3 Strategies To Help You Eat Healthy Even When You’re Pressed For Time
I don’t have time and energy to eat healthy. It’s too much work and it doesn’t come naturally to me.
If you’ve ever felt like this, you’re not alone. I hear this often from potential clients and I get it, life is hectic with many competing priorities and eating habits can easily fall to the bottom of that list, especially if you rely on the traditional all or nothing approach to healthy eating that can feel overwhelming and impossible to keep up with.
Rules are constantly changing. One day fats are villainized, the next it’s carbs. You may find yourself wondering if you should be eating meat, eggs and dairy or if it’s better to go vegan.
You may try paleo, keto, low grain, low fat high carb, hight fat low carb, macrobiotics and juicing celery but nothing seems to stick and you give up on the idea of eating healthy because it feels too hard and too complicated.
You end up on the opposite end of the spectrum, completely neglecting your nutritional needs, and feeling like you just don’t have the time and energy for it all.
The Good News
The good news is that healthy eating doesn’t have to be complicated, overwhelming and all consuming and you don’t have to turn your life upside down to make it happen. With a little planning and organization, you can make the use of the time you do have to create healthy eating habits that are sustainable and enjoyable for you and your lifestyle.
Below are 3 strategies that I’ve used for myself and my clients that are proven and guaranteed to help you create healthy and mindful eating habits that are easy to stick with.
1 - Stock your pantry & refrigerator strategically
A strategically stocked kitchen is your ticket to creating healthy eating habits and making healthier choices more often. What this means is ensuring that you have a wide variety of nourishing minimally processed and/or whole foods on hand so that you can create a nutritious meal, even when you’re pressed for time.
If you’re wondering what this looks like, The HolisticNiss Pantry Guide and Recipe Ebook was designed to help you do just that. It’s the ultimate guide to stocking a whole foods pantry and includes an exhaustive list of the most important pantry staples every household should have on hand plus a detailed overview of the pillars of natural nutrition, how to build balanced meals that nourish and over 50 whole food plant centric recipes to make use of your pantry staples, reduce your reliance on processed foods and nourish yourself and your family with ease and simplicity.
2- Plan your weekly meals in advance
If you're looking to make healthier choices with ease and simplicity, meal planning is a great way to start. What this entails is taking some time each week to anticipate your needs and plan for them. This may involve batch cooking meals that you can refrigerate or freeze and just reheat throughout the week or in later weeks (i.e soups, stews, etc…), batch cooking ingredients that you can repurpose into different meals (one pot of rice used to create 3 different meals), or it may simply mean defrosting previously frozen meals on busy days, preparing a meal from scratch on less hectic days, and odering in on others.
Meal planning helps you prioritize nourishment so that it doesn’t fall to the bottom of your list when you’re busy. If your kitchen is well stocked and you have a plan, you’ll feel less stressed about meal times and it becomes infinitely easier make healtheir choices.
If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of meal planning and you’re not sure where to start, The HolisticNiss Meal Planning Guide can help you. It includes my step by step approach, templates and a flexible formula for planning and creating balanced meals. It’s a mindful approach to meal planning that gives you structure and guidance with plenty of freedom to tap into your innate wisdom so you can nourish yourself on your own terms.
3 - Keep it simple
One of the things I hear most often is “I just wish I could hire a personal chef on some nights”. Trust me, I’ve been there. In fact, I still feel that way sometimes, despite all my nutrition training, expertise in healthy eating and love of cooking. Some days and weeks get really busy between work and mom duty and I find myself lacking the motivation to spend time in the kitchen.
When I find myself low on time and energy despite my best efforts to plan and be organized, I turn to simple no fuss chop and assemble meals.
This can be:
a pot of soup made from chopping up whatever you have in the fridge (you can also use prechopped veggies or a bag of mixed frozen vegetables) and adding in a can of tomatoes, beans and a few herbs and spices;
a simple chopped salad made from a bed of greens, topped with other chopped vegetables (leftover roasted vegetables are great here too) and sauteed chicken strips or tofu cubes;
a vegetable stuffed omelet with a simple side salad;
a make your own snack plate style meal, where anything goes based on what you have in your refrigerator. We do snack plate style meals on movie nights and they usually include some form of protein like tofu cubes/smoked salmon/boiled egg, a variety of veggies like carrot sticks, fresh fennel and cherry tomatoes, avocado and/or guacamole, homemade crackers and homemade dips. This is a tactic I use to keep the meal fun for movie night and prevent my kid from filling up on ONLY chips and popcorn.
If you can chop and assemble a dish, you can prepare a nourishing meal in under 20 minutes.
The Bottom Line
Once you’re organized, well stocked, and have a good plan in place with a few tried and true quick chop options to fall back on, then healthy eating habits are possible, even for the most time starved.
If time is your only obstacle, then I assure that these strategies will solve your problem and have you well on your way to creating the healthy eating habits you desire.
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