The "Good" Rice Pudding: How to Make Time for Fitness When You Can't Be Great at Everything

Making time for fitness almost always means choosing something else to be a B-minus, at least for now. Optimization culture tells high-achieving women to want the best version of everything, and that belief is one of the biggest reasons I see new fitness habits fall apart.

Growing up, my family had a Sunday tradition: dinner at Indian Oven, a small Indian restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We went every Sunday like clockwork, and we looked forward to it all week. One Sunday, we invited one of my close friends to join us as our guest, because we loved the place so much we wanted to show it off.

We raved about everything all through dinner, and then we ordered the rice pudding, the dessert we'd ordered more Sunday nights than I can count. It came out looking completely normal, and it tasted rancid. Of course it did, on the one night we'd brought a guest. So we told the waiter, as politely as we could, that we'd loved the meal but something was very wrong with the pudding. He looked at us with complete seriousness and said, "Oh, so you wanted the good rice pudding?"

Yes. Yes, we did. He came back with one that was delicious as always, and to this day we have no idea what he meant. Was there a secret second pudding? Who was ordering the other one? "The good rice pudding" has been family lore ever since.

Optimization culture keeps asking if we want the good rice pudding

The waiter's question sounds ridiculous, because of course we want the good one. But it's the same question our culture asks women about everything, all the time. Do you want the good career, the good relationship, the good skin, the good sleep score, the good body? And can you be the good mom while you're at it? Wellnessmaxxing has turned even rest into something to optimize. One wellness brand's 2026 survey, published on Fitt Insider, found that 97% of the women it asked felt pressure to optimize their health in the past year. It's the brand's own research, but even if the real number is lower, it matches what I hear from clients every week.

And the women I work with keep answering yes. They're excellent at work, they show up for their families, and they hold themselves to a standard most people never see. So when they add fitness on top of everything else, it becomes one more thing to get an A in, and something has to give.

Why you can't make time for fitness without letting something else slide

We do not have time to work out. We make time for it, and making time means something else comes off the plate. That's the part most people aren't willing to do; they try to add three workouts a week to a life that's already full, without letting anything else be less than excellent, and then they wonder why the habit falls apart by week three.

I'm still figuring out where my B-minus goes

I'd love to tell you I've mastered this. I haven't. Lately I've been reworking parts of my coaching programs that were already working, because I know more now than I did six months ago. There's a voice on my shoulder that says this isn't scalable, it isn't sustainable, it isn't my number one priority, and my energy is finite. And there's another voice that says this is the lifeblood of what I do, and it deserves the even better version.

I went with the second voice, and I know it cost me somewhere else. For me, that’s my social life. I’m very social when it comes to growing FBZ or learning something new, because those are my two passions. But my calendar is full right now, so most of my social plans are made weeks ahead, and spontaneity just isn’t in the cards this season.

How to make room for fitness without making it one more thing to ace

Fitness doesn’t need an A. It needs a permanent seat at the table. For some women, that’s their full plan every week. For others, it’s an A plan, a B plan and a C plan: the full workout when the week cooperates, a shorter one when it’s busy, and a quick ten minutes when it’s chaos. You don’t have to decide in advance which week you’ll get. Fitness just keeps its seat.

We kept going to Indian Oven every Sunday until it closed. We never did find out who the other rice pudding was for.

If you want help giving fitness a permanent seat at your table, that's exactly what my first call is for.