Monday, March 8, 2010

Prep and plans


Let's face it- eating healthy or eating clean is work ! Most places that set up shop where humans are know to gather offer food options that can be mass produced with fairly long shelf life, at a low cost for supply ( it's the basic formula for any successful business). While you may be able to purchase pre cut salads, vegetables, fruits and such, they are of dubious quality. Only way to insure quality is to buy it and make it yourself. However, most people struggle with the time constraints of such a lifestyle.When you have to leave the house for work at 6 am , the last thing you want to do is get up at 4 am to make healthy food( let alone exercise, shower , dress and then face the commute before you "work"). There is a compromise, and that lies in spending time over the weekend to do prep work. I do it every week, for survival. While I may be a stay at home homeschooling mom. life gets crazy and time gets crunched for me, like any working person. This weekend I cut up carrots and celery for sides, lettuce for salads, kale for convenience, made fruit salad for the weekend and then made the following salads for the week for lunch. It is one step that will insure that I pack healthy options for my husband during the week as well ( we are changing his diet this week to see if it helps his weight loss)


Southwest crab salad
(back beans, red pepper, yellow pepper, green pepper, zucchini, corn, cilantro and salsa)

Quinoa Bean Salad
(Quinoa, garbanzos, carrots, red yellow and green pepper, onion,tomatoes, garlic and a little soy sauce)

Healthy Slaw
(cabbage, carrots, apples, beets with a tofu/vinegar dressing)

All happily nestled in Tupperware containers in my fridge, and we are ready to rock and roll ! With the addition of several soups in the freezer and cans of sardines ( for my hubby), it will be a good week.

I am going to try adding something new to my exercise routine this week. While many parts of the country are experiencing warmer , sunny weather, we are still trapped in a world of cold and gray that makes my joints lock up as soon as I set foot outside. However, walking is one thing that not only keeps my joints very limber, but helps for weight loss. I have no treadmill, but I have a hallway, and this week I am challenging myself to make 100 trips in my hall, in addition to our Wii sports work, stability ball work and weights. The 100 trips will be taken through small clusters of minutes through the day ( some days it gets hard to find time to go to the bathroom, let alone something more complicated), so this is do-able. If Dr Oz challenges his weight loss clients to take 10,000 steps every day for weight loss, this should be a move in teh right direction. If nothing else it will greatly help my arthritis !

4 comments:

Dutch said...

I know what you mean about prepping for meals. I am also a stay at home Mom/Wife and I don't know how I would get all this chopping, cutting and cooking if I had a full time job out of the house.
I told my Weight Watchers leader on Friday that eating healthy is hard work.
I hope you have a wonderful week.

Enz said...

You know what I love about you and your approach?

You just make it work within your limitations. You don't complain you don't have time or finances for a gym, you work out at home and find ways to exercise in your home in between the homeschooling and being a mom and wife.

You don't complain that it takes too long in a busy day to cook properly, you find time on the weekend to make it work.

Di said...

Thanks Enz- I think the reason this happens is because I am stubborn, blockheaded and any time anyone tells me I can't do something because of any kind of limitation, I do all I can to prove them wrong just to satisfy the inner brat in me.And sadly , that means in order to do anything I have to wake up my inner brat so that I can do just that. Sometimes it is just not so easy ! Hardest times are when my inner brat starts arguing for any kind of limitation- and then I am in trouble !
Dutch - I think the world has a strange picture of us fulltime homemakers as being these silly creatures that lounge on the couch and eat bonbons all day. So not true ! Homemaking is never the same job every day with new challenges and stumbling blocks, and it takes a lot of flexibility to keep it all juggling.I think the flexibility and the juggling are the only things that save us some days ! People who "work" do not have that advantage, and that makes it challenging !

JC said...

You are so right in that eating healthy or clean is hard work, very hard work. I just don't have the time on the weekends to do what needs to be done for the week right now. I've going to figure out a way to do it. Those salads look wonderful.