Our #1 tip to increase your sex drive
Sex drive tends to go up and down during pregnancy, postpartum, and throughout motherhood. There are many contributing factors, some biological and some not. The pelvic floor, vagina, and vulva all go through a lot of changes as hormones fluctuate throughout these seasons of life. We have less natural lubrication which can leave you feeling dry and sometimes just uninterested.
If you are a married woman and mother, it is highly likely that you carry a tremendous mental load for the household. For those of you new to the term, mental load is the invisible work done to manage a household. It is overseeing that everyone has all the things they need to succeed. This often involves cooking, cleaning, meal planning, grocery shopping, laundry, transporting kids, doing dishes, buying clothes, playing with the kids, picking outfits for the kids each day, picking up toys, scheduling doctor and dental appointments, making sure the bills are paid, and more.
Just writing all of those tasks makes me feel stressed. When we get stressed, we tend to rely more on our sympathetic nervous system, which is our “fight or flight” system. When we rely on the sympathetic nervous system, we have trouble relaxing, tend to breathe more shallowly, and our pelvic floors tense up.
If you are reading this, it is likely you have not been giving your partner the “bedroom eyes” lately. Now you are thinking about all the things you need to get done, and sex is probably not on that to-do list!
In a study done in 2018, the top reported killer of libido was, yep, you guessed it: stress. So what do you do about it? You probably think I’m going to tell you to take some deep breaths and do some pelvic floor stretches. But this time, I’m actually not going to tell you that!! (I know, crazy, right?) This post is actually about what tangible step you can take to decrease your stress level.
If you take a look back at the list of things I included in my mental load list, 3-4 of the tasks are involved in meal planning and preparation. What if we took some of that mental energy and made things super simple and less time consuming?
Here is a recipe that literally saves my sanity every single week. I take a large package of chicken breasts and cook them in a slow cooker all day at the beginning of the week. We use that chicken for most, if not all, meals for the week. I’ll leave the recipe below, and in my next post I’m going to share with you my top 4 kid-friendly recipes that I make with the shredded chicken on a regular basis!
If you are anything like me, you despise cutting up raw chicken into cubes, so this little trick has saved me! No chopping, dicing, or cutting needed. I just go from the package straight to the slow cooker. We can get a week’s worth of dinners out of a large package of chicken breasts (sold at Cub, Target, Walmart) or even more (we freeze some) if we buy jumbo packages (Sam’s Club or Costco).
Making a crock pot full of chicken has decreased my mental load because I don’t have to do any extensive meal planning, and all our go-to recipes can be made with shredded chicken and staples we keep on hand! If you have been feeling overwhelmed with meal planning, stuck in a rut with what to make, or just don’t enjoy planning meals for the week, give this a try and see what you think!
The key with this chicken is cooking it long enough. And I don’t mean long enough to be safe, I mean long enough to be super tender, with lots of juices, and easy to shred! Here’s my process: I place all the chicken in the crock pot, sprinkle the seasonings over the top, set the timer, and go about my day. I season with garlic powder, onion powder, minced garlic, pepper, and salt, but you can use whatever you like! This seems like a good base for our family where we can easily use it for a variety of things and the kids like it straight out of the slow cooker without any “extras” like sauces or sides. When it is finished cooking, I shred it with two forks. Here are a few more specifics:
Ingredients:
5 lb package of chicken breasts
1 Tbsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
½ tsp minced garlic
½ tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
Directions:
Place all chicken in the slow cooker and spread along the bottom as much as possible. I have a 7 qt cooker and it fits just perfectly if I used a 5 lb package of chicken. (Most recipes call for water, but I don’t add any extra water.)
Sprinkle the seasonings over the top of the chicken.
Cook on high for 4.5 hours or low for 6.5 hours.
Shred the chicken with two forks or meat claws if you have them.
That’s it! We either put some of it into a recipe right away or toss it all in a pyrex and throw it in the fridge. Tip: if you are going to make a casserole or something that is less chicken-heavy for entrees, you may want to freeze a portion of the chicken once it cools in the fridge so you can use it for the maximum time once you thaw it back out (always write the date you made it and the date you froze it so you can calculate how much “life” is left in the chicken!)
I hope this tip can help decrease some of your mental load, and thereby decrease a little bit of stress this week. Remember that decreasing stress can increase your sex drive and your overall well being!