3 Strategies To Eating Healthy Without Making Different Meals For Your Kids

As parents, we have enough challenges without also being made-to-order chefs. The idea that I’m going to make 2 or more different meals every night so that I can eat according to my goals is laughable. So here are 3 strategies for your meals when you have picky eaters:

Prepare ingredients not meals

I have 3 kids 3 and under. I have maybe 25 minutes before at least one of them is climbing up my leg. So the idea that I’m going to spend 3 hours on a Sunday making all my meals in perfectly portioned matching tupperware containers is hysterical to the point of ridiculous.

Here’s what I do instead:

I’ll batch cook some protein & veggies that I can use in multiple meals. Let’s be honest: carbs & fats are easy to come by (particularly when you’re cooking for kids). But protein & fiber are harder (and more important). So I’ll grill some chicken & cook up some peppers & onions (done in less than 25 minutes) in bulk. Then, I just warm them up & I can combine that with whatever carb source my kids want that night & I have myself a pretty solid meal. Ideal? No. But it’s better than eating scraps of Mac n’ Cheese straight out of the pot.

Find overlap

My kids will eat broccoli & sweet potatoes. But there’s no chance they’re going to eat steak. So I can make a meal of broccoli, sweet potatoes & steak for us and just replace the steak with dino nuggets for them. Figure out some shared food interests & double dip.

Have a simple backup plan

Last night, my son told me that he doesn’t like Mac n’ Cheese (one of his favorite foods). Sometimes, he won’t eat his dinner because it’s on a plate instead of in a bowl. Kids are wildcards. So, when a kid doesn’t want what we’ve prepared, they have two options: PB&J or yogurt - two homerun choices that take basically no time to prep. I’m not going to stand on principle & argue with a 3-year-old that “this is what I made & you’ll eat it” because that means I’ll never eat.

But our house is not Burger King - you can’t have it your way.

Eating well is harder when you have kids without question. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean we can’t do it. Parenting itself is hard, but we can’t just use that as the blanket excuse for why we can’t take care of ourselves. The stakes are too high.

Even though I fancy myself a poor man's Gordon Ramsay, I’m not a personal chef. I’m not about to sit here and make 3 different meals for 3 kids plus another meal for me & my wife. I like cooking, but that’s not happening. Even though I use my kids as an excuse to leave parties early (or, to be transparent, not go at all because who starts a party at 8 PM, Janet?), we can’t have them be an excuse for why we can’t eat well.

We’re keeping tiny humans alive without adult supervision. Surely we can figure out how to feed ourselves too. We’re the ones making the dang meals! We can’t pass the buck to our kids. They don’t get to decide when they go to bed or whether they wear pants that day. We’re the adults.

We set the expectations & we steer the ship.

Even though at times it feels like our kids run our lives: we’re still in charge. Yes, it’s hard. The whole parenting thing is hard. Like, seriously, how is it that we have to take 6 months of driver’s ed to get a license, but they send us home from the hospital after two days to keep A LITERAL HUMAN BABY alive on our own? Am I the only one who feels like they need adult supervision for this? No? Just me? Cool. When people find out we have a 3 YO & twin 2 YO’s, they often say “I don’t know how you do it.” Honestly, I don’t either, but we do it. Because we can do hard things.

And here’s why: It freaking matters.

When we’re taking care of ourselves, we feel better. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m way more the parent I want to be when I feel good. If it matters, we have to figure out a way to make it work. We have to prioritize taking care of ourselves because then we’re better able to take care of our kids. That doesn’t make it any less hard, but we still have to do it.

I created an entire free guide on Recipes For Fat Loss. Check it out if you need some easy but balanced meal ideas.