I want to share my top five tips for how busy moms can get a healthy dinner on the table for their family each evening. One of the largest challenges as a busy mom is getting a healthy meal on the table for dinner. I’ve been doing trial and error over the years of my wellness journey to figure out what works best for this. And over the years, I’ve developed some habits that have really helped me eat a healthy dinner no matter what gets thrown my way during the day.
For example, I was cutting up some sweet potatoes at about 8:30 p.m. and not because I was hungry for a late night snack. It was because I had them on my meal plan for dinner the next night. When I walk in the door from work, I have hungry people to feed and school activities to get to so there isn’t time for a 45 minute roasting of sweet potatoes. This brings me to my first tip:
Tip #1: Prep tomorrow’s dinner today.
Each evening, I ensure that I have everything ready for dinner the next night. Like this week where I made rice (the 45 minute type) to eat with our stir fry or how I am roasting vegetables to eat with salmon tomorrow night. Basically if anything takes longer than 30 minutes to make, it is done ahead of time because this mom has no time for that. However, this brings me to tip #2:
Tip #2: Steam in a bag people!
If you maybe forgot to roast your veggies or make your rice the long way, there are hacks for those! Almost every grocery store now sells steam in a bag veggies and rice packets. These are awesome and total life savers to get a quick dinner on the table. A few minutes in the microwave and you can have steam vegetables and rice done. All you would need is some type of protein and you got yourself a meal! This brings me to tip #3:
Tip #3: Always have quick and easy meal option.
We have a few go-to meals that are super fast and easy like burgers (turkey, beef or veggie) or stir fry. One of our favorites is shrimp stir fry. This is something you can always have on-hand with frozen shrimp, frozen stir fry vegetables and rice packets. All you have to do is throw the frozen vegetables in a pan to warm up. Then I sprinkle on some ground ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, a little rice vinegar and likely hoisin sauce. Add the shrimp and throw your rice packet in the microwave. BAM – dinner is served. It is that easy people. And bonus that you can get leftovers from it, which brings me to tip #4:
Tip #4: Eat leftovers often.
Eat them for dinner the next day or for lunch. Whoever said they didn’t like leftovers must not be the cook of the family. Leftovers are AMAZING because they will greatly reduce the amount of times that you need to cook. And in actuality, there are many meals that taste better the next day – hello chili or any soup for that matter. We eat leftovers every week so that we only have to cook a few times because again, we are hungry people when we get home and have things to do!
Tip #5: Have healthy take-out options when needed.
Let’s be honest, we aren’t always going to have time to do the tips I shared above. When those things happen, I still try and plan ahead to ensure I can buy something healthy for the family. For example, if I know I am going to be traveling for work for a few days, I may order a few meals from Let’s Dish. You can always find a coupon for free assembly and pick up. I really do try to make this the exception though and not the rule.
Every family is different so you may have to do some trial and error for your family until you find what sticks. These are the things that we have found worked for us over the years and I hope they can provide some guidance or inspiration to others.
These tips have helped us lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off. They are also helping us to build healthy eating habits for our kids. I won’t pretend to be perfect, we still go out to eat from time to time and pizza is still part of our diet. We really try to live the 80/20 rule with healthy eating and find that has been sustainable for us.
