How to Feed your Kids Healthier Food on a Busy Schedule

(This post is by Dr Orlena Kerek)

Are you busy busy busy? Rushing from here to there and there to here? Trying to combine family life with work life? Trying to connect with your kids and earn enough to make ends meet? And on top of all of that, you’d quite like your kids to eat healthily. Perhaps a few more veggies? A few less cookies? It’s just you don’t have time? And you’re not really sure how to go about it?

I know. When you don’t know how, it can be really frustrating trying to get your kids to eat healthily. Cooking and providing food for our kids is one of those really time consuming things that just has to be done. There’s no such thing as ‘no dinner’ or ‘whatever is in the cupboard’ when there are hungry mouths to feed. The pressure is on, you need to cook, provide tasty food AND it needs to be healthy. How do you do it?

Please allow me to show you a few simple and easy tricks that will make your life easier.

Improve your diet.

Now, I don’t know what your diet looks like, but let’s say we’re aiming for more vegetables and less junk. Where do you start? How do you change your life? Or more importantly, your kids’ lives.

1. Look at your shopping basket. Is roughly half of what your buying fruit and vegetables? If so, good job. If not, start here, buy some more and don’t let them go to waste.

2. Look at your shopping basket again. Are you buying lots of junk? Have a look at the labels to see what your packets have in them. Happy with them? No worries. Worried they aren’t great? Stop buying them.

3. Plan your week. A meal plan does wonders to take away the stress of ‘what am I going to cook tonight?’. Half an hour planning saves hours of worrying.

4. Start with the vegetables. What are you going to cook? You don’t have to be a vegetarian if you don’t want to, but stop thinking of the meat first.

5. Cook extra veggies. Give your kids lots of different types of veggies. Don’t expect them to eat them all, but be happy that they eat some.

6. Learn some simple healthy meals that are based on vegetables. Get your kids involved too.

7. Cook too many vegetables and eat them cold for lunch.

8. Buy some good quality olive oil. Raw grated carrots for lunch? How about ‘Mediterranean carrot crunch’? Good olive oil can transform ingredients into a dish, especially those cold cooked veggies you have in the fridge. So easy!

Working healthy eating into your every day life is totally achievable and when you do, you won’t even notice that you’re doing it. It will just be part of your normal routine.

Help Your Kids Eat Healthily Even Though You’re Really Busy Mini Course.

I know that this is a problem for lots of parents. I’ve put together a two video ‘mini series’ for you. The first video explains what healthy eating is (think fruit and veggies) and the second video gives you some awesome tips to help you provide healthy food even though you’re really busy and don’t have time to spend hours cooking.

You can watch the videos in the comfort of your own home, at your own time. It’s designed for busy parents like you.

For readers of Powerful Mothering, I’ve created a discount of $10. The package includes a copy of my book, Crunch! Put an End to Picky Eating and Help Your Kids Love Veggies. Instead of $30, the whole package (2 videos and the book) is now only $20. Just for you! (Just follow the link to get the discount.)

(Or if you prefer, you can get a copy of just the book at the special price of $10.)

Bio

I’m Dr Orlena Kerek. I’m a paediatric doctor and mother of four young children. I used to think that healthy eating was easy, until I children. Then I realised it’s easier said than done. Over the last few years I’ve been researching and practising on my own children to ensure that they develop healthy eating habits.

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