38: How To Time Block Your Healthy, Happy Summer (Summer Success #3)

Summer's here, and that means fun, sun, and...total schedule chaos? I get it...and that's why I'm sharing my tried-and-true method for surviving (and thriving!) during summer break: time blocking!

In this episode, I share how to effectively time block your summer so that you have time and space and capacity to eat well, move your body, do all of those things that are important to your health so that you can keep up with your activities, with your family, and with everything else you have going on this summer.

Think you don't need time blocking? Think again:

Tools for Time Blocking Success: How Google Calendar manages your life, plus printable calendar for family visibility.
Prioritize Fun: Schedule those vacations, barbecues, and lazy days first to ensure they actually happen!
Movement Matters: Block out specific times for workouts or walks, treating them like non-negotiable appointments.
Nutrition on Autopilot: Schedule meal planning, grocery shopping, and even snack prep to avoid last-minute, unhealthy choices.
Ashley's Time Blocking Breakdown: If it doesn't get planned, it won't get done. I'll show you how!

By time blocking your schedule, you'll feel more in control of your nutrition and wellness, freeing you up to enjoy all the fun summer has to offer!

More support just for YOU
🥗 Cook just 3 nights/week AND have a list of emergency/back-up meals, when you join the Supper Club
🍡 Fast, easy, and healthy snack ideas that your whole family will love can be found here and here
💪 Learn how to create an effective workout schedule here, then sign up for my favorite workouts here

Transcript

Hello there, my friend, and welcome back to the Family Fork podcast. Now, if you are listening live around here in Colorado anyway, summer starts at the end of this week. Oh my gosh. My daughter is out of school on Friday and like they're not even in school for a full day. So by 12 noon this coming Friday, summer vacation is in full swing. And for us as a family, I know the

best way that I have found over the years to survive summer break is to time block the heck out of our summer.

Now, to be really honest, I always thought that everybody did this, but I was talking to some other moms recently and they were actually only just starting to think about their plans for the summer. They didn't have anything locked down. What I can tell you from years of experience, and remember I have a 24 year old, so I've been doing this for a while. The more you plan your schedule with planned flexibility, the better off your summer will be.

You will have everything in place to feel good, have energy, do the things that you want to do, and have time for the things that you need to get done as well. And when you can do this, like all the time blocking for your entire summer, you will make room for everything. I promise. Vacations, fun things, planned days of doing absolutely nothing, as well as some of the really important things like having enough time to grocery shop.

and cook some healthy food for your family. Truly, the magic comes in knowing what's coming up, but also in being able to be flexible and build in time and space to move things around in case those schedules get crazy. Because let's face it, that is typically what happens over the summer. So today, we are going to talk about how you can effectively time block your summer and easily.

so that you have time and space and capacity to eat well. Not spend a lot of time in the kitchen, move your body, do all of those things that are important to your health so that you can keep up with your activities, with your family, and with everything else you have going on this summer.

I do want to add a personal note here. So if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen recently that I posted that I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This has definitely changed what our summer is going to look like. But honestly, it's all the more important that I time block so that I can prioritize my health and my wellness.

My medical team, thankfully they were able to catch the cancer relatively early. So I feel good about the prognosis and I sort of understand what the treatment is that's ahead of me. But honestly, we never know when something is going to derail our plans, which is why every day I'm advocating for you to place a high priority and importance on your health and wellness. I know I...

I'm going into this breast cancer journey already having my nutrition pretty dialed in. I know how to move my body so that I can feel good, but I can still prioritize rest. Had I not been doing those things all along, the changes that I would need to make for my health this summer would be so much more challenging. Please don't put off your health this summer just thinking, ⁓

You know, I'll probably just do it in the fall or I'll wait until school starts again. I just want to relax and enjoy the summer. I get it. But I really want to encourage you from my own personal journey. I didn't expect this. I really didn't expect to have breast cancer. I didn't expect that I'd probably be down for like the next four to six months. We never expect this. We don't expect this kind of thing to happen. So if

you are working today, like right now to prioritize your health and your wellness and your fitness. I promise you're going to be so much better prepared to handle anything that comes your way. So as we talk through these time blocking techniques in today's episode, I want you to be really thoughtful. How can you tuck some of the important things into summer along with all of the fun stuff

so that you are getting yourself to a place where you are healthy and well, and you can tackle anything that comes your way.

On that note of my cancer diagnosis, I do plan to keep the podcast going through the summer because honestly, this is really one of, is the favorite way I have to share information and inspiration with you. So there may be a week or two that I have to miss if I just don't have the energy, but hopefully I can continue to inspire you through this journey. You know, here on the Family Fork, we talk

all the time about mindset. And I'll be really honest with you, mindset is the thing that is going to make or break this journey for me. I'm pretty positive and optimistic about things today, but I really struggle to recover from surgery. I've had a couple of surgeries in the last few years and my body does not like the drugs that they use in surgery. So I know that my mindset is going to be a

big challenge as I get closer to the surgery and definitely when I'm in that recovery period.

So I'll be sharing that journey with you a little bit, but in future episodes, we're really gonna talk about how important and imperative the right mindset is to tackling any of these challenges. So hopefully you'll stick with me this summer on this journey. Just rest assured, if there are one or two weeks where there's not an episode, it's probably because I just couldn't get to it. But I'm really excited to share all summer long.

how to help you stay motivated and accountable and inspired through these really busy summer months.

All right, so that said, let's get into our time blocking topic. What I want to do is talk about two different sort of like high level categories.

First of all, we are gonna talk about some of the tools that you can use to be super effective with your time blocking. We're also gonna talk about what goes on your calendar so that once you have those tools, you'll know exactly what you need to put on it easily to prioritize nutrition, movement, rest, all of the things. So let's start with the tools. Now, this is probably a holdover for my corporate days.

But for me, the most effective tool hands down for time blocking your summer and getting a handle on your schedule is your Google Calendar. It is so easy to create a Google Calendar and to just be able to move things around. And what's so good about the Google Calendar is that if you don't already use it,

And what's so good about this type of calendar is that you can create individualized calendars in different colors. So for your work life, your personal life, family life, and all of those calendars can live in one view, like on one screen. So it is really easy to see at a glance, ⁓ I have a vacation coming up. So that's one calendar, maybe your personal or your work calendar, but then how am going to move around my workouts or?

How am gonna get some grocery shopping done in advance of our vacation so that we have the right kind of snacks to take with us? It's really easy to see on your Google Calendar all of the different priorities that you have going on at once.

The other thing about your Google Calendar is that it is really accessible on your desktop, your laptop, your phone. It is always there. And you're probably just like me, you always have your phone with you. So no matter where you are or what's going on, somehow you will have access to viewing your calendar. Now, because you can create these different calendar views for things like work or personal commitments, you are

instantly going to have better communication with your spouse or your partner, your entire family, because everyone can have access to any of those different calendars. So if you create a calendar that's called like in my case, it would be the Malik family calendar. Everyone in my family will have access to that. My son, my husband. Now, obviously my daughter, Sarai, is too young. We'll get to that in a minute. But everyone can have a glance at the Malik family calendar.

and know exactly what's happening, where everybody is, when. It just makes that communication really, really easy and streamlined.

Typically, what I do when I'm looking at summer is I actually plan my whole summer out. But then I schedule in about 10 minutes every Thursday or Friday to just look at the week ahead. This allows me to move things around if our schedule has changed or if we want to do something different. And again,

This is where that flexibility comes in. So I've got the high level plan for summer, but then being able to look at a week at a time, I can move things if I need to. It just really increases that flexibility. So if you aren't already a Google Calendar user, really encourage you just go get, I think you just need a Gmail account. It's free. And that way you can have all of the capability that that calendar brings for you.

And stick with me, we're going to talk about what you actually put on your calendar in just a minute. But make sure that you have the Google Calendar. I promise it is going to be such a game changer for helping you and your family stay organized all summer long.

And stick with me for a minute, because we're going to talk about what you actually put on your calendar in just a second. But make sure you have that calendar. And I promise it is going to help you and your family stay so organized all summer long. And this way, I promise you'll be able to prioritize your health and your wellness. And you'll see how in just a minute. So the other tool that I always use is a printable calendar.

Now know that there are a bunch of like fancy solutions to this. know, there are like light boards that you can put up in your kitchen. And recently I saw like a tablet style calendar that it actually syncs with Google calendar. But the idea is that you put it in your kitchen so your entire family can look at it at any point in time. Personally, I really like a paper printable calendar. That's just my preference. So what I do is I post a week.

like a one week view. So I put up a fresh calendar every week. That way somebody like Suraya, who doesn't have access to Google calendar, she's sex, she can look at the calendar in the kitchen, which I usually post on the refrigerator. And it's just really easy for her to see what's coming up and what she should expect. Now, maybe you're thinking, okay, cool, Ashley, this is awesome. But

It's supposed to be a podcast about food and nutrition and feeding my family. Yes, that is true.

But I will tell you, if you don't time block your entire life effectively, you won't have time for good nutrition and being able to move your body. So let's talk about what are you actually going to put on your calendar in the first place? And how does this even relate to health and wellness for you and your family this summer?

First things first, I need you to plan the fun stuff. This is a tip that I learned from a business mentor of mine years ago, because my calendar was already full with like work and different things and priorities. And it would just look so full and then summer would come around or the winter holidays would roll around. And it didn't feel like I had capacity or bandwidth for any of the fun stuff. Like I didn't have a...

Like I didn't have time for a day at the pool with my kids or during the winter time, I didn't have time for gingerbread making or going to visit Santa. So after you get your Google Calendar set up, you are going to schedule all the fun things. And again, you can do this with flexibility in mind, because maybe you don't know exactly what you're going to be doing. But let's say in June, you want to take two days off.

and you definitely want to take your kids to one of the local theme parks. So that's three days total. Schedule those first. This gives you the opportunity to schedule everything else around those events. And by doing this, you are pretty much guaranteed to have time to do the things that feel fun this summer. Like we're talking about hosting barbecues or going to barbecue, it's taking a vacation, going to theme parks.

taking a day to do literally nothing. Can you imagine? Like you are allowed to do that. So if you can get all this scheduled in first, you are going to have the availability to get everything else dialed in and there will be room and time and space for everything this summer.

Once you have taken the time to schedule all the fun things, all the things that you want to do, we are going to schedule in things that relate to your movement, whether that's workouts or not, whatever, and your food or your nutrition.

Let's tackle the movement piece first. It's a little bit more straightforward, and then we're going to dive into the nutrition piece. So for workouts, I need you to schedule on your calendar exactly what time of day you are going to work out. Some days, this might be a more intentional workout, like going to the gym or working out in your basement or your living room, whatever that looks like for you, but you need to schedule in the time.

It might even be a simple walk. But if you don't schedule that time, you're not going to find time to do it. I want to encourage you to listen to episode 36, where I talk about my favorite workouts. And one of the reasons that I really like the workouts that I do, they're on the body platform, B-O-D-I. I really like them because the workout, it's already planned. But

That also tells me exactly how long it's going to take. So when I'm thinking about time blocking my summer, makes it really easy to say, know, okay, I'm gonna do three workouts this week. I know that they're each gonna be about 50 minutes. So I'm gonna time block one hour on my calendar to complete each of those workouts.

Now, when you are planning your workouts or your walks, whatever it might be, I want you to remember that, you if you're going to a gym, you need to schedule time to travel to the gym and home from the gym. Or maybe you are going to need a shower or do like a quick hair and makeup refresh after the workout or the walk. You just got to make sure and schedule that time in too. The more specific you can be,

the easier it's going to be to ensure that you have time available for your workout so they don't go by the wayside.

This episode, it isn't really about what kind of workouts to do. So again, I want you to go back and listen to episode 36, and I'll link to that in the show notes, because there you'll get a ton of information on how to pick a good workout for yourself now and for the summer that's going to be super sustainable. So definitely go listen to that episode, but above all, make sure you are scheduling your workouts, your movement time on the calendar,

and that nothing else gets in the way of those time blocks. Make those like appointments with yourself or like it was a hair appointment or a dentist appointment, you wouldn't miss those, right? So don't miss these appointments with yourself. Sometimes you're gonna have to get a little creative.

This might mean working before the kids are up. It might mean working out after the kids go to bed or while they're at summer camp. Do what works for you, but just make sure you get it on the calendar, okay?

Alright, now let's jump into the nutrition portion of your summertime blocking and why it's so important to get all of this stuff on your calendar. So we need to put a couple of different

So we need to put a couple of different categories on your calendar. The first one is meal planning. Meal planning, really shouldn't take you a ton of time. But if you hear that phrase, meal planning, and your eyes start to roll, I want you to go check out the Supper Club, which I will link to in the show notes. Honestly, the Supper Club literally gives you everything you need this summer. There are shopping lists. The meals are already planned.

It will make sure that you're only cooking three times a week. I promise the supper club is totally where you need to be this summer, especially if you don't like meal planning, because it's just all done for you. But regardless of whether you're in the supper club or not, I want you to make sure that your meal planning is done on a Wednesday or a Thursday. And this should be on your calendar. If you're not in the supper club, you might need a little bit more time to do this, but try to keep it to no more than 30 minutes.

Just grab a few recipes that look good, that work with your family's dietary needs and call it good. Honestly, that's all you need to do. And then make a shopping list for what you need to get. The reason I encourage you to do this on Wednesday or Thursday is because if you are out and about running errands on the weekend or doing activities, if you already have your meal plan set for the following week with a grocery list, if you're out,

you can just say, hey, let's just run into the grocery store. It's right here. You can do it on the way home from a barbecue, for example, and then it's done. So don't stress about it. Just get it done during the week.

If you're working full-time like me, I personally like to schedule it in during my work day because I actually do it faster. It's like, okay, I've got 30 minutes to get this done. Let me just get it knocked out and then it's ready to go for next week. So add that meal planning to your calendar, preferably on a Wednesday or a Thursday. And then next, we're going to add grocery shopping to your calendar every single week. Again, look at what you've got going on over the weekend.

Can you batch your errands so that you're going to that barbecue and then stopping at the grocery store on the way home? That's obviously gonna be really efficient. But again, this is an area that can be really flexible. Choose a time that's going to work best for you and your family. Look at your weeks and say, what time ideally is going to be best for me to go grocery shopping?

Personally, I like to shop on Saturday mornings. It is the first thing we do on Saturdays. We just get it out of the way. And then I have the whole weekend to enjoy. I don't have to stress about grocery shopping, which I used to leave for like Sunday afternoon when we were trying to get ready for the week. That is so not fun. It's just not ideal. So for our family, we typically either do it Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, and then it's done and we can enjoy our weekends.

Okay, so you have your meal planning time scheduled on a Wednesday or a Thursday. You have your shopping scheduled, so you know when that's going to happen. So next we need to put time on our calendar for cooking meals. Again, I'll briefly mention the Supper Club. If you only wanna cook three nights a week, the Supper Club helps you do exactly that. But regardless of whether you're in the Supper Club or not,

you need to plan the nights that you are cooking and they need to be on your calendar. If you don't do this, what's going to happen is that you're going to get maybe through like Monday, Tuesday, by Wednesday, you won't really know what you're cooking for the week. You'll be running low on time because maybe some meetings ran late or you were just out doing some fun stuff for the day and you didn't get home in time to make dinner. Plan those nights that you're going to cook and stick to them. And again,

they can be super flexible based on changes in your schedule or wanting to do something different. But at least if you know, okay, I'm cooking Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday night of this coming week, then those are the nights that, well, you probably gotta be home by 4.30 or so, so you can get everything ready and get dinner on the table quickly.

Now, because summer schedules are super crazy, and I know that, I want you to make sure that you plan a couple of emergency meals, things that you can make in like 10 minutes or less. I have a guide that I give members in the separate club called the Oh Shit Meal Planner. I love this guide and I use it all the time. The idea behind it is that if you have that moment where you're like, ⁓ my gosh, I didn't plan anything for dinner.

you will already have items in your pantry that you can use to make a quick meal in 10 minutes or less.

So a plan like this is really gonna help you on those nights that are unpredictable when the schedule has gone haywire and you don't have anything to cook. This is going to fuel you so much better than stopping at Chick-fil-A or Qdoba or a fast food restaurant. Cooking at home is hands down so much healthier for you. And remember, this is the goal to feel healthy and well fueled for everything you're trying to do this summer. So.

Make sure that you're planning those nights that you're going to cook and then make sure that you have all of the ingredients on hand for a couple of like last minute or 10 minute meals already ready to go in your pantry so that no matter what happens, you are dialed in.

and ready to cook for your family.

Okay, so that covers your dinners each week. I think that breakfast and lunch are much more fluid. It's a little bit easier to direct your older kids how to get their own breakfast or to even just have a couple things on rotation like hard boiled eggs and cereal and some freezer waffles. All of that can make breakfast really easy. Lunch, it's kind of the same thing. Like have some things on hand like nitrate-free deli.

maybe some gluten-free bread and some components for making really fun salads. So breakfast and lunch really should be pretty fluid and pretty easy. I usually find that dinner is when things really go off the rails for a lot of families. So hopefully these tips are feeling really helpful for you in planning for a nutritious summer.

The last thing I want to talk about in terms of nutrition though is snacks. Because if you are a mom, you know you will hear at least a hundred times a day, I need a snack. ⁓ So that you're not cringing every time you hear that from one of your kids. And so that you're not worried about snacks when you're doing an outing, like you're at the pool or you're going camping or hiking. Let's set you up for success when it comes to snacks.

So I want you to think about preparing for snacks ahead of time. And the way that you do this is by gathering ingredients that feel healthy so that you don't cringe when your kids say, oh my gosh, I need another snack. You will already have some healthy options to offer them. Now in episode 35 and 37, I've given you some really great ideas around what kind of snacks will work well for you and your family this summer.

So I want you to go back and listen to those episodes and then check in with yourself and your pantry every couple of weeks and make sure you have ingredients on hand for any of those snacks that you've selected.

In our house, I actually really like making snack bags ahead of time. And again, this is what you're to want to put on your calendar. So with our snack bags, this way, Suraya can just pop into the pantry. She sees that there's a snack bag there. And I don't know, I like to lots of different things in one bag. So it might be like Annie's cheese puffs and some dry roasted nuts, ⁓ couple of like dried cherries or some chocolate chips. We really like the

unreal chocolate drops, are like ⁓ &Ms without all the artificial colors, string cheese, applesauce pouches, fruit in a peel like clementines, bananas, apples. Having all of these things on hand is going to make it really easy to make up some of those pre-made bags for your family. So it's really easy if somebody says, my gosh, I need a snack. You can just tell them, go grab one of those snack bags.

Again, make sure that you listen to episode 35 and 37 and then plan for those snacks during the week so it just doesn't become a headache or a hassle. And this will keep you from defaulting to snacks that actually aren't the best for fueling your energy or your family's for the summer when you're at the pool, for hikes, for riding bikes. You need to have the good energy so you can do all of the fun stuff, but you need to schedule time to make that happen.

Okay, so we've covered a lot of ground here today. We've talked about the tools that you need for time blocking your summer, your Google calendar and a printable calendar. And we've talked about what to put on your calendar. So when it comes to movement, you're scheduling your workouts and the time that it might take to get to and from those workouts or to like shower and refresh. We talked about nutrition. So everything from meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, all the way to planning.

your snacks and what kind of things you're going to have around your kitchen for the summer.

As you get into this process of time blocking, one of the things I want to caution you about is that you don't get stuck in planning mode. So for those of us like me, maybe you, who are A type individuals, planning feels really good. It makes your nervous system feel really calm and safe when you know exactly what's coming up. Because you can say, yeah, I have a really good plan for that.

The problem here is that it's really easy to get stuck in planning mode and to not actually execute or do the things. So once you have meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking on your calendar, they're there, but you also have to do them.

This is what's gonna help you to feel so much more on top of your nutrition and your wellness for this summer, really just by actually doing the things that you have scheduled. And again,

And remember, planning does not mean lack of flexibility. It actually gives you flexibility because if things go off the rails one week, you can look ahead at the next week and say, okay, where did this go wrong? How can I readjust or move things around? You know, this is why like Google Calendar. It's like drag and drop so that you can create the following week to work a little bit better so that you really have time for cooking.

time for the fun things, you have snacks planned for going to the pool or a day hike, whatever it is. So your flexibility is there. Don't let a schedule make you believe that you don't have it. It's available to you and you're actually with a plan going to have more flexibility than you realize.

So real quick before we go, I wanna put this in perspective. So I took a minute to just put some actual time blocks around these different things and categories that we've talked about. So if you are to like look at your calendar and say, okay, workouts, maybe that's gonna take me like five hours total a week. Maybe cooking will take three hours a week. Grocery shopping and meal prep, maybe like one to two hours a week and getting those snacks prepared and prepped.

That's like an hour a week. If you add all of that up together, you're looking at around 10 hours a week. Now think about this. If you do not plan ahead for 10 hours a week, do you honestly think that it's possible that you're going to magically find 10 hours a week? No, you're not gonna be able to find that time. This is why time blocking your summer will absolutely change your relationship

with your nutrition and your fitness and your wellness, because you will have time to do these things well. They won't feel like an afterthought. And it's not gonna feel like a drag because you already have the fun stuff planned, right? You already put it on your calendar, that came first. So now all you need to do is fill in this 10 hours a week, make sure that you're fueled properly, that you're eating foods that keep your inflammation low.

so that you have tons of energy and you feel good. You stay healthy.

Whether you're at home or at work or on vacation, whatever you are doing this summer, you want to feel good. So do not leave these 10 hours to chance. Get them on your calendar. Follow those steps that we just talked about in this episode and you are going to set yourself up for such an amazing summer, I promise.

All right, my friend, thank you so much for being here. And truly, thank you for letting me share a little bit about my breast cancer diagnosis. I always want to be as transparent and authentic as I can be. Like what you hear in your ears right now, this is exactly who I am. And I can't imagine going through an entire summer and not sharing some of this cancer journey with you. So hopefully these tips are helpful for you.

because I know that they're gonna be really helpful for me as I navigate what this journey is gonna look like. I cannot wait to be with you all summer long and continue to inspire you to feel your best every single day. So have a great week. I am already excited to meet you back here next week.