Healthy Reasons For Eating at Home

If you are looking for an easy way to achieve a healthy life for you and your family, one of the most effective ways is to eat in. Here are some useful tricks.

With our busy lifestyles, preparing your own meals is often exchanged with quick meals at fast food or casual dining dining establishments. Not only are these choices usually more cost prohibited than eating in, but also less healthy. You can dramatically improve the health benefits by staying in to eat.

Eating at Home Puts You in Control
Eating at home has many health benefits, but more importantly it gives you the options of what ingredients you decide to include or not include in your meals. Have you ever glanced at what a hamburger at a casual dining restaurant is made from- there can be tons of ingredients, some with names you haven’t heard of or are unable to pronounce. When you prepare home-cooked meals, you can keep your foods natural and basic.

Do You Have Special Dietary Needs?
Another health benefit of eating in is that if you have special dietary restrictions such as limitations on fat in your foods, you can conveniently fix dishes that accommodate your guidelines. No need to fret if the restaurant has a low salt dish or if there is any extra sugar added to a dish.

Portion Control
One of the reasons that many people have gained weight is due to the portions that many fast food restaurants give you. They are much larger than recommended. If you eat at home, you can choose the appropriate portions for you and your family members, eliminating unnecessary food intake.

Food Allergens
When you eat at home, you can be more mindful in preparing foods, especially if you or a family member has a food allergy. Food allergies many times can be serious and possibly even deadly. Preparing food at home can eliminate the risk of an allergic reaction to allergic food reaction.

Quality Time
Another benefit to preparing meals at home is the quality of time spent with each other. Everyone likes to be pampered at times so it’s okay to eat out once in a while. However, eating at home allows you to spend quality time with loved ones. Each person can take part in meal preparation so it’s a shared event. By allowing children to participate in meal planning and cooking you are teaching them valuable self-sufficiency skills. The atmosphere is more conducive to sharing stories.

Make a pledge to prepare more home-cooked meals. The benefits of eating in exceed the time it takes to prepare a home-cooked meal. Your family will thank you in the end.

Dine Without Whine is a great menu planning service for active families. Go to http://www.dinewithoutwhine.com to discover even more rewards to menu planning.

How To Make A Healthy Eating Plan You Can Stick To

By Christine Steendahl

Once you get in the swing of things and find healthy foods that you truly enjoy sticking to a healthy eating plan isn’t very hard…provided you do it right and don’t fall in one of the few traps that seem to get most people to give up on their healthy eating efforts.

The key to healthy eating is to find ways to insure you are eating foods that are good for you until it becomes a habit or a new way of life for you. One great way to do this is to let family and friends know about your plans and ask them to check in with you every once in a while. Positive encouragement from loved ones and knowing that they will hold you accountable is a great way to motivate yourself to keep going and stick to your plan.

Put your healthy eating plan on paper. Sure that may sound a little simplistic and you may have a pretty good idea of what you are doing in you head. But it’s not the same as writing it all down and having it in front of you. It’s much easier to cheat yourself into thinking that carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is a health food when you don’t have a healthy meal plan written out. Get out a piece of paper or even better, grab your free meal planning basics report and meal planning worksheets at Menu Planning Central and write down what healthy foods and dishes you are going to enjoy this week.

Speaking of enjoying food. Try new healthy foods like a vegetable you’ve never had or a new recipe on a regular basis. Sooner or later you are bound to find some things that you absolutely love that are also good for you. And don’t completely cut out your old favorites either. If you can’t live without a bacon cheese burger then don’t… instead enjoy it in moderation like maybe once a week or once every few weeks. Make an effort to eat healthy foods the rest of the day and maybe take a walk to burn of a few of those calories. The point is that you don’t have to live without those favorites. You just don’t want to eat them all the time. But don’t feel guilty when you do indulge yourself. In fact, you may want to make them a regular part of your meal plan.

A Little of This and a Little of That Soup

A Little of This and a Little of That Soup

What You Need:

1 T canola oil
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 (19 oz) can minestrone soup
1 (15 oz) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained well
1 (14.5 oz) can stewed tomatoes
1 (11 oz) can whole kernel corn
1 (4 oz) can green chilies, chopped
1 t salt
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t onion powder

How to Make It:

Place the oil in a skillet over medium heat.
Break up the ground beef into the skillet and add the onions.
Cook 12 minutes or until the meat is completely browned.
Drain well and pat the excess grease off with a paper towel.
Place the meat and onions into the crock pot.
Pour in the minestrone soup, pinto beans, tomatoes, corn and the chilies.
Sprinkle in the salt, garlic and onion powder.
Stir from the bottom up to incorporate all the ingredients together.
Cover and cook on the low heat setting 6 hours.

Serving Size: 8

This great soup is made up of things everyone has in their pantry and refrigerator. Try adding a few of your own ideas such as canned green beans, peas or carrots to see if you can come up with you very own this and that soup.

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