It’s an easy excuse to give: “I don’t have time to eat a healthy diet.”
I get it. I understand. There is a lot going on in life. People are super busy, running from here to there. Many of us are raising children, working full time jobs, and spending a good deal of time going to and from various activities. Cooking and creating healthy meals can take significantly longer than throwing a frozen pizza into the oven or making some ramen noodles. All of this is true.
However…
I really, really, really believe that we can all eat a healthy diet, no matter what our situation in life may be. No excuses.
I didn’t say that we all have to eat a perfect diet. I’m not even sure how that would actually look. But how about we all do the best we can with what we have so that we can be as healthy as possible? Yes?
The way you eat and the way I eat may not look the same. As a matter of fact, the way I eat and feed my family during busier seasons in my life may look different than the way I eat when life is a little more settled. During soccer season, I buy a few extra “compromise” foods just to keep my sanity. And on days when I can’t even tell which end is up? I buy a couple of Wal-mart take and bake pizzas. Those times are rare, because we have made healthy eating a priority in our house. But when all is said and done, I figure that God would prefer me to continue smiling at my children while putting store-bought pizza on their plates, than to be grumbly and stressed while I slap down nutrition-packed asparagus souffle onto their plates. (No, I don’t have a recipe for asparagus souffle, but it does sound like such a healthy choice, doesn’t it?)
Give yourself a break from the guilt of not feeding your family perfectly.
But don’t let the “I’m busy and don’t have time” excuse pull you away from making healthier choices. Most days, I feel like I wrote the book on “busy”. But I’ve decided to make healthy eating happen anyway because it is important to me.
Overall, I have found that healthy eating doesn’t take much more time than eating junk food. It doesn’t take any extra time out to make the choice to use real butter instead of margarine. Or how about the time it takes to grab an apple instead of a cookie? Buying real cheese instead of processed cheese? Eating a salad instead of french fries? Putting a roast and veggies into the crock pot in the morning instead of waiting in line at a fast food drive through at night?
You may not have lots of extra time at home to make all of your meals from scratch, grind your own flour to make bread, raise food in a garden and preserve the produce by canning and freezing – but that doesn’t mean you have to eat junk. All of us, no matter what season in life, no matter what situation – can make healthy choices to improve our diets! Even if you’re just taking baby steps, at least take some steps. (Here are some ideas to get you started.)
Oh, and P.S. Grinding flour is the easiest thing in the world. What? You think I’m grinding it by hand or something?? :)
What are some simple ways you have found to improve your diet that have not taken much (if any) extra time?! What have you found to be the biggest challenges in regard to taking the time for healthy eating?
Guess what? I’ve got loads of healthy eating, time saving ideas to share with you.
Watch for this new feature in upcoming posts!
Dishes and cleanup afterward…
Ugh, yep…if only it were just about cooking and eating and NOT about cleaning up afterward. :)
Look forward to hearing more tips! Just a heads-up that your logo says “Heathy” not “Healthy”… ;-)
Ha! I can’t believe I didn’t catch that! Thanks for letting me know – I’ll have my designer get right on that. :)
All better now! :)
Laura, You are so right on with healthy eating and time. However, there are still lots of families that no matter what they learn still eat unhealthy. From talking with some of my friends I think part of it is they just simply don’t like to cook or don’t know how. If someone waved a magic wand and prepared healthy food for them they would eat it always, but the effort just isn’t worth it to them. Maybe if they had a teacher to show them just how to do the cooking they might be more prone to taking the plunge. I could not agree with this posting more though. Keep up the good work of telling everyone how easy this healthy journey is.
You are very right – some may have the time, but just don’t want to take the time. Even I feel that way occasionally!! :)
Laura,
I agree with your posts that eating healthy is doable for many of us. I think it’s mostly about changing habits and educating ourselves. I am so thankful that you are providing this resource for me and others. I love being able to find healthy, kid tested recipes and finding good deals on healthy food. I am thankful my family has the resources to make healthier eating choices.
I would like to encourage all of us to think about the people struggling to put any food on the table. I recently watched a Food Network documentary called Hunger Hits Home (you can watch it online at foodnetwork.com). It was very eyeopening. 16 million children in the U.S. don’t have enough to eat and what they do eat is not usually healthy. As christians we have an obligation to help the poor. I would like to challenge all of us to find out how we can help all families have enough healthy food to eat.
1 John 3:17-18
17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
I think of this often, so thank you for sharing it! I feel so blessed to have such wonderful food in abundance, and often think about how God would like me to share it with others.
Amen! thanks for the reminder :)
Eating healthy requires PLANNING. Have healthy foods on hand. Learn a few healthy “fast food” options, eggs being our family’s favorite. And as for clean up, I often draw a sink full of water and wash as I go, let it air dry and put away after supper.
Thank you for this encouragement! It’s especially timely for me as baby #1 is due at the end of May. After my maternity leave is done, we will both be full-time working parents. We’ve been talking about ways to save time and sanity as much as possible, especially when it comes to meals. This is finally spurring us to explore the wonderful worlds of meal planning and freezer cooking!
Thanks for the post. As a busy mom of two little girls under the age of two I found this post to be very encouraging. I try to keep our food as healthy as we can and I have found that a lot of times it is just choosing a product that has whole ingredients instead of chemicals and occasionally having to compromise to keep our sanity but to at least make some items from scratch when time allows like whole wheat muffins, they are so simple.
I love this site and have used many of your recipes to feed my family of 8. In our quest to eat healthier, I’ve just chosen to not buy the quick and easy boxed stuff. You know what, my kids haven’t complained at all. We also switched over to ww flour and sucanat. I’ve been taking baby steps for months and I feel like we are leaps and bounds ahead of where we were in our diets. Thanks for an awesome site and encouraging words!
For me, it’s about planning and preparing ahead of time. I’m in a very busy season with little kids and it’s hard. B/c I’ve choosen to keep most prepared meals and snacks out of the house, I have to make sure i have fruit and vegies and homemade snacks. Some days I feel lost as to what to eat. Our diet is certainly not perfect but I”m blessed and it makes me so proud when I can feed my family healthy.
So I guess what I would encourage others with is to keep only healthy, easy to grab food on hand. You are the one who buys the food, so it’s your/my/our choice.
Something that I would say is super helpful (has been for me)…. is my BLENDTEC! I would tell all, if you want a machine that can do it all this is it. Yes, it’s about $400 – but so worth the investment to make life easier and healthier!
You can easily GRIND FRESH FLOUR, make applesauce to can (without boiling/peeling, etc…), whip up smoothies, soups, and so much more!
Thanks Laura, love your site…..but I get tired just reading what all you do :)
After watching Dr. Oz today, I won’t be buying anymore canned mushrooms or canned tomatoes,sauce,etc….how gross what the Gov. allows in our food !!!!! Go to his website and read today’s show…..
Every time I tell people I make my own bread AND make my own flour, they look at me like I’m superwoman or have grown two heads or something… then I tell them how EASY it is… I made the bread the “good old fashioned” way at first, but then my hubby bought me a bread maker. So it’s REALLY easy now! Making my own bread actually takes less time than driving to the store to BUY bread. Making flour takes LITERALLY seconds… I don’t have an actual wheat grinder, but I grind my wheat in my Blendtec (similar to a Vitamix). Takes 50 seconds to run the cycle to make about 2 cups of flour at a time. I make enough at one time to fill up a big Tupperware container that I keep in the freezer. That lasts me a few weeks. (Making 3-4 loaves of bread per week.) They STILL don’t believe how easy it really is, though.
I often use Rachel Ray’s recipes (found on the Food Network site) or her books. She’s made herself famous designing her “30 minute meals”. You really can make them in 30 minutes. Granted, she does use the occassional pre-bagged veg or somethign from a can or box. And she could make better use of herbs and spices…but for the beginner who doesn’t think they have time to eat healthy, her books/recipes are a great place to start.
Laura, you summed it up with this comment: “But when all is said and done, I figure that God would prefer me to continue smiling at my children while putting store-bought pizza on their plates, than to be grumbly and stressed while I slap down nutrition-packed asparagus souffle onto their plate”. I found myself getting so stressed out about cooking from scratch, etc and finally came to this same conclusion. What good does it do my family if I’m nourishing their bodies with healthy food but not nourishing their souls with gentleness and kindness due to my stress? I’ve made peace with a balance of whole foods and compromise foods and it seems to be working for us. Thanks for the grace you give to us moms!
Tomato season is upon us and I as I stood in line at the grocery store with a large carton of pickling salt, some cheese cloth and natural cane sugar. The woman in front of me asked, “Are you making pickles?” I excitedly said “yes and ketchup and tomato sauce!” She looked at me like I was an alien and said “WOW, I didn’t know people still did that!” I happily said, “I dunno. I do!” :) It’s nice to know I’m not an alien:) There ARE OTHERS! AAAAnd I found you!
Haha I do hand grind my wheat but it’s able to be electric. What I think is funny. That people really thinks it’s so much harder to homecook meals and will think hamburger helper takes less time but I can throw chicken legs in a crockpot in about 20 seconds and a salad takes about the5 minutes. I think the issue is that a lot of people were not taught how to cook then that mixed with a busy life people probably feel as they can’t. The best think we can do is to continued to encourage others and help them learn. Good post Laura.