healither eating options?

Question

ok not sure where exactly to post this. but here goes. this will go in a couple of places. my family eats terribly. burger fries fried everything. well its time for a change i want to eat better more fruits and veggies. but how do i start, my husband is overweight and needs to change before it kills him . how do i get us eating better before my son ends up overweight.

i have already started cooking more. i have black beans cooking for tomorrow .my husband wont touch them but my son loves them. right now at age 4 he loves veggies. i want ot keep that but not sure how when my husband eats like he does

i have tried not buying cookies cakes and candy no use it still ends up in the house, any advice or tips. my husband has started doing the slimfast diet sorta he drinks one slimfast shake on his way to work. how else can i get us eating better,
i am making soup tonight and not canned soup

Answer 1

This is tough. I'm in a similar boat so I really feel for you. Shame on our husbands for not meeting us half way on these important efforts. He should help you on this one, especially with his son if not for his own health.

Take more pictures of your husband and frame them around the house. Put the bathroom scale where he can't avoid seeing it. Do not let himself smother in denial!

Tell your husband to please help you set a good example for your son. It's crucial that your husband follows your lead on this. If he rebels against healthy foods, how else does he expect your son to react?

Stick with your plan of not buying snack and fatty foods or stocking your house with them. They can't eat what's not there! And even if they bring some of it home themselves, men are lazy and inconsistent: they won't always remember to keep themselves stocked. They'll have to eat healthy foods by default. :) Good luck!

Answer 2

You are making a good start. You should sit down with the family and give them some good information on the results of a bad diet. Have you seen the program "honey we're killing the kids" Great program. We actually take years off our lives by what we eat.
You will have to be sneaky and prepare your fruits and veggies in ways that they don't realize you are making a drastic change. Add shredded veggies to your next pizza. and other sauces. Make up a smoothies with fruits and some ice cream (eventually you can leave out the ice cream)
You will have to flip them over slowly. My family loves stir fried, a little olive oit in a big pan and throw in your veggies and stir, and meat first, then hard to cooks, like carrots and then other stuff. Cabbage is great cooked this way. I'm hungry just thinking about it.

THE VERY BEST DIET. Fruits and Veggies, as near raw as possible (cooking destroys the nutrition), no meat or limited meats, nothing fried, and nothing white. and NO FAST FOODS OR PROCESSED FOODS. And believe me this is a hard diet when you are not used to it.

One little trick you can do to show your family. Buy a McDxxxx happy meal. staple it shut and put on a shelf in the cabinet or garage. In 6 months, it will not have rotted, and the bug will not have bothered it (they are smarter than us) and it will look exactly like it did the day you bought it except it will be dried out. This is because the majority of the ingredients are not food.

Answer 3

I am going through the same process. I am trying to eat a healthier diet. Since you are cooking it should be a little easier. Cook foods that are healthy, not just beans make dinners that are good tasting and good for you lots of veggies. Have the family sit down together to eat. This has worked very well for my wife and I as it is easier to eat healthy as a group than an individual.
As for the slim fast diet it only works if you are eating healthy the rest of the day. You don't have to cut out goodies 100% but by buying fruit that will help cut the snacky snacks out. If took my wife over 2 years to get me eating more fruit but she just kept buying it and now I am eating it. By the way I have lost 12 pounds and 3 inches off my waist. Good Luck!!

Answer 4

Okay, it will be hard, but you're just going to have to have a zero tolerance policy. Instead of shopping in the supermarket, try the greengrocer's, butcher's (etc this way, you go to certain shops with the sole purpose of bying a certain thing, there should be less to distract you then) or farmer's markets. Also, try health food shops, they are great for getting you in the right frame of mind, and have brilliant healthy food.

Try to buy as much natural food as possible, get recipe books from the library or visit www.sparkpeople.com and look at their recipe ideas (they tell you the fat content, calories etc).

As for not getting the bad food into the house, sit the family down and tell them what's going to happen, get their support and try to make it sound like a bit of fun for your son.

Make meals as varied and interesting as possible, so you won't get bored, and try getting some exercise in (if you haven't already) to compliment the new eating plan. If there's a park nearby, or if you have a large enough garden, play football or something similar as a family. This should help make it fun for all of you, whilst being healthy.

Also, plan what you are going to buy food wise, and stick to it! Go once weekly/fortnightly (however often you need to go) and make sure you get all you need until your next trip, otherwise you'll "just pop in for some milk" and come out with choholate etc. making a list to tick off should help.

And finally, it's best to just eat healthily and exercise (I know it's hard, but after about a month of sticking to it, it will be the norm.) rather than going "SlimFast" diets, I know this from watching family members' diets, those sort of things tend to lead to yo-yo dieting.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Answer 5

There is no perfect formula and no real diet works if one isn't committed. If I may advise you...
1. Make fewer trips to the supermarket
2. When you go to the super go with a list of this you need and not things you want.
3. Eat a good break fast or big salad at home before going to the Mall to shop (or to the supermarket)
4. Make smaller portions... you may even want to continue to eat the bad stuff but make smaller portions....
5. With the smaller portions of the old bad food you guys eat make bigger salads and bring the fruit bowl to the table.
6. With the smaller portions of junk food bring steamed veggies to the table
7. Don't buy butter (your over weight hubby will just melt it and pour it all over his steamed carrots!
8. Live with an 80% filled pantry!
..... the better you guys eat the more money you'll save.... and think of the things you can do with the extra bucks. Paint a room, go to visit a neighboring city, by season tickets to the opera.....

Answer 6

Your off to a great start! Good for you for taking your family's health into your own hands and not playing victim to society. The fried, fast, cheap food is all around us, but it is our resposibility to rise above and take care of ourselves. Cooking at home is a definite huge step in the right direction. Do you have a health food store anywhere nearby? It is often worth traveling a little if you have to in order to find quality food to feed your family. I suggest you go exlploring there. Be brave and try new things and you'll be blown away by what you discover. There is a whole world of food out there outside of burgers and fries to tantalize your tastebuds. Trying new fruits and veggies prepared new ways is great, but don't limit yourself there. Try new grains, beans, nuts, "fake meats" (there are a great many different kinds now), and drinks.
Go exploring. Keep an open mind (and mouth) to check out all of the new and exciting foods around you. Good luck.

Answer 7

I was raised on home-cooked comfort foods, and as an adult I still practice this. There are only 2 of us, me and my live-in boyfriend. Healthy eating is very important to us. I don't know if this will help, but this is an average day for us:

In the mornings, we eat:
Special K cereal with Fat-Free Skim milk, and english muffin, some fruit. OR, yogurt or Oatmeal. Once or twice a week (usually on weekends) we eat fried or scrambled eggs.

I pack lunch for us every single weekday. We NEVER eat fast food or take-out for lunch. Lunch for my boyfriend consists of:
Deli Turkey and cheese with mustard wrapped in a FlatBread roll (not regular bread)
A baggie of fresh grapes
An applesauce cup or fruit cup (he hates raw veggies)
String Cheese
A snack - usually one of those 100 calorie snack packs
Bottled water
(my lunch is usually a smaller version of his - half his size of sandwich, etc)

For dinner, I cook.
Boneless skinless chicken baked w/ breadcrumbs, or marinated and grilled. We are HUGE fans of steamed Broccoli....we eat that at least 3 times a week. I boil small potatoes.
I also do pasta, and usually grill a steak once a week. We do fish (salmon, tilapia, pearch) twice a week as well. You can get great recipes for all these items online, in cookbooks, or I've found many great dishes right here on Y answers.

The point is, balanced, homecooked meals....is the way to go. Treat yourself to pizza or a burger a couple times a month....but you will get the most nutrition out of your meals cooking them yourself and knowing exactly what you are getting.

Answer 8

can certainly empathize with you about wondering what to feed hubby. My husband loves food and gourmet cooking and is actually far less picky than I thought him to be.
The one thing that I learned to do is ASK rather than assume what types of "healthy" foods he loves, likes, or can tolerate in small amounts, and what he's willing to try. Despite both my husband and I having a more refined palette than most--we still encounter things in the produce section we've never tried so we jokingly buy it and think of it as an adventure!

Get your husband and or son involved in cooking--it will be far more fun and rewarding for everyone.

Perhaps your hubby wouldn't be so offended by having black beans or other things like that if they were part of something else rather than served as a side dish on their own, how about in a soup, chili, rice or grain dish, a wrapped chicken burrito?

I work full time, commute 90 minutes each way and don't buy fast food or pre-packaged convenience meals AT ALL to control what my family eats. To boot, I'm one of those sorts that is completely disorganized and whimsy and my success secret is this: Don't laugh. I have my family menus planned for an entire month in advance; I have a software calendar template which I fill in around the 3rd week of every month. Of course, one wouldn't have to plan for a month but I know that if i didn't, it would only last as long as I planned and it would all go to pot following. I only have to plan my weeknight dinners. I've learned not to focus meals around traditional starches like pastas, rice and potatoes. My goal is to have a good protein portion surrounded by colorful veggies and stuff.... This has become a little more complicated since I've turned vegetarian (my family has not) and still aim for having high amounts of protein for myself as I do not believe at all that humans should be eating grains and grasses en mass anyways!

To keep it interesting, I'll actually pick completely random things out of a cookbook that I've been wanting to make and haven't tried yet to cook on one of my calendar days. We hardly ever eat the same things twice in a month and save immensly on groceries since we know what we need all the time.

We'll have curried chicken filled crepes with greens on the side, vegetarian stir fry minus the rice or noodles, with won ton soup made from scratch, jamaican jerk chicken legs with rice and peas and a side salad, a stew of sorts without potatoes--like beef bourginion, chicken & shrimp jambalaya with brown or red rice rather than white, club house or deli style sandwiches with fresh vegetables for dipping like carrot and celery sticks, apricot lentil soup with a side salad, curried lentil stew on a bed of sauteed kale which actually tastes better than it sounds, grilled pork chops with apples and confetti barley pilaf.

Anyways, your menu needn't seem so international or complicated....you just need to think outside of the box in replacing some of the less nutritious foods you eat often to something more healthful and slowly start to throw in a new thing or two here and there and you'll find it gets easier and easier with each passing week.

Know what you're making in advance (and find cooking tips for it if you're trying something new) and get stuff prepared so that it's not such a hassle to cook....You can pre-chop veggies and store them in bags in the fridge to help save time and reduce overall family stress.