Host Amelia Phillips answers our listener questions with simple hacks and products she loves. Today she answers questions on how to pull yourself out of the crippling feeling of being a bad parent, her top tips on eating healthy on a budget, and how to start running (or get back into running) the safest, most effective way.
Show notes:
Fresh and local produce delivery service in Sydney: https://www.fratellipolitoproduce.com/ or google ‘fresh produce delivered near me’
Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:
Welcome to another Ask Me Anything episode. Gosh, I love getting questions from you, my lovely listeners. I usually get them over DM or sometimes you email them to me as well. Please keep in coming. You can ask me anything from topics on nutrition to exercise, parenting career, and if I don’t have the answer, I’ll find someone who.
And I’m particularly excited because my show is now featured in Apple’s Top Parenting and Family Shows Category. Thanks to all your listens, I’d also love to encourage you to give me a star rating and review my show on Apple because this does help to get my show on the Apple algorithm, which is what we.
So you simply go to the show view when you’re looking at my episode now, and then you just scroll down to the stars where you see the little stars there. Leave me a quick star rating. Five would be great and a quick review and I will be forever grateful now talking of grateful. I have to admit that I’m feeling particularly emotionally wrecked.
It’s been a tumultuous couple of days with a very near miss with my best friend Sam. We’ve been best friends since we were three years old. We went to school together. We lived in London together. She’s the godmother to one of my kids, and Sam has a farm up near the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales.
With the recent floods that happened, her farm was flooded in and she was really worried about her livestock. She has horses and cattle on her property, so last week, Sam and her husband and their 15 year old son took a chopper because they had to rescue their horses and check on their cattle. And she spent three days, no electricity, tending to the animals, and then she had a helicopter booked to come and pick her up.
And yesterday we found out that on the way to pick her up, that helicopter crashed. The pilot of the helicopter very, very sadly passed away. We still don’t know how it happened. We don’t know. There’s talk that maybe an eagle might have flown into the windscreen, He maybe could have had a heart attack.
We’re just not sure. But this chopper was literally on its way to pick her up, and it just never turned up. And it was all over the news. And I have to tell you, it has been such an emotional few days realizing. Sam could have been in that helicopter. It would’ve been her, her husband, her 15 year old son.
She’s got two other kids that were back in Sydney. So we’ve all just been working through the absolute sadness of the poor pilot passing away who was literally about to retire. Really lovely man. She knew the man versus the relief that nothing happened to her. So just a reminder during these times to hug your loved ones, cuz you never know what is around the corner.
But look, let’s move on cuz I’ve got some great questions for you today. And my first one is from someone who’d like to remain anonymous. And then question is, how do you shake the feeling of being a bad parent? Oh yes. We have all felt that on a regular basis. I’m constantly beating myself up for being that bad parent.
Whether it’s yelling at the kids, not feeding them well, copious amounts of screen time or fighting with my partner in front of them. I just feel ashamed of the parent. I have become this feeling makes my behavior worse, almost like self-sabotage. I just don’t know how to break this. Well anonymous. First of all, please be aware that you are so not alone and I’m sure that all my listeners are sitting here nodding right now going.
We all go through periods of feeling like a bad parent and often those periods are more of the norm than the exception. I have to blame social media. For a lot of this because we all fall in that rabbit hole of comparing our blooper reels to everyone else’s highlight reel. So right when you’re feeling it your worst and you’ve just had a yell, and then you’re jumping online and seeing all these people winning at parenting, it doesn’t help to make you feel any better.
So please know that you are not alone. Please know that you are a much better parent than you give yourself credit for. The fact that you are even asking this question and sending it in to me says that you really, really care. So I think firstly, that idea of name it to tame it, , and you mentioned feeling ashamed.
I think that’s really great to be able to put some adjectives around how you are actually feeling. What are you, Are you feeling shame? Are you feeling guilt? Are you feeling rage? Understanding what those feelings are is a really good first step. Rather than just that kind of alphabet soup of emotion in your head, you may be feeling detached.
Some parents start to feel really detached from their kids, like they don’t have that emotional connection or detached from their partner. Whatever those feelings are, just scribble them down on a piece of paper to really get them out there. I wanted to ask, what do you think that you. Reading your words for me, that’s a cry out for help.
That your needs are not being met right now. Is there someone you can ask for help? That you can have a break from the kids, maybe even a break from your partner. If the relationship isn’t great at the moment, it could be micro breaks where you know, you might not be able to go away for a whole weekend, but maybe there’s half a day or a night off or something like that.
Cuz to me it sounds like you need a break and you need to ask and put your hand out for some kind of. Don’t be afraid to do that. There’ll be so many people that will be happy to reach out and help you if you just put your hand up and say, You know what? I’m not coping right now. I’d also wanna ask and just invite you to have a look at the self care or maybe possibly the lack of self care that’s going on at the moment.
What are you doing to fill your cup up? Can be a really hard thing to do when you are in that horrible, negative spiral. But have you been going for a walk in nature? Have you been able to take those regular breaks? Is there any possibility of doing a yoga class, going and having a massage? We all know the types of self care that work for us.
Each of us are different, and some of us just a lovely hot bath is form of self care. For others, we need to kind of get out of the house. So I would also put to you that really prioritizing some self-care right now just so that your fuse is not so short. That can be a real game changer when it comes to your kids.
I remember Jennifer Kaari in my episode, I think it’s called Help. I don’t like My Children. To help you reconnect with that love you feel for your kids, and to kind of lengthen that fuse. She talks about doing baby play, and what she means by that is chatting to your kid about how cute they were as a baby, because that brings a connection between the two of you and it also.
Is a memory jogger for those banks of special moments. You know, I remember when you were a little baby and you used to make this gurgling noise with your mouth, and then I’d tickle you and you that gurgling noise would break out into this infectious laugh, and it would make everyone around you laugh.
Or I remember your little teeny tiny feet and I used to trace your, the souls of your feet with my fingers, and then you’d Google. Just really having those memories and talking to your kids about those memories is a really lovely way to reconnect with. And then when you do have an outburst, whether it’s yelling at your kids or having a fight with your partner in front of your kids, Jennifer always says that it’s what happens afterwards.
That’s so, so important. She says, These can be these amazing teaching moments, and so you can kind of spin the meltdown into a growth opportunity by repair. And so first of all, she suggests that you own it. So you say to your child, let’s say for example, you and your partner had a, a yelling match in front of your kids.
You say, Mommy and daddy, we were having really big feelings earlier today, or whatever the vernacular is that you use with your kids. We were having really big feelings earlier today, and you acknowledge the kids’ feelings as well, and you must have heard our voices get really loud, and I’m so sorry if that scared you or if that made you feel.
So that way you’re acknowledging and you are helping them to name their feelings and then you wanna add a layer of security for your child. Cuz often it can make them feel a little on the insecure side. So something along the lines of Mommy and daddy are still friends and we still love each other very much, even when we have these really big feeling.
And then layer it on top of that layer of security. This is where you can have that growth moment or that learning moment. Mommy and Daddy will work on handling our big feelings without yelling Next time, would you like us to do that? And that way you’ve kind of owned it. You’ve acknowledged their feelings, you’ve added that layer of security, and then you’ve added that layer of growth for next time.
And even though it’s. Ideal to yell in front of your kids. It’s that repairing afterwards because they need to know that conflict will happen, but it’s that repairing afterwards That’s so, so important. So there’s just a few little tips for you anonymous. I hope that they have helped in some way, shape, or form, but please recognize that this is a time for you to be asking for help, and that’s what I would recommend over and above everything else.
Okay, moving on, Beth Lewis. I’d love some tips for healthy eating on a budget. Yes, With prices rising, I’m finding it even harder to feed my kids healthy food and the waste is killing me. I’ve been in the media recently actually talking on a similar topic because it is top of mind at the moment with inflation and the war in Ukraine and all the many factors that have been contributing to not only fresh, but also.
All sorts of FMCG products seem to all be getting more and more expensive, but yes, fruit and veg in particular. Let me just remind you, Beth, I can assure you that in the long run, cooking from home will save you money, okay? So don’t fall in the trap of thinking that, Oh, if I just grab that chicken and chips from Red Rooster on the way home, you know, it might save you money in the short term right now, but what is it costing you in the long term as far?
Not honing your cooking skills, not teaching your kids how to cook, and also obviously not feeding them nice healthy food. So when it does come to saving at the moment, frozen or tin veggies are definitely a way to go. And yes, a nutritionist recommending tin vegetables. Oh my goodness. So many people right now will be shaking their heads going, I can’t believe you.
You gotta remember that everyone’s at a different nutritional journey. Everyone’s at a different price point as well, and I would much rather your kids be eating frozen or tin veggies than none at all. In the frozen section, there are so many options for veggies. So there’s beans, there’s corn, peas, broccoli, even unusual veggies that you might not feed your kids like okra.
And you know, there’s chopped spinach, which is a really great one. If you haven’t seen it already. It’s already chopped and you can mix it through pretty much anything. And it’s almost like a hidden veggie. I use that a lot when I’m doing my pasta sources with my kids using that chop. So go for frozen, Reduce your meat consumption and you can replace it with tinned chickpeas or lentils.
Although I did hear in the news that chickpeas are about to go up in price, so you might wanna grab some before they go up. But reducing your meat consumption, cuz meat is also very expensive at the moment. Replacing it with those chickpeas or lentils is a great one. Soups and stews are always extremely affordable.
The cost per serve sits around that two to $3 mark because they’re so laden with water, they tend to fill kids up a lot more as well. Just be careful that they are actually having the soup and not just filling up on toast, which my kids can sometimes fall in the trap off. I always make sure they finish the soup and not just ask for more toast.
Kent Pumpkins are reasonably affordable at the moment, and I actually put on Instagram recently a really super simple pumpkin soup recipe where you literally get an entire Kent pumpkin and you just whack it in the oven. Have a look on my Instagram and you’ll see the video I did for how easy that recipe is.
So right now it’s winter when I’m recording this. So, Fruits such as mandarins, limes, lemons, oranges, grapefruits, are all really affordable. Pumpkin, as I mentioned, sweet potato. Even avocados are doing quite well this season as well. So have a look at what’s in season. Buy local where you can, So for example, for me in Sydney, there’s a website called Fratelli Poto.
I’ll pop it in the show notes. They are an aggregator where they go to all the local growers and they will pull together the cheapest and best in season produce. So if you just Google do a similar search, buy fresh produce near me. There’ll be some kind of co-op or aggregator, hopefully near you that will do something similar and you’re supporting local, which is great as well.
Another tip I have for saving money is to serve their dinner and their veggies and their dinner in a way that you can keep the veggies for a snack tomorrow. So whether you kind of simply lay it out on the plate in the way that if they haven’t finished it, you can just box it up and then rinse and repeat tomorrow, add some hummus with it, give it a quick whack in the microwave, and they can have it as a snack tomorrow.
The other tip to get more veggies in with their dinner is to actually serve the vegetables before dinner. What I like to do, kids for some reason seem to get so hungry right before dinner. So as I’m chopping up, I’ll just have a plate and I’ll pop some of the raw veggies on that plate. And it’s amazing with the dollar performance, how they’ll just come and start picking away at that.
And at least I know they’ve eaten most of their veggies before they’ve even sat down at dinner. And my other tip for you, Beth, is to just keep. Keep serving those vegetables up. I know you sometimes look at the waste and think, Why am I doing this? But if you can preserve that waste and reser it at another time, the more veggies you serve the kids, the more veggies they’ll eventually eat.
So keep at it and hopefully these prices will come back down soon. Sharon Margaret, I would like to learn how to run. I currently power walk, but am nervous to run in case of an injury. What’s the best place to start? Well, Sharon, you are talking to the right person because I am a huge fan of running and I recognize that running doesn’t suit everybody.
And if you have tried to run before and you’ve had lots of injuries, then yes, maybe it’s not for. . But I have to say that there are so many amazing benefits of running. It’s one of the highest calorie burn activities you can do out there, so you really get that great bang for buck. If you’ve only got 20 minutes to run, you know you’re probably gonna burn more calories than doing much else.
It’s also that lovely meditative task where it’s just repetitive, so you can let your mind wander. You can maybe have a mantra, you can hopefully get out in nature as well. It triggers that endorphin rush and it boosts your fitness. There are lots of health benefits of running, such as reduce heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, reduce risk of type two diabetes.
What else? Managing cholesterol, blood pressure, and also when you are fitter, you have more energy, so you’re in a better mood, you feel more relaxed, you sleep better. So I hope that’s given you a few pointers and motivation to run. Before you get started with your running program, a good pair of supportive sneakers goes a really long way.
And with your sneakers, I always like to do a bend test, and that’s where you hold your sneaker upside down, so the soul’s pointing up to the ceiling and you bend it back so the toe bends around to the heel. Now the idea is that you should be able to bend it, but it shouldn’t be too hard. If you’ve got a real hard plank soul, then that can contribute to injuries like plantar fasciitis, for example.
But on the flip side, if it’s super soft and bendy, some of those real minimal profile running shoes can be too soft and bendy. That’s not great either. So you just need that bend to be somewhere in between those. You also want on shoe that’s got really good arch support, and you want the laces to be tied nice and firmly because if your ankle is stabilized, that goes a long way to helping to stabilize your knees, your hips, and your back.
Another tip I have is to make sure that you stretch your back, your hip flexes, your glutes and your calves. Before and after you run. That’s super important because those are the areas that can get tight when you do run. And if you are over the age of 40, a really good warmup, five to 10 minutes of proper warmup, and a call down at the end will go a long way to preventing injuries.
So there are the auxiliary things. As far as the running itself, literally just Google couch to 5K program. Short of having a running coach or a trainer with you, there’s a chart. I’ll pop a link in the show notes and literally follow that. It’s three runs a week and it’s just slowly increasing the amount of time that you’re running for.
It’s so simple, but it absolutely works. And you’ll be running that five Ks in no time. And what I suggest you also do to balance out the running muscles that you’re gonna be building up is to also do some work on your core glute activation. So you could try Pilates, you could try doing some cross training sessions on a bike or swimming as well.
They really. So there you go, Sharon. Good luck and please keep me posted with your progress. I love hearing about people getting into running or back into running after a break. Okay guys, they’re my questions for today. Have a great week and I’ll see you back in the booth very soon.
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