How to Incorporate Real Food into Your Busy Life

Eating healthy sounds great, and it should be a really simple thing to do, right?  Well, yes… and no. 

So why does something that sounds so simple, also sound so daunting at the same time?  Well, we’re busy.  And prepping real, whole food takes time; time that a lot of us are already short on between taking care of a family and work and the always growing baskets of laundry and shuttling kids to school and practices, and as soon as you get caught up with laundry there is more, and the list goes on, and on, and on. 

As soon as you say, “Ok, our family is going to start eating healthy,” questions that start with “how” and “what” and “but what if” start racing through our mind.  What if I don’t have enough money in my grocery budget for farm-raised chicken or vegetables at the farmer’s market?  How do I even cook a whole chicken?  But what if I buy and prepare all this healthy food and my family refuses to eat it?

What if I told you that you don’t have to know all the answers to these questions to start eating healthy?  You can start feeding your family healthier, real food by incorporating just one of these suggestions today.  Then add one or two more suggestions from the list.  Eating real food doesn’t have to be an all or nothing endeavor. You don’t have to completely scrap everything you know and love and totally start over.  I don’t do everything on this list all the time.  We try to keep with the 80/20 rule at our house.  Eat whole healthy food 80% of the time and the other 20% of the time we don’t worry about it.  That’s a much more realistic goal for us with two working parents, sports practices & games, trying to build/maintain a farm, or whatever else might be going on at any given time.  And it keeps me from feeling like a bad mom when my kids burn through a whole box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch tomorrow morning or when someone asks my oh-so-honest 10-year-old at his baseball game what he had for lunch today and he says, “a popsicle.”  Because I know there are healthy meals and snacks mixed in our day and we eat pretty good food most of the time.  

Also, this is the bottom half of the list. To see the first 10 tips, be sure you are signed up for our email list here!

10 Tips to Help you Increase the Amount of Real Food You Incorporate into Your Family's Meals and Snacks

Look for foods in their whole/natural form (rather than processed) form.  Whole foods include fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, old-fashioned oats, milk, various beans, nuts & seeds, unprocessed meats, herbs & spices, and olive/avocado oil. For decades we have been told that some of these real foods are bad for your heart and will make you fat. Sorry...not true. Minimally processed foods like block cheese, yogurt, frozen/canned vegetables, whole wheat flour or other whole grains that have not changed much from their natural form are good, too. 

Packages labeled with healthy buzz words like “low fat” or “heart healthy” are not always as good as they seem. Look at the ingredients to verify.  For example, the product Just Eggs is advertised as “so good you will accidentally eat healthy” and has the following 14 ingredients: Water, Mung Bean Protein, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Contains less than 2% of Dehydrated Onion, Gellan Gum, Natural Carrot Extractives (color), Turmeric Extractives (color), Potassium Citrate, Salt, Sugar, Tapioca Syrup Solids, Tetrasodium Pyrophosphate, Transglutaminase, Nisin (preservative).

Do you know how many ingredients are in an egg? 1 ingredient: egg.

Find just one thing to swap for a whole food or eliminate all together.  I started with Pop-Tarts. That is something I refuse to buy at the grocery store.  And it’s not because I don’t like them.  I love them.  Especially the strawberry frosted ones.  And so does everyone else in our house.  If a box of Pop-Tarts shows up, they are gone in less than an hour.  Why?  Because they’re delicious and so easy to grab and eat for breakfast or for a snack or just because you are bored.  But they’re so unhealthy!  So, I don’t buy them.

Plan meals around healthy protein such as whole chicken, pot roast, or pork chops, and add healthy, low-cost sides.

Invest in appliances (or use those you already have) that will help you make meals without all the hands-on work. We use our crock pot, Instant Pot, and air fryer all the time, especially during the summer.

High quality meat and eggs can be more economical if you cut out the middleman and buy directly from local farmers. Buy half a hog or a quarter beef to save even more per pound on meat.

Cut out or reduce sugary drinks like soda, sweet tea, and sports drinks. Sports drinks and fruit juices can also be diluted with water. Think Trop 50, which is really just (over-priced) watered-down orange juice.

Eat at home more. Nine times out of ten, what you cook at home will probably be healthier than what you could get from a drive thru.

Grow a garden or just a few plants in pots on your porch. You can get foods closer to their natural form than picking them right before you cook or eat them! Planting just a few seeds will yield a lot of produce.

When buying ground beef, look for higher lean/lower fat varieties. 80/20 beef is 20% fat, but 90/10 beef is only 10% fat, so it’s leaner. Another trick is if you only can find ground beef with a higher fat content is to pour boiling water over your cooked and drained ground beef. The hot water will remove even more of the fat than just straining it.

Want more ideas on how to add more real food to your meals and snacks? Remember, this is just half of the list. To see 10 more tips, be sure you are signed up for our email list here!

Did you enjoy this post?

Sign up below to get regular updates of new blog posts and other fun stuff in your inbox. Plus, I will also send you a free download! I change these from time to time to keep it interesting. So, when you are reading this will determine what I send you. It could be a ground beef recipe, a raw milk guide, or maybe a coupon code. How exciting!