Nutrition "On the Go" - AKA Nutrition for Busy Women!

Leading a healthy and balanced lifestyle sometimes feels impossible when you're busy and tired. As women, we have a lot on our plates. For many of us, we are the primary caregivers of the home, while balancing a full-time job. We place pretty demanding expectations on ourselves and it feels like all of society just expects us to go it alone.

What I hope to give you in this article is a few simple tips on how to work nutrition into your busy lifestyle. Most of these should be fairly easy, but do require a bit of commitment. If you're with me, read on!

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Why Do Busy Women Need to Focus on Nutrition?

Quite simply: you matter too. You want to feed your family nourishing and healthy meals so they can thrive, right? Well, you deserve a nourishing and healthy meal, too. And to feel your best. And when we eat nourishing foods, we exercise, we get some sleep, and we relax, we are more capable of taking care of the people we love, and completing the many tasks that make us feel a sense of achievement.

Nutrition feeds our mitochondria. These are the energy powerhouses of our cells, which require nutrients and adequate hydration to operate smoothly. These are the vitamins, minerals, water, fat - all of the good stuff. How can you possibly be expected to work all day, come home and care for your children, do laundry, clean, make a beautiful dinner etc. if your cells aren't nourished?

Tip #1: Eat a Balanced Breakfast

This is perhaps the most important thing you can do to nourish yourself in preparation for your busy day. No matter how rough of a night you had - maybe you were up all night with a sick kid, you were anxious about work, you had a million things to do before you finally crawled into bed - nourish yourself with a balanced breakfast. But what does that look like?

PROTEIN, FAT, FIBRE (PFF).

This is the magic combination for balancing your blood sugar, which calms anxiety and fuels your cells. It is satiating, so you won't be starving in another hour. And you might find yourself reaching for less coffee because the vitamins and minerals you've just consumed help to wake you up. It's a good rule for your children as well, so the whole family can incorporate this.

Carbohydrates are not really needed in the morning for most people. This doesn't mean you have to completely eliminate carbs, but you should be prioritizing the three macronutrients mentioned below before adding carbs to your breakfast. I am not against carbs, at all. But I think breakfast needs to focus more on the PFF rule.

Protein - eggs, meat, grass-fed dairy, nuts, seeds, legumes

Fat - grass-fed cottage cheese or yogurt, avocado, cheese, olive oil, nut milk

Fibre - vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts and seeds

Balancing Breakfast Examples

• cottage cheese with berries and almonds

• green smoothie with protein powder and milk/nut milk/yogurt

• eggs, beans and vegetable omelet/scramble

• vegetable and sausage skillet

• avocado and egg toast on whole wheat or gluten-free bread

• soup! This is a weird one for some, but it's one of my favourite breakfasts

If you're going to eat cereal or oatmeal, please please please have it with milk, sprinkle it with seeds (ex. pumpkin) or nuts, and serve it with berries. You can also drizzle some oil over your oatmeal to help make it more blood-sugar-friendly. The examples above though are going to be much more helpful than cereal or oatmeal.

Tip #2: Smart Snacking

Throughout the day, don't shy away from snacking if you need to. This can be helpful in the afternoon if you feel a bit of a lull. There's no shame in this; just snack smart!

If you are following an intermittent fasting routine, obviously use your judgment here and make the best decision for you. I think busy women need permission to snack, because most days we are running on empty. Fasting puts our bodies into a state of stress, so snacking can be helpful to calm the nervous system and therefore reduce anxiety. Most importantly, it balances blood sugar which might have dropped in the afternoon due to us running around trying to pick the kids up, finish up work, grab groceries, etc. Fasting can be beneficial in the evenings when our stress is (hopefully) reduced, or on days when there are less demands placed on us.

Snack Ideas

• almonds and other nuts; homemade trailmix (low sugar - use seeds, nuts, dried fruit)

• Cheese or almond butter and fruit (ex. apple or banana)

• Guacamole/tzaziki with raw vegetables

Depending on your body composition, you may need another snack before bed. If you are extremely lean with a fast metabolism, consider a small snack before bed. This might sound like a surprising suggestion coming from a holistic nutritionist, but everyone's body compositions have different requirements, so find what works for you. I personally sleep better when I have a small snack at night. Someone with a slower metabolism can benefit from fasting after dinner until breakfast, as long as dinner was balanced with a good amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates.

Tip #3: No Coffee After Lunch

I don't want to make enemies here, but cutting coffee completely changed my life. It honestly did. Everyone reacts differently to coffee and caffeine in general, but I invite you to look at your relationship with coffee / caffeine. In my case, it was really disrupting things. It was causing a lot of inflammation for me especially with my menstrual cycle, and affecting my sleep. I do not detoxify caffeine quickly enough to make it worth consuming, and within a few days I noticed a huge change. And this was from one large cup in the morning only!

While high quality, organic coffee does contain some antioxidants and minerals, most people drink so much that it becomes acidifying. This causes a lot of widespread damage. There are better sources of antioxidants that don't cause the issues that coffee can - veggies and fruit, anyone?

Coffee is a stimulant, which can be really helpful in the morning. It boosts cortisol, our stress hormone, which again, is helpful in the morning when cortisol should be high. However, around mid-day, we want our cortisol to start dropping slowly but steadily. This is what helps us feel more relaxed during the afternoon, and prepares our body for rest in the evenings.

Caffeine also has a half life of 5 hours in our bodies. This means that 5 hours after drinking a cup of coffee, you still have half that amount of caffeine running through you. So one cup of coffee at 3:00pm = half of that caffeine amount by 8:00pm, when you should be winding down.

It takes the body some time to adjust to less caffeine in the system. If you want to cut back, just be prepared that it will affect your mood and your energy levels initially. This is normal. Keep on the path - you will get there!

You can replace your afternoon cup of coffee with a herbal tea like peppermint, a snack, a brisk walk, etc. Those are all effective methods of gently boosting energy without negative side effects. I find getting outside gets me over a midday crash, though I don't have those as much anymore - and when I eat a PFF breakfast, I don't have them at all (even when I haven't slept well!).

Tip #4: Feed Your Adrenal Glands

These little glands sit on top of your kidneys, and pump cortisol out into your blood. They need some love and care in order to stay functioning optimally. If you've heard of "adrenal fatigue," this refers to a state of underactive adrenals where you have basically been pushing your adrenals to pump out so much cortisol over time that they start to become desensitized and as a result, underactive. There can also be issues that stem from the pituitary gland in the brain, but adrenal fatigue is an epidemic among adults in modern days (especially women), and it's controllable and fixable with diet and lifestyle modifications.

Diet, sleep, exercise, and stress reduction need to be the starting point for adrenal gland care.

And there are specific ways to take care of our adrenal glands other than striving for a balanced diet, good sleep, and exercise:

• vitamin C. Our adrenal glands love vitamin C. You can take a supplement or simply ensure you are consuming vitamin C every single day - oranges and other citrus fruits, bell peppers, broccoli, and tomatoes are some ideas. Electrolyte powders can also be helpful here.

• herbs. I encourage you to speak to a nutritionist or naturopath before starting herbs but some really helpful ones for the adrenals are rhodiola (energy boosting), ashwaghandha (calming), licorice root, holy basil (tulsi), etc. Some are meant to boost the adrenals while others are meant to calm overactive adrenals, so do your research and/or speak to a practitioner.

• fat. Coconut and olive oil, avocado, nuts, etc. Fat is required to make hormones, so ensuring you are eating adequate amounts of healthy fat is necessary.

A note about adrenals: in menopause, these will be responsible for producing your sex hormones' precursors after the ovaries have retired, so they need care and attention now, before menopause. Exhausted adrenal glands often contribute to worsened menopausal symptoms.

Tip #5: Hourly Breathing Check

Every hour, especially past noon - take 30 seconds to 1 minute to stop what you're doing. Drop your shoulders. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths in and out through your nose. Breathing through the nose puts your body into a parasympathetic state - ie. the "rest and digest" state which allows your body to lower blood pressure, digest your food, etc. It doesn't take long but it can be very, very effective for a busy and stressed person.

Tip #6: Prep Work

A way to help you manage your week is to do some prep work on the weekends, or whatever day works for you. I don't meal prep for the whole week because I find it overwhelming, though you can certainly do that. I prefer to have things "on hand" that are easy and make the job of preparing a healthy meal seem effortless. Some ideas to make your life easier would be:

• batch cook some hard boiled eggs (leave shells on for storing in the fridge) - great for breakfasts or salads

• roast some almonds or other nuts with some seasoning and jar it for snacks

• cut up raw vegetables and put in glass containers for easy snacks

• make a big pot of something like a soup or stew - makes for easy lunches!

• stock your pantry with helpful things like canned fish (great for salad), raw nuts and seeds, high quality trailmix, etc.

• get a variety of frozen vegetables like broccoli, peas, carrots, etc - they cook quickly and are generally less expensive than fresh

• make up batches of things like homemade burgers that go straight into the freezer. This is nice in the summer, but you can also double batch cook a stew and freeze that into smaller portions.

Final Thoughts

These are general tips for any busy person, but I feel passionately about sharing these tips with women in particular, because we have a different kind of pressure we place on ourselves as well the ones imposed by society. We are expected to do so much, while somehow also caring for ourselves. But you are worth that care. And if you need an excuse to prioritize your nutrition, remember that your cells literally require these nutrients to function optimally. If your cells aren't healthy, you can't be effective at doing anything - not work, not childcare, keeping house - literally nothing. If you're exhausted, there's a reason - your cells need more. It's not because you are weak; it's a physiological response to the energetic needs of your body. Feed those cells, ladies!

Feel free to comment below and let me know your key takeaways, or other recommendations/hacks you have for the busy women in your life and what works for you!

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This information is not intended as medical advice as I am not a doctor. I am a Certified Nutritional Practitioner aiming to help people attain their health and nutrition goals.