Menu Plan Monday: Let's Get Healthy

With our weight, our health and our budget spiraling out of the control, I know I have to get my act together and lead by example.

What is my goal? Well, I control what goes in our mouths! My husband does not cook so this makes it my responsibility to ensure that I am doing my best to provide healthy, diverse and satisfying meals to my boys. It is far to easy to cave into simple, quick and instant foods, especially while working full time and dealing with other responsibilities we all face. Don't get me wrong, I will always think that those kinds of meals have a place in menu planning but when most of my menu planning and meal preparation revolves around opening cans and boxes, something has gone wrong. I need to get our grocery budget under control and the time is NOW to teach our son about healthy eating and physical activity. Very often, TroubleMaker helps prepare the food we eat - he needs to understand healthful foods do not generally come from cans.

So where do I start? Research, my friend! Very few things haven't been thought of before and this can be one of those times to use the Internet for positive things!

There are exercise programs abound and eating plans and all of them tell me that once we get rolling, we'll feel better, have more energy and it will become habit. I am hoping they are right because at the moment, I just want my slippies and my chips!

So what is the plan? Well, honestly, I just want to crawl back into bed and let someone else play grownup for me but if I really have to put one foot in front of the other, I'm hoping it will go down something like this...

Walk two nights a week with a longer walk on one weekend morning
-->Walk nights - simple suppers with minimal prep (use the crock pot)
Strength Training three nights a week
-->Based on home routines planned at Spark People
Online Dance Practice
-->One day a week, practice my existing routine or learn new via online tutorials

For meals, I will keep prep time low for weeknights and explore my culinary ability on weekends or holidays. Exercise nights will be crock pot or the prepared type meals. I have to fit it in but I have to be realistic about the time or it will make it too easy to drop it all and resume old habits.

I've been Pinning a bunch of different recipe sites with prepared meal plans, healthy meals, quick meals and the like. This is giving me some renewed interest in cooking. I've also been working on a "Meal Planning" game for a while and I'm hoping that I'll have it to a point where I can test drive it with my family so we can all be involved with the weekly menu planning!

I also know I work much better when I plan a month at a time... So I'm leaping back on that wagon. It's the only reasonable way I can keep our grocery bill in control. Now that my recipe binders are sorted and organized, it should help me too. But I've found electronic tracking does NOT work for me. So I will be going back to using my tried and true template that I developed before I returned to work in 2009.

My Template Later, I'll upload a blank one to ScribD so that you can download it and use it too! Because I dislike the use of paper, I'm working on getting it put on a white or chalk board.

October 3 to 7

Monday Chicken Nuggets & Fries
Tuesday Unstuffed Green Pepper Soup with Baking Powder biscuits
Wednesday Irish Chicken and Dumplings
Thursday Penne with Tuna and Broccoli
Friday Latkes, Poached eggs, Bacon
Saturday Deep Dish Pizza Party
Sunday Oven Roasted Turkey breast, crock pot stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and steamed vegetables

I do realize not too much of that sounds "healthy" and tonight's soup is pretty reliant on prepared food but it's a start and any step forward is a positive one!

Thanks for stopping by and listening to me wander on and on... For more concise and happy menu plans, why not check out The Org Junkie and the 250+ people who share their weekly meal plans!


Image courtesy of Homemade Simple