Monday, August 19, 2013

My Balancing Act with Food

I didn't get serious about working out before I had children.  I had dabbled a bit, but wasn't 100% committed.
 
I often wonder how easy it must be for those without kids to plan meals and food.  (I didn't say it wasn't time consuming, because I've seen the amount of time some people put into food prep!)
 
But seriously, you cook your lean protein and bake your veggies and cook your rice and boil your eggs and put it in containers for the week and voila!  You have your food for the week!
 
I'm actually going to get more serious about food prep, but for now, I do as much as I can and work to make as healthy of choices as I can.
 
BUT, the bottom line is that my kids aren't going to eat chicken and spinach for dinner every night.  Nor do I want them to.  They're not on a muscle building diet, I am.

With that being said, I'm not quite ready to be the woman/mom/wife that won't eat what the rest of her family eats for dinner.  In fact, we teach our children that what we cook is what they eat, bottom line.  I'd be a pretty big hypocrite if I ate separate food from them.

So, I cook "normal" foods for my family.  When I say normal, I'm talking about tacos, spaghetti, burgers, pizza.  We also have several nights each week where we eat a meat and a vegetable.  We very rarely have anything resembling dessert.  I'd say we're a pretty well rounded family in terms of our diet.

I just factor in what we plan on eating for dinner that night into my daily macros and work out the rest from there.  Does that make sense?  I kind of work backwards from dinner.  If I plan on eating 30 grams of protein for dinner, I know I have to get my other 70 grams in throughout the day.

This also helps me control my portion sizes.  By the time dinner rolls around, my macros are going to be close to complete for the day and if I decide to gorge on something, I know that I'll mess them up for that day.  I don't obsess about it, but it feels good to fit everything into your macros! :)

Who else out there has kids?  How do you balance your healthy eating (and desire for them to also eat healthy) while making sure they eat something??

Are you more into clean eating, or iifym?

Do tell!



 

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