Taking Steps to Healthy Eating

Do you find eating healthy is difficult and can be expensive??? I know do, so I have tried to take a few steps to make it easier and less expensive for my family.  The first step....MEAL PLAN!!!

Sunday mornings, I enjoy browsing recipes in cookbooks or on Pinterest as my husband, Matt and I start to MEAL PLAN for the week.  I have several cookbooks that I reference including Men's Health's "A Man, A Can, A Plan," "A Man, A Can, and a Grill," and "A Man, A Can and a Microwave."   Matt and I have cooked from these books for over 10 years and many of them fall nicely in line with the 21 Day FIX meal guides.  We also use a few Weight Watcher cookbooks, recipes from our parents and of course, Pinterest! Recently I found a Turkey Chili on Pinterest that was fabulous and it was a crockpot meal, so it was easy too!! Here's a picture of me prepping the chili while I watched a UK basketball game! :)

As I find recipes such as this one, I enter the ingredients that I will need into the appropriate "Any List."  We choose this app because it has a share feature.  We both have it on our phones and have it set up where we see the same list and receive a notification when a change is made by adding or crossing off an item on the list.  It's nice that we can add items throughout the week as we realize that we are running low or completely out of a specific item.  Also while shopping, we can cross items off & know what is still needed.  The list can also be saved...you clear the crosses off and start again.  Plus you can have multiple lists for different stores.  So we have a list for Sam's, one for Costo and one for Kroger since those are the main places we grocery shop.  Having a LIST whether it's on your hand, a piece of paper or on your phone will help you save time and money as you grocery shop each week!

Our Sam's list includes items like....bananas, salad, veggies, strawberries, groups, peanuts, water bottles, salsa, string cheese, lunch meat, steak, chicken breast, pork chops, etc.  Of course we also have food specifically for the girls, infant items, dog items and misc. other items.  Shopping at Sam's is great if you have a family, but if it's just for one person, the quantities will likely be too big.

However, I find that for our family the quantities are just right and we save money overall by shopping at bulk discount stores!  We can easily go through 8-9 bananas a week, a hug bag of salad, a large quantity of strawberries and so forth.  I pack lunch for myself and Caroline daily, Courtney packs a lunch 2-3 times a week and Matt has started eating at home or packing a lunch at least 2-3 days a week.

As soon as the groceries come in the door, I try to immediately prep the produce!! PREPPING is the next step towards Healthy Eating!! Putting items into containers for the week on Saturday or Sunday makes weeknights so much easier!  Here is an example of the fruits and veggies packed into containers and ready to go into lunches during the week.

Here is a better look at the inside of "Mom's" lunch and snack containers.  These show how I portion out the food using the 21 Day FIX containers and then moved them to another container as I only have 1 set of 21DF containers.

While I are far from perfect and these steps (meal planning, making a list and prepping) don't always get complete due to work, kids' activities or weather...I feel these are the great steps toward eating healthy, decreasing stress and spending less money on food.

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