Self-Care for Moms – Physical Health

Physical health is an important part of self-care for moms. Here are five simple ways to practice self-care and take care of your body. They may seem obvious, but how many of them are you actually doing?

Hey mamas! I’m so thrilled to kick off my self-care for moms series today with a post all about taking care of your physical health!

When I sat down and broke self-care down into five parts, the first one I wrote down was physical health.

Physical health is an important part of self-care for moms because it’s so critical to our overall well-being. If our bodies aren’t healthy and functioning at their best, we can’t take care of everything on our plates.

As moms we spend so much time taking care of everyone around us, but sometimes we neglect to take care of ourselves, especially our physical health. We make excuses that we don’t have time or we’re “too busy” or we have other priorities, but if our bodies aren’t healthy, we can’t do any of those things anyway!

I have a few self-care tips for physical health that I want to share today that are simple, but when implemented, can really make a big difference in your ability to function at your best. And yes, I know that some of these seem like “duh, of course that keeps you healthy,” but honestly, sometimes we just need to be reminded to do them!

Self-Care for Moms: Tips to Help you Keep Up on Your Physical Health

Go to the doctor

There are several appointments that we should be keeping up on in order to help our bodies function at their best. Think for a minute when the last time you had a physical was? What about a pap smear (unpleasant, but important)? When did you go to the dentist last or get an eye exam? Do you even remember?

It’s easy to schedule appointments for your kids, but so hard to schedule them for yourself because they often involve finding someone to watch your kids while you go. But if we don’t go to the doctor and make sure our bodies are functioning at their best, we may find out later on that something’s wrong and it might be too late to take care of it.

Along with this, keeping track of your medical appointments is important. Mommy brain is so real, and unless you write it down in a specific place, you probably aren’t going to remember when the last time you had all these things done was. So make a note in your phone, take a page in your planner, or draw a chart in your journal and use it to track appointments so you won’t get behind.

And if you can’t schedule out appointments months in advance, a good way to remember to schedule them is to put a sticky note in your planner or make a reminder on your phone when you need to schedule them. I use sticky notes and it always works for me!

Be aware of what you eat

Eating foods that are good for you is also important for your physical health and self-care because it can impact not only your energy level, but also how you feel. I’m not going to say to go on a diet or cut out sweets or anything, but just make smart choices, get the right nutrition, and listen to your body.

Get enough sleep

Are moms ever not tired? The jury’s still out on this one, but I know that when I get a good night’s sleep, I’m able to function so much better the next day. Obviously some stages of motherhood make it hard to get enough sleep (the baby stage, in particular!), but if you make an effort to go to bed at a certain time every night or wake up at a certain time in the morning, you’ll feel a difference!

Drink more water

It feels dumb to add this to the list, but drinking more water than soda or coffee is probably something we should aim for! Water helps your skin, energizes your muscles, keeps your organs functioning properly, help you feel more full (source), and prevents dehydration!

Exercise

Again, obviously this is going to improve your physical health, but have you ever thought of it as self-care? I have gone through periods in my life where I’ve exercised regularly and when exercise was non-existent, and guess when I felt better? Duh, when I’m exercising regularly! It not only helps me feel physically good, but also helps me clear my mind, take a break, and do something that’s 100% for myself.

I also recognize that exercise is hard if you aren’t already in a routine. The key to enjoying exercise is to find something you love to do or something you’re good at and do that. It might still be hard (I run 3x a week and it’s hard every time), but I guarantee you’ll feel good after it’s over! It might be pilates, yoga, cross fit, spin class, or even jazzercise, but whatever it is, figure it out and go for it!

Get ready for the day

Make sure you shower, get yourself ready (at least brush your teeth!), and do whatever you need to to feel “ready” for the day. For some this might include a whole makeup and hair routine, and for others, it might include dry shampoo and a top knot. Either way, just do you.

When you get yourself ready for the day, you’re not only taking care of yourself physically, but mentally prepping yourself for the day ahead. Shower (either before your kids wake up or after they go to bed), wash your face, brush your teeth, and get dressed (even if it’s just switching from your pajama leggings to your day leggings). It’s a small thing that can have a big impact.

Now you might be reading these six tips and be thinking that this post was not helpful, you already knew all of this information, and that it seems like a waste of time for me to type all of this out and for you to read it.

Sure, these things are all obvious things you can do (and should be doing). We get told to exercise and eat healthy every time we turn on the TV. But honestly, how many of these things are you doing? Are you really taking care of yourself physically? Have you gotten a physical in the last year? Been to the dentist? When was the last time you drank eight 8-oz glasses of water in a day? How often do you eat vegetables (my personal failure!)?

Yeah, it’s kind of silly that I wrote all these out, but these five things are the basics of physical self-care, and making sure we are taking care of our physical health is important even if you “seem healthy.”

So pick one of these things and work on it for a week. Don’t try and do them all at once, and don’t feel like you’re a failure if you’re not doing any of these things. Give yourself grace, recognize that we all have things we’re good at and things we need to work on, and decide to make a change! Prioritizing your physical health is an important part of self-care for moms!

Check out the other posts in the Self-Care for Moms series:

• Self-Care for Moms – A Six-Part Series
• Self-Care for Moms – Mental Health
• Self-Care for Moms – Finding Yourself
• Self-Care for Moms – Spirituality
• Self-Care for Moms – Connection