Healthy Eating – A Family Affair From Start to Finish

Healthy eating habits can open doors for a family that may not have been opened otherwise earlier. It’s true when you get everyone in the family involved you’re enriching more than just your body with the foods you eat, but your minds, hearts and souls too. Here are some ways (from start to finish) that you can begin implementing in your house to make your family’s journey through healthy eating a true all for one and one for all event.

Meal Planning

If you aren’t already planning your meals, now is a perfect time to start. Meal planning makes it easier to stay on track with your healthy eating habits. It avoids the “What’s for dinner?” question. It helps make grocery list writing and shopping so much simpler. It helps save money and reduces stress. Once you get the hang of it, meal planning can even be fun.

HOW TO CREATE A FAMILY MEAL PLAN

The first thing anyone creating a meal plan should do is to decide how frequently they will put their meal plan together. Some people do a weekly meal plan, others a bi-weekly plan and some choose to do a whole month at once. One of the best ways to determine what will work best for your family is to base your meal plans around your grocery shopping or pay days. Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself to determine what might work best in your household.

• When do you currently do your grocery shopping?
• Do you get paid on a weekly basis, every two weeks or monthly?
• What day of the week do you need/like to shop?
• Do you work around weekly sales at your local store?

Once you’ve determined how far you’d like to plan your meals in advance, it’s time to actually start the planning. Let’s use this example:

You currently get paid once a week on Friday and do your shopping each Saturday for the following week’s groceries. You’ve decided that your meal plan will be a weekly one that runs from Sunday to Saturday.

Create a chart and simply put the meal or snack you’ll serve for each day of the week. Get the whole family involved in the process by asking each one for suggestions of meals. Assuming they are healthy (or at least healthier, if just starting out with healthier eating habits) choices, be sure to include those suggestions somewhere in the week’s menu.

Once you’ve completed your weekly menu, it’s time to create your shopping list.

Shopping List Preparation

There are a few ways you can do this, but make sure you aren’t skipping any meals or snacks when you create your list to avoid having to make a special run to the store 10 minutes before you’re ready to eat because you forgot to add something to the list.

Go through each meal and snack on listed your menu and write down each and every item you’ll need to prepare it. This will be your grocery list, minus any other items (staples like milk, bath products, etc.) you might need while at the store.

Don’t forget to clip any coupons for the items on your list too. Coupons are a great way to stick to your budget and eat healthier at the same time.

This is a great time to get older kids to help. They can learn not only what items are required to prepare the meals, but also how to compile a shopping list instead of making a run to the store and grabbing anything that looks good in the aisles.

Now comes the fun part: Grocery Shopping!

Grocery Shopping

Obviously you’ve done this before, but have you gotten your kids involved? By involved I don’t mean sitting in the cart throwing their favorite snacks in while you’re not looking.

Shopping trips are great opportunities for kids to learn. Smaller children can help you find items on the shelves. School aged children can help by marking items off your list as you put them in the cart or adding up the cost of items either on paper or with a calculator. Teenage and older children can help you gather items throughout the store making your trip a little less time consuming and stressful, especially if the store is busy.

Once you have your shopping trip finished and have arrived home again. It’s time to put the groceries away. Get every member of the family involved in this. It’s a great bonding time and a perfect way to keep from having to do it all yourself.

Meal Preparation

When it comes time to actually make the meals you’ve listed and bought for, again be sure to get the entire family involved. Kids love to help cook and by allowing them to complete age appropriate tasks for each meal, you’re teaching them a very valuable life skill.

You can choose to make more than one meal in one day and then freeze them for easy preparation during the week or prepare your meals each day as you’ll eat them. Depending on your schedule and which meals you’ve got planned, you can do either one, or a combination of both.

Another tip that saves tons of time is to cut up all your fresh fruits and vegetables and separate them into snack size containers so they are ready at snack time throughout the week.

Clean Up

Yes, clean up should be done as a family too. It might not be easy getting everyone to chip in right away, but if you can get even one family member to help you, the rest will soon see how much fun it can be (not to mention faster) and join in before you know it.

Enlist help with table clean up, dish washing, and leftover duties. Depending on the age of your children, you might just be able to get a few nights off from clean up, but don’t leave the kitchen if you do. Stick around and join in the conversation and fun times. You’ll be glad you did.

Whether you plan your meals a week or a month at a time, get everyone involved. Be sure to ask each family member what meals they would like to have and include some of their favorites in your meal plan. Then enlist their assistance in every step of the process from grocery shopping to clean up.

Resources to Make Healthy Eating Easier:

Menu Planning Central
Traditional Foods Menu Mailer