If you notice, my last healthy-eating post was about a myth, the myth that eating healthy is expensive. The next one will also be about a myth, but I didn’t label this one a myth, because it’s true! Who honestly has enough time? If you are the one person out there in the world twiddling your thumbs wondering what to watch next on the ol’ Tivo because you have nothing else to do, yeah, I’m super jealous. For me, I hit the ground running at 5:00 in the morning and don’t get a chance to stop until about 10:00 at night when I finally get to collapse into bed. The rest of the day is filled with work, kids and everything that goes along with that (diapers, getting Barbies dressed, breaking up fights, giving hugs, running them around to all their activities, and on and on and on….), housecleaning, errands and this list could really go on forever. Oh, and somewhere in there my handsome hubby would like some attention and I might need to just take a few minutes to breathe. I’m pretty sure most people out there feel the same way.
So how in the world do you find time for healthy eating? Because I hate to break it to you, folks, but it does take time. There is just no way around this one. Thankfully there are some things you can do to make it a little bit easier.
1. Make food the priority – I have recently started reading a book called French Kids Eat Everything. I’m loving this book so far and I’m sure an official book review will be coming, but for now I’ll just share one little part. This is basically a book about a family that moved to France and had a bit of shell shock when it came to how different eating habits are there, especially when it comes to kids. One thing she points out is how important mealtimes and food are to the French. And since they are some of the healthiest people on the planet (while eating some of the yummiest food!) maybe we need to learn a little bit more from their example? The book talks about how the French are surprised at how many Americans will spend all day shuttling their kids from activity to activity, but spend little to no time with the important stuff, like teaching their children how to eat. Now I know that some of these activities could also be labeled as important stuff, but there is so much evidence that sitting down together as a family to have dinner is so beneficial to our kids. It increases communication, makes kids less likely to try alcohol or drugs, improves academic performance, and gives everyone better nutrition (see here and here for some good articles about this). Also, for those that share the same religion as me, have you noticed a gigantic push lately about family dinners? I sure have! It seems like every general conference we hear more and more about it. If this is the case, why is food regarded as merely an inconvenience? Something to be taken care of by a drive through window and quickly consumed without thought in the car while getting from point A to point B? We have to consciously decide to make food the priority. It’s a choice, and isn’t it worth making that choice to have happier, healthier families?
2. Have a plan – This one is so important that I came up with a fancy smancy math equation to explain it. Are you ready? Here it is:
No plan + no time = greasy pizza for dinner.
Awesome, right? Ok, I’m not a math whiz, but you get the point. If you have a menu planned out and the ingredients already in your house, you are less likely to order pizza or hit the drive through for some yucky fast food. This was also a big part of my post on making healthy eating affordable. Just do this one, ok? It seems to help to have a reminder of the menu right there in the kitchen, so go on Pinterest and find all those adorable menu board ideas and get on it. For us, I bought a whiteboard and I had a friend who does vinyl put together a cute menu/shopping list for me to put on the whiteboard. It hangs right on the front of our fridge with Command hooks. My beautiful mother-in-law has a calendar she prints off of her computer every month. She just pencils in the meals and sticks it to the front of her fridge with a magnet. Do whatever works for you, but get a menu planned!
3. Put meals and food planning in your schedule – Seriously, pull out your nifty day planner and pencil it in. At our house we eat at 8:00 a.m., noon, a little snack at 2:30 p.m., dinner at 5:00 p.m. and usually a bedtime snack at 7:30. That’s early for dinner, I know, but Marquis has to be at school at 6:00 p.m., and we have made having dinner together a priority, so 5:00 p.m. dinner it is! That means that I have it in my schedule to log out of work at 4:00 p.m. so I can start cooking.
I also have it in my schedule to plan the menu every Sunday afternoon/evening, and I have scheduled to go grocery shopping on Monday nights. If all of these things are on the schedule, you are more likely to do them. These days/times are not going to work for everyone, you have to figure out what works for your own family.
4. Take advantage of the time you do have – Whenever I cook, I’m usually preparing for more than one meal at a time. If I am making a meal that freezes well, I will make lots extra and freeze the rest. I do this all the time with tamales, meatballs, shepherd’s pie, tortillas, bread, muffins, and the list goes on and on. This means that later on if I’m having a crazy day and need a quick meal, I can just pull something from the freezer and throw it in the oven rather than eating out, or if I know in advance that we have something going on to complicate a day, I can just throw a freezer meal in the crockpot, easy peasy!
I will also sometimes cook something completely unrelated to the current day’s meal. A few days ago I had a few extra minutes. I knew we would be having tamales a couple of days later, so I quickly threw some tomatillos, onions, garlic and jalapenos in the oven to roast for this sauce, which we like to eat on the tamales. I made a lot so that I could freeze some and also use some in a recipe for salsa verde chicken with cornmeal dumplings that I was thinking of putting on the menu the next week.
I will also quite often throw in some granola or muffins to cook while I’m making dinner if I don’t need the oven. That makes for some fast, easy breakfasts later on that aren’t processed or from a box.
5. Use available resources – Plastered all over Pinterest are fast, healthy recipe ideas. I’ve also recommended this cookbook before, we use it all the time and love it! Sometimes it’s fun to spend all day making a perfect, fancy meal, but most of the time it’s just not possible to do, so it’s nice to have some yummy, fast recipes in your arsenal. There are so many recipes that take less time than driving to a fast food place or waiting for the pizza man, and the food is going to be fresher, healthier, and yummier!
Other resources include your crockpot and your freezer. Take a few minutes in the morning to throw a few ingredients in a crockpot, and by dinner time you have dinner all ready to go! I use my crockpot probably two or three times a week. Sometimes I even pull out our second crockpot and have both going at once! Whoever invited this device is a genius! I’ll have more crockpot tips and tricks later. Make sure you also make use of your freezer! I have friends who spend one Saturday a month to cook an entire month’s worth of meals which they then freeze. All the hard work is done, and they just have to throw it in the oven. How easy is that? I don’t do a full month of freezer meals at a time, but I will sometimes take a Sunday afternoon to put together a few freezer meals. Having a freezer full of nutritious, easy and yummy meals makes me happy!
Now it’s your turn. What do you do to keep your family eating healthy, real food when you have limited time?