Can Modern Women Really Have It All?

Published: 10 August 2010

What is it that working women and busy mums all strive for in their lives? Our recent ‘GET A BALANCE’ survey found that 43% of women today are struggling to achieve some sort of balance in their lives due to lack of time. Because of this women are sacrificing their own health and nutritional needs.

With 62% of women unable to bring themselves to say ‘no’, this is a problem that will not go away anytime soon so how do we help remedy this and take control of our lives?

Below are some highlights from the survey. We have also put together a team of experts to share some tips on how we can help gain balance.
Celebrity mum and founder of the Little Venice Cake Company, Mich Turner, who has just been awarded an MBE (http://www.lvcc.co.uk/) shares her secrets on how she manages to get a balance in her life.   “Balance for me depends entirely on supreme organisation, time management and communication.”

Allison Mitchell, author of ‘Time Management for Manic Mums’ and founder of Mumcoach (http://www.manicmums.com/) says  “many women today have put themselves at the bottom of the pile and don’t value their own time.  Very often their priorities get squeezed in preference for mundane tasks such as cooking the tea and getting the pile of ironing done at the expense of their own quality time and ultimately their life balance.  We must set boundaries around work and home and for many of us this means simply learning to say NO!’.

It seems that the modern woman’s energy levels are running on empty. In fact, a third of women admit that they spend most of the week exhausted and 44% say that they feel stressed out for the majority of the week.   With Christmas looming stress levels will peak for many women as 68% said they found this the most stressful time of the year.

Health and fitness is important to working women and busy mums and the fact that they are neglecting this is something that 20% of women lie in bed at night worrying about.  The first thing to go out of the window is a healthy diet as 26% of women interviewed said they often skip meals or rely on convenience  food because they feel that they do not have time to prepare food for themselves or simply don’t have the energy.  Half of the women surveyed owned up to missing breakfast on occasion and 25% of women admitted to skipping the meal daily.  Whether a busy working woman or a stay at home mum, a cup of tea is often left untouched and the lunch hour is something of the past as 23% of women no longer take any time for lunch. Those that do make time for a break take on average only 15 minutes.

Fiona Hunter, the UK’s leading nutritionist believes that, “a healthy diet is important whatever your circumstances but when you are busy it is more important than ever. Without the right fuel, your body cannot perform efficiently.  Skipping meals and grabbing food on the run is one of the worst things that you could do because stress and a busy lifestyle increases the need for several vitamins and minerals. It is therefore even more vital that you think about what you put into your body.”

For more information, take a look at our Web TV broadcast (this opens in a separate player).