Here’s how Haylie Duff makes her mornings stress-free

It would be an understatement to say Haylie Duff has got a lot going on with her life right now. The actress and mom (she has a nearly 2-year-old daughter named Ryan) runs her own food blog called Real Girl's Kitchen and hosts a TV show by the same name, plus she films movies on the reg.

She keeps a busy schedule, one that has had to shift with the expansion of her family. "My morning routine has changed since I had my daughter," she told Women's Health recently. "A lot of my personal morning routine, things that are for me, have to be simplified."

We caught up with Duff while she was promoting Burt's Bee's new Plant-Based Protein Powders, to get the scoop on how she manages to make her mornings (and her life!) a little bit less stressful.

What are your tricks for making mornings go by easier?

Haylie Duff: Simplifying the morning, like getting the prep done the night before ... Meal planning for my whole family makes things easy. Once Ryan started trying real food, I got this great advice from a girlfriend of mine. She said, "Don't start making two meals because if you do that, you'll do it until the end of time." I try to live by that. I try to do meal planning where halfway through the recipe, I try to reserve a little food for Ryan. So for example with [making] banana nut chai oatmeal, as I'm making steel cut oats I would reserve some before I put the chai in. She's a huge oatmeal lover!

What is one thing that you MUST HAVE or do in the morning, whether that’s meditation time, food, a shower?

Duff: Definitely there’s some caffeine in there every single day! ... I would love to have a minute to meditate in the morning but as soon as my daughter was born, that went out the window. I tend to find quiet moments in kind of mundane things like doing dishes or going on a walk with her.

I bet your hectic schedule can cause some stress. What do you to help combat that feeling?

Duff: I just started a movie a couple days ago, and right before holidays I just ended another one. I was going back and forth with mom guilt and being a mother and working and figuring out how that balance is going to work. Most moms deal with that.

Combatting a lot of stress for me has to do with doing fun things with [Ryan]. I take her to the zoo middle of the week. Matt [Duff's fiancé] for Mother's Day got me a season pass, and on Wednesdays or Thursdays no one’s there. It’s so quiet and calm, and that’s one of my favorite ways to unwind and spend time with her.

Before I became a mom, it was, "Go to a workout class!" or "Go to SoulCycle and hear all this crazy music!" but it’s really kind of changed into finding things that are way, way, more lowkey. Watching her go do things that are fun and simple and way less complicated than things that are mostly around us relaxes me.