Grocery Shopping Time: Where Do I Start

Tonight I am looking at grocery circulars and making a menu plan in order to cover from Saturday until the following Saturday. Because we are eating at home more and over half the crew are bringing their lunch from home I have to account for those meals as well.The key thing I want to wean them off of is eating so many potato chips. This will be an adventure/challenge in and of itself. But again, it's all about the baby steps.

I do know that the key to getting them to eat veggies and fruit is to have it prepped and ready to eat without them having to do it themselves. They are very much a grab and go crew and if I want them to eat healthier then I'll have to make the good stuff just as accessible as the not-so-good stuff.

I would like to share that they are already eating fewer chips and trying different things than they were before. There is no arguing about "how many chips can I have". I am excited about the changes to come, for all of us.

Off to figure out what types of snacks to buy.

My First Menu Plan Monday While Ditching the Restaurant Food

Okay so this isn't exactly Monday but life happens and menu plan Tuesday just doesn't sound as good. (Roll with me here.)

Breakfasts: muffins, toaster waffles, toaster strudel, cereal, oatmeal, grits, eggs and bacon, fruit

These are eaten throughout the week and I normally make the eggs and bacon on weekends. Often I also make homemade biscuits, pancakes, waffles, sausage and fried potatoes on weekends. My kids are big morning people so something that is easy to fix and not heavy on the stomach are best on weekdays.

Lunches: salad and baked chicken breast or leftovers for me, school lunch for girls, sandwich/chips/yogurt/fruit/juice for the boys and hubby

This weekend lunch is: soup and sandwich, corn dogs(or hot dogs) and tater tots and fruit

Dinners:
Tuesday-meatloaf, green beans, carrots, mashed potatoes, homemade rolls
Wednesday-homemade hamburgers and baked fries
Thursday-homemade Chinese: egg drop soup, egg rolls(frozen), stir fry/sweet and sour chicken, rice
Friday-salad, homemade pizza (we're going to try it)

Desserts:
strawberry trifle
oatmeal raisin cookies
chocolate chip cookies


I know you are thinking; Where's all the vegetables, where's the fruit? Isn't the objective to get rid of the junk food? Yes, you are absolutely right. But this involves tiny baby steps or else mommy (AKA me) will lose her mind.
Just remember January's challenge is to eat out only once a week. So far so good and we are 13 days into the month. WooHoo! Now if eating fast food or restaurant food isn't a problem for you then great but for us it is a huge problem. What's on your menu?

Gotta Start Cooking

The chips are going fast, and since I won't be buying any more until my next big grocery trip, I will be baking some snacks. First will be the muffin and cookie mixes I already have. Once those are gone I will have to be a bit more creative. Will probably try my hand at homemade granola or even muffin/cookies made from scratch. I'm good at muffins and brownies from scratch but I'm still working on how to get my cookies to come out just right. It's almost a fluke because sometimes they are awesome and other times, not so much.

I will say one thing for this experiment. Because I told them that whatever chips are in the house is the amount that must last for another week, the kids are really stepping up and doing their own portion control. Whenever they want chips,instead of eating out of the bag, they get a sandwich size ziploc bag and load it with whichever chips they want. The deal is that the bag has to be able to close completely when they do this. Amazingly they have learned how to eyeball when the bag is full but still able to close.

My 11 year old wants to order pizza and I reminded her that we had already had take out last weekend. She insisted that ordering pizza to be delivered doesn't count. I informed her that anything from ANY restaurant counted and to my surprise she stopped asking. I have a sneaking suspicion that she will beg for it come this weekend but at that point she will have to decide between going out to a restaurant or staying in with pizza.

I will say that have been eating better at dinner lately and have been eating less snacks overall. It's helping that I moved dinner time up. I used to start cooking around 6-6:30pm because hubby gets home around 7:30-8pm but I noticed more and more that the kids were hungry around 5ish. So I have started cooking around 4:30-5pm so they/we can eat around 5:30pm. I'm making a plate for hubby to reheat later.

And on the note of reheating thing: my microwave died last weekend. Yep. It still runs with the lights and the timer but no cooking happens. An interesting experience when your teens are so used to zapping pizza pockets or ramen noodles. Now they have to actually use the stove and oven. And amazingly they are willing to start eating the food that mom cooks because they don't want to bother with trying to actually cook anything. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't replace the microwave?

Minor Whining

Groaning about lack of snacks (aka "there's no more junk food left that I like to snack on) has started to happen. Unfortunately less processed and prepackaged snack food means more work for me. It also means I have to  get the opportunity to teach my kids how to chop fruits and veggies on their own, how to figure out portion sizes and keeps me from cheating on my own healthy eating plan.
This weekend will be a testing ground for me prepping healthy snacks and storing them in containers that my kids can reach without having to go on a treasure hunt in the refrigerator.

Yep, changing from (never expires) potato chips that will last until sometime in 2016 to fruits and veggies that go bad within a week or two means making room in that crazy Tetris game of a refrigerator. You know, you pull out three things to get to what you really want. And then you have to put back the stuff hoping that it stacks the same even though a "block" is missing.

I've been working on one shelf at a time. I even bought a few containers to help keep things more organized. Did you know you could use containers in your refrigerator like you do in your pantry or your linen closet? This was such an amazing concept to me. Not once did I think of using anything but Tupperware or Rubbermaid with leftovers inside. Now I have my eggs in a basket and a closed container that hold string cheese and those little Babybel snack thingies. The kids can locate their healthy snacks just a little easier.

*Yes I realize that some people don't consider cheese a healthy snack. One step at a time people.

Progress?

We've eaten at home everyday so far. Of course, the weekend hasn't gotten here so they aren't begging for pizza, yet. Only the 11 year old has been drinking water but thankfully I discovered our reusable water bottles so I have filled them and they are in the fridge. We'll see what happens.

I did get a request for me to actually cut the apples and put them in the fridge for some of them to snack on, yay me. This weekend and next week are going to be the beginning of the real test as the chips are beginning to run low, as are the other processed snacks. Soon they will realize that they are left with fruit, nuts, cheese, yogurt, popcorn, carrots, celery, cucumbers and if they are really good I'll make homemade BAKED potato chips in the oven.

Building my plan for reducing the sugar in my Kool Aid and tea.

Excited to see how things go. Normally I would be dragged down and give in to the ease of ordering pizza or picking up more frozen pizzas at the store before the big shopping day. But this is a challenge, an experiment, to see what works and what doesn't and to prove my hypothesis that even junk food addicted kids ( as well as us adults) can change our habits for a lifetime.

Maybe I should see if I can figure out a good way to get the kids moving during the day? These single digit temperatures are making them all crazy with cabin fever. Thoughts?

January Challenge: Where my Kids Begin to Hate Me

My children love junk food, fast food, essentially anything not homemade. There are a handful of foods that I make that my kids will eat. So this month is about ditching restaurant food. When you buy your kids McDonald's and the 7 and 11 year old are screaming that they are hungry an hour later, the word frustrated doesn't even begin to cover it.

January will be the month of eating at home. We will only go to a restaurant once a week at most. We will not be hitting any fast food places AT ALL. Any restaurant meals we have will be at sit down places and will be limited to the weekends. Eating at home also eliminates ordering pizza to be delivered.

Another change is that I will only allow milk at meals and they have to drink a glass of water everyday. Or at least try. All but one of my kids hates water. Yes, hates it. So I am filling water bottles(the refillable kind) and they can drink from those.

I would love to be the mom that is able to throw out all of the junk food and only buy fresh fruits and veggies and only do healthy meals. But for those of you that are addicted to junk food and have children that can't even identify most fruits or veg, you know that concept is a sure fire way to have your kids stage a hunger strike or worse yet, go to a friend's house and binge until they are sick.

This is a process, not an instant fix. I'll keep you updated on how it works out.

Cold Turkey Just Doesn't Work in My Family

In all honesty, I am the only overweight member of my family. My kids have been blessed with the ability to eat virtually anything they want to without gaining weight. If I let them, and sometimes I have, my four kids will live off of frozen pizza, Ramen noodles, spaghettios and pizza pockets. If it were up to the younger two they would never eat fruits or vegetables.  I know that their junk food diets are completely my fault. I was depressed and often downright lazy during a lot of their younger years so I missed out on the "training" phase.

Over the last few months I have really started trying to get in shape and lose the weight. It was then that I took a good long look at how my kids eat. I actively searched blogs and health sites looking for answers as to how to change my family's eating habits. There are lots of suggestions.

• Throw every bit of junk food/processed food out of your pantry.
• Stop buying sugary treats and drinks
• Change to eating whole wheat
• Cut out processed foods, etc. 

I don't know about you, but I don't have the grocery budget to throw out my pantry.

And those families that do their 30 day clean eating challenges (or whatever number of days they choose) make it seem easy. At least they do to me. After reading enough of these challenges I began to notice a pattern. Most of these families already ate veggies with every meal (just maybe not organic) or they ate at least semi healthy overall. They weren't showing pictures of the overweight/obese kids on the playground or mounds of mac and cheese with no greens in sight. Most, if not all, of these families had children under the age of six. In my experience it is a lot easier to convince those under the age of six than it is a teenager, much less two teens and a pre-teen that thinks chicken nuggets are a major food group.

In honor of those whose families are older or are simply addicted to junk food, fast food and processed foods, I present Operation: Ditch the Junk Food. My junk/fast food addicted family of six is about to tackle a year of transforming our eating habits. Shhh, they don't quite know it yet. But I have a plan to slowly get us out of eating crappy food for 75% of our meals to only eating 10% of processed foods. 100% all clean eating isn't realistic, at least not for our family.

Each month will have a new set of rules/changes that I will be implementing.
On this blog I will record:

• How things are going (like if my 11 year old is holding a hunger strike or if I am ready to pull my hair out)
• Foods/recipes that work or that bomb fabulously
• Changes I see in each of the kids as well as my husband and I. This includes weight lost, crankiness, headaches or lack thereof, etc.
• How our budget is holding up since we all "know" that processed foods seem cheaper than healthier food. 

So if you're interested in seeing if the experiment works then check back in. If you just want to hassle me then move along.