It’s daunting. You’re thinking, I don’t have time for this! Between work, soccer practice and cleaning your home, you barely have time to eat, let only eat healthy! Right? But it can be done. It must be done. You can save your family from fatigue, mood swings, poor school performance, obesity and heart disease. But in order to do this, you need to change the way your family eats. Not over night, but slowly and steadily. Once you decide to commit, for the sake of your family’s health and future, you can make small changes. It will be challenging, but don’t give up! Your family’s health depends on it.
GO SLOWLY
Don’t yank everything at once. This is a lifestyle change, not a diet. Be slow, patient and persistent. Start with one things and slowly eliminate it. Through our Nutrition Response Testing programs, we help figure out which foods would be the best for you to lessen or eliminate and help you develop plans to do so. Don’t hesitate to ask us about our personalized nutrition programs!
PLAN, PLAN, PLAN
If you want to succeed at eating healthier, you need to plan what you are going to eat for every meal and snack. Pick one day a week, where you sit down and plan out your meals for the rest of the week. Don’t forget to plan your snacks and drinks! Look through your kitchen and figuring out what groceries you need to buy and then go out and buy all the food for the week. If you know you have a busy week, you may find it helpful to precook a couple of meals or parts of certain meals that take longer to make. This would allow you at the very least to simply warm up a meal for a quick dinner.
Planning will not only save you time, but it will also save you money. You will only buy what you need and will be less likely to eat out, or impulse buy.
EDUCATE YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY
On what is healthy and why you want to eat healthy. Education is the key part of our nutrition response testing programs. We found that if someone understood why they need to change something, they are able to make the changes easier, and they get healthier faster! The same is true for your family. If your kids are old enough explain to them why you are making changes to their diet and what the unhealthy foods do to their body vs the healthy foods. Get them involved!
BE KIND TO YOURSELF
Don’t worry if you mess up. For most people this is a big change, so don’t give up if you had a bad week. Accept it and move on. Next week will be better and easier!
THREE KEYS TO SUCCESS
1. Eat your protein and vegetables first, your carbs last.
If you fill up on protein and vegetables first, you will naturally eat less carbs. Carbs such as breads, rice, potatoes and pasta are something most people eat too much of and this is a easy way to eat less.
2. Insist that your kids try foods, but don’t force them to eat it.
Remember it can take up to ten tries before they decide they like it.
3. Never tell your kids you don’t like something.
Monkey see, monkey do. If you don’t like it, they will be less likely to like it too.