Now that school has started, how to eat healthy becomes more difficult in the middle of September Craziness. How do you keep it together with all the many activities, homework, and daily pressures when you are working full time and trying desperately to juggle everything?
My two favourite words are ORGANIZING and PLANNING. Those happen to be my two biggest strengths, but what if you are one of the people who struggle in that department? What do you do? My advice to you is start slow. Start by making lists. Write down everyone’s schedules and see where you have pockets of time, even if it is just a half an hour or an hour and talk about the upcoming week.
Although my girls are now grown, we spent many, many years racing around between sports, music lessons, and after school study groups. How to Eat Healthy was a constant struggle, but necessary and for me, something I never compromised on.
What worked for us was on Saturday we would find an hour or so, usually during a meal, to look at schedules and discuss when we would be all be home for a meal, and when we would have to eat “supper on the run”. Get the kids involved in their favourite foods, but keep it simple.
Usually after breakfast on Sundays, I would get the groceries and we would spend a couple hours “prepping” for the week. This would include cutting veggies for salads, pre-browning and seasoning meat before freezing it, pre-making pasta/rice dishes and freezing them in individual containers, either for lunches or for supper on the go. If you pre-brown hamburger, for example, it can be used in a lot of different recipes, just adding the final ingredients when you reheat it. The same goes for rice. This step was a huge time-saver for cooking meals. We also relied on the crock pot for cooking chilis and meats.
Freezing banana bread in individual slices (made with a scoop of protein and/or chia seeds) paired with a piece of fruit, was a quick, handy, after school snack before an activity. Home-made granola bars were also a favourite. When we baked, we would triple the recipes and throw the extras in the freezer so the baking would last longer, in case we weren’t able to bake every week. We usually would choose something different each week to bake so there was something different to look forward to in lunches or after school snacks.
It might sound like a lot of work, but once the routine is set and everyone helps out, it becomes easier. It certainly saved us from last minute trips for fast food out of desperation. When our schedules got messed up (as they sometimes did), the rotisserie chicken and a bagged salad at the local grocery store was our favourite go-to.
Hope this helped on how to eat healthy!
