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.
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?
