The New Eating Plan

 Geoff and I, overall, are pretty good eaters. We have decent diets that include a lot of fruits, veggies, lean meats and of course the occasional treat.

However, with the inevitable expansion of our family, we wanted to improve our eating habits however we could and come up with a new eating plan that helped us to achieve the following:




a) a healthier diet
b) making the most of our groceries (not wasting food)
c) save time in the kitchen

 So, we went to visit our nutritionist at work and although she agreed we ate pretty well, there were certainly some areas in which we could improve.

The biggest was increasing some of the protein in our diet and mixing up our source of this protein. She also wanted us to vary the sources of grains and nuts.

Geoff was afraid that our nutritionist would make us eating foods that weren't what he would consider to be "food". Luckily, she used a lot of the stuff we already eat and modified it.

We now eat a lot more healthy snacks of nuts, fruit and yogurt. We eat pasta, but we mix it up between brown rice pasta, corn pasta (it's actually delicious) and whole wheat pasta. We have introduced quinoa instead of rice for some our dishes. We ensure that we are eating consistently throughout the day and that we are snacking on healthy things such as greek yogurt, cottage cheese, hard boiled eggs, bananas dipped in almond butter and sugar snap peas (don't even get me started on how addictive these things are).

Not only have we been eating more consistently and better foods, we have been preparing all of the veggies ahead of time so that when we get home, there are dinners ready to be made. It has saved us a lot of time.

As well, we have learned to make meals that are not only simple, but that use basic ingredients that we can use for our lunches the next day. For example, extra cooked chicken breast used for our healthy chicken and veggie pizza (on whole grain thin crust) was used the following day in chicken breast wraps for our lunch.

I love that our new diet has made cooking easier, more fulfilling nutritionally, and we aren't throwing out all the leftovers and remnants that we were. I love this new diet. Geoff does too. It's a great step in the right direction and it'll make life easier and cost effective once Baby G comes along and time becomes precious.

Luckily for us, Mira is a super non-picky eater and has taken well to the new changes. She loves snacking on almonds and raisins (instead of granola bars all the time) and she has enjoyed the latest addition to her lunches-ants on a log.