Eating Clean with Your Family

I openly admit, I'm the crazy on in my family that tries to keep our diet clean! I think it's important to limit GMOs, junk carbs, sugary drinks, trans-fats, etc. That said, it's not always easy to find options to please the entire families palate. On top of finding foods that everyone enjoys, if you're not careful, it can be very expensive!

​Here are a few tips that I've used to keep eating at home clean and simple.

• Keep your meals simple
  • We love our Instant Pot (it's a pressure cooker and slow cooker)! For the most part, we use the slow cooker function. It's easy to toss a lean meat, vegetables, aromatics, and other simple ingredients into the pot before leaving for work in the morning (or the night before). Come home and you're ready to go! A few favorite recipes (I promise to post them soon) include beef & banana peppers, salsa chicken, pulled pork with a (palo style sauce), and more!

• Know where to shop
  • I can't believe the awesome deals on organic food at Aldi! There's even an organic produce section these days. Thanks to their store, our family is able to purchase more organic than ever before, with a decreased weekly grocery bill!
  • Check out this video to see what I picked up on my last trip!
• Use food that is as close to it's natural state as possible (especially when it's not organic)
  • If you can identify your food, you have a better chance of knowing what's in it. For instance, don't get the pre-grated parmesan cheese...get a good wedge and grate it yourself! It's not hard, and doesn't take much time.
  • Shoot for steaks over ground beef (if you can't find organic), or grind the beef yourself, especially if you have a Vitamix. Processed beef can have a ton of crap it in that's not on the label.
• Do the best you can, don't stress
  • The kids are not going to eat healthy all the time, so don't stress! Jax takes frozen chicken nuggets to school from time to time. He likes them, and it's easy. So, we do the best we can to get him the highest quality nuggets possible. He also likes juice drinks. He doesn't suck them down day and night, but he will have an organic apple juice with lunch. I don't drink much juice, but he's a kid, it is okay!
  • If you're going out to eat, use common sense. Sure, from time to time you might over do it. In fact, I had 5 pieces of pizza with 2 slices of cake, 3 lemon cookies, and a brownie last night for dinner! I didn't stress over it, but I did feel like crap today. Usually, when making a decision at a restaurant I think, "How do I want to feel in 4 hours?" If the answer is "I'm not doing much, so feeling like crap is okay," I'll pick something like a fried fish sandwich with fries. However, if I know I need to be on my A-game, I'll pick out the foods I know will make me feel great.
•  Get Some Cool Gadgets
  • Some of these are expensive, but they've been key to my healthy kitchen
    • Vitamix Blender (killer for smoothies, soups, homemade peanut butter, and even ground beef)
    • Instant Pot (a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice maker, yogurt maker, and more)
    • Air Fryer (all the goodness of deep fried foods, no oil!)

*This post is also available here on my new, but under construction health coaching page, www.kenpfitness.com!