So, I need to prepare my meals with anticipation?

Every time I started a healthy lifestyle journey, I struggled to keep myself eating healthy. Let's face it, having more than one small kid at home with lots of schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and demanding needs, you'll always try to look for the fastest, easiest way to do things so everything gets done. We tend to believe we are super moms who need to do everything, right away, because if not, we are crappy mommies who do not deserve been call as so. Most of us even struggle with the demanding duties of a job or the responsibilities of keeping an immaculate house (you know in case anyone dares to visit), others need to balance both. Sometimes is like we transform our self into octopuses, with 8 arms all around every unimaginable duty.

So, how am I supposed to plan a healthy meal and keep it up? The usual action is just stop by a fast food franchise or even order delivery food. Then it seems so easy for us to do this we easily fall into this trap and create a habit of it. What I find more effective to keep me on track of healthy eating habits is to plan ahead my meals and even separate them into the required portions. Of course it will take time, thinking and preparation, but you will schedule it and do it just one day, not every single day. You will need containers of all sizes to do this which you can find on supermarkets or department stores for a very reasonable price; and of course a variety of vegetables, healthy snacks, fruits, lean meats, whole grains and healthy fats so you can prepared a varied menu for the whole week.

My husband and I, pick every Sunday evening/night (something we need to start doing again) to look for healthy recipes (most came from our exercise programs nutritional guides or the Eat Clean Diet Facebook fan page). Then our culinary workshop begins. We mostly pick easy recipes which do not take a lot of time to prepare and have great cooking tools that helps us accelerate the preparation process. For example, we have a slow cook/steamer were we can prepare the brown rice and steam veggies at the same time; a flat grill and a pasta pan.

We both have different servings and portion sizes, so each one measure our own servings and put them into the containers, making sure we serve a balanced meal. For snacks, we do exactly the same. Most of the snacks we buy come in full packages, so we make sure to separate those on individual servings, and either put them in small bags or containers. Also, we make sure that our snacks contain a fruit or veggie base. With this exercise we make sure to have at least 2 meals daily for 5 days, the working/school days, which are the most difficult to keep with.

Try to put this into practice, equip yourself with great cooking tools, make your healthy shopping list, look for a partner or partners and enjoy the ride to healthy habits to avoid unwanted temptations.