A question I am asked frequently, because I am a nutrition counselor, is how do I eat healthier, when I am working all the time, and I’m so tired when I get home? Between work, school, events, family, kids, and everything concerning life, it may seem impossible to eat healthily.
Here are my top tips for maintaining your healthy eating and health, while on the go with an over-booked schedule.
- Start your day by eating a good nutritious breakfast. Your body needs fuel to function. It’s like a car that requires gas or electricity to function. Your body needs to eat. When we eat early, it revs up our metabolism.
Make a quick smoothie (I have some smoothie recipes in my books), or prepare some toast with avocado, or have some plain, organic yogurt and fruit or granola that you keep available in your kitchen. Eating a healthy breakfast is vitally important for maintaining optimum energy for your whole day.
I can still remember my daughter saying, “I am not leaving without my smoothie!” She knew she felt better, could think more effectively, and could thrive until lunch time (which was late in the day), if she had her power smoothie that I prepared for my family every morning. Invest in the time to do this, because it is well worth the effort. With healthy ingredients, this alone can transform your life.
- Another one of my top rules is that if you know you shouldn’t eat it, don’t buy it. Don’t have it in the house or office. I see people with candy and cookies sitting on their desks or in their offices. Sugar or artificial sugar (which is worse), acts like a drug and it will destroy your immune system.
One teaspoon of sugar can shut down your immune system for up to 5 hours. It is also addictive and it takes more sugar each time to satisfy that craving, because you build up a tolerance. The mind is very suggestible, so keep it out of sight and therefore out of your thoughts. I’ve found that it’s much easier to eat in a healthy way if you only have healthy foods from which to choose.
- I really don’t believe in snacking, because it makes your body dependent on a constant intake of food. I think this leads to obesity and diabetes, because it never allows the body time to rest or the ability to use its storage of fat that it has put away for extra energy. Try to eat only at meal time.
What we think of as a meal doesn’t necessarily have to be what the advertisers or movies would have us believe. We really need just a small amount of nutrient-dense food, not a huge amount of food with empty calories and no nutrition.
Serving sizes have grown over the years and they really aren’t healthy. My son or daughter would say, mom doesn’t eat hardly anything. But in reality I do eat very well. I eat sitting down, slowly chewing my nutritious food that feeds my body on a deep cellular level. In this way, I feel satisfied and my body gets what it requires to feel energized and healthy.
One thing that works for me is to pick one day in advance to prepare my foods for the week ahead. I buy the ingredients the day before, and then have a day of fun, music, and the creation of my healthy dishes for the week. I find this day of food preparation to be very enjoyable, relaxing, and therapeutic.
If you have family, do it together and share the fun and healthy food preparation! Children learn by watching and they are also more inclined to eat what they help prepare, so get everyone involved! My children now prepare amazingly healthy meals for work, because they learned how when they were growing up.
What I know is that nutrient-dense foods give you more energy, make you feel fuller and more satisfied than nutrient-deficient foods. So, go for the nutrition that feeds the body on a deep cellular level.
The meals I eat are small but nutritious, and they are eaten slowly, and chewed well, without liquids to water down my digestive enzymes. Remember to have your liquids at least 90 minutes after a meal or 30 minutes before a meal, but NEVER with a meal. You need to digest your food fully and completely. If you water down your digestive enzymes and aren’t chewing your food until it’s liquid before swallowing it, then your body won’t be able to digest your food effectively. Digestion-related issues are a major cause of many health problems.
Some healthy meal suggestions:
Combine some slices of apples, pears, peaches, or celery, etc. with some seed or nut butter of choice to have as a light meal.
Cut up some vegetables to use with hummus. This makes a delicious easy and satisfying meal. I cut up cucumber, red pepper, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, and tomatoes, then put them in a good glass container to take with me for meals. Have the hummus separately so they don’t get mushy.
My daughter was telling me about her “jar salads” she is making. You can make salads in large jars and set them in the refrigerator for grabbing another day. Put the salad dressing on the bottom of the jar, then stack your salad ingredients on top of it. I would place things like small whole tomatoes, olives, or radishes, or something not too absorbable on the first layer over the dressing. This way the salad dressing doesn’t make your salad soggy before you are ready to enjoy it. When you are ready for your salad, simply shake it up in the jar and eat it out of the jar, or you can pour it out into a bowl or plate to combine and enjoy.
My son makes his salads for work in transportable containers. He places his dressing in a separate small container to add to his salad later. Use your favorite veggies or greens.
- Beware of buying things that are pre-chopped. Many of my clients go for these, but when I show them that they are usually not organic, and are conventionally grown with GMO seeds or glyphosate (an antibiotic used on foods as a drying agent and/or herbicide chemical to kill weeds, but really kills all life), which is one of the main reasons they are having health challenges, they decide to try a different approach.
Most of these pre-cut or pre-prepared meals and foods are NOT organic, have canola oil in them (or other unhealthy ingredients), and are very high price and tough on the budget.
Another thing to be aware of is that when foods are cut, they start to lose their nutrients as soon as they are exposed to oxygen. So, chop them yourself and have control over how long they are cut and if they are organic.
What I do is take them whole and just cut them up as I eat them. I find it’s easy and also slows me down from gobbling my food too fast. I sit and cut a bite at a time and eat it. Take a plate and silverware with you. Eat with dignity. You deserve it.
- Make time for yourself and your health. As I mentioned earlier, choose a day to make a large pot of soup, beans, rice, quinoa, stew, lasagna, or pizza to have for meals in the coming week. Make it an event that is fun, with music, candlelight, and family or friends. Put it on your calendar like it is a business appointment with the Doctor, only it is a health appointment with yourself that is going to give you a higher quality of life, more energy, less sick days, and more vitality!
Decide on two to four main dishes you will have for the coming week and cook them on a weekend day or a day you have off from work.
You can get a recipe prepared and use a crock-pot to cook it during the day while you are at work, and have a meal ready when you get home. It can be a marvelous dinner and enough left over to save for another day.
Once you do that, put it into a variety of single serving bowls you can put in the refrigerator or freezer and take out as needed for meals at work, home, or school, etc.
- One thing I recommend for everyone, is to make an investment in a set of glass “Oven to Freezer” single or double serving containers with snug fitting lids. This will make your life so easy! Make large amounts of foods, then store them in these containers for using later in stir-fries, side dishes, meals, etc. If you come home late and are tired, take one of these out of the freezer, remove the lid, and put it in the oven to heat it up while you, take a shower, walk the dog, or are going through your mail.
- I understand that not everyone has access to a work refrigerator, but many folks do. I recommend utilizing the office fridge and freezer to optimize your diet and keep your healthy foods available for your meals.
- Just remember to NEVER use a MICROWAVE to heat ANYTHING! Microwaves destroy the molecular structure of your food and destroy the nutrients. Don’t even heat water in them. “According to US researcher William Kopp, Russian forensic teams observed the following key effects:
- People who ingested microwaved foods showed a statistically higher incidence of stomach and intestinal cancers, plus a general degeneration of peripheral cellular tissues and a gradual breakdown of the function of the digestive and excretory systems.
- Due to chemical alterations within food substances, malfunctions occurred within the lymphatic system, causing a degeneration in the immune system’s ability to protect the body against neoplastic (cancerous) growth.
- Microwave exposure caused significant decreases in the nutritional value of all foods studied, most significantly in the bio- availability of B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, essential minerals and lipotropics (substances that prevent abnormal accumulation of fat).
- Heating prepared meats in a microwave sufficiently for human consumption creates the cancer-causing agent d-nitrosodiethanolamine.
- Cancer-causing free radicals were formed within certain trace-mineral, molecular formations in plant substances — particularly in raw root vegetables.
- Ingestion of microwaved foods caused a higher percentage of cancerous cells within the blood serum.
- Microwaving foods alters their elemental food substances, leading to disorders in the digestive system.” (1)
Use a little hot plate to put your warm drink on so you don’t have to reheat it. Try using a little warming oven or toaster oven, or don’t heat it, and eat it at room temperature.
I’ve worked with movie stars, models, CEO’s, doctors, lawyers, etc. Most of them were sick quite often, or had “allergy” problems, autoimmune, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc. Once they decided to make their health a priority, and actually started taking control of the quality of their food and what went into their body, their health transformed.
It was usually within a week or two, they had improved quality of sleep, higher amounts of energy, sharper mental focus, and better blood tests, and they became believers.
What goes into our body turns into our cells, our tissues, and our blood. How could our food and drink not affect our overall health and well-being.
So, take control of your life!
I have many wonderful easy recipes in my six cookbooks. I also have a lot of recipes in my blog, and on my Youtube videos, Preparing healthy food is easier than you think.
Oftentimes when I do a pantry make-over, I find out what a person likes to eat, and then we go together on a grocery store shopping trip. We replace their favorite foods with better, more nutritious versions that support their health and well-being.
Let’s turn those tired sick days into energetic healthy days!
You can do this!
It is a choice.
It can be easy, delicious, and fun!
Sources 1: Health Effects of Microwave Radiation — Microwave Ovens by Lita Lee, Ph. D.
http://healingtools.tripod.com/microeffects.html
copyright@nancygibbonsaddison2019
Nancy Gibbons Addison is an international speaker, who is a certified health counselor, certified in plant-based nutrition, certified raw food chef, certified in Health-Supportive Cooking, and certified in Mediterranean Cooking. Nancy has written award-winning books on health, nutrition and cooking. You can reach her on her website, Organic Healthy Life, or find more easy, healthy recipes in Nancy’s book, How To Be A Healthy Vegetarian, Diabetes And Your Diet, and Raising Healthy Children.
The information from Nancy Gibbons Addison and Organic Healthy Lifestyle LLC is not offered for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of any disease or disorder nor have any statements herein been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We strongly encourage you to discuss topics of concern with your health care provider.
Medical Disclaimer: Information provided in this article, book, website, email, etc. is for informational purposes only. The information is a result of years of practice and experience by Nancy Addison CHC, AADP. However, this information is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional, or any information contained on or in any product label or packaging.
