwich. Like he loves when I cook, but he is also easily impressed. If I make a sandwich and I like jazz it up with cheese and lettuce and tomato and bacon avocado, he's like, this is amazing. And I just love that about him. So keep in mind, it doesn't mean a hot, fresh meal every week. It just means that you're giving thought to what we are having and you are setting the expectations for everyone else as well. Another thing that's really easy is keeping no prep vegetables on hand. For me, that's always frozen broccoli in the freezer, canned green beans in the pantry, just some high fiber items that can be microwaved or thrown on the stovetop and be ready in just a few minutes. Because we are not reinventing the wheel, okay? I want you, whenever you're planning out your meals and like when you plan to have them, and you're sitting down with your planner and you're looking at your week, spend no more than 10 minutes doing this, okay? Because all you need is some action, some intention, because action alleviates anxiety. So I do not want you to overthink this. Think about things that you're already confident making, things that your family loves. This is going to give you a framework for the week and it's going to prevent you from being on Pinterest for 45 minutes and just end up doom scrolling. And let me bring us back to the core of this episode. It's titled Hot Mom Habits. And I really do mean that. Hot moms are going to be on top of their lives. Okay. So let us bring us bring us back to the core message of this. We're trying to prevent you from just spiraling every week, feeling out of control, feeling like your goals are so far out of reach. We're trying to have you feeling on top of life, feeling fit, feeling healthy, and just feeling productive and like you have your crap together. You know, that's the whole point in all of this. So, number four was planning out your meals. We're still on our weekly hot mom habits. Habit number five is doing some form of minimal meal prep. So if you work outside the home, the easiest things for you to prep are breakfast and lunch. When I was working out of an office, this meant prepping my food and putting it into containers for each day. And then if I worked in an office even now and my two kids went to daycare full-time, I can assure you this would be an even more important habit than it was when I didn't have my kids, you know, because your brain space and your time is more limited when you have kids. Maybe you're someone who works from home and so you don't have to have everything in a specific container already portioned out. Maybe you can just have some bulk protein and veggie or starchy carb options already prepped that you can then assemble before you sit down and eat. Like for me, my current hyperfixation meal is baked spaghetti squash as my base with seasoned ground beef, broccoli, and then marinara. So I bake the spaghetti squash and cook the ground beef in advance. I put those in bulk containers, and then I just weigh out the exact same amount, the exact same portions every single day when I go to eat that meal. Since I'm not personally leaving my house and going into an office, I can just assemble them before I eat lunch every day. And it also is going to allow everyone else in the family to eat those items in different ways if they choose to do so because I'm keeping it in its bulk container. And then if I run out of something like ground beef because someone in my family ate some of that with a different meal, then I'll just sub in like some just bear chicken nuggets, which I will also always have on hand. And when I worked in an office, I would generally have one of these options. So, like for breakfast, I would do protein waffles with peanut butter and some berries, or I would do overnight protein oats, or I will do oatmeal with a protein shake. Just something so, so simple and it was predictable, and I had it until I just got sick of it. So if you work outside the home, I want you to also try and have some type of a morning routine because those hours can feel so very tight. And when you have something prepped in advance, it allows you to just grab and go and then eat when you get to the office. Weekly habit number six is laundry, which I hate talking about because my laundry, it piles up, but it also doesn't bother me. So like I'll wash and dry a ton of laundry and then just keep it in the baskets and fold it like all in one day. And I notice some people that would make you want to pull your hair out. For me, it's just a system that works. So, like, find whatever system works for you, but it doesn't overwhelm me. And that's what we're trying to get to the point to where these things don't overwhelm us and we kind of have like systems built around them. So I find that I actually don't do much laundry on the weekends. I typically save my laundry for Thursdays when the kids are both home with me. And that's the day that I also spend 24 hours off social media. And I do understand that that is a luxury of being a stay-at-home, work-from-home mom, is that I can just start a load of laundry at any time. And then I find myself doing like three to five loads of laundry between Wednesday and Thursday. But then I have this massive mountain of clothes to fold. And I don't love it, but I also don't resent it because I listen to a podcast while I'm folding clothes, which makes it more enjoyable. So maybe for you, like consider turning on a show or watching a YouTube video. Try to layer in some type of fun with this type of a mundane task. And if you work outside the home and you need to spend the weekly weekend tackling laundry, maybe consider starting like one to two loads Friday. So then it's then ready to fold on Saturday versus you doing, you know, everything on Saturday, and then that entire day is just spent doing nothing but laundry. Try and get a little bit ahead of it on Friday. So that was weekly habit number six. Weekly habit number seven is probably one of my favorite weekly habits that I have, and it is a social media detox. So we do not want as hot moms because we are all hot moms, okay? We do not want to constantly be in a comparison trap. And listen, pot, kettle, okay? Like Carly, look at yourself in the mirror. I went through a not only did I detox who I followed, but I'm now spending two full days off of social media every single week. So let me just start by saying that several years ago, I started taking just Sunday off of social media. So I would delete Instagram on Saturday night and then I would re-download it on Monday morning, and it was a breath of fresh air. I cannot describe it to you. And now I have a brick device, and so I just brick my phone. And if you're like, I have no idea what that is, I'm gonna link to it in the show notes and it'll get you 15% off a brick device. It's like $50. It's a one-time purchase. You don't have to pay for a membership or anything. It's the best $50 I've ever spent in my entire life. So I was already doing the Sunday, and now this year I've added a second day each week that I just totally lock myself out of social media, and that is every Thursday morning through Friday morning. My kids are both home with me every Tuesday and Thursday. And I just don't want to miss these years with them being so little. And so every Thursday morning after I post exercise clips and stories and then potentially get a grid post up on my Instagram, I then brick my phone from Thursday morning until Friday morning. So each week I'm intentionally locking myself out of social media for an excess of two days. And if you have zero days off of social media each week, I really want to encourage you to take at least one day off. And I promise that you will feel anxiety lift and you're gonna feel so much more present and productive because I can guarantee you this hot moms do not want to feel anxious, okay? We want to feel present and we can also get a ton of stuff done when we lock ourselves out of social media. That was weekly habit number seven, social media detox. Last weekly habit number eight. I want y'all to stay with me on this one, okay? This is a heart-to-heart moment. Number eight is going to church with your family. And as I dive into this category, I want to remind you how I started this podcast episode. And I mentioned that these are habits, and I know that I'm talking about hot mom habits, but these are habits that when they are done consistently, week after week, they allow me to not feel anxious, feel like a present mom, feel productive, feel healthy, feel at peace, sleep better at night, not have a million tabs open in my brain, and avoid a spiraling crash out. And the funny thing is that going to church with my family every single week checks every single one of those boxes for me. It's like a reset for my brain, my body, my nervous system, and it's just a reset for our family. It's like this anchor that keeps us, keeps the boat from drifting off, you know, because at the end of the day, my sole purpose on this earth is to be a disciple of Jesus in everything that I do, and that others can see my life and that it points them back to Him. And this is a constant recalibration for me because even with all of these habits, even if you did them every single week without fail, something is going to happen in life that completely knocks you off your feet. But the reason that I say that staying grounded in my faith in the habits that support that, they're like an anchor for me. The reason I say that is because at the end of the day, even at the end of a stressful day where I cried, I got nothing done, I had a massive crash out, I yelled at my kids. Guess what? God's grace is the exact same as it was when I woke up that morning before all of that happened. And so that is my anchor. And this is what I constantly pull myself back to. One, God, two, family, three, everything else. So even on the worst of worst days, if those relationships are prioritized, everything else will be okay. It will all work out. It always does. And church is that anchor for me, and it constantly reminds me of that. And I know, like I said, these are hot mom habits. And having church as a category under hot mom habits, it feels funny, right? But let me tell you, hot moms go to church. Because when you have a relationship with God, your identity doesn't get wrapped up in the surface-level desires of the world. And that's going to make you more confident in who you are. Because what God says about you trumps what anyone else's opinion is about you. And when you know that you know what God says about you, what God feels about you, that gives you more confidence. And a confident mom is a hot mom. So hot moms go to church. That wraps up our eight weekly habits. Now we're gonna shift into daily habits. Daily habit number one kind of feeds off my very last one that I said. So daily habit number one for me is I call it so like my morning routine is one thing, but then I have like a ritual. And I feel like ritual is a more sacred word for this. So number one is Bible reading in journal. I know that's like a lot of different things, but it's wrapped up into one and it's more of a ritual thing. And I know that you're gonna think that journaling is woo-woo, but just try it because then you will not think it is woo-woo. Because you're gonna experience the nervous system regulation that it gives you, and you're gonna realize how much of an enjoyable habit journaling is. And even if it's just a brain dump to get things out from rattling around in your head, it's going to be useful. I promise. And maybe it's what you have going on that day. Maybe it's things that you're worried about, hopes and dreams that you have that would be really cool to look back on in a few years and see that they became a reality. Like nothing is off limits in the journal. Okay. Sometimes I journal prayers, but sometimes it's just here's what's going on. And sometimes I'll start journaling prayers and then I'll get distracted and I'll start writing a to-do list. And I wish that was a joke, but it's not. So like anything, anything, anything can go in the journaling category. So habit number one for a daily practice is Bible read and journal. If you're not religious or you don't, you know, read your Bible, that doesn't have to be part of it. I would love if it was, but maybe it's not. Maybe right now it's just reading and journaling. But that's habit number one for daily hot mom habits. Habit number two, I want you to start stacking water before your coffee if you're a coffee drinker. So a first keystone habit of the day often cascades into a lot of other healthy habits. So, like what I do is I make myself finish a glass of water before I drink any of my coffee because I don't enjoy drinking water. Like just full stop, I don't enjoy drinking water. So coffee is like my little reward for drinking my water first. And it also gets me, you know, 16 to 20 ounces into my daily water goal for my water intake that day. So habit number two for daily habits was water before coffee. Habit number three, obviously, this would not be my podcast if I did not have a morning workout in there. I actually didn't title this morning workout, but that just came out naturally because I fully believe in a morning routine. But number three is just to work out. As moms, afternoons are so much more unpredictable than mornings. Okay. And this is why I swear that millennial moms with young kids need a morning routine. I promise if you commit to 30 days of making yourself get up and work out, even if it's just like 25 minutes, you will never look back if you commit to it for 30 days. And this doesn't mean that every day is just gonna be easy and you're gonna spring out of bed and just be chipper. But when you start getting up earlier and you force yourself to do it, you just simply start negotiating with yourself less because the more that you show up, the more it just becomes what you do. You know, the negotiations just kind of fall to the wayside. And I want you to also remember this basic math, okay? One is greater than zero. One is greater than zero. So if you think like, oh, it's just 25 minutes, how much could I really accomplish? I'm just gonna work out this afternoon. Like I can't, I can't, I only have 25 minutes this morning, so I'm gonna have more time this afternoon. I'm just gonna push it to the afternoon. Well, I can almost, almost guarantee that something is going to come up and you will then find a reason that afternoon to not work out. So then your axe your exercising minutes are zero. And please remind me, is zero more than 25? No, it's not. There are so many things competing for our attention in the afternoon. You have errands, you have kids' sports, you have dinner, you have bed and bathtime routines. So mornings just make the most sense. And habit number three was workouts, but here I am on my morning routine diatribe. I'm I can't have it, I can't not have it in an episode of this podcast, right? But at the end of the day, if you're working out and you're an afternoon or lunchtime workout girly and that works for you, that's all that matters, right? Because hot moms work out. So if we want to guarantee that a workout will happen, it probably, probably, keyword, needs to happen first thing before our day starts. Habit number three was a workout. Habit number four, pre-logging your meals for the day. I promise the longer that you do this, the faster it becomes, especially if you are willing to repeat things, which I highly, highly recommend. It takes me, no joke, 30 seconds to pre-log my entire day of eating because I eat the same breakfast, lunch, and snacks until I'm sick of them. Sometimes that's a few weeks of eating the same thing. Sometimes it's a few months. Sometimes when I say I'm eating the same thing, like it's essentially the same thing with maybe like one thing swapped out to make it feel a little bit different. But all in all, I am repeating a large bulk of my day every single day until I get sick of it. So then my pre-logging looks like copy, paste, copy, paste. And what this does is it allows me to know exactly how many calories I have going into dinner. So then weighing and portioning things out is so easy. And in a lot of cases, I'll even pre-log my dinner because I'll know what we're having and I'll just plug and play with those numbers, meaning like portions and things like that, until I hit my protein and calories for the day. So you need to tell your macros where to go versus wondering where they went. That was habit number four, prelogging your meals. Habit number five is hitting your steps because hot moms go on walks, plain and simple. And this doesn't have to mean an outdoor walk every single day, but it does mean looking for solutions versus excuses when it comes to getting your steps in. And walking is such an underrated way to not only lose fat, but then maintain that body composition long term. Hitting your macros combined with hitting your step goal gives you the upper hand on staying lean year-round. And steps are a very low impact form of movement. So it's not adding this additional stress to your body like other forms of exercise might. It is the lowest hanging fruit that is available right now today. So habit number five was going on walks or hitting your step goal. Habit number six, putting your phone across the room whenever you are going to bed at night. So please stop doom scrolling. A good rule is for you to not allow yourself to look at your phone when you're inside the four walls of your bedroom. So as soon as you step inside, put your phone on its charger across the room. This habit alone will probably have you in bed 30 to 60 minutes earlier than you are currently getting in bed. And then when your alarm goes off in the morning and your feet hit the floor, you have to walk across the room to go turn it off. So then once you do that, don't even give yourself the option of getting back in bed. Don't even let it be an option. Habit number six was putting your phone across the room at night and not doom scrolling on it. Habit number seven is an early bedtime. This one is very simple, right? But are we doing it? No, we're probably not because once again, number six, we're not putting our phone across the room. We're then sitting in bed doom scrolling. I am not perfect in any way, but I can say this. I do not ever let myself get on my phone when I'm getting in bed at night. Now, there will be some times where I'm in my bathroom and washing my face, and I realize, like, oh wow, you're not doom scrolling sitting in bed, but you're doom scrolling as you're like washing your face and brushing your teeth. So stop, stop in your tracks right now, or this is gonna put you in bed later than you want. And the reason that we're setting an early bedtime is because we're trying to prioritize our morning routines. And this is my approach. And some people, this will rub them the wrong way. But if you're trying to establish a morning routine and you find yourself going to bed later than you'd like, you need to punish yourself by still getting up early anyway. Because what's gonna happen is that at some point you're gonna hit a wall and you're gonna be so tired that you actually will go to bed when you intend to go to bed. But if you want to establish a morning routine, that means getting up even when you are very tired. And sometimes that means punishing yourself for not going to bed early enough the night before. And eventually, lack of sleep will catch up to you. But stick to your morning routine regardless and be more efficient at nighttime. Like full transparency. After my kids go to bed, very shortly after, I am also going to bed. And people are often like, When do you spend time with your husband? We have a small window that we spend time together after we put the kids to bed. We spend time together on bi-weekly date nights. We spend time together on Saturdays and Sundays. That is when we spend our time together. We don't get a ton of time together at night. And that is just how our lives operate. I'm an early morning person, he's a later night, later at night person. So as I'm getting in bed, he's going downstairs to work out. And it works for us. Like we actually get quality time together. So don't feel like you have to just stay up because I can almost guarantee that if you're saying, oh, my husband and I are spending quality time together, y'all are probably sitting on the couch, scrolling, sending each other reels back and forth, or you're watching a show together. And like, yeah, watching a show together is like kind of spending time together, but it's not like super intentional time either. So if you cut that back a little bit so that you can abide by daily habit number seven of early bedtime, you really will find that you're still able to spend some quality time together, even if you trim it back just a little bit. Because, like I said, the quality time right now, you're probably classifying it as sitting on the on the couch sending reels back and forth or sitting on the couch watching TV. You're not sitting there holding hands, looking each other in the eye, and expressing your love and affection for each other. I can almost guarantee that's not happening. So that wraps up our very last daily hot mom habits. Once again, those were the weekly categories and the daily categories. And like I said, at the very start of this episode, this is an aspirational episode. Okay. If you're currently doing zero of these habits, but your kids are loved, clothed, and fed, you're doing a great job. You're still a hot mom. But I want more for you. This podcast is one for me to coach you, but also like give you something to aspire to. And once again, I don't do every single one of these habits every single week, but the weeks that I hit them nail on the head, I cannot tell you how much better my life is. So I really believe that our habits and our health create either a positive or negative ripple through everything else in our lives. So this week, I want you to really aim to sit down and lay out your planner and have a point to try and hit these weekly habits. And then establishing some form of a morning routine is really gonna make those daily habits easier to hit as well. That's all for today. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of the Daily Penny Podcast. Keep in mind that new strength cycle starts Monday, April 27th. I will put a link to the app subscription in the show notes below, as well as a blog post to accompany this podcast episode to recap these habits.