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Thursday 26 February 2015

Healthy Eating For The Lazy

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Brought to you by Coles

I have been talking about whooping my butt into gear for a while now and its time I start eating my words – like literally!

All that grazing I did over Christmas and the school holidays has paid its toll and I am feeling sluggish and blah.

Oh who am I kidding?

I have been feeling sluggish and blah for the past 13 years since I ate my body weight in Cookies and Cream ice cream when I was pregnant with child number one.

Yep for that long I have been talking about getting healthy, yet I don’t know – it all just seemed so hard!

When I was chatting to the Coles team about what I would be road testing in my February blog posts, the idea of some post Christmas cutting back came up. Coles have a focus on healthy routines at the moment and given the fact that my cargos were unbuttoned right at that precise moment for ummm comfort reasons; I thought this sounded like a most excellent idea.

Half of my problem is the fact that I am busy. Alright, I’m lazy too which makes for a terrible combination really.

But isn’t that the downfall of many of us?

We are so busy that we tend to switch to autopilot and throw together meals that don’t require much thinking and that we know the family will actually eat with resorting to bribery but without necessarily considering the health benefits.

Please tell me that is not just me?

The thing I have come to learn though – is that a little planning can go a long way to making life easy and being busy can no longer be used as an excuse for not eating well.

Dammit.

So anyway, flicking through the January / February Coles Magazine I noticed Quinoa and couscous and healthy salads featured heavily and I was all “der – what could be easier than a healthy salad for dinner?”

And so I decided I would give some quick and easy healthy post Christmas cutting back meals a try.

Healthy eating for the lazy? Excellent!


To get me started, I did a little research and came up with 5 healthy eating tips that according to experts will help keep us on the right track.

1.       Plan your meals; planning gives you time to think about healthy choices and shop for the ingredients you need so the bare pantry cannot be used as an excuse.

2.       Drink plenty of water; often we mistake dehydration for hunger so it is true, water will help to keep the munchies at bay.

3.       Keep a supply of healthy snacks on hand. Sadly mini Snickers are not considered healthy.

4.       Include healthy whole grains and seeds in your diet – consider using Quinoa or couscous in place of rice or pasta.

5.       Load up on fruit and veggies and choose lean protein options wherever possible.


Right OK.

So I can do that… can’t I?

I can.

Here are a couple of healthy meals I put together this past week based on those principles.

This meal takes as long as it takes to boil an egg to throw together.

5 eggs - 15 minutes?

Winner Winner Salmon Healthy green dinner.

Whatever!

The kids laughed at me when I first served this up. They looked at it and then at me and then the little sods laughed and laughed.

Was I insulted?

Hell yes.

But did I get the last laugh when they wolfed it down and actually told me they liked it? 

Yep, I laughed all the way to the couch because they were on clean up duty for being so mean to their Mum.

OK so the truth is only 1 out of the three squids actually enjoyed this one which is a bit of a hit and miss I guess when it comes to feeding the kids…

DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE THOUGH?

NO! Because this has become one of my most fave meals ever and every adult I have served this up to and teenager for that matter has loved it.

Just don’t ask me to say edamame though, because I just can’t.


Now Coles have gone and made life a lot easier for us who are trying to be healthier, by introducing the new Health Star Rating System on their Coles branded products.
Health Star Ratings are a Government-led, voluntary front of pack labelling system that scores the overall nutritional value of food and assigns it a rating from ½ to 5 stars. It takes the guesswork out of healthy shopping which is particularly good for novices like me.
Basically, the healthier foods will score more stars, with 5 stars being the highest possible score and ½ a star the lowest. The more stars the healthier – easy as!
Choosing products with more stars will help to ensure we are choosing foods that have less of the bad stuff like saturated fats, sugars and sodium and more of the good stuff like fibre, protein, or more nutritious ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.
You can read all about the Coles Health Star ratings as well as a load of delicious Quinoa and Couscous recipes in the January / February edition of Coles magazine.

And of course don’t forget there are loads of healthy eating and easy weekday meals on coles.com.au and taste.com.au.

Are you a healthy eating family?
Any tips to help this novice stay on track?