AN APPLE A DAY - DAY 124 OF 365 DAYS TO A HEALTHIER LIFESTYLE - ORGANIZING THE FOOD YOU EAT

STILL GETTING ORGANIZED IN ORDER TO STAY HEALTHY - THIS WEEK:  FOOD

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

So we’ve been talking about how to de-stress your life by achieving a better organization of life’s daily events and activities in order to achieve the healthier lifestyle we all desire.

So far; we’ve organized our time by learning to use a calendar and a personal planner and  We’ve learned how to avoid “time-clutter” in our lives. 

What else can we organize in our daily living that will help us to get and stay healthy? 
 I think our food choices would be a next place to start.

I’m told by the experts that most people have good intentions to eat healthy.  The problem with good intentions is that they are never followed up with action. 

Why is this? 

The research tells us there are three reasons:

1) Lack of planning

2) Lack of following through the plan with action and

3) Boredom

I can see where that has been true in my own life.  What about you?

I have been guilty in the past of eating unhealthy simply because I forgot or even deliberately did not take the time to make out a healthy menu. It is a tiresome chore and it gets to be monotonous.  Of course even if I did decide on a weekly menu; I often forgot or simply got too lazy and did not make the time to follow that menu plan by making out a healthy grocery shopping list.  

Even if I DID remember to do those two things; I would often leave the list at home and/or go buy all the wrong things at the grocery store. 

I MIGHT even occasionally get all of those things in order and plan and buy the groceries, and then get home to find out I need some special type of dish or container or cooking tool that I do not have on hand at the moment; and all my extra efforts would still be wasted. 

I think it is time to get organized with all of this in order to make life simpler and easier for all of us. 

I’ll tell you what I want to do; keep watching the AN APPLE A DAY blog articles during the last few weeks of February and the first few weeks of March.  (I'm posting these every Friday.)  I’m going to make all of this planning much easier for myself; and at the same time; I’m going to copy you with the very helpful results of all my efforts for free! 

Can you beat that deal? 

Here is the actual plan: 

1.  I’ll make an easy to follow list of healthy breakfast menus that are tasty and nutritious (30 days worth) and I’ll list all the groceries and special dishes needed.  All you will have to do is shop and prep the meals.  A lot of these foods will be the types of food you can actually eat on the run.  We will do a week of the breakfast menu just to get started and ease into this program. 

 2.  The next week, I’ll do the same thing for lunches that are tasty and healthy and can easily be carried to your work space every day.  By this point we will be doing the breakfast and lunch part of the plan.  We are building our healthy diets a little at a time so that we stick to the plan for the long haul.

3.  The next week I’ll do the same for easy at-home dinners that are totally healthy as well as fast and easy to prepare in the evenings.  You will now be preparing three healthy and nutritious meals a day for yourself and your family.  This is great progress!  In just three weeks we will have formed the habits of putting DAILY healthy meals into our lives, and it will be easy and not at all stressful.  It is simply a matter of what we discussed before; good organization and planning (and I will help a lot with the menus and the grocery lists.)    

4.  By the fourth week of our plan, when all of these 30 days worth of 3 meals a day are created; (90 meals in all for a 30 day menu;) I’ll combine all of the lists together into a whole 30 day’s worth of 3 meals a day menu plan for 30 days along with a weekly grocery list for your 3 meals a day for each week for one month.  You can simply use this 30 days plan over and over again each month.  No more grocery lists to make out, no more agonizing over what to cook!  

Now you have NO EXCUSE not to get your meals organized for cooking at home; nor do I.

All you will need to do in the end is shop and prepare.  It will only take you 2 and 1/2 hours a week and an hour a day total.  That's it!  The planning is done; so just pick one time-slot (and mark it down on that planner we discussed a few weeks ago) for a once-a-week grocery shopping trip and allow an hour for grocery shopping and half-an-hour for putting it all away in an organized manner.  Then set aside thirty minutes more each morning for meal prep to fix breakfast and lunches, and thirty minutes each evening for preparing dinner.  You will also need an hour once a week for cooking a few things ahead.  (Block that time on your calendar off too, so you will remember to keep the schedule.)  That is all that eating healthy is going to cost you; simply the price of your regular grocery bill that you are already spending, and routinely scheduling 2-1/2 hours each week for shopping and cooking ahead, plus an hour a day TOTAL for simple meal-time prep.    

Your health is worth it!  

This is simple and easy.  

You will not get bored because no meal plan is ever the same for 30 whole days.  You can just re-use this 30 day menu over and over again, adding your own adaptations for any unique needs as time goes by.  Because you will be using less meat and more fruit and vegetables and less pre-prepared items; your grocery bill may even be less.  That might be a bonus surprise to the fact that your waistline will be going down and your health quota will be increasing.

 

Just keep watching the blog if you want to join in with me on this little adventure toward organizing more healthy eating routines.

We can get our healthy eating organized in no time flat.  

The rest of this year will be dedicated to making these meals become very useful in our daily lifestyle.  In making up the menus, I’ll basically be following the healthy food plan I suggested several blogs back.  Here is the link to the blog post with those healthy eating plan details in order to refresh your memory:http://dancinginseason.blogspot.com/2016/07/an-apple-day-day-104-learning-lesson.html.

Just remember if you decide to follow the diet plan I referenced in the above linked article; that it calls for two meals a day spaced many hours apart. So, combine breakfast and lunch into one morning meal if you are following that plan of two meals a day spaced more hours apart.   If you are wanting to lose weight; I recommend you adhere to that plan.  If you are simply maintaining your current weight; you can be okay with eating the three meals and probably not gain any extra weight; but you will feel much better simply from eating the same foods.  You might want to re-read the whole previous post, then decide what your specific goals are.  

While you refresh your mind on these facts I will do all of the other hard work. Decide what stage of life you are in and do what works best for you in the area of how many meals a day to consume, but either combine breakfast and lunch into one morning meal with dinner much later, or eat three separate meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner at THE SAME TIMES each day.  

Stay tuned for an organized eating plan made easy and simple!  

We’ve all needed this forever and it is yours just for being a regular reader of my AN APPLE A DAY blog column.  

You could probably pay a lot of money somewhere else and get a similar less detailed plan; but why would you do that?   As a favor, I would kindly ask that you click on the G+ FOLLOW button right underneath my photo on the right-hand sidebar of this blog in order to follow these blog posts without missing any of the articles.  That will keep me from e-mailing over and over to those of you who miss a few blogs.  Besides; you get a lot more than AN APPLE A DAY posts when you subscribe; you get a whole week's worth of great articles; similar in fashion to a magazine you might pay a lot of money for in the store.  

The blog subscription is totally free - no strings attached.  I would simply like the credit of having the numbers of those subscribed to my blog increased in order to raise my popularity quota in the eyes of the editors that I submit freelance articles to.  So you WOULD be helping me out and thanks in advance!  I hope the process will be mutually satisfying for both of us.  

While you are at this task of subscribing to my IN SEASON BLOG; you might also enjoy reading many of my other daily posts.  In general the blog is about the things that carry all of us through the many varied seasons of life (hence the title; IN SEASON.)  I am a Christian, who often thinks Hebraic; so much of the blog is about the daily thoughts of a Christian woman trying to live life to the glory of God in-season and out-of-season through all the timely and seasonal activities that come and go daily with all the ups and downs of life in a Christian family.  

Keeping all of the above in mind; my daily posts work much like a magazine with articles broken down into certain subject categories which are usually posted in the following order each week: 

MONDAYS – MONDAY WEEKNIGHT MENUS:  Something I created with ordinary (not necessarily all healthy) menus on Monday nights just to make at-home meal planning, shopping and cooking a little easier for at least one night a week.  This was so successful; it sparked the above article in the organizational series you’ve just been reading.  Don't confuse these Monday night posts with our easy new diet plan.  This Monday column will continue to provide something easy and organized for people not wanting to plan their Monday night cooking chores; but it isn't as health oriented as what we are discussing today.

TUESDAYS – THE HOUSE DOCTOR:  A little column once a week to discuss making a house into a home.  I use my own personal experiences and share little stories about how we have loved, cared-for and remodeled our current home over the past twenty years, (a project that will probably never end) as well as telling the stories of others with the same heart for their home, who have shared their stories about creating their own homes with me.  The subjects have more heart than technique.  If I do anything with this column, I want to encourage people to have a heart for making a home.  I think that may be a major problem in our world today; people have forgotten how important this is to our daily living.   Hopefully I am able to relate some homemaking thoughts to everyone by passing on such stories and experiences.  This is NOT a decorating column; but more a "share your experiences " column and a “making a house a home” column.  The subject matter is very random, and a lot of it relates to the current season.

WEDNESDAYS AND SUNDAYS– SEASONS/PEN ART/PIECES OF THE PUZZLE:  
I randomly alternate writing about these three themes/subjects/categories in articles every Wednesday and Sunday.   Below is a brief description describing each:

I could post on any of these three subjects on Wednesdays or Sundays.

The SEASONS articles are all about holy days and holidays.  I am a non-denominational Christian; but I have a Hebraic heart; therefore I tend to keep the Holy Days from Exodus, Chapter 20 (not in a legalistic way, but in a loving, devoted way) and I also love all the regular seasonal and national holidays we observe here in America.  With the SEASONS articles; you will read my take on each new season as it approaches. I love to relate the seasonal themes to the daily seasons of our lives here on planet earth. 

The PEN ART articles are simply me sharing some of my literary leanings.  It could be random short stories, essays or poems that I’ve written on almost any random subject under the sun.  These articles could be by me or a guest author; or they could simply be me reviewing something that someone else has already written.  The one theme is that most all of it follows the current season of which it is published.  The "seasons" are what my blog evolves around, in many different ways; and this category conforms to that pattern too.

The PIECES OF THE PUZZLE articles are about deeper, more theological subjects that are not always discussed at length in the other blog posts of this blog.  It is full of my own personal thoughts as well as how I arrived at those thoughts.  I am not a theologian; but I DO have many theological thoughts and I’ve spent 50 years studying the scriptures with all of my heart.  I consume theological books like most people breathe; so you might find a few interesting facts here.  I can guarantee you they will not be run of the mill articles.  

THURSDAYS – COME AS A CHILD – This is an on-going weekly bible study where we are walking together all the way through the bible, page by page and verse by verse in narrative form with the fresh eyes of a child who has never heard the scriptures before. We aren't in a hurry.  We are taking our time to learn all we can and to soak up the goodness of God.   Here we are  discovering the wonderful treasures of life in The Kingdom of God through weekly chronological scripture studies.  As I post this note; we are most of the way through Exodus.

There have been 156 study lessons presented so far; and the next one will be number 157.  It might be fun for you to start from the beginning; but it isn't necessary that you do so.  If you wish to review what we have already done, just look all the way back to the year 2012 in the chronological postings on the side bars of the blog pages (the blog archives.)  The lessons have been posted every Thursday since 2012.

FRIDAYS:   AN APPLE A DAY – 365 DAYS TO A HEALTHIER LIFESTYLE – These are articles on maintaining and keeping a healthy lifestyle and they have all been written in easy, common, lay-man’s terms.  They speak of how to maintain that healthy lifestyle that we all desire.  You are following this column today.  These are practical, common sense facts that are usually given from a biblical and/or Christian worldview.  I am NOT a medical doctor; I'm just an ordinary person, like you, who wants to live my life to be as healthy as possible.  This is a blog where we can all do that together and support one another as we go along the journey toward better over all  health.

SATURDAYS – OH THE PLACES WE SHOULD GO –  Everyone needs a little fun and activity every week in order to lead a healthy lifestyle!  Isn't that why we are doing all of these things to start with?  This column is part of how I feel God rewards us in life; with interesting places to go and fun things to do together. This is my way of finding those fun parts of life by exploring the obscure little corners of my part of the world with good friends and loving family and writing about what we discovered in these places.  

These articles are about traveling to the sometimes not so well known and off-the-beaten-path places in the South; and sometimes even further.   Here I share the amazing little details of all the small and large places that I have personally visited and experienced and appreciated.  

I love small towns; yet I also enjoy busy, active, alive and growing cities.  I’m not into the exotic; but I'm more into traditional, family oriented, laid-back, home-town types of places to visit and travel. I happen to believe some of the best places exist right under our noses, usually only a few minutes from our own homes; if we just take the time to explore and discover all the wonder of our own communities.  

I am also fascinated with travel from a “seasonal” and “historical” point of view.  So you may find my “travel” articles are not full of the usual touristy words; but they tend to be more down-to-earth, yet very informative; and I try to show people fun and enjoyable places that they haven't seen before that are actually affordable for the average family and even sometimes offer history lessons.

So; I hope that explains my blog a bit; and I hope you click that G+" “follow” button right under my photo on the right, because this freelance writer could sure use a lot more followers to impress all of those statistical people I deal with day-in and day-out.  The blessing for you will be that you will never miss another one of my daily blog posts; and I highly recommend sharing them with friends and family whenever you hit on a subject that you think they will find interesting.

Okay - Now I’m off to make out those menus!  Check in again next week (or have fun reading all the other blog posts with the time I'm going to save you!)