75: The Real Reasons You're Overwhelmed By Healthy Living with Lucy Hutchings – Meant to Bloom
How many times have you started that healthy living journey only to quickly be met by the towering overwhelm of it all? It doesn’t have to be that way. Today Lucy Hutchings is sharing her expert advice on making healthy living realistic, simple, and sustainable. Lucy is revealing the real reasons you’re overwhelmed by this shift AND giving her tips on how to overcome each of those reasons.
Grab Lucy’s Free Guide (Too Overwhelmed To Start And What To Do About It) here
Why You’re Really Overwhelmed by Healthy Living, and How to Reduce the Overwhelm
Transcribed with Descripted: Listen to the audio here.
Brittni: Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome to the Meant to Bloom Podcast. Today I have a special guest, Lucy Hutchings. She is the host of the Healthy Mama Podcast, and she has a lot of really great tips for us today, and I cannot wait for you to meet her. Hi, Lucy.
Lucy: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
B: Why don’t you tell us just a little bit about, you know, who you are and your heart behind all this.
L: Awesome. Yes. So I am Lucy Hutchings. I am a registered dietician and I help busy moms with inflammation, with pain, with gut issues. I help them to work on their health by healing their gut, using an anti-inflammatory type of a diet so that they can get their energy back, lose weight, and get healthy and live their best life. So that’s kind of me in a nutshell.
B: You are exactly what I need in my life. These are the things that I know I need to do and I never get around to doing them. So I am really glad we’re doing this episode for my own personal benefit. So you’ve mentioned that you have this really great resource for the overwhelmed mamas who wanna get healthy.
I’m just gonna kinda give you the floor here to go ahead and talk about what, what does an overwhelmed mom need to do in order to get healthy in the most simplified way. Let’s keep it easy, let’s make this something you’ll actually do kind of.
L: That’s a really good question. And so when I work with people and in all of my content that I have out there, I focus on making things really realistic and simple and sustainable because I’m a busy mom.
I have three kids, and I really find that health is very important. But how do you make it happen? How do you make both happen? Being a busy mom and. You know, keeping yourself healthy tho that’s really difficult. And so I’m always trying to make it as simple and easy as possible, and I really, really do believe that it actually can happen.
It can be both. You can be healthy and be that busy mom at the same time. So one of the first things that we kind of have to talk about and think about. What is causing us not to reach our goals? You know, it’s, it’s overwhelmed. We’re feeling really overwhelmed and that prevents us from moving forward. So I have a handout for all of your listeners called Too Overwhelmed to Start and what to do about it, because that’s kind of one of the things that’s stopping us if you are thinking that.
Getting healthy, working on your health, working on skin issues, gut issues, hormones, all those things. If you feel like that is a huge undertaking, then you’re probably not gonna start because it’s just too overwhelming and that’s totally understandable. If you think that you have to change everything in your life, then why would you even wanna do it? Why would you wanna start?
B: Where do you find the motivation energy for that?
L: So I have some reasons why some of this overwhelm starts or you know, where does it come from. Some of this overwhelming feeling of not wanting to get started on the health journey is because we get so many messages and it becomes so confusing.
So, Where do you get all your health messages? You get it from the doctor or social media or magazines or, you know, all, all different places and they can be really conflicting and really confusing. And so that’s. That’s a problem right there because then you think, well, okay, I wanna get healthy. I wanna work on weight loss.
I wanna work on all these things, but I don’t even know where to start because there’s just so many different messages from so many different places. The other thing that happens is that kind of. Preventing us from moving forward is that we get these unrealistic expectations. We want things to happen right now or yesterday.
We want to, you know, if we’re, we’re dealing with a skin issue, we’re dealing with digestive issues, whatever it is, it’s like we want it, we wanna make changes, and then we wanna see results right away. And it’s like these unrealistic expectations. We have to be patient. We have to learn that it took a while to get to where we’re at.
It’s gonna take a while. to, you know, get better, get healthier and implement these changes. And then some other areas of, you know, reasons why we are too overwhelmed to really get started is because we have things like our critical self-talk inside of our head. So if we’re. Just judging ourselves or we are berating ourselves for making poor choices.
That’s not gonna help us to move forward. And then maybe we’re too busy. That’s another thing. If we’re a busy, overwhelmed mom, then we’re, we’re gonna have, we’re gonna struggle to find time if we feel like it’s a really big undertaking. And then there’s this fear of failing. We don’t wanna start because what if we.
There’s just, you know, so many things, but I do wanna say that you are not a failure if you don’t stop trying. So that’s really important. Keep going and then you will work through it. So those are my reasons why it holds people back.
B: Those are relatable, very relatable reasons. I’m sure plenty of mama’s are listening, resonating with that already, like Yep, I feel too busy. Yep. I’m afraid to fail. Yep, it’s overwhelming. Just the information we have access to tells us different things. That alone has like, paralyzed me on this journey before. So do you have any, what are the tips for that.
L: Yes. Overcoming this moving forward, yes, there is absolutely a solution for this, for all of these things. All of these things we can work through. So the first one, as far as, you know, reducing this overwhelm and moving forward on your health journey is limiting the noise. And what I mean by that is all the messages that we have coming to us, right? We talked. that there’s so many messages. We talked about the fact that you’re getting them from doctors, social media, magazines, books, everything, all around you.
You’re getting all these messages. Well, if we could start paying attention and start limiting them and, and reducing some of the noise, some of those messages that will help you to start. So messages like commercials, they’re, they have a, an. , you know, they have a bottom line that they’re trying to to work on, right?
They’re, they’re trying to make money. So all these messages about different diets, different medications, different, you know, anything that they’re trying to sell, different supplements. There’s just so many things out there that they’re trying to sell. Well, we can start by ignoring. Commercials, stop looking at them, stop watching them.
I know that when there’s a choice, when we’re watching something on the internet, if we can pay a dollar or $2 to watch it without commercials, then it’s worth it, just to reduce that noise in our lives. You know, this time on social media, that’s another place that is, that you’re going to get overwhelmed with the messages because there’s just so many people out there that you know, maybe don’t even have any credentials that are providing all of this nutrition advice and health advice that sometimes is just really, really not helpful.
So, limiting who you follow, being careful who you’re following on social media is another, another thing. Say the same thing with groups that you’re in, maybe on social media, so you know, especially ones that promote diet culture, if you are in a, some kind of a weight loss group there, that’s a tricky one because maybe that’s your goal, but what types of information are they giving you?
Are they promoting fad diets or crash diets or some kind of limited restrictive eating? I’m really big on. Eating, eating just whole natural foods, but doing it in a realistic way that’s not restrictive and that makes sense for you and your family and for your kids. It’s gonna make it a whole lot worse if you’re, you’re excluding a lot or if you are restricting a lot that that doesn’t really happen.
So that’s one of my first tips is to limit that noise. So the next thing is making space for yourself. and for your health journey. So if you look at your calendar or your schedule and you say, there’s no way that I could work on my health journey right now because I am way too busy, that’s a red flag right there that maybe you need to check that schedule and see what can be done about it, because that means you haven’t left any space for yourself.
If you don’t have the ability to, you know, schedule in some, some u time or schedule in some time to chop some extra vegetables or to make a lunch for yourself the next day, or to go for a walk. That’s where you need to look at your calendar and say, okay, what can I cut back on? What can I say no to?
Because you need to make sure you’re doing everything that you can to keep yourself healthy so that you can be there for everyone that needs you in your life. Sometimes people feel like that means they’re putting themselves on a pedestal or they’re being selfish because they’re putting themselves first.
but it’s actually the opposite. If you wanna be there for your kids and you wanna have the energy and you wanna have the ability to, to keep up with them, you need to put your health first in order to, in order to stay healthy, to be able to do those things with them. Great. Like I love that it’s also bite sized and simple, and it really is just getting to the root of why you’re overwhelmed so you can start taking some.
B: Do you have like a recommended first step? Like where should you start if you’re trying to like go for the wellness stuff or should people just come connect with you and find you for like specific like questions? Or is there one place that’s just like, okay, now that you know where to fix your overwhelm, what is like the next first thing to do?
L: Yes. That’s a great question. And so what I usually tell people, and when I’m working with somebody one-on-one, the, our first step together is finding your why, finding your big reason that motivates you to be on a health journey or to to work on your health. You know, what is it? Is it, you know, for a lot of people they’ll say, oh, well I’m trying to lose.
Well, that’s not really a big, that’s not your big why. So you need to think beyond that. That’s not gonna be enough motivation to keep you going because sometimes when you have to make health changes, it takes effort and it takes energy, and those things are in short supply usually when you’re a busy mom.
And so when things get hard, it’s easy to just give it up. Oh, well I don’t have time for a walk today, or, oh, I don’t have time to chop extra vegetables or make lunch. So, We really hone in on what the benefit is. That’s when we can, that’s when we can find that momentum and that motivation. So when some examples are, if you.
If you want to lose weight, what is the reason that you really do wanna lose weight? Is it because you want to have more energy? You know, is that gonna provide that energy or is it because you want to have more confidence. Do you feel like that’s going to lead to more confidence or is it that you feel like it’s gonna give you maybe, maybe some pain in your knees or pain that is happening because of the weight?
Right? So you have to figure out what’s the real reason why you wanna make those changes. And then write it down. Take some time to journal on this, write it down, and. In the forefront of your mind at all times so that when you’re, when you’re feeling like you don’t wanna go for that walk, or when you’re feeling like you just don’t wanna put in the effort, you can remind yourself of why.
And that’s really the first step because otherwise it’s just too easy to give up.
B: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, this has been gold. I’m gonna leave it at this before we get. Into overwhelming, you know, too many steps. Thank you so much for coming on today, Lucy, and giving us all these wonderful, wonderful tips and like insights into these first steps of seeking wellness, because it is so important.
So where should my listeners, where should my friends come and find more of you? If they just need more from you.
L: Yeah. Thank you. That’s a great question and thank you so much for having me on here. I think this is really a very important conversation for those busy moms out there that just don’t wanna take the time to, or feel like they can’t take the time to take care of themselves.
And, my message really for them is that there is a way to do it in really small bite sized steps. And you know, if you’re feeling it. Too overwhelmed to start there. There are some things that you can do about it. So you can find me on the Healthy Mama Podcast. You can, and that’s anywhere you listen to your podcast.
You can find the Healthy Mama podcast. I also have a private group for busy moms that are working on inflammation and pain and, and on a health journey. So that’s on Facebook and we can put the link in there and then basically, Both Instagram and Facebook. However, I definitely am on Facebook a lot more than Instagram, my handle is @LucyHutchingsrd.
B: Amazing. Thank you so much for being here, Lucy. You’re welcome.
L: Thank you so much for having me.
About Me
Hi, I’m Brittni, a mom who’s determined to share my light, wisdom, and joyfulness with every mom. My desire is that every woman knows she is worthy of ease and joy and finds the encouragement and motivation to pursue her best life possible.
I live in rural Oregon with my husband and 3 sons. I never dreamed of being a boy-mom, but now I can’t imagine life not surrounded by toy dinosaurs, race cars, and fart noises.
Brittni Clarkson 