Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Trying To Eat Healthy During Busy Weeks

Some weeks are just so painfully busy that I beg for relief in the form of folding laundry or something. Just for the excuse to stand still for a few minutes. Okay, not really. I never beg for laundry. I'm not a lunatic.

Weeks like this though are just brutal. School reports, errands, and just lots going on in general and I wish I could go sit in my car and just be alone.

Aside from the obvious reasons that weeks like this are tough, I hate sometimes how I fall behind on making sure we have lots of healthy choices for food on the go. You know what I'm talking about. Kids are in the car and your purse/gym bag/car is empty of anything edible. So visions of golden arches dance in your head and that little evil mini-me hangs out on your shoulder saying "You could solve this problem in about 5 minutes... "

I have been lucky because we haven't had fast food in several months. In fact, we've had it only 3 times or so in the past 6 months. If you haven't had it in years, good for you. For us, these are new changes. So being able to say that for us feels pretty darn good. A couple times this week though I found myself in the above situation, worried that I wasn't going to make the best choices for my kids.

Normally I try to have:

Cut veggies in the fridge to grab, or at least a bag of sugar snap peas. My kids love them and they're totally portable. I realized that Trader Joes has a huge bag for like $2.27! Man, I wish we had a closer TJ's.

Cheese sticks (I have been trying to go organic here, but I think we may end up buying large organic blocks of cheese and cutting them ourselves to cut back on the $$, organic cheese sticks are serious robbery)

Granola bars or whole grain pretzels/crackers or all fruit leather.

Fruit! Cuties and apples

Those are all things I try to grab on the way out the door but I found myself empty handed a few times this week.

I actually bought snacks for my kids at my gym on Monday, and we really try to never do that. They mark the prices up and despite the fact that they claim to carry only healthy snacks, you do find superfluous ingredients on some of those packages. When we find ourselves in those situations, I usually use it as a great time to explain that these are 'sometimes' snacks. They're not BAD. Just not everyday snacks. Of course, the bottom line is my kids love those occasions.

Yesterday I fared a bit better. I found myself ahead of a long drive home and a toddler who wanted to snack. I realized that most grocery stores now carry a slew of to-go snacks that can be found in and near the produce section. Don't be fooled though, many have sauces and dressings that are no better than buying bags of Doritos and Cheetos. But mini carrots with hummus or pre-sliced apples (a must have in our house because of all the lose teeth going on) are pretty awesome. So I grabbed a bag of organic mini-carrots and pre-sliced apples. See here if you have concerns about the chlorine/baby carrot connection. I still try to always buy whole carrots since they taste better to us, but in a pinch they are awesome.

So we had a great snack and no french fries were harmed during the ride home. This whole week has definitely made me revisit my dedication to always bringing along fresh healthy snacks for us.

I know that this post wasn't filled with lots of great suggestions and tips, but sometimes it's important to show that we all come across challenges in our own quests to go unprocessed.

What do you do when you find yourself with a busy week ahead of you and an empty fridge? Well, if you need more motivation to steer clear of the temptations out there on the road, here you go.

1 comment:

  1. You know what is tough... Eating well at Disney (or any theme park for that matter!). :)

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