Discover How Eating Healthy Can Be Easier Than You Think - The Mad Spinner

Eating healthy is not a thing you do, but rather a lifestyle. If you make eating healthy a way of life instead of a thing you do, then things will be much easier. 

Here are some examples: Get your entire house on board. Don't make different meals for every one. Just scale back on some things. Serve a little less pasta and more protein. Change to brown rice instead of white. Try oven-baked chicken with bread crumbs instead of fried. Use extra virgin olive oil and no salt butter. Use powdered garlic for flavor instead of salt. These are just a few of the minor changes you can make to your everyday cooking habits that can benefit your entire family. Sometimes the less they know, the better. Change is always hard. 

Now for the really hard part... snacks. This can be a big problem area. If you are like my family, we like to grab any quick snack we can find - which was usually unhealthy. So how do you make the change? Start buying the 90 and 100-calorie snacks and snack packs instead of the potato chip and cookie snack packs. 

Keep an eye on the sugar content. Keep it in the low teens and single digits per serving. Just because you see "low sugar" or "lower sugar" does not mean that it is good. Sugar is the biggest problem. If you can reduce the amount of sugar in the snacks and cereals you get, you will see a change in weight and energy. Since sugar brings you up, it also sends you down just as fast. 

Breakfast cereals are the biggest source of sugar, with some having as much as 23 grams per 1-cup (8 oz) serving. The only problem is your cereal bowl is more like 16-24 oz, and if your kids are like mine, they will fill that bowl to the top and then add the milk. OMG!!!!!!! That can be as much as 75-100 grams of sugar in their systems before they even get out of the house. Can you say SUGAR HIGH! I can and I did, so we made the switch to lower sugar cereals and skim milk. That change was not as easy as the dinner and lunch part, but with a little compromise and patience, we finally did it. 

Now I would not attempt these changes all at once. That could be problematic. You might wind up with a mutiny on your hands. My suggestion is to start small and see how it goes. Start with dinner, for example. Make some subtle changes there. If you are met with minimal resistance, then add some more - and so on, and so on. You get the idea. 

I hope this was helpful. 

The Mad Spinner