612 - Mum and Lead Nutritionist on Working Mums' Nutritional Struggles

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Welcome to Modern Mindset, the show that picks the brains of the world's leading minds to help you unlock yours. Decoding the beliefs and strategies of global experts to give you an updated mindset to make the most of modern life.

Rory McGowan (0:20)

This is Modern Mindset, the show that picks the brains of the world's leading minds to help you unlock yours. My name is Rory McGowan, and in today's episode, we're talking about the roughly 5 million working age mums with children dependent on them. New research has shown that many working women are putting their own nutritional needs behind those of their children, which, while admirable, is costing them peace of mind and their own physical health. With some even admitting that they're eating the leftovers from their children's plates rather than having a fully cooked dinner.

To talk more about this research, I'm joined by Emma White. She is a nutrition lead at Nutracheck, the company whose app provides calorie and nutrition tracking information via an app, and the people who have commissioned the research today. Emma, thank you very much for joining us today on the show.

Emma White (1:09)

Well, thank you for having me, Rory.

Rory McGowan (1:11)

Yeah, this research is quite stark, especially those who are admitting that they're eating scraps off of their children's plates rather than cooking for themselves. Can you give us a bit of a lowdown as to kind of the other information that you've found here today?

Emma White (1:24)

Yeah, so, yeah, we did some research and I think the bottom line is that it's clear that women are sort of de-prioritizing their own needs in favor of prioritizing their family or their work commitments, for example. We found, we surveyed women that were aged between 35 to 50 So it is that sort of core group of people who are likely to be juggling work and family commitments at the same time.

And we found that just over half said that they regularly prioritize their family's meals before their own. And then what was quite sad was that of those that did sometimes put some time or money into their own health, around a quarter said that they felt guilty for doing so.

So for me, it sort of brought up two core issues is that firstly, women clearly feel too busy to juggle all of the commitments that they've got. But secondly, when they do realize that something's got to give, the first thing that they're sacrificing is their own needs. But something that really stood out to me was around 73 percent. So nearly three quarters said that they would like to eat more healthily if it was just easier or quicker to do so. So it's clear that the desire is there, but it's the sort of time restraints and sort of having the energy to put into it that is the real issue. So I think lots of women are looking for sort of easier solutions. And I can completely relate. So I am a nutritionist, I completely know, see what I should be doing, but I also work full time and have two young children. I know firsthand how easy it is to put yourself at the bottom of the list sometimes.

Rory McGowan (3:02)

I think that it's that feeling of guilt that really strikes me, Emma. The fact that even when they do prioritize themselves, they feel like it's the wrong thing to do, something is, there's that pang of, well, I could be doing more. Even though many women in these households are the primary caregivers already, I mean, I'm sure I don't need to tell you this as somebody who is a working mom.

Where does that feeling of guilt come from? And how can women work around that? Because they shouldn't feel guilty for prioritizing their own health. Yeah.

Emma White (3:38)

I mean, there's a term, isn't there, called mom guilt, and it's out there for a reason, is it's something that we all experience every day.

And I think we are just driven to obviously our children, particularly, you know, we're caregivers and we will prioritize them. And so it's easy to feel if you're not getting everything right for them, that you shouldn't be spending the time on yourself. But yeah, I'd love to flip that on its head because it's something that I've learned myself as well, if you don't make that time for yourself, then you can't really be the mom that you really want to be in the family anyway. So it's just, even if you set aside 10 minutes just to do something for you, and if your diet is something that you want to work on, having a tool where you can manage your diet or just taking some time to prioritize that, whether it be planning meals in advance or something, just showing up for yourself and I think you'll see what a huge difference it will make to your energy levels and your happiness. And yeah, just to realize that we count too.