Nicole Cheak (00:00)
It is so early.
like way earlier than I needed to be up and the house is quiet, which if you have teenage boys, you basically know that that's kind of a miracle.
That was last summer and that walk, that simple unplanned, sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes an hour became the thing that held my entire health together all of last summer. And it wasn't a perfect nutrition week, it wasn't a rigid workout schedule, it wasn't even a meal plan that I stuck to every day. It was a single walk.
And today I want to talk about that because I know what's happening for so many of you right now. Your school is either just ending or it's about to and the schedule that you've been running for the past nine months is just gonna evaporate like overnight. Your kids are home, your structure is gone and that quiet little panic is starting to show up. And maybe it's already here. For me, it's already here. So today we are going to talk about the summer,
Specifically, what to do when summer completely blows up and you are staring three months into the month of chaos and wondering how you're going to stay on track. And here's what I want you to know before we really kind of dive into today. You don't need a new routine, okay? You just need a few simple swaps and one anchor, okay? That's it. And I'm going to give you six of them today. Practical, real life swaps that can work when your schedule looks like it didn't look like a couple of months ago or even a couple
weeks ago. Okay, these are not aspirational. They're not here's what I want you to do when everything goes right because let's be honest nothing ever goes right but this is the real stuff. The stuff that works when your kids are home and your fridge looks like a gas station and you haven't been to the gym since well you don't even know one. So stay with me because this one is going to matter.
So let's talk about what actually happens in the summer because I don't think we actually name it clearly enough. And when we don't name it, then we start to blame ourselves for it. So the school year gives you kind of like a structure that scaffolding, right? You might not even realize it's there until it's gone, but it is. You wake up at a certain time, you pack lunches, you get your kids out the door, you maybe hit the gym, walk, do whatever you do, or maybe you don't. And if you work from home, maybe you come home, you start work,
and you sit down and before you know it, the day is gone. That summer blows that shape up completely because your kids are maybe sleeping later, they have summer camps that are like at the worst times for parents because they start at 10 and end at one and like, come on, who really is able to do that all the time? So your snack situation is crazy because your kids are home all the time and they're always asking you, oh, or if they're anything like my kids,
standing behind my computer making, you know, sign language things and they're like, I'm hungry. And it's like constant. So everything is different. There's different meals, you're going on trips, you're skipping weeks, and everything that was automatic is just suddenly not anymore.
So summer blows that up completely. And on top of all of it, you're summer. Like it's summer, it's supposed to be relaxed and you're supposed to have fun and enjoy it. And so when you feel yourself slipping and when you feel like you haven't moved your body in a week and you've been reaching for whatever is in reach, there's this extra layer of guilt that comes with it because you feel like you should be able to handle all of it because it's supposed to be, you know, like easy season, right? But here's what's
want you to know is when your structure disappears, the most motivated, most disciplined women on the planet is going to struggle to maintain the habits that lived inside that certain structure. Okay? And it's not really a willpower problem. It's a structure problem. Okay? And I'm going to, I'm going to talk about scaffolding for a minute, right? Because scaffolding is like structure. The habits didn't fail. The scaffolding that they built on kind of disappeared, right? And
That is a very different problem with a very different solution and so the solution to all of this is Not maybe the exact same routine in the summer
Okay, because it's not gonna work. right, summer doesn't cooperate with the same routines that you had during the school year. All right, but the solution is to find your anchors. Okay, the non-negotiables that are gonna hold everything else in place, even when the rest of the schedule is complete chaos. So that's what I figured out last summer with my walk, and I want to help you figure it out today for you. But before we get into the six swaps, I want to say something real quick,
know some of you are already sitting here thinking, okay, but what's my problem? What's actually getting in my way? And here's the thing, summer derails women for different reasons. For some of you, it's the food environment, the snacks that are suddenly everywhere, the vacations, the barbecues. For some of you, it's the movement piece, the gym schedule is gone, you don't know what to do. And for some of you, it's mindset. You feel like if it doesn't look like it didn't spring, it didn't count. Okay, so I have a free quiz that is called What's Actually Getting in Your Way, and it's literally
one question, 30 seconds, and you're going to get a personalized guide built on the other side for your struggle. Not generic advice, it's your specific obstacle.
So will link it in the show notes. It's intentionalwellnesscoaching.com backslash quiz. And so if you don't know where to start, I want you to start there. All right, so let's talk about the six swaps. So swap number one, I want you to swap the rigid workout schedule for movement that fits into your day. And I start here because I think this is where most women lose summer before it even begins. We have this idea that workouts have to look a certain way all the time. They have to be at the gym,
They have to have a certain length. They have to check certain boxes and when that schedule allowed for that specific thing disappears, so maybe you were an early morning gym person and maybe it's you know, nobody's getting up at 6 a.m. anymore and so we don't feel like we can work out at all and so that is kind of like this all-or-nothing trap and it's the number one thing that sends women into the fall feeling like they lost their entire summer. So I hear this all
the time. I couldn't get to the gym, so I just didn't work out. And I get it, okay? I have been in this exact mindset before in my life, and I want to push back a little bit because that thinking is costing you more than you realize. And here's what I want to offer you instead. Movement is movement, okay? A swim with your kid counts, a bike ride after dinner counts, a 20 minute walk while your teenagers are still asleep, it all counts. More than you know, which is what I'm going to get to in a minute.
And look, dancing in your kitchen while you're making lunch with the 90s music on that brings you back to that day and age, it all counts. right? And prompter yoga on your living room floor totally counts. And is it the same as a structured lifting program? No. And that's okay. All right? The goal in the summer is not to optimize, but the goal, and the goal is maybe not getting your best results. Maybe it is. But the number one goal, the number one thing I hear is that because there's
and structure.
then you don't get results at all. And so the goal is just to stay in motion, to keep the habit of moving your body alive, even when the specific thing has to change. So most women who come into the fall with their momentum are not the ones who executed a perfect summer training plan, okay? It was the ones who never stopped moving, even if it was messy, even if it was short, even when it looked like nothing that it did in the winter. And the research shows this, and it's
important for us specifically for women in their late 30s and 40s, consistency of movement, even varied movement does more for your hormones, your cortisol, your insulin sensitivity and your mood than any perfectly programmed six week plan that you're going to abandon my week two because it doesn't fit your schedule. Okay. So your body and perimenopause is particularly sensitive to the stress hormone called cortisol. And we talked a little bit about cortisol
and insulin in last week's episode. And if you missed it, go back and listen to it. But if you are skipping movement entirely, that can actually keep your cortisol elevated, okay? Because your body is missing that natural regulation that comes from physical activity. So you don't necessarily need intense, don't want you running five miles every single day. You just need to be consistent, all right? So even regular movement tends
minute walks are going to help your body manage cortisol and support and sensitivity and it's going to help keep your metabolism doing you what you want it to do. So give yourself full permission this summer to let your workouts look a little different. Do your regular lifting sessions when you can. I'm not saying to give those up because strength and muscle are your metabolism but on the days that you can't I want you to move anyway because that's what works and that's how that's the swath.
for one. Okay? We are on swap number two.
So, swap number two is I want you to stop complicating meal planning for a few anchor meals. right? Let's talk about summer and food because the environment in your house is going to change, right? Your kids are home. They want snacks. You have maybe more kids coming in and out of your house. You're doing more casual eating, right? Cookouts, pools, vacation meals, and the structure of breakfast before school and packed lunches, it's kind of gone.
And without that structure, a lot of women just kind of stop eating intentionally. And so they graze. They grab whatever's the easiest. I've done it before too, right? It's just kind of part of life. But when you skip real meals and you find yourself standing in front of the pantry eating goldfish and Cheez-Its, and then you wonder why you feel terrible. And so if that sounds familiar, I get it because that's been me. So the solution is not creating a summer complicated meal plan, okay? If you couldn't stick to a rigid meal plan in the spring,
when your schedule was more structured. mean, I don't know, May-Sum-ber is a little bit crazy, but if you can't stick to it in the spring, then you're never gonna stick to one in the summer when you have a little bit more freedom and not as much structure, okay? So what are anger meals and what exactly is this? And I want you to think about this. It's these two or three meals that you know by heart, that you know that you can make in 10 minutes without a recipe. They hit your protein goals and they keep your blood sugar
stable, and there are meals that are flexible enough to kind of survive that chaos of summer. So I want you to think about it like this. Right? You don't need a perfect week of nutrition. You just need a few meals that you can always come back to. And when the summer, you know, changes your plans, you have those anchor meals and they matter more now. So
For me, one of those anchor meals is always going to be some version of my easy plate. And this is really what I focus on all the time regardless, but it's something that I can build very quickly from whatever's in my fridge without a plan. So protein, non-starchy vegetables, healthy fat, and my fiber-rich carb. That's it. I'm following a framework. I'm not following a
And that is what I teach so many of my clients inside of the collective because at the end of the day if you have to rely on recipes for the rest of your life, then you're never going to You're always going to feel like you need new recipes You're always going to feel like you have to have all of these new things when in fact research shows the more simple that you keep it the more anchored that you keep it and The less decisions that you're making around food the easier that weight loss becomes so if you want to go deeper
and understand how the easy plate method works and how to use it in your actual life. That's the foundation of everything I teach inside of the collective, which I'll share a little bit more about later. But for now, simplify. Anchor meals, two or three that you know cold. And that's really where I want you to start, okay? Swap number three. Stop trying to be perfect for one non-negotiable anchor habit. All right, and this is the heart of the entire episode, and it's something I want you to remember.
So last summer, you know, I was running to my kids school four times a day sometimes because that's where they were doing a lot of their camps and I was in and out all the time. Like all the time. I didn't really have a structured schedule. So I had made a decision. I didn't want to replicate my school year routine in the summer. But my anchor was my walk. And every morning, I before the day got away from me, I got up and I walked.
And sometimes those walks were 20 minutes. Sometimes they were 45. And you know, once, like a few times, like they're close to an hour because I got out there and it just started moving and I felt so good. And so I just didn't want to come home and I just kept walking. And I want to tell you, you know, why it started because it wasn't some elaborate strategy. I just knew in my gut that I needed to start my day with sunlight and fresh air and movement before anything else happened. And
before anyone really needed me, right? Like you hear mom a lot. And so sometimes hearing that before you've really taken care of yourself can just kind of feel like nails on the chalkboard. So I needed something that was for me before the day actually started. And so I got up every morning. I started my morning with a walk with sunlight, with fresh air, with movement, and I felt better. I felt clearer. The days I walked, I ate better almost automatically. I felt more patient. I was making better
decisions and you know honestly I would finish the walk and feel so good and sometimes I'd go straight into my lifting session because I actually wanted to. Not because I had to, okay, but because I actually wanted to and I cannot tell you how different that feels from forcing yourself to go through a workout. When you create the right conditions and you move your body outside in the morning light with fresh air, your brain starts to crave it more and at
that point it doesn't become discipline, it just is the momentum. And so maybe it's something different for you and that's what an anchor habit does, okay? It doesn't just check a doc, check a box. It's creating momentum for you. It's signaling to your brain and your body that your day has started intentionally and when your day starts with intention, the rest of it tends to follow. So listen, I know that you, for you it might be something different.
Okay. Now, did I walk every single morning all summer? No, I'm human. I skipped days. Life happened. And I noticed when it did, I felt more scattered, a little more edgy, a little less clear. And the difference was noticeable enough that it kind of made me come back to that all the time. So even when the bed was comfortable and, you know, the book would still be there later, I knew, you know, how I was going to feel if I didn't go. And I liked how I felt when I did go. So,
you want to find an anchor and for you it might be something completely different. So don't try and carry your current routine into the summer because it's not going to survive. So find your one thing, okay? Make it a non-negotiable thing.
All right, because once you do that, that is going to thread the whole summer together. And I have seen this in my clients and the collective, in my coaching work and in my own life. And it works every single time, not because one habit magically fixes everything, but because one habit that you actually keep is infinitely more powerful than 10 things that you're gonna abandon by July.
Swap number four is skipping breakfast or grabbing whatever's easiest for a simple protein first morning. Okay, this sounds basic and I know I've talked about it before, but it works and it's why I'm not going to skip it. So summer mornings can be chaos. Like your kids are up late, they're sleeping in, or you might have multiple camps that you're trying to run your kids to. You don't have a driver yet and so you're back
and forth 5,000 times all while trying to work. So your morning routine is gone. And for a lot of women, breakfast just kind of stops too. And so you start to graze and you have coffee first and you eat whatever the kids are having. And then, you you skip it entirely and you wonder why you're starving and you have brain fog by, you know, early afternoon. So when you do that, then, you know, you're, you're kind of setting that rhythm to
different pace and it's bio it actually is biological. So when you wake up your cortisol is naturally elevated and that's normal that's what you want. It's your body's way of waking up and getting you moving. But when you skip breakfast or push it back significantly then you keep that cortisol elevated for longer than it needs to be. An elevated cortisol in perimenopause is not your friend okay. It's what promotes fat storage particularly around the belly okay. It messes with your blood sugar and we talked a lot
about blood sugar in the last episode, so if you haven't listened to it, definitely go back and listen to it because it makes you more reactive and anxious. So getting protein in within the first one to two hours of waking is going to be much better and it's something that you can intentionally do that is going to help bring your cortisol back down, stabilize your blood sugar, and kind of set you up for a different kind of morning. right? So make sure that you are getting in that simple protein
first breakfast. Swap number five is a swapping a rigid morning schedule for a morning rhythm and evening rhythm.
Okay, this one kind of sounds a little wishy washy, but I want to talk about what consistency actually means, okay? And I think it might be a mindset shift that changes how you approach not just summer, but every season that doesn't cooperate with a perfect plan, okay? A schedule that says I work out at six, I eat at seven, I start work at eight, right? Most of the time it doesn't work like that, and summer kind of changes all of that. So a rhythm kind of says in the morning I move my body, I eat something with
before the day starts and then the evening I wind down and I do something that signals to my body that the day is over. So your morning rhythm could be you're walking or moving, you're having a protein breakfast, five minutes of quiet before you start hearing your name and it doesn't matter if it happens at 6 a.m. or 8 30 a.m. but the sequence is the same. And maybe your evening rhythm is you know no more eating after a certain time. Okay so for me I
typically try not to eat after 7 p.m. and you do something calming. All right, you put your phone away and definitely put it away for 30 minutes before you go to bed. And it matters because for all of these things, your sleep, your cortisol, for fat loss, your body is not responding to the clock on the wall. Okay, so it doesn't know if it's 9 p.m. or 11 p.m. but it starts to respond to the signals that you do it. I joke with my husband a lot.
that as soon as he lays down, his signal for bed is the bed itself. And he literally can lay down in the bed and fall, within minutes he falls asleep. Even if we're sitting there talking, it's like his body knows the signal of the bed and then he just falls asleep. And I wish that that were me and I work on that all of the time. But it's one of those things that that signal is what your body responds to.
consistent in that is what helps you keep your hormones regulated and your energy stable. And the last swap is I want you to stop isolating your healthy habits from your family and start bringing them into the fold. And I saved this one for last because I think it can make the most meaningful difference in our summer. And it's also the one that can make the most lasting change.
Here's something that I notice in the work that I do with women and moms. A lot of us have unconsciously separated our health habits from our family life. We work out when everyone is out of the house. We eat different from our families sometimes, and we sneak in healthy choices around the edges of everyone else's needs, and we get tired of it. And it's part of the reason that we kind of fall off. And we're constantly managing it, hiding it, doing it alone.
summer is actually a great opportunity to change the dynamic. What if the walk became a family thing? Or at least an occasional family thing? What if you asked your teenager to take a walk with you either one morning or in the evening? You know, you might be surprised. I, my boys have been more willing to do some of these things than I expected and you know, it's not all the time. I don't take them every single day because I still like my time too, but I sometimes will take a second walk with them, right? Or
something like that, but those walks have turned into some really great conversations. And what if protein-first meals just became dinner? Okay, the easy plate that I teach is not a restrictive eating plan. It is a balanced plate, all right? And it's not a diet meal. It's a normal meal and something that your family eats. And then what if your kids saw you prioritizing your walks, saw you putting in your earbuds and heading out the door and learned from watching you that adults can take care of themselves and that moms
take care of themselves because you are modeling something whether or not you realize it every single summer morning that you choose your anchor habit whatever it is for you. You choose movement that fits your day, you choose a protein first breakfast, you're showing your kids what it looks like to be a mom who takes care of herself. All right, not a perfect woman, but a real one.
And honestly, that might be the most important health habit that you can model all summer. So let me bring this all back together for you because summer will blow up your routine, but we have swaps for them. right, one, swap out that rigid workout schedule for movement that's going to fit into your day. All right, let the form change, right? It doesn't really matter if it was at the gym or outside of the gym. It just cares that you moved. Two, swap out that complicated meal planning for a few
meals, two or three protein packed meals you know cold that you can come back to whenever the week goes crazy, okay? Because you know it will. Three, swap trying to be perfect for one non-negotiable anchor habit. For me, it's my walk. Four, I want you to swap skipping a breakfast for a protein first morning. Before the chaos, before the kids, make sure that you're getting your protein in and you will feel it hormonally.
and metabolically. Five, swap a rigid schedule for a morning rhythm and an evening rhythm. Consistency of the sequence, not consistency of time. Six, swap isolating your health habits for folding them into your family life. Stop doing it alone. Let them see it. Let them be a part of it because you're modeling something whether or not you intend to. And look, none of these require a perfect schedule. None of them require a perfect summer. All of them are things that you can start tomorrow. And I
want
to bring it back to where we started. Last summer when I was headed out the door, earbuds in, zero plan, and a good book of my ears, I wasn't trying to execute some perfect morning routine. I wasn't trying to optimize anything. I wasn't following a protocol. I was just doing one thing I decided that I wasn't going to let summer take from me.
So that's what the anchor does. Summer is not the enemy of your health. You don't have to start over. It just might require a slightly different approach, okay? It's gonna ask you to let go of the rigid and just focus on
real life. Summer is going to be imperfect. Your routine is going to look different. Some weeks are going to be completely different than others, and that's okay. That's what summer is supposed to be like. This is life, and life is supposed to be something that you actually live in. All right, but the anchor, that's something that you can always come back to, even after a vacation where everything was out the window, even after a week where the kids were home and you barely had a moment to yourself, but you can come back to that one thing. And then that one thing becomes two.
And then that two becomes three and it becomes your rhythm and your rhythm becomes the summer where you actually took care of yourself. So that's what I want for you. And if you are listening today and you're thinking, okay, but I still don't know what my biggest obstacle is gonna be this summer, I want you to take the quiz. It's one question, it takes 30 seconds and the guide you get on the other side is going to be personalized for your specific struggle.
It's at intentionalwellnesscoaching.com backslash quiz. I'll put the link in the show notes. And if you're ready to go beyond the quiz, if you're ready to have a real system, a method that works in your actual chaotic life, a community of women who are navigating the same season and a way of eating that doesn't require you to be perfect or have a perfect schedule to make progress, then that's what real food made easy. The collective is all about. It's where my method, the easy plate lives. It's where all of my monthly training lives. And it's where I personally respond to your check-in.
every single month so that you're never feeling like you're just another person in there. This summer can be different, not because you finally have to find the willpower to execute some perfect plan, but you finally stopped trying to have a perfect routine and started building the anchors that you hold instead.
