The number one barrier to making a real change in your nutrition tends to be…life getting in the way. You see your schedule as a major barrier to clean eating, which takes time for shopping, cooking, and cleaning up, not to mention actually sitting down to eat. When your week is crammed full of work, soccer practices, volunteer activities, dance, karate, book club, and anything else you do in the evening, the thought of adding a REAL meal may be daunting.
However, no other change is more important to your health than fitting clean eating into your life, and you are probably missing only one key step that can bust the schedule barrier for you.
It’s called PLANNING!
Compare these two scenarios:
1. Couple comes home from long day at work, crashes on the couch, turns on the news, gets hungry, and decides to amble off to the kitchen to see what’s there. In the fridge, we find a hunk of three-week-old cheddar cheese, some bacon, half a head of lettuce, an army of condiments, and perhaps a few chicken breasts. Hm. Now what? Chicken takes too long to cook and we are hungry NOW…get the door, it’s Domino’s.
2. Couple comes home from long day at work, checks the recipe board, checks the fridge, and spends the next 10 minutes chopping veggies from the fridge, adding spices to the chicken, and preheating the oven. Once the chicken is safely in the oven, couple crashes on the couch, turns on the news, and waits for the oven to beep 20 minutes later. Yum.
In the second case, the couple had planned and shopped for their meals in advance. Spending 15 minutes each week planning and maybe another hour shopping for ingredients is the best way to enable clean eating. It’s pretty simple, and the internet is there to help with automated meal planning sites – my favorite is Relish! (www.relishrelish.com), which lets you pick from a selection of meals, and spits out a shopping list and recipes. I modify the recipes to remove unwanted sugars or grains, add whatever vegetables happen to be in season, and cook accordingly. Without going into too much detail, I have a schedule that would make most master multitaskers shiver, so I don’t see time as an excuse.
Convenience is a little trickier. If you need to feed the beasts between school and soccer, meals need to be edible on the go and often at high speed. Again, planning will help, but be sure to pick entrees that go. Pre-chop cooked meat for easier eating, avoid red sauces if kids are going to eat in the car, and add plenty of crunchy finger veggies.
Don’t forget to plan your breakfast and lunch selections as well as dinner. The easiest lunch solution is to add a bunch of leafy greens to the shopping list, and cook extra meat at dinner. Chop the leftover meat, add to some greens in a portable container, sprinkle with chopped veggies, nuts, etc. as desired, sprinkle with a little oil and vinegar, and take it to go!
You CAN eat real food with a packed schedule; just devote some time for planning and shopping time each week. We can help you figure it out. You’re worth it!
