Healthy Living for the Family

You are a mom and a wife, one or the other and you want to eat healthy but the family is resistant? Making a lifestyle change that affects your entire family can be challenging. There are usually many different personalities, desires, cravings, etc. Making a change in the weekly menu, which usually includes pizza/soda/cookies/candy/McDonald’s to organic vegetables, roasted acorn squash soup, and baked organic chicken may cause an uproar in the home. Which will certainly be stressful for the woman (or man) of the house.

It is important to understand that making a lifestyle change that involves eating well most of the time (leaving room indulge every now and again), takes time, months and even years. You have to work at being healthy. You also have to make the effort to grocery shop with the health of your family in your mind. Even after you become accustomed to the healthy lifestyle you still may find yourself falling off the wagon and BEING HUMAN. It is ok.

My family turns their noses up to a lot of stuff I offer them. However, I am never discouraged. I would like to offer some tips to keeping it healthy in the kitchen for you and your family.

Take baby steps. It will take time to make changes to the family diet; do not stress yourself out trying to force “odd” looking meals to your family. Try experimenting with a new meal option every Monday (i.e. Meatless Monday)
Try making healthy versions of your normal family meals together! Make this a family affair, try to explain how its healthier to make your food instead of buying it (i.e. vegetable lasagna using eggplant as “noodles”)
Don’t give up introducing healthy foods to your children. Research shows that a child may need to be exposed to a food 10 times or more before accepting it. Parents, you also should not remove healthy food such as broccoli and green beans because they themselves do not like them. Children will adapt to food that is available to them (Nutrition and You by Joan Salge Blake).
Stop buying the unhealthy foods. When cookies and cake aren’t readily available there is less temptation for you and for the family.
Swap mainstream brands for healthier brands. For example, swap Kraft mac and cheese with an organic or nontoxic brand. I do this sometimes… days when I don’t feel like cooking a 100%, fabulously organic meal for my kids I give them organic mac and cheese sometimes. I’m human too :).
Never give up. I want to restate that it is not easy to make changes to the family lifestyle. When you make a misstep do not get down on yourself and say, “forget it”.