juggling. it. all

Let me preface this by saying I have one 7 year old boy. I have a husband who works until 4 and yes he has his flaws but he always tells me to just do what i have to do when it comes to exercise, work, school and he picks up the slack with the house and our son. He is an active dad and a clean freak! My point is - I have a ton of help so I can't imagine what it's like to have 5 kids (gah!) and a husband who works long shifts over night.

I'm going to assume your kids don't have sports every single day and you can find an hour or two a week to plan your meals. Start there. On Sunday or whatever day is less chaotic - make a couple of big batches of your favorite meals and either portion them out and freeze them or only make enough for a couple of days so it doesn't spoil. I can eat leftovers for a few days in a row so this works for me. Some people can't do that - you may want to learn to love leftovers for now.

How old is your oldest child? (Sorry, I didn't read through the entire thread) If the child is old enough get him/her involved in helping out keeping the younger kids buys while you cook.

I really think tackling one thing at a time is your best bet. Start with your meals. Once you have that worked out then you and only you can find the time to exercise since we really have no idea what your day to day life is really like.

Can you afford to hire some help? Whether it be a kid in the neighborhood to watch the kids for a couple hours a week while you plan and cook? I'm just throwing stuff out there.

Simply put - you have to figure out how to make this a priority without getting so overwhelmed that you give up!

Friend me if you'd like judgement free but also b.s free encouragement

thanks for this! My husband is the hardest working man I know. WE have been together 16 years and to answer other posters questions, yes he is the father of all 5 of my children. He works nights, sometimes up to 14 hour shifts, I work days. We wave hello/goodbye to each other on the highway. He does what he can with the hour or so he has after he has gotten home and taken a nap for a few hours, maybe 4-5, before going back to work. I don't see him until about noon on Saturday. Some people have no idea what they have.

This is my life. My husband works 12 hour nights 5 days a week. But I have 3 kids. And I work 50 hours a week with a very demanding job. So I get where you are coming from.

My advice?

Plan ahead.
Make a meal menu for a week ahead of time.
Take a Sunday, or a Saturday, or an evening and cook meals. Yes, plural. Meals. I know I won't be home on Tuesday and Thursday nights, so I make 2 dinners on Monday night. One for Monday and one for Tuesday.
One day on the weekend, make several and freeze. To reheat and serve.
I'm assuming your daughter is 15? Because you said she will be driving soon. Teach her to cook.
While you are at practice, walk the fields.

I, personally, have to get up and go to the gym at 5am, or I won't go.

Invest in a crock pot or two. Crock pot meals are and can be quick easy and very low cal.

Good luck. It can work if you make it work. its a lot of work and hard, but so is being unhealthy and being fat. So pick your hard.

Planning, prioritizing, and making use of "kid down time."

When he's in sports, I walking/running/workout while son is at practice. When he's not I use a treadmill and workout while watching netflix. That plus morning devotion is my only guaranteed "unwind" time. As a busy mom, it's easy to cut out the "unwind time" but I find that taking that hour out for myself (devotion in the morning, treadmill in the evening) makes me better able to handle the stress. I can't afford to miss either because it has a domino effect of me being more stressed later in the day/week.

Instead of cooking all the time, I started making a big pot of something on Sunday (even those "freezer meal plans" took a lot of work) for weeks I knew would have a lot of busy days (soup, chili, spaghetti, curry chicken, etc).

I still got to a point where I *just* couldn't do EVERYTHING anymore. I got mad at people who said, get up earlier or plan better (I was already getting up at 4 and getting to bed at 11 most nights) and my days were so jam packed I didn't have but maybe 10 minutes to play with and tuck my son in every night.

I finally HAD to start cutting things out of my life to make more time for my son. Period. I just coulnd't handle as much as other people and still be a good mom. Looking back, I feel like I'm making MORE of an impact NOW that I have time to play with him (and his attention starved friends) and actually HAVE a social life of my own (which makes it easier to make those mom sacrifices we all make).

You can read about my journey from being "SuperMom" to being a great mom in my "Mother's Day fo the SuperMom" blog posts: http://www.janinewiggins.com/news.php?item.309

PS: My mom and dad did the opposite shift, swap kids as you go, say hi/bye passing in the night kind of thing you and your hubby is doing. It's SO tough, but eventually things will get better. Kudos to you for not giving up!