Episode #297: You Can Have it All- Just Not Every Day

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want. Without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make foods that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly, and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies. Well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hi, friends, welcome to today’s episode, thank you so much for pressing play and choosing to spend time with me here today. I don’t take that lightly. And I am so happy you’re here. I’m really excited to dive into this concept, this topic this book as a resource today. So backstory I read this book years ago, I don’t even remember how many years ago, probably four or five years ago, I don’t know how old it is. So maybe I could have looked at that first. But I believe I read it when I only had one child. And there were just some really helpful themes and concepts that we’re going to get into. But I think, the overwhelm for me at least I’ll speak for myself, but I think part of the overwhelm and motherhood can be the idea of how do I do it all. And there’s so much that has been said or can be said about this concept, especially those who are working outside the home, like work life balance, all of that. And then, you know, there’s memes about it. There’s funny things that we share about it reels and whatnot about like, what how I look when I’m trying to keep myself healthy, keep up with friends have a social life, make sure my kids are, you know, learning and also making time for my spouse and all these things. And you know, a lot of these things are really good. And then people say then the lesson like and then make sure you’re doing self care. Like why aren’t you doing self care? Why are you going out and getting manicures and getting your hair cut regularly making yourself doctor’s appointments like these should be easy things and it’s all like just, whoo, it sounds like a lot it sounds it was a lot for me to just say. So we all just need to like take a deep breath, shoulders down away from our ears. And just like I’m cueing a workout.

We do have a lot of responsibilities. And I want to say first and foremost that I think you could get the same idea from reading proverbs 31 Okay, let me explain this a little bit and get into this because I don’t want you to walk away from today’s episode, thinking okay, Brittany thinks we should really lower the bar. And that was the takeaway. I think if you’ve been here for any length of time, you know that that is not usually the way I swing I’m usually talking about how we did stop settling for mediocrity.

We need to strive for excellence and all that there’s a difference between running ourselves ragged trying to be a superwoman not ask for help do everything ourselves. And I think a lot of it actually hinges on pride, which is something I’m personally over here raising my hand dealing with, I hate asking for help. I hate admitting if I can’t do everything by myself. So there’s bad end of the spectrum. But then there’s also the the end of the spectrum that you know, might be not striving for anything, being really selfish with our time thinking, well, I need all this time to dedicate to self care into my workouts and my nutrition. So I don’t have time for all this other stuff. None of these things are what I’m trying to talk about today. Why I mentioned proverbs 31. When I read that chapter of the Bible, I am encouraged but I’m also like, holy cow. How does this woman do it? I mean, there’s so much in there, I don’t have a pull up in front of me. But it’s not just that she’s looking over the duties of her household. She’s also making things to sell at them. You know, now I’m gonna really butcher it but you can look it up and see she is making things to sell. She’s also making all the clothing for her
household making sure her charges are doubly covered. There’s so much sushi rises while it’s still night. She’s working late into the night. So you’d hear about me like, well, she’s not really practicing self care. I don’t think that the message of that passage in that chapter is to work yourself to the bone. Never find respite, right? We can find tons of other Saint readings and ratings to encourage us the other way, like St. Mother Teresa, who said, you know, you need to take at least an hour in prayer a day, that shouldn’t be the self care you’re including, okay, so all of this kind of has to like work together and then find a middle ground. Because if I just read that proverbs 31 Chapter and took it so literally, and thought I need to do all these things in one day.

That is a very high bar. And it’s probably going to set us up for disappointment and guilt and shame when we don’t reach all those things. It doesn’t say in the passage that she does all of these things in one day that she’s both sewing and selling things, you know, it whatever they sold them at, then the markets, I don’t know. And she’s making food for her household and the servants and everything all in the same day, every single day. Okay. Plus, when this was written, they didn’t have all the modern conveniences that we do that could pull off some of those things. I think about that often. Like
I was just why we I’m so late to this party, and this is a slight tangent, then we get back on topic. I know many of you watch the chosen, we have not watched it all my husband, I he’s been doing Exodus 90. They, I’m gonna blame that on part of it that I want to watch it but I want to watch it with him. But then he’s not doing screen time. So I just actually pulled up the first episode the other day, and started watching it. And immediately Of course, this is very me watching him like wow, see, they had to be so physically fit for their lives back then. Because of the very first episode, the first scene it shows Mary Magdalene getting water from the well it was like that was so hard that she had to pull those jugs up. They need to carry them back balanced on your back. Like that was such a physical life. And I was thinking how easy it is. I was I don’t know, my brain went from the well to washing laundry. And then I was thinking about how they’d be like, go down to the river and wash on wash boards with laundry, thinking we just press start on a machine, like majority of us, maybe we’re hanging our laundry on the line during the summer. I like to do that. However, we have the total modern drumbeats of pressing Start. So
I don’t think like going back to problems, Proverbs 31, she was doing all of those things in one day, because just time probably wouldn’t have allowed that with everything to sew something by hand, like that was a bulk of your day. And it took several days or it took weeks.

So this is I think the lens and the grain of salt we need to give ourselves and look at things through but realize like, Okay, this is what we’re striving for. This is what we’re looking at in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t mean every single day, we cannot stress ourselves out with this hour by hour, we need to always be productive, we need to get done as much as we can. I think it’s really helpful to look at overarching. So I’ll get kind of into this book now that I’ve laid that out a little bit. So I did not even revisit this book. I honestly meant to before doing this podcast, but I remembered enough of the themes, I just had to look up the categories to make sure I didn’t mess up the categories and said, but this is totally my opinion.

And the book is called Pick Three, you can have it all, just not every day by Randi Zuckerberg. So I think it’s worth the read. There might be some things in there that probably are that I don’t agree with. Because it’s been so long. I’ll just disclaimer that. But like I said, I think that so many books, it’s like, if you can take one thing away, it’s worth your time to read because this has come up. I mean, even if I read it four or five years ago, how many times in my mind, it’s really changed a lot of things for me. So the book in general, in my opinion, defies the concept that you can be totally balanced in every category all the time. So the seven categories are, let me see.

I did actually put them down somewhere, work, sleep, fitness, family and friends. So I’m sure all of us have some categories that we would add to that or subtract to that like faith, like, nutrition is not on there.

But there’s other just like parts of life, but her big five categories are work, sleep, fitness, family and friends. So her general concepts were that you can’t do it every single day, but you can be successful. If we pick three. What this really reminded me of and what this I think is similar to I’ve talked about him before Andy Frisella has what is called a power list. And he suggest every day to just pick your three biggest things you need to get done that day. And that’s it. If you’ve done them, you check those off and you have won the day and then you gain momentum by winning enough days in a row. And then you can look back and see, okay, I didn’t win everyday this month, but I won 25 out of 30 and that’s pretty darn good or whatever. The idea is you’re only striving for three things.
so that you’re not making a list of 10 things and then not succeeding and overwhelming yourself and feeling that guilt and shame that I just talked about. So I thought this was very similar. If you are hearing that thinking, well, that’s ridiculous. I can do every category every day I can work, I can sleep, well, I can be fit. I can spend time with my family, I can spend time with friends. Yeah, I think yes and no. Okay, because that’s what that was kind of my initial reaction when I read the book, was that like, Superwoman mentality of? No, no, I can do all of it. But I like the freedom here more, it’s like going deep in each category, like, Yes, I think you could be you can and should be, I think the author would agree with this, maintaining all of those at all times. But maybe you’re not really hyper focused on or making progress in or spending time in every single category every day, that’s just not going to work our wise. So yes, if you don’t work out one day, your fitness should still be maintained from your workouts the day before the workout you’re going to do the next day, you still hopefully, have a good relationship with your family, even though you didn’t spend a lot of time with him that day, maybe you still are going to work, you still slept well that night. And then you can shoot a text to your friends, you know, a friend that day, but you’re spending, you know what I mean? You can, yes, have like a hand in each of these areas. But
you have the ability and the freedom to go deeper if you’re just kind of honing in on three each day. So an example of this, and I know the book cited a ton of examples.

An example this might be on a Saturday, you’re waking up, you’re praying. Obviously prayer, and faith isn’t on the list. But I would say that that’s you know, for most of us, it should be the non negotiable we’re getting in each day. That that’s like a, you know, just a different pillar of our lives. That’s like in that showering and eating category, right of just, we, you know, we pray everyday and whatever.
But so say you, it’s a Saturday morning, and you wake up, you pray, you get a workout in, okay, that checked off the fitness box, maybe you’re hanging out with your family, you’re either hanging out in the yard, or you’re doing yard work or whatever, it’s spring, a lot of us are doing that. Maybe you walk to the park with your family, etc. Saturday is a family day. And then that night you meet your friends out, you just checked off three that day fitness family, and friends, you probably didn’t also get worked on that day.
What’s the other one, maybe because you’re going to meet your friends out, it’s not going to be a day you’re heavy on sleep, because you’re going to stay out a little bit later. And then if you have kids, you probably have to still wake up at the same time the next morning. So that’s an example. Another example would be, say just a Tuesday, like a weekday. Those of you who maybe work from home or work outside the house, we’ll go with that example. So maybe you’re waking up, you’re praying, and those pillars are still in there. You’re working out, you’re going to work, but then you get out of work, you’re doing dinner, bedtime, whatever with your family. And then you go to bed early, I would count that as like the three categories of fitness, work and sleep. That’s where you could argue, Well, I still have dinner with my family or I still talk to my kids. And yes, but again, was that really a maybe you talk to a friend during the day you talk to a work friend, but you’re not really spending a lot of time and energy in those categories. So that’s kind of how she sets it up. And how, what I take it to mean is yes, you can be maintaining other ones like yes, hopefully, you’re kind of do have a hand in each of those like say on a fitness, I used it fitness and both of those examples. But say it’s a rest day and you’re not going to put fitness in there. Hopefully, you’re still moving your body, hopefully you’re still walking around, maybe you’re doing some stretching at some point, but you didn’t do a designated workout again, doesn’t mean you’ve dropped fitness forever. It just means that was not in your top three that day.

Now, how I’ve kind of the takeaways I’ve had, those are kind of some main themes. To me. The takeaways to me were that you
realize I’ve realized at least that you’re still in control of where you’re putting your time and attention. So if you have this huge to do list, and you’re like I have all this stuff, how am I going to do this and like I need to connect with each kid, I need every day and I need to like take care of myself.
If you can kind of like segment in your mind, I just kind of take this a week at a time to think like okay, what this week am I doing? You know, for with my spouse first and foremost, and then I try to look for pockets of where I can connect with each kid. I’m that is something that has really that’s why I think this book has helped me in this way that as the kids are getting older, like man, how do people with 56789 10 kids, like make sure they get enough one on one time with kids at different times. And to me that you all probably have a lot of great tips in this area. But I’ve had to realize like, way back in the day, which is when most people not necessarily this generation. A lot of people in this generation still a lot of kids, but when it was more than norm the stories that I hear from people who are in our like grandparents age, they say like well the time I had with my dad was when I was outside working with him or if we took a quick trip to the hardware store or if I accompanied my mom to run errands or whatever. A lot of times that’s what the quality time looks like and that’s that’s a whole nother
topic, but I think just being aware of like touch points, like, okay, when is the last time I had a little bit of alone time with this kid or, you know, making sure like we plan out our workouts for the week, right? And most of us do that most of you listening to this podcast, you do look at your week, and you roughly plan your meals, or you look at what days you’re going to work out. So plug that in with the other categories here. And I think this is really big. The reason I wanted to bring this to the forefront was a listener did I mentioned this, I think in last episode, wrote me an email and mentioned sleep and was like, Okay, listen to your morning schedules. But like, what does sleep look like? Because I want to hang out with my husband at night. But I want to have this great morning. And like, When are people sleeping? How are they sleeping? I think this is where it really is that pick three idea. And this is contrary to what you’re gonna hear on most really extreme health podcasts. I was just listening to on the other day, I think it was on the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon show where she was talking about talking with someone who someone she was chatting with about how I think it was this podcast, so don’t quote me on it. But it was some experts saying like, you should ideally be going to bed at the same time every night, waking up at the same time every day, like and that within minutes, it can throw off everything for you, basically, but they were talking about high level athletes and people who want their body to be functioning at its absolute optimum, optimal potential maximum potential. And that’s not me, that’s not me. I’m the average mom that wants Energy wants to feel good, wants to be pretty healthy. Still want to have a margarita and chips in guac? Sometimes, okay, so I’m not looking to never have a seed oil in my body or to never not wake up at the same time or never not go to bed at the same time. So this comes down to priority. And like I just talked about like that you’re still in control of those things. So yes, there’s basically how we do this. No, everyone’s can be different their house, most Monday through Fridays, my husband and I are getting to bed and getting up around the same time. The weekends is where we have a little more flexibility where we do stay up later, we hang out we sleep and a little bit later, etc. Of course, seasons of life. Totally factor into this and ages of babies and kids and whatnot. But even within that even knowing what we know. And knowing that seven to eight hours, seven to nine hours is optimal sleep for most people. And that we should really prioritize that and knowing what we know about how much our hormones are affected by sleep. Do sometimes we say, hey, the new Morgan Wallen CD. You know what I mean? What do we got out? Just new album is dropping? Like, do you want to stay up on a Thursday night and drink whiskey and listen to the whole album? Like, yeah, sure, let’s do it. Like Friday, I’ll just be rough. And that’s what we do. Or, hey, it’s Tuesday night, do you want to just paint the living room and like, we know that tomorrow is going to be terrible. But guess what, we have three little kids and you can only really paint when they’re sleeping.

So like, Yeah, let’s do it. You know what I mean? Like, there’s a time and place for that. And my husband, I talk about that a lot where I don’t think we’re gonna be at and be like, Thank God, we went to bed at 830 Every single night and got a full eight to nine hours of sleep. Because I’m so thankful for that. However, it’s easy to say that and then think well, at least we made it to 80 Because maybe if you were on the complete other end of the spectrum, you might be 60 7080 with tons of health ailments, overweight, not conditioned, lots of like obesity related diseases or problems. Because you just always live that lifestyle of who cares? Let’s not sleep life short. Let’s, yeah, let’s get the takeout. Yeah, let that. So I do think there’s a balance. I think order is important. I think our God is a God of order. There’s so much that scripture has to say about early Tibet. Well, that’s actually I think, Ben Franklin, Early to bed early to rise. But there’s a lot in Proverbs talking about how the wise man is going to bed early and rising early. And all of that there really are, of course, I don’t have them to reference for you right now. But go through proverbs and Syriac, have a ton to say about that. And that should be I think the norm is we have a structure, we have a Rule of Life, where, you know, it’s what works for our state in life. And then there’s times that we can just, you know, toss that out the window and go a little bit rogue. I think there’s absolutely room for that. But, you know, not veering on either side of way too austere or absolute chaos. Right? So getting back to the book, I did originally initially read it and think no, you should have family in there every day or no, you can do this or know that. But it’s helped me to actually be successful in making not just like progress in these areas as a standard of measurement but to feel good in one area like okay, if I’m going to meet a friend that is going to be a day where maybe I got to work out in I had family time because I was
with my kids all day, which is my work, and then I met a friend out for dinner, whatever, and I didn’t hang out with my husband at night, obviously, or I didn’t get work done that night or whatever. But I feel that category and then letting go of that not like, and I have to get my work done. And I have to this or knowing, okay, we’re gonna stay up late and drink whiskey and listen to country music. So I’m not checking the sleep box tonight. But this was quality time with my spouse. And we chose to do that. Like, I think there’s something very freeing and just realizing you can’t pick a perfectly even balance on all 567 categories, however many you personally might have, at one time, because it’s just setting ourselves up for failure. And then we just say like, well, I can’t control any of this. So my takeaway, hopefully, what will help you is to think, Okay, you’re in control, you can look at your week, your month, your year, whatever, say no to some things that are going to get in the way of you taking care of your health, getting some sleep, getting your workouts in, saying yes to other things that you think are worth it, realizing you cannot have a perfect balance in all areas at the same time. And then bringing it back to the Proverbs 31. Women woman, what we’re called to, and that we are called to a lot, we’re not called to just settle for the very bare minimum that we can do. So we can strive for excellence and strive to be accomplishing a lot in a holy way. You know, again, according to what we’re called to, and everybody’s, this is gonna be personal to everybody. But just, it’s just not going to be in the same day. Again, go back. I think some maybe you want to read this book after listening to podcasts. Maybe also just take some time with the Proverbs 31 passage and see like, wow, okay, there is a lot going on. But she probably still had to sacrifice some things. Some days, if she’s finishing somebody’s garment. She probably wasn’t getting that much sleep at night. But overall, we know that sleep is good for us and all of that. All right, you guys get the point. I hope this bless you. I hope there were some takeaways for you. If you enjoyed the podcast, I would be very grateful if you take a second to rate and review it or share it on your Instagram stories, share with a friend that would be really helpful and I would appreciate it so much. All right. Thanks. Have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you next episode.

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