Planning Healthy Meals

Planning healthy meals can be difficult, especially if you are cooking for a family who is stuck in a rut of unhealthy meals. With some basic nutrition knowledge, however, you can have your family eating healthy without them really even realizing it.

The key to creating healthy meals is to plan. Plan your week’s meals ahead of time and ensure you have all of the necessary ingredients. Don’t put off preparing healthy meals because you don’t have a tomato. Plan your meals out and go grocery shopping. While shopping it is important to get only the foods that are on your list and stay away from the cookie and ice cream aisles to limit temptation. This will also allow you to keep your food costs to a minimum because you are buying less expensive whole foods instead of processed foods.

Huge time savers such as slow cookers and microwaves are also helpful and everything that comes out of the microwave doesn’t have to be unhealthy. A slow cooker will allow foods to cook all day while you are at work. When you get home, you have a delicious and healthy meal waiting for you.

On the weekends you can prepare meals ahead of time and put them in microwave safe dishes. When you have busy nights such as evenings that are full of sports games or practices with your children, all you have to do is pop their healthy meal into the microwave. There are several mircrowavable healthy meals that you can make at home and save for the rest of the week. These are also good if you are a single person living alone and have a hard time cooking for just one person. Divvy up the meals for the rest of the week.

When you are planning meals for the week, create a chart of each day’s meals and your daily schedule. This will help you decide which days are best for certain meals. For example, maybe you have time to cook something extra special on Friday nights, but the rest of the week is so hectic you don’t know if you are coming or going. You can place those special recipes you have been wanting to try on Friday and then come up with healthy alternatives for your busy days.