Posted on 12 Jan 2021 Views 797 Comments 26
Set the wheels in motion to help get everyone on board with your healthy eating plan.
It can be tough to stay on plan when you have family meals to prepare and keep everyone including yourself happy, so it can be simpler to cook up lots of different meals, which is a lot of work, time and energy!
Here are some helpful hints and tips to help you.
Make changes to your fridge and cupboards and plan extras so you don't have to come face to face with snacks like crisps and chocolate, which can cause you to cheat.
We realise that it can be hard to replace all of your kid's snacks with healthy options as they do not see them as essential to their health if you introduce items like veg sticks, Fat-Free yoghurt, fresh fruit, Babybel lights and hummus you are setting them up with good healthy eating habits!
You shouldn't feel guilty about cutting back on your families unhealthy snacks, do it slowly so that they do not feel deprived. Remember, you are not denying them but incorporating a healthy well-balanced diet for them, which will have a beneficial impact on their health.
It's too easy to grab a few bits of this and that when cleaning up after your children or making them packed lunches, they may not seem like much but those calories do add up and can affect your weight loss. Why not repackage snacks into single portions as soon as you buy them and storing leftovers into small containers so they can use them for lunches the following day.
If you are cooking for your family, you need to plan what you are having and make your shopping list accordingly. Make a weekly menu guide, list what ingredients you require, get the kids to help, would they like broccoli or cauliflower with their meal, what fruit would they like?
I find that a slow cooker is helpful and there are lots of great recipes, and it doesn't have to be just a beef stew! Adapt your family favourites, use lean beef, low-fat sausages, chicken breast, fish and sneak in a vegetable or two, they'll not notice! I have put cauliflower into mashed potatoes, a little turnip and swede in mashed carrots, instead of tomato-based sauces make them from red peppers, rather than deep fry veg try oven-roasted vegetables. You can have roasted swede, carrots, asparagus and your family can have some roasted potatoes.
Get them involved in helping you but make sure not to be rushed as it will take a little longer and be messy! It may be challenging at first but hang in there and take small steps but stick to it as a healthy lifestyle is one of the best gifts you can give your family, and they can then take it forward.
Want to win £10 of points? Tell us how you keep your family healthy whilst on plan! Our favourite three comments will be chosen on Friday 15th January 2021 at 4 pm! All three will receive £10 in points each.
By Joanne Jones, Customer Care Advisor
It's good to be slim
In the last | Slim & Save customers have lost |
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Based on the Slim & Save customers who are using the Weight Tracker Application. (Data auto-updated at 5am each day).
I try to buy snacks I don't enjoy, and we like fruit and veg anyway (not that I'm eating those, but it helps with the 5 a day for the family). I do all the cooking still, but my partner is 100% in charge of snacks. Instead of keeping them in the kitchen, he keeps them on a shelf in his home office. So for me they're out of sight and out of mind :-)
When cooking, like the blog says, batch-cooking in the slow cooker is brilliant - something like a bolognese for the family can be turned into a few different dishes (lasagne, stuffed courgettes, chilli) without me having to cook every night. I have good days and bad days in terms of how easy it is to stick to plan, so being able to just grab something from the freezer and pop it in the oven without having to be around food for too long is really useful on 'bad' days.
I'm not eating veg yet (I'm new to the Simplicity plan and trying to be strict with just 4 packs a day - I'm not sure how I'll cope having some 'real' food yet so I'm delaying introducing that until I feel more confident in my ability to stick to it) but I'm already looking at the 'allowed' low carb veg and using them in the family meals as much as possible, rather than higher-carb veg. I'm quite looking forward to being able to have a version of what they're having :-)