You Don’t Have to Do It All

As a follow up from my post titled “Three Reasons I Do It All”, I wanted to remind you again that you don’t have to do it all!  I know that I said that before, but I think it bears repeating.  Not just that, I wanted to share with you some tips for getting started.  If you read my previous post and thought, “I can’t do that!” or you get overwhelmed at the whole idea of “eating healthy”, remember you don’t have to make all of your changes at once.  In fact, you really shouldn’t.  A few key changes can make all of the difference in your health and your family’s.

Limit fast food, takeout, and dining out.  The fact is that when you’re relying on someone else to prepare your meals, you’re handing over control of your nutritional health to someone else.  Someone who may not care as much about your health.  I would recommend making a goal of eating out only once a week.

Focus on fruits and vegetables.  Instead of planning meals around a protein, think about how you can work more fruits and vegetables into your meals and snacks.  Build meals around sides, vegetable heavy entrees, and always serve fruit on the side.

Keep it simple.  It’s not like you have to make elaborate four course meals.  Make plans for simple meals that don’t overwhelm you.  They don’t need to be fancy.  They should just taste good and be good for you.  At my house my “formula” is sort of like this – breakfast is usually fruit, bread, and a boiled egg or Greek yogurt; lunch is a 1/2 sandwich with fruit or a salad with whatever I have in the fridge plus a boiled egg, chopped chicken, or leftovers for supper; dinner is usually grilled chicken, fish or pasta, salad, and fruit and sometimes an extra steamed or roasted vegetable.  Easy.

I’ll be making some suggestions about easy cookbooks soon, so stay tuned for that.  Meanwhile, I love the Cooking Light website and many of their recipes are easy and good for you!

Start there.  Don’t let the fear of trying to “do it all” overwhelm you.  Just pick a step and start.