“How can you prioritize health better when the main factor keeping you from it is work?”
This came up during a private event Q&A while I was discussing the Lack of Conditioning Overwhelm Culprit™ — the lack of physical and mental health and wellness. And it hit close to home.
According to Mental Health America, the average person spends only 15 minutes a day on health-related self-care. And here’s the reframe that changes everything: keeping a consistent health routine has nothing to do with the amount of time you spend. It has everything to do with making the most of what you have.
This is exactly what I did during the most demanding, financially stretched season of my life. And it’s the framework I still come back to today.
Health and Work Life Balance Starts With Your MVP
The MVP is your Minimum Viable Plan. It’s the baseline – the non-negotiable floor for your physical and mental health, no matter how busy or broke you are.
Most people think they can’t prioritize their health because they don’t have time or money. But here’s the truth: the bare minimum health practices are almost entirely free. They just require intention.
The five non-negotiable areas your MVP needs to cover are hydration, sleep, nutrition, movement and mental health. Every single one matters. And your MVP for each will look different from mine – because only you know your own minimums.
My Story: The Hardest Season of My Life
A decade ago, I was a newly divorced mom of an infant. I was commuting over 20 hours a week on the Belt Parkway in New York. I was financially cleared out from my divorce, living with my parents, and trying to save up for a new home.
I desperately wanted to lose my baby weight. I had zero time and very little money. So I built an MVP. Here’s exactly what it looked like.
The 5-Part MVP for Health and Work Life Balance
Hydration
My minimum: 60 ounces of water daily.
I bought a 30 to 40-ounce water bottle and made sure I drank two of them every single day. It was with me at all times. Besides the cost of the bottle itself – around $30 for a nice one – water is free. You can get it from the tap if you need to.
Simple. Consistent. Done.
Sleep
My minimum: six hours – because that’s what an infant allowed.
Seven is my ideal. But I didn’t have a choice. What I could control was protecting those six hours fiercely. I had a strict bedtime – which honestly wasn’t hard, because I was exhausted. But the intention to protect that sleep was everything.
This was a short season. I knew it. And I held on.
Nutrition
My minimum: one to two hours of meal prep per week.
I was constantly on the road. I had no time or money for takeout. So I paid $20 a month for a digital meal prep subscription plan. Every week, I’d spend one to two hours prepping and that was it. Everything for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was ready to go. Cooking each night took five to ten minutes.
I was spending less money because I wasn’t eating out. I was eating better. And it only cost me twenty dollars a month and a couple hours of intentional time.
Movement
My minimum: whatever I could sneak in.
I literally could not get to the gym. So I got creative. I parked as far from my office as possible and walked. I sat on a BOSU ball chair at my desk so my core was engaged even while sitting. I invested in a standing desk platform – this was before it was trendy and tried to stand during the workday.
Once I had a bit more money and time, I signed up for dance classes. This was very strategic. It got me moving, yes – but it also helped me meet people in my new community since I’d just moved. One activity. Two problems solved.
Movement doesn’t have to cost money. Walk more. Get creative. Multitask if you have to.
Mental Health
My minimum: weekly therapy and three minutes of morning meditation.
I had mandatory weekly therapy appointments – all done via Zoom, which made it so much easier to fit in. And every morning I meditated for exactly three minutes. Not 20. Not an hour. Three minutes of grounding and presence before the day started.
That was enough. It kept me centered. It kept me functional. And it got me through one of the hardest periods of my life.
The Mindset Shift That Makes Health and Work Life Balance Possible
You are not a bodybuilder right now. You are not trying to optimize. You are just trying to hit the minimums.
That reframe is everything. When you stop chasing the ideal and start chasing the minimum, health and work life balance suddenly feels achievable. Because it is.
And here’s the best part: as life opens up and your capacity grows, you’ll naturally start doing more. You’ll want to. But when things get hard again and they will – you just default back to your MVP. The minimum. The floor.
That’s what makes it sustainable. Not perfection. A plan you can always come back to.
Find Out If Lack of Conditioning Is Your Overwhelm Culprit
If your health keeps getting pushed to the back burner because of work, the Lack of Conditioning culprit might be running the show. The free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz takes three minutes and tells you exactly which of the five culprits is holding you back – plus your most powerful next step.
Take the free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz here.
Go Deeper With the Book
I cover the Lack of Conditioning culprit in full detail in my book – including even more strategies for building a health routine that holds even during your most demanding seasons.
The Five Overwhelm Culprits™: Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success is available now everywhere books are sold.
This is the book for the high-performing woman who refuses to sacrifice her health to succeed and needs a smarter strategy to protect both.
CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] How can you prioritize health better when the main factor keeping you from it is work? This is a question I received during a recent private event Q&A while discussing the lack of conditioning overwhelm culprit, which for context, lack of conditioning is lack of physical and mental health and wellness.
And that’s when I realized this is a great topic to cover here since according to Mental Health America, on average, people only spend 15 minutes a day on health-related self-care. You deserve more than that. But here’s the truth, keeping a consistent health and wellness routine has nothing to do with the amount of time spent.
It has everything to do with making sure that you’re making the most of that 15 minutes daily. If you’re a high achiever who struggles with prioritizing your health because work or money keeps getting in the way then you’re gonna wanna stick around, because by the end of this episode, you’re gonna have strategies to help with it.
If you’re new here, my name is Corrie LoGiudice. I’m otherwise [00:01:00] known as Corrie Lo, and I’m a professional keynote speaker, facilitator, leadership expert, and author who helps high achievers transform overwhelm into confident leadership action, even in times of crisis. Now, I understand this question intimately because this was me over a decade ago.
So at this time, I was a newly divorced mom of an infant. I was commuting over 20 hours a week to work back and forth on the Belt Parkway here in New York, which if you’re from New York, you know it’s an absolute disaster. I was also financially cleared out during my divorce, so I had no money. I was living with my parents in attempt to save up for basically a new home for me and my son, and I wanted so, so badly to lose my baby weight, but I found it absolutely impossible due to the demanding hours of my job as well as my commute.
I just had too many commitments going on.
So I’d love to know before we [00:02:00] dive in. What do you find to be the hardest to prioritize when it comes to your health when work starts taking over your life? Comment below. Let’s create a strategy together.
Now, when you’re looking to create a solution for this issue, I always bring it back to what I call my MVP, which is your minimum viable plan. So I talk a lot about MVPs throughout this channel. You’re gonna hear that term multiple times, but for today, we’re talking about it when it comes to your physical and mental health and wellness, right?
So what’s your minimum viable plan for your physical health and wellness? So as I mentioned before, and this is a really big misconception, I think. Taking care of your health doesn’t have to cost you money because so many of the bare minimum practices, those MVP practices, are 100% free. So health necessities include hydration, sleep, your [00:03:00] nutrition, movement in terms of whether that be exercise or walking or how are you moving your body. And also your mental health.
Those five areas are non-negotiables when it comes to your physical and mental health and wellness. That’s your MVP. Your minimum viable plan needs to cover all of them. And also, I wanted to note too, all of these vary by person. Only you know what you need to be able to function your best, so you’re gonna have to determine what your MVP KPIs are. But only you know. So as an example for this, for sleep, there are some folks that their ideal amount of sleep, they’re fine on six hours. Where for other people, they need a minimum of 10 hours sleep. It varies so much by individual, only you know the minimum amount.
So that’s what we’re trying to figure out here. We’re figuring out your minimum viable plan for your physical and mental health and wellness. So if we use me as a case study, back 10 years ago when I was going through this difficult time, some things that I [00:04:00] made a priority, this was my MVP plan.
First was hydration. I made sure I was drinking a minimum of 60 ounces of water daily. To make it easy, I bought myself a bottle. It was similar to this one, but this one’s the same size, where it’s a 30 to 40-ounce bottle. I just made sure I drank two of them daily. It was with me at all times. So that was number one. And again, besides the water bottle, if you invest in a water bottle for yourself, looking at 30 bucks for this fancy one either way, water is free.
You can get it for free out of the tap if you need to. So hydration. Made sure I was getting 60 ounces of water a day. For sleep, I at that time had an infant who slept maybe six hours a night, so I made it a point to make the most out of those six hours. Six isn’t ideal for me, seven is the best, but I didn’t really have much of a choice.
It was a short season of time that I was gonna be dealing with an infant, so I knew that I had to get those six hours in, so I had a very strict bedtime, [00:05:00] which honestly, let’s be real, it wasn’t very hard, ’cause I was exhausted. So I just made sure that I protected that. For nutrition, during this timeframe, I was constantly on the road all the time.
I didn’t have a lot of time to, whether that be a time or money, to order takeout or whatever when I went for lunch. So what I did instead was I purchased I remember it was $20 it was a digital subscription, monthly, for a meal prep plan. It was a meal prep plan where you spent one to two hours every single week meal prepping or doing the bulk of the work so that you only had to cook, five or 10 minutes at night.
And it was such a game changer for me because I ended up having everything that I needed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I only spent two hours on it. I was saving money because I was buying my own groceries and I wasn’t eating out all the time, and it was just the intention of taking that time every week.
So nutrition, that’s how I dealt with that. For movement, this one was much more challenging because I literally did not [00:06:00] have time to go to the gym. I did not have time. So I did what I could in terms of getting more movement in. I parked as far away from my office and walked as much as I could. I had one of those chairs, the BOSU ball chairs that I sat on to hold myself up, so at least while I was sitting at my desk, I was at least getting some kind of engagement out of my core.
I did, at that time invest in a standing desk, and again, this was 10 years ago, so it was before it was trendy, where it was one of those platforms that I manually, pulled it up and I would try to stand, during the day because I was there. Then later on, once I had a bit more cash and I had more time, that I was more settled in my life, I signed up for dance classes. This was very strategic. It wasn’t just because I wanted to dance. But it was because I knew, number one, I would meet more people in my new community I had just moved to. I didn’t really have any friends. And also, I knew that I would get those steps in, so it actually solved two issues for me at once, that I was getting that physical activity, [00:07:00] it was fun, as well as I was able to make friends, and network there.
So movement, it doesn’t have to cost you any money. You could just walk more, for example, and figure out, creative ways to get those steps in, or you could do something like I did and try to, multitask with it. Now, for your mental health, you need to be more intentional with this one. For me, during this phase in my life, I was looking at, mandatory weekly therapy appointments, and they were all done via Zoom.
So it made it so much easier for me to navigate the difficult period I was going through. I also made time to meditate every morning for three minutes, just three minutes. That’s it. It didn’t have to be a lot of time, to give myself that grounding, that centeredness to be able to be fully present.
That became really crucial for me during this timeframe. So again, that was my plan for Basically, the difficult, most busy season of my life, how I made sure that I was [00:08:00] getting my physical and mental health taken care of. And again, it wasn’t because I was doing some crazy, bro wake up at 5:00 AM morning routine.
It was sticking to the minimum viable plan that I could for what was absolutely necessary for me to keep my mind and my body running at the highest capacity it had the ability to in this season.
So to recap, if you’re going through this really busy time and you’re not sure how to prioritize your health when work is taking over your life and making it financially difficult. Determine what your MVP minimums are for your hydration, for sleep, for your nutrition, for movement and for your mental health.
And then hold yourself accountable to only hitting the minimums daily. We’re not looking for maximums, we’re not looking for the ideal, because you’re not in the season of your life that you can focus on it 110%. You are not a bodybuilder at this point in time. You’re just trying to get the bare minimum.
And then from [00:09:00] there, knowing this makes it so much easier on knowing what you need to prioritize for your health when times get difficult because as time moves on you’re gonna have more capacity to do more things for your physical health and mental wellness that you’re gonna wanna do, that you’re gonna be excited to do.
But then when times get tough again, you just default back to this minimum plan, and it makes it much, much easier to stay consistent.
So hopefully you found my sharing this helpful today. If you have a question that you would like for me to answer, please feel free to leave a comment below, and we just may feature it on a future episode.
And if you wanna know for sure if what I talked about really resonated and you wanna know that the lack of conditioning culprit is your specific overwhelm culprit, I invite you to take the free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz. The link is in the show notes. And you can also learn more ways to work with me, either one-on-one through coaching and advisory, or with your organization and team through my speaking offers in the show notes as well.
So thanks so much for being here, and I will see you on the next [00:10:00] episode. See you
Thanks for checking out The Next Step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. Together, we’ll transform overwhelm into action, and we’ll keep taking the next step towards confident leadership. See you next time