A Busy Mom’s Guide to a Healthy Family

As a busy mom, it can feel super challenging to keep your family healthy. You probably feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything you need, right? With these hacks, you can feel confident that you’re doing the best for your family’s health and wellbeing, even when life gets incredibly hectic!

Planning is everything

When you’re busy, it’s easy to get caught out and most of the time, this means you’ll fall back on convenient food that isn’t always the healthiest choice. Menu planning can save you major headaches when it comes to dinner and lunch options.

A few tips to get the ball rolling? Make veggies a key part of meals wherever possible. This helps your family to eat the rainbow and get key nutrients and antioxidants without too much effort on your part. Plus, it’s easier than you might think to keep things fresh by switching up the veggies you bring home from the grocery store.

Menu planning and meal prepping might seem like something you don’t have time for but it’s a very effective way to save yourself heaps of time, money and stress in the long run. If you’ve got little kids, you can try using nap time to get in front and save time later on.

Always in a rush because of after school activities and other family commitments? Spending just an hour a week on prepping and cooking ahead of time can be a big investment for the rest of the week.

Meal prep means you can just heat up a super healthy meal in double quick time. You’ve already done the bulk of the work in advance, especially if you’ve doubled or even tripled the portions and frozen the excess for future days.

A slow cooker can be your new best friend for cooking healthy meals even when you’re pushed for time. Set it off before you head out and let it do the work!

It’s not cooking that you can get ahead on. Chopping veggies to use another day or picking up some pre chopped options from the grocery store cuts the time you spend on preparing dinner too.

(Click here for my meal planning resources!)

Play and get active together

Families who get active together tend to be a whole lot healthier and find it easier to keep a healthy weight. Spending time at the weekends on family walks or bike rides, playing in the park, playing games or having family dance offs can be super effective for this.

Whatever activities you choose to do as a family, it can be really helpful to make it a ritual. This can be as simple as a walk after dinner or a Saturday cycle ride. The trick is to make sure that it’s likely to be something you can stick to in terms of your family’s schedule. A little bit of healthy competition can work wonders too for keeping the younger members of the family interested and motivated!

Even commercial breaks can be an easy time to fit in some activity together. Use the time to do anything from running on the spot to jumping jacks. Get creative and see who can win mini competitions to come out on top in a particular commercial break.

Eat together

These days, it’s pretty common for families to eat in different parts of the house and be distracted by smartphones and other devices. There are a lot of benefits linked to eating together as a family, including making healthier food choices and better mental wellbeing.

The golden rule? Once everyone is together, make it a device free zone so there are no distractions. And bonus points if you can encourage some all-important conversation too!

Reduce stress

Life can get stressful when you’re super busy but there’s a lot you can do to minimize unnecessary stress.

Having a family command centre for appointments, dates and other important family stuff can help you to get a lot more organized. No more turning the house upside down to find bits of paperwork!

On a similar note, having a family calendar can save loads of stress too. A big wall friendly version will give you tons of space to mark down schedules, appointments, activities and anything else that has an effect on day-to-day life. To keep things super simple, you can colour code it and use a different colour for each member of the family. This makes it really easy to keep on top of family life.

Encouraging family talk at the dinner table can help to keep stress to a minimum, especially if you can get everyone to open up.

Delegate chores

Delegating some of the chores to different members of the family can save you precious time and stress and ease the burden on you as a busy mom. Give everyone a task such as setting the table, loading or unloading the dishwasher or sorting the recycling. As well as helping you out, it also teaches your little ones how to be responsible and work as part of a team.

How do you combat the stresses of the "busy mom" life? Let us know in the comments or if you found something you're going to try!