With Love, Katie.
You know exactly what 3 pm feels like. And if you are a SAHM, you still have 1-3 hours until your husband comes home…
So what you feel: the energy just drops, your brain goes foggy, and you find yourself standing in the kitchen staring into a cupboard, not entirely sure what you came for, reaching for something sweet or another coffee just to get through the next two hours. What you might think is that you are a tired, lazy, impatient mom again… but you are actually not. Your body is simply responding, predictably and physiologically, to a day that has been asking too much and giving too little in return.
The good news is that the 3 pm crash is not inevitable. It is a pattern, and patterns can be interrupted with a few small, consistent decisions made earlier in the day. For that, I made a list of 10 rules for busy moms.
Here is the list. Keep it. Use what fits. Leave what doesn’t.
Here are the 10 ultimate rules for busy moms, all written by a tired, overwhelmed mom who also happens to be a neuroscientist.
1. Never drink coffee without eating something (mostly protein) first
Coffee on an empty stomach spikes cortisol sharply, and cortisol is already at its natural morning peak. The combination triggers a blood sugar response that sets up the afternoon crash hours before it arrives. Eat first. Even something small, like a boiled egg, a few spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt, a slice of good bread with butter and cheese. Then the coffee. Your adrenals will thank you by 3 pm. And in a few days, you will thank me.
2. Always have an SOS meal in your bag
Maybe it is a handful of almonds. A boiled egg wrapped in foil. A small piece of cheese and a few oatcakes. Some pumpkin seeds in a jar. Something real, containing protein and fat, that you can eat when the day runs away, and lunchtime disappears. Hunger is not a minor inconvenience for a busy woman, but again, it is a cortisol trigger, a mood destabiliser, and the most reliable gateway to the crash. Having a little nourshing food on you is not over-preparation or some new fancy trend. It is a strategy.
3. Frozen vegetables are not lazy (nor are the canned foods)
Frozen vegetables are picked at peak ripeness and flash-frozen within hours, which means their nutritional profile is frequently superior to that of fresh vegetables that have been sitting in transport and on a shelf for days. Keeping a stocked freezer means a nourishing dinner is always possible in fifteen minutes, regardless of what the day did to your plans. Release the guilt. Keep the peas. And if you want to make an easy lentil soup dinner, please feel free to use some good canned lentils. These are really helpful tips from a mom of two.
4. Froze your meals: always cook more
When you cook, cook more than you need. Always. The second portion is tomorrow’s lunch. The third goes in the freezer for Tuesday, three weeks from now, when everything falls apart, and there is nothing to eat. Cooking once to eat three times is one of the highest-leverage habits available to a busy woman, and it requires almost no extra effort beyond a larger pot.
Make sure you freeze smart. Do not freeze fried meat, baked/fried potatoes, or soups that contain heavy cream.
A freezer stocked with pre-cooked grains, soups, portions of bolognese, roasted vegetables, and portions of yesterday’s dinner is the difference between a nourishing meal and a 9 pm biscuit situation. Spend twenty minutes on Sunday filling it. That investment pays out across the entire week in decisions you no longer have to make when you are already depleted.
5. You do not need to cook from scratch every day
Fresh cooking every evening is a beautiful idea designed for a version of your life that does not exist on a Tuesday. Leftovers are meals. Eggs are a meal. Tinned fish on good bread with a salad is a meal. A bowl of lentils reheated from yesterday with a poached egg on top is a meal. The idea that a real dinner requires starting from scratch daily is one of the most exhausting fictions the modern kitchen operates under.
Listen to me: we eat home-baked food. Always. It happens very, but very rarely for me to order food. But I do not cook every day, God forbid. I make a very good, nutrition-rich, veggie-packed lentil soup and eat it for three days. If we have meatballs, we eat them for three days. Two days with potatoes, the third day with rice. Now it is spaghetti, we will eat it probably only for two days because I hate the mess (hello, mom of two under 5), but then I make sure I make a very good, authentic, creamy chicken paprikash and we eat it for three days again. No food waste in out home.
If I see that the girls will not eat it again after two days, it goes into the freezer.
We’re halfway through our rules for busy moms, and I really hope you already see that nothing big is required here.
6. A protein shake is sometimes life-saving for your whole family
Listen to me. I am eggs in the morning, Mom, always. But then again, some mornings are brutal. So on the days when breakfast does not happen, when lunchtime was a meeting, when the children needed something the moment you sat down, a protein shake with good quality protein, a handful of frozen berries, and some nut butter is genuinely better than nothing. It is not ideal, nor is it a failure. It is a practical tool for a day that did not go to plan, and having the ingredients on hand means the option is always there. I also love the Greek yoghurt, chia seeds, banana, and honey combo.
Skipping meals more and more will affect your overall well-being, which is crucial as a mom. You will have blood-sugar problems and listen to me, your brain running on low glucose is slower, less creative, but more reactive. Eating properly.
7. Evening overeating is not hunger
When you find yourself eating everything in sight after 8 pm, this is usually not about food. It is about a nervous system that has been running on high alert all day (which happens every day for us, moms), never properly rested, and is now seeking the one reliable source of dopamine that is immediately available. The fix is not willpower at 9 pm.
It is protein at breakfast (please, please, do not skip a good breakfast), a proper lunch, and a moment of actual rest somewhere in the afternoon, before the system reaches the collapse point.
As a mom, as a woman, I find myself eating at 9 pm always, before my menstrual cycle. But this happens one day per month. I let myself eat chocolate or a piece of cake, two portions of soup and everything else. But if this happens every day, make sure you fix your daily rhythm and schedule.
8. Moms are overwhelmed
This distinction between being unmotivated and overwhelmed matters enormously. Unmotivated suggests a character issue, something internal to fix. Overwhelmed is a description of circumstances which surely applied to you: too much input, too little recovery, a nervous system that has exceeded its capacity. The response to being overwhelmed is not pushing harder. It is reducing the load, building in recovery, and asking for the help that the overwhelm is signalling you need.
9. Chaos rises cortisol
Yes, again, it is all about cortisol. Chronic chaos, including unpredictable meals, disrupted sleep, constant decision fatigue, and a nervous system that never fully settles, keeps cortisol chronically elevated.
Elevated cortisol promotes fat storage, particularly around the abdomen, and drives cravings for sugar and dense carbohydrates. Structure, aka tips that help simplify motherhood: a loose meal plan, consistent sleep and wake times (circadian rhythm), a few anchoring daily habits, all of which reduce cortisol and create the physiological conditions in which your metabolism can actually function as intended.
10. Be consistent as a mom
Perfection requires conditions that rarely exist: enough time, enough energy, no interruptions, everything going to plan. As I always say, there is no such thing as perfect motherhood.
Consistency requires only showing up with whatever is available on a given day. A good enough breakfast eaten every morning beats a perfect breakfast eaten twice a week.
A thirty-minute walk done regularly beats an hour-long gym session attended sporadically.
Implementing all these tips, which, btw, did not require too much (a good, nourishing breakfast, some daily walks and fixing your circadian rhythm) will help you with all the problems, including hormonal disruption, immune dysfunction, thyroid issues, chronic fatigue, and mood instability.
Some final words as a tired mom…
The 3 pm crash, which is very common in modern motherhood is not a personal failing. It is a physiological bill arriving for a morning that did not give the body what it needed. Pay attention to the morning and the afternoon changes. Build a few of these habits into your week, and the crash gradually loses its grip.
Start with one. The protein before coffee. Then make sure not only your kids, but you too have some SOS healthy nuts in your bag. Later, when you learn to cook a double- or triple-portion, make sure you freeze it so your freezer will have your back on a chaotic Wednesday.
As usual, consistency is the key. I hope you manage to apply some of these rules for busy moms and have easier days.
