Healthy Meal Planning for the Family

by Darlene Morrison

Since having children, I’ve always been battling weight loss and having the “perfect” body again.

Carrying the last pregnancy, twins in fact, I had gained almost 50 pounds, although you couldn’t tell it by looking at me so much! After two years of running around with my twins and being so busy with raising four young children, my husband and I both decided that it was about time to lose weight and get back to eating healthy.

Well, my twins are almost five years old now and it is still something I am working on. They always say you don’t gain weight overnight and you cannot lose it overnight either. Isn’t that the truth!

We signed ourselves up for a gym membership, some personal training sessions and we were off! The results were phenomenal and my husband and I probably both lost about twenty pounds each over a year’s time.

We had started a clean eating lifestyle – nothing white, nothing processed and nothing packaged. We lasted on this quite some time before we went back to eating the same way we had before. We still continued eating whole wheat and all the whole grains that we had already implemented and still continue to drink skim milk.

After a summer of eating poorly, I finally sat down yesterday for a couple of hours and planned out a healthy week meal plan for a family of six.

I had all of the notes and handouts from the nutritionist that I had seen at the gym in the past as well as some recipes I had printed off from the internet for school lunch ideas. With my pen and paper, I planned a menu for one week and we will duplicate the same menu for my second week also.

I have recently stopped running (due to laziness mainly) but coupled with this and possibly my low thyroid condition coming back again, I had noticed I was gaining weight. I also took into count that I ate terribly throughout the summer with many carbohydrate filled foods, like burgers, hotdogs, corn on the cob to name a few.

I had noticed that I quite often had a dull stomach ache. After having a BBQ with friends and eating processed burgers with white buns, potato salad (yummy), and corn on the cob, I went to bed early with some Pepto Bismol because I had a sore tummy and even worse than the usual dull ache I had been experiencing.

At that point, I had talked many times about getting back to our eating clean diet but just hadn’t made the time to sit down and get it planned. After the barbecue night, I knew that I finally had to make the change and get back to a healthy and nutritious meal plan for the entire family.

After two hours of sitting in front of computer, with a pen and paper and nutrition handouts, I planned our menu.

My menu does not show the snacks that I have planned for the children’s school lunches but I’ll pack them:

• grapes (red and green)
• cheese strings
• celery with cream cheese and raisins (ants on a log)
• a yogurt fruit salad (strawberry yogurt mixed with cantaloupe, grapes, strawberries)
• cheese and crackers
• apples

 

Since I have started this better eating menu and have gotten back to my running, I feel much better and have lost a total of 8.5 lbs  in a month!

It is very rewarding to have your children eating a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner and teaching them how to make nutritious choices.

What are you doing to eat healthy?

Darlene Morrison is a mother of four who resides in Newmarket, Ontario with her family. She loves cooking, running, reading and writing.