Don’t Change Your Diet Without Doing This One Thing {plus this week’s menu plan}

Last week I shared with you that we stopped taking care of our bodies and now we’re reaping the consequences. We’ve been taking baby steps back into healthy living these last several weeks, and I have to say we’re already noticing a significant difference!

In the coming weeks, I want to share with you some of the changes we’ve been making so that I can remember, and so that I can hopefully inspire you to make your own list. I’ll be sharing one step each week until I run out of steps to share. 🙂

My list of changes and your list of changes will probably look a little lot different. That’s okay. But I suggest starting here no matter what …

First, we developed our food perspective.

If you were to ask me where to start in your healthy living journey, this is where I’d tell you to start – know your WHY.

Ask yourself these questions to help determine your WHY:

1. What do you think is the purpose of healthy living?
2. What are three things holding you back from moving forward on your healthy living plan?
3. What scriptures have you read that encourage you to a more disciplined, faithful approach to health?
4. Why do you want to live a more healthy lifestyle?

These are questions I encourage you to take to God in prayer as you pursue a grace-filled approach to healthy living.

Then, continue to take your cares and concerns to Him as you walk the journey ahead because changing your eating habits, exercising more, or learning to recycle aren’t things that are necessarily easy to do. You need Jesus to change your heart and allow Him to guide your steps for His glory and not your own.

For us, we come at healthy living from a Christian conviction of stewardship of body. We believe that God has created our bodies to heal themselves, and He has provided for us in His creation the foods and nourishment we need to aid our bodies in this healing.

We prefer to eat whole foods rather than processed, boxed foods, but we’re also not legalistic about. We make conscious decisions about what we put in our bodies, and we evaluate our lifestyle before we choose convenience foods.

We like to shop local as much as we can, and if we find organic, we vote with our money for better practices.

We want to be better stewards of our earth and body because we want our entire lives to speak to His glory and not our own.

We want to be strong in body and spirit so that we can share Jesus with those around us, and we want to always be ready to share about the hope within us. We can’t do these things when we feel terrible, lack energy, or get overrun by clutter and stuff.

These are some of the guiding principals we’ve established for our family. It’s not really a mission statement or purpose statement, though I bet that would be a good idea to develop a mission statement. I’m all about mission statements. 😉 But this is an idea of our WHY behind what we do when we choose better health!

Next week, I’ll tell you another step we took that’s a little easier and a little less soul searching. However, it’s always had a huge impact on our health. Stay tuned!

For now, here’s our menu plan for the week!

You can see past menu plans here.

 

Breakfast

I have found porridges to be the best, go-to breakfast for us right now. My boys are growing so fast, and eggs don’t stick with them nearly as well as porridges. So you’ll see a change in our breakfast menu this week!

Monday – Oatmeal with honey and fruit
Tuesday – Quinoa Porridge
Wednesday – Egg Scramble with Smoothies & Toast
Thursday – Oatmeal with honey and fruit
Friday – Quinoa Porridge
Saturday – Egg Scramble with Biscuits & Gravy
Sunday – Oatmeal with honey and fruit

If you want even more breakfast ideas, check out these 40+ Real Food Breakfast Ideas.

Lunch

I have to wing these for the week since we are changing some of our grocery shopping plans. Most days will be leftovers or snack-y lunch, which means we’re scrounging right now! 😉

If you want even more lunch planning inspiration, check out these 30+ Real Food Lunch Ideas.

Dinner

We ended up not getting to many of our dinner meals last week. We ended up with a leftover buffet overload, so I got out of cooking one night. Another night we made a day trip to a dairy farm so we ate out. Another day was just so dog-gone hard with the kids that we fed them scrambled eggs and put them to bed early. This means I just rolled over a lot from last week and did less work this week! 🙂

Monday – Salmon Noodle Casserole (double for freezer) with salad or broccoli
Tuesday – Pan-Seared Lemon Rosemary Chicken (from my 20 Minute Meals cookbook), carrots, corn on the cob
Wednesday – Pot Roast, Potatoes, Carrots, Green Beans, and Rolls {with grandparents}
Thursday – Mustard Crusted Breast of Lamb, potatoes and salad
Friday – Meatballs with Red Sauce, Salad, Bread
Saturday – Hubby doing something with Chuck Tender Steak I got super cheap, potatoes, corn on the cob, salad
Sunday – Leftovers or Breakfast for Dinner

Need some additional ideas for dinner? Check out these 30+ Real Food Dinner Ideas.

Other posts you might be interested in:

• A Grace-Filled Approach to Real Food Series
• 55+ Snack Ideas for Toddlers (and Adults!)

What’s on your menu for the week?

This post is linked to orgjunkie.