Tips on How to Change your Eating Habits

It has only been about two years now since Tom and I have completely changed eating habits.  I used to eat cereal and doritos for dinner regularly.  We're not exactly sure what made us want to make the change - but we are so happy we did. 

Everyday we learn something new, and writing this blog pushes us to continually try out new foods and recipes - we love it! 


We wanted to share with you some of things that helped us successfully change our eating habits - we hope these tips help you out..

1.  Start Slow
You can't change your lifestyle overnight. 

In the beginning, commit to eating two or three healthy meals a week.  Do small trips to the grocery store and only buy what you need for the meal you are making.  Don't make it overwhelming either - pick some easy recipes that do not take much time to prepare (the last thing you want to do is discourage yourself and think that this is something you can't do).  Have the leftovers for lunch. 

Then, begin to do the same with breakfast and lunch.  You will start to notice the days you are eating healthy you feel so much better than the days you go out for lunch and / or order take out for dinner.  It will motivate you to eat healthier more often. 

Here are a couple super-easy recipes we suggest you start out with:
Baked Chicken & Vegetables
Salmon & Baked Vegetables
Yam Fries
Quinoa

For more recipe ideas, be sure to read through our blog archieve - located on the right side of our blog - for a listing of all recipes we have posted.  Or just click the "Recipe" label and all our previous posts will recipes will come up. 

2.  Meal Plan
We have found this to be so helpful.  Starting your week off with a plan and all the food you'll need already in the house will most certainly set you up for success. 

Read our post about meal planning and send us an email at melicipes@gmail.com if you would like our meal planning file. 

3. Incorporate Vegetables into your Diet

If your not already in love with vegetables, it may take some time to get used to their taste and/or consistency. But if you keep trying new veggies and new ways of cooking them, you will start to love their taste as well as how good they make you feel.

We encourage you during the spring, summer, and fall to go to Farmer's Markets and Co-ops and buy locally grown vegetables.  In the winter time, most Farmer's Markets shut down and you may be forced to go to the grocery store.  We buy our vegetables once a week and we make sure we eat everything we've bought by the end of the week. 

4. Prepare Foods on the Weekends (or your "free" day of the week)
Because of our busy work schedules during the week, we try our best to prepare as much as we can for the week on the weekends.  Our meal plan is completed on Fridays, and we go grocery shopping on Saturday or Sundays.  (I do not like food shopping, at all, so sometimes we order through http://www.peapod.com/ and our groceries are delivered! So convienent!) Sunday is usually reserved for food preparation. 

For example, Tom is great at making sure we are preparing our lunch for the coming week on Sundays.  He will always make a kale salad and then a "main course" for lunch.  Sometimes he makes chicken soup, other times chicken, quinoa and vegetables.  All we have to do in the morning before work is put a bit in a zip-loc container and heat it up at lunch time for a healthy and cost-effective lunch. 

We also will cut up the vegetables so all we have to do at dinner time is take out two portion sizes and cook according to the recipe we are following.  Preparing your vegetables ahead of time works any way you want to cook them - sauteeing, baking, roasting - it just cuts down the time in preparing your dinner. 

5. Read our Blog!
Our blog posts provide information we've learned over the past two years on different types of food / ingredients you may never heard of, recipes, and interesting food facts and nutrition information. 
 
We hope that once you are on the right path to changing your eating habits, our blog will inspire you to continue to try new recipes and maintain a healthy way of life for you and your families. 
 
 
Do you have any tips on changing your eating habits and lifestyle?

Eating Right with Diabetes

Melissa's cousin Emily was diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes in 2008.  For the past few months, we have been raising money for the JDRF walk and this weekend we flew to North Carolina to participate in it. We are proud to say our team raised over $1,000! In honor of Emily, we did a little research on eating right with diabetes and wanted to share.

One of the foods that kept coming up in everything we read was one of our favorite foods - Quinoa. Here is why:

Quinoa is gluten-free and its protein quality is comparable to that of cow's milk, according to the Purdue University website. Recent research has revealed some compelling benefits of quinoa for blood sugar control and diabetes treatment.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/345343-quinoa-diabetes/#ixzz1cIbq41

Another way to better manage diabetes and control blood sugar levels is through consistent meal planning. See our meal planner post and send us an email if you are interested in using our template.

You should always consult with medical professional before changing your diet.

From what we have read, we believe we have some great recipes you can introduce into your diet which may be beneficial in controlling your blood sugar levels. After consulting with your doctor here are some great sites with plenty of information.

http://www.diabetesinnj.org/Learning_to_Eat_Right.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06298/732548-114.stm

We also recommend you read through our blog to find some great healthy recipes.

If you would like more information on the JDRF foundation or wish to donate visit:
http://www.jdrf.org/.

Meal Planning

Trying to eat healthy was turning out to be time consuming and expensive. Well at least the way we went about it when we first tried changing our eating habits.


We would go food shopping at Whole Foods and spend a million dollars.  During the week, things always came up and we didn't have the time to decide on, cook, and clean up dinner so we would eat pizza.  And at the end of the week would end up throwing out a lot of the food we bought from Whole Foods because we never cooked and it all went bad.


We needed to find a better way, and planning ahead (about a week) turned out to be the best way to eat healthy with a busy schedule. 


So, we put together a meal planning template in excel (because Melissa is a dork and everything has to be in an excel spreadsheet) and we fill it out every week.  It helps us come up with a food shopping list, talk about our schedules for the following week, and most importantly, really think about what we were going to be eating. 


We tried to make it as simple as possible so we would actually use it.  (We do, you can ask my brother because he teases us about it.)  We encourage you to take a look and try it out! Let us know how it works out for you and your families.


We were unable to attach the file on our blog, but if you would like for us to email it to you, please email us at melicipes@gmail.com. We'll work on seeing if there is a way to do this...