Healthy Living
Just over a year ago right after my daughter turned one, I made a decision to begin feeding my family healthier. I’ve always forced low fat foods on my dear Hubby and children, but decided to step it up.
Regular sour cream?? They’ve never heard of such a thing! Whole fat Mayonnaise? Naa, we go with fat free! If it’s made nonfat, I buy it. (Except for cream cheese. Fat free cream cheese is just disgusting. So I get the 1/3 fat. A girl’s gotta have her limits!)
Anyways, Last year I’d become pretty tired of staring at the fridge and trying to figure out what I could make for dinner, sighing, and pulling out a packet of Mac & Cheese or those cute frozen dinosaur chicken nuggets from CostCo. I was so. over. it.
Since I was just exiting my ugly years.…you know which ones I’m talking about, pregnancy, birth, nursing OMG did I even brush my teeth today??!! years, saying Bye Bye Boobie and gaining my sanity and self back. I decided that I need to take control of my family’s dinnertime chaos.
So I began meal planning. Insert choir music and angelic voices here. Oh how life has changed. Once a week I sit down, browse allrecipes.com figure out what meals I’ll be making for the week and write my grocery list accordingly. I don’t buy pre-packeged dinners ever anymore. And I rarely fret about what’s for dinner.
You know the greatest thing? I save bucket of money. BUCKETS I tell you!! I don’t buy bags of chips, crackers, or any other snacky foods anymore–with one exception, NutriGrain Bars (Which I keep in the van for those hunger emergencies!)
For snacks my kids often get fruit, string cheese, or low fat yogurt. I don’t buy high sugar snacks or anything that claims it’s fruit flavored. They get two snacks, one at 10 a.m. and one after nap.
That’s it.
In addition this Christmas my brother handed over his amazing juicer which I use almost every morning. I make a full mixture of some or all the following ingredients:
apple, carrot, cucumber, celery, orange, broccoli
And my family drinks it. eClaire, BC and Hubby ALL drink it. Hehe, I’m totally getting my kids to DRINK their veggies. More impressive, I’ve somehow managed to hoodwink Hubby into drinking his!! he he.
Lately Hubby and I’ve been taking it up a level. Buying organic. Not everything, but lots of stuff. We got to our local farmer’s market most Sundays to stock up on our weekly veggies, jam, and honey. We always choose organic when offered a choice. And recently I’ve all but changed my household cleaners over to all natural products.
And I feel good.
Sure we still go on an occasional fast food run. But I try to keep it to In & Out, and NOT McD’s.
And best of all I feel like by teaching my kids healthy eating habits now, I’m hopefully combating a whole slew of health problems down the road, most importantly, childhood obesity.
And that my friends, is recently what I’m most proud of doing right for my family.
****I just looked over to my right and realized that I have a CostCo sized bag of peanut M&M’s open and partly eaten… I’m SOOO not perfect. Excuse me while go do some emotional eating as I ponder this…
Vered - MomGrind said,
April 23, 2008 @ 9:55 am
I seriously need to start meal planning. I totally stare at the fridge *every single night* around 5:30, trying to figure out what to make.
Vered — MomGrind’s last blog post..Most Husbands, Nowadays, Have Stopped Beating Their Wives (Wordless Wednesday)
Coach Jen said,
April 26, 2008 @ 6:13 pm
Hi! I just am browsing blogs tonight and saw your post! How wonderful that you’ve committed to feeding your family healthily!!
Your children are going to be so blessed by this when they become adults!! Isn’t it wonderful to raise children that wont have to figure this all out like we’ve had to!?
Way to go MOM!
Coach Jen’s last blog post..Ode to Leg Lifts
Jessica (aka Rose) said,
April 27, 2008 @ 8:38 pm
When C was maybe 6 or 7 months old we started meal planning because I just couldn’t go to the grocery store every day any more. We stuck to it for the longest time. It was great, we were eating better and limiting the evening frustration. Then I got pregnant and all the planning went right out the window. I was too tired to go to the store, too tired to cook anyway, and I had no appetite to speak of so no motivation to look for recipes.
Now that Little L is bigger and things are starting to settle down it’s time for us to start planning again. I am SO sick of spaghetti and chicken!
Jessica (aka Rose)‘s last blog post..Weekly winners
Peris said,
May 6, 2008 @ 10:04 am
I am so trying to do this…It is so hard if you are not used to it.…any cookbooks you use or websites you prefer to get reciepes from or do you just wing it.????I need help with finding things to cook…I only know like 4 dinners on my own to cook. I know its horrible.…give us some ideas girlfriend! I love reading your posts.…
Peris’s last blog post..Look who we got to Wii
WTF?? » Smiling Mom said,
June 12, 2008 @ 8:12 pm
[…] scene: Hubby pulls out our monster CostCo sized bag of M&M’s, giving BC and eClaire their own bowl. Which just about knocked them over with delight! […]
ankit said,
March 8, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
A very nice article. Thought provoking and well written.
ankit’s last blog post..India doing well in New Zealand