Eating Right in a Hurry: 9 Meal Prep Tips for Busy Parents

Eating Right in a Hurry: 9 Meal Prep Tips for Busy Parents



As a busy mom, I know how challenging it can be to prepare healthy meals with 3 hungry boys wanting to eat right away.  This offers some great tips!  I do love my Tower Garden which I'm preparing to bring inside for the fall and winter.  It's so convenient to always have fresh lettuce for salad! Once I figure out where to put a second one, I will be ordering it :)

January Challenge

Happy New Year!!

As the new year begins many people make resolutions for change.  The problem is that resolutions are notorious for not being kept.  I believe that is because we think of them the wrong way.

I gave up making resolutions but I do make goals both short and long term every year!  One of the important aspects of goals is to known and articulate why you are making them.  To say you want to lose weight is great but to say how much weight, by when, and why give it much more power.  Why do you want to lose weight?  Do you really want to or is it something you think you should do?  Have you given any thought to why you want to?  How will you feel if you do and how will you feel if you don't?  Is there a difference?  The deeper you can go into the reasons you want to do something, the better.  If the reasons are really important to you and you keep those in mind you are more likely to actually follow through on what is need to achieve your goal.

I have created a challenge for myself.  I believe in planning to make a change for 30 days.  We can do anything for 30 days.  If it feels good, we can continue it and if not - release it.  It's done.

I invite you to join me in this challenge at whatever level feels good to you. I will report back at the end of the month to let you know how I did and I'd love to hear how you did, too!

Every day in January I'm planning to do the following:

1. Meditate
2. Run or Walk (3 miles minimum each day)
3. Nature - get out in nature and enjoy the world around me
4. Mirror Exercise - before going to bed every night I will look at myself in the mirror and compliment myself on my achievements for the day (big or small) and tell myself "I Love You!" ***
5. Goals - review them morning and night
6. Inspiration - read inspiring books at least 5 minutes
7.Sit-Ups - Do at least 30
8. Push-Ups - Do at least 15
9. Fruits/Veggies - each at least 5 servings

*** The mirror exercise sounds "weird" to people at first but people who have done it have had wonderful results.  Often people may not even know that they have low self-esteem or harbor some inner anger or guilt that is actually holding them back.  In doing the mirror exercise, we allow ourselves to have unconditional love from ourselves which is the most empowering gift we can give ourselves. We deserve it.

Please share your thoughts, comments, and results with me.

Simple Steps To Overcome Holiday Challenges

I have always found it so ironic that the times of the year that "should be" the happiest often bring the most stress.  The fact is the holidays can be very stressful for many of us. Because of the additional stress and also the abundance of delicious (yet unhealthy) food, people tend to overeat. There are lots of ways to ensure this doesn't happen.

1.Meditate.
It's important for us to ground ourselves to be in the right state of mind before we are in stressful situations. I recommend meditating every day of the year but especially around holidays. Being stressed out often tends to have us overeat or make poor food choices.

2. Get plenty of sleep.
We need eight hours of sleep a night. When we don't get enough sleep, it negatively affects our mood, our metabolism, our memory, our energy, and our immune system.  It is common for us to eat in order to try to get more energy. When we do that, we often overeat or make poor food choices. (Do you see a trend starting here?)

3. Get plenty of exercise.
Exercise is important because of the obvious fact that we just need to move our bodies. It also helps us to eat less and make better food choices because we know how hard we worked to burn some calories :-) Exercise is also a great stress reliever as long as it's done at a cardiovascular rate. If you're exercising too hard, it is sometimes counterproductive and produces cortisol, the stress hormone, and that leads to holding weight on and feeling stressed.

4. Bring a healthy dish to parties.
This guarantees that you will have something delicious to eat and it helps other people have a healthy choices well.

5. Remember to be grateful.
When we are feeling stressed, it is easy to lose sight (or at least not focus on) all the things we have to be grateful for.  (Ironic at Thanksgiving but totally part of human nature.)

6. Be gentle with yourself.
Why are we so hard on ourselves? Remember that you always do the best you can in every situation. That doesn't mean that you can't do better next time. That also doesn't mean that you wouldn't do something different if you could do it again. But at that moment, you did the best you can could. We are all changing and we're all growing and improving AND we need to love ourselves exactly as we are!! :-)

Enjoy the holidays because you deserve the best!! Do what makes you happy!!