The thought of eating a healthier diet and positively influencing my daughter’s eating habits is very alluring and so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we as a family can eat better. I don’t believe a change needs to be all or nothing overnight, and a lasting change probably won’t look like that either.
A while ago I told Koree that I wanted to attempt a 30 day “cleanse” and he asked how I defined that. I wasn’t sure and as I thought about it more, I realized I wasn’t as interested in a strict 30 day cleanse like some of my friends were doing, but I was interested in eating less processed foods as a general rule of thumb, an idea he was not opposed to. But neither of us really ever figured out how to start, so we never really changed anything. We’re fairly healthy eaters and with the proper encouragement from me, we do get our veggies and come close to “eating the rainbow” fairly regularly.
I recently came across 100 Days of Real Food and while that is an impressive accomplishment, it’s still a bit strict for my goals. However, it does have some useful information and so I’m going to take inspiration from their guidelines to implement a gradual improvement in my family’s eating habits.
Borrowing from the 100 Days’ rules, my goal is that our dinners at home (which are most nights) will eventually adhere to the following guidelines as we use up current supplies and buy new groceries with these goals in mind:
- No refined grains such as white flour or white rice (items containing wheat must say WHOLE wheat…not just “wheat”)
This is an area we can definitely improve in, and when it’s time to buy more of these staples, it should be easy to do so. - Nothing out of a box, can, bag, bottle or package that has more than 5 ingredients listed on the label
This one. This one is going to be the hard one. I’m a fairly good label reader. However, that being said, I often just shrug off the familiar chemicals -I’m only put off by the “really bad ones” and anything I can’t pronounce ; ) This is where I can improve. - No deep fried foods
(seeing as how I have no idea how to even do this at home, this one is a no-brainer) - No “fast foods”
This one is too generic. What does this even mean if you are cooking your meals? And if it entails anything you get at a restaurant, well, that’s too lofty a goal for this family, especially since we started eating out less.
There are a lot of really good ideas on the 100 Days’ Meal Idea page, and I hope to give some of them a try.
Maybe eventually we will expand the goal to include the rest of our meals, maybe it will happen organically (see what I did there). But, this is a good start for us and any improvement is a good thing.
I do hope that by the time Miss P starts school, I will have formed some solid habits that will enable me to send her to school with a belly full of breakfast awesomeness and a kickass healthy lunch that other kids will want to trade her for. …hrm. might need to rethink that last one.