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How To Plan Meals For A Large Family On A Budget

Are you struggling to figure out how to plan meals for your large family without breaking the bank? Check out these tips!

For families everywhere, and in every size, planning meals on a budget is a challenge. For large families, this is compounded exponentially.

-Decide that you are absolutely not a short order cook. This will mean that you will face the fact that you will probably, at least eight times out of ten times, not please everybody. You will wind up driving yourself crazy, using up half a meal here, half there, and ruining the budget.

-Tell everybody that it is a new day and that what is for supper is what is for supper and if anyone doesn’t like it, there is plenty of peanut butter and jelly. If your family is like ours, you may have one or two picky eaters, one who will eat virtually anything, and the others who will whine and eat eventually. But, for the sake of sanity and money, stick to your guns.

-Make a menu for the week. Or two weeks if you can do it. We always try to get input from everybody and incorporate suggestions into the bi-weekly menu. Making a menu, then listing the ingredients needed as we go to the store for what we call “the big haul” helps keep the number of runs to the supermarket to a minimum.

-As you make your menu, check the specials. Go online, see what’s on sale and work it into your list of ideal, almost-everybody-will-eat-them meals. It will take a bit of research, but you’ll get better at it as you go along. Print out the coupons that the store offers.

-Armed with your menu, list, and coupons, go to the store with as little distraction as possible. If you can leave the kids at home, do it. If you have to take a child or two, let them pick one item each-say, cereal-and then stick to the master list. Don’t shop hungry. Don’t shop if the kids are hungry. Don’t let them hornswaggle you into all the swanky, sweet-tooth foods. Don’t try to second guess yourself in the store. You made this list for a reason.

-When all the ingredients are bought, post the menu on the fridge. If you don’t, you’ll forget why you bought those three cans of diced tomatoes and go off budget trying to piece something together off the cuff. The kids will appreciate knowing what’s for supper when they are heading out the house for school in the morning. Try to stick to the menu. Remember, you put a lot of thought into this.

-Make two good, solid meals with meat, veggie, and potatoes or pasta, then incorporate the leftovers elsewhere. If you make mushroom chicken, rice and broccoli on Monday, spaghetti on Tuesday, you can have chicken soup on Wednesday, and spaghetti casserole with cheese topping for Thursday.

-Avoid prepackage quick meals. This should be obvious, but boxed meals are usually for four small helpings at most. They’re just not economical. Get the ground beef, the macaroni noodles, the cheese and whip up a big casserole. Once you get the hang of it, you can do it almost as fast.

-Make a big stew or chili for at least two suppers a week. This will get rid of a lot of leftovers, and will get the veggies into the family at the same time. Homemade soup never gets old, because it never tastes quite the same each time. With biscuits or cornbread, it goes a long way and will stretch for those friends that the kids bring over at the last minute.

-Lastly, get the kids involved. When you are making good, plain meals, there is not much that they can do to mess them up and it’s good practice.

And, if you’re lucky, one day you might just be able to put your feet up and let them do the cooking!

Advantages Of Eating Small Meals Through The Day

Do you like to eat little and often, or do you prefer to ‘pig out’ once or twice a day? If you tend to eat big meals, you may find several health benefits by switching to 5 or 6 small meals, spread evenly through the day.

Many weight loss experts counsel that you should eat small meals throughout the day, rather than a couple of large meals. Small and often boosts the metabolism, and keeps blood sugar levels balanced, so you shouldn’t get an attack of the ‘munchies,’ as you never go very long between meals. This method of eating is often termed ‘grazing.’

Eating little and often helps the digestive system to work at its best, as it can be more efficient if it hasn’t got a mountain of food to process. The body is an efficient and prudent machine, and always keeps in mind that starvation could be just around the corner.

Therefore, if you eat more calories than your body needs at that time, it will store the extra energy in fat cells for later. By grazing, you’re not adding to the fat bank, so instead of adding to the balance, your body will be forced to make a withdrawal and burn off existing fat stores, which will boost your weight loss.

Grazing means that your body is getting regular intakes of protein, which is needed to maintain muscles and vital organs. Muscles burn off more calories than fat, so by building up muscles, you’re using more of the calories you eat. And if you have smaller meals, you won’t be ‘full to bursting’ and therefore unable to get up and start burning off the energy you’ve just taken in.

According to a study published in the ‘British Medical Journal,’ it appears that eating small and often is also good for your heart. People who ate six small meals had average cholesterol readings of 5 per cent lower than those who ate two large meals. The grazers also had lower levels of ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol. Researchers attributed this result to increased metabolism, although they are not absolutely sure why this should be.

The main advantage of eating small meals, whether or not you’re trying to lose weight, is that you’ll have more energy, because your body is getting a constant supply of fuel, albeit in small doses. Hunger pangs will be a thing of the past. You’ll feel better and look better, and that’s a bonus we can all appreciate!

Benefits Of Drinking Water With Meals

Did you know that drinking water with your meals can help improve digestion and absorption of food? Find out more benefits of drinking water with meals here!

Benefits Of Drinking Water With Meals

Everyone knows that drinking water with your meals is a good habit to get into. However a wide majority of these people do not know the facts that make this information true.

It is better to be informed with the reasoning as to why you are doing something before you blindly go do it. The benefits of drinking water with every meal range all the way from dietary benefits all the way to general health benefits.

The first benefit of drinking water with every meal is perhaps the simplest of them as well, and that is the fact that water keeps you hydrated. While there are other things you could drink with your meals that would keep you adequately hydrated, none of them are as effective as water.

This is because water is the basis of everything else that hydrates you, and it saves your body from having to break down all the other ingredients in juices and soda before it can begin doing its job. While this is not only a benefit of drinking water with meals, but rather a benefit of drinking water with meals, it is still a great reason to drink water with meals.

If you are trying to lose weight chances are you are looking to cut down on calories. This makes water an excellent choice to drink with your meals because it contains no calories. If you were to drink a soda or other drink with every meal you ate every day, you are in taking a much greater number of calories than if you were to just drink water with each meal. Combine this reduced number of calories with a steady diet and exercise plan and you will be on your way to losing weight in no time at all.

Drinking water with your meals will also help prevent overeating. When the body receives water the digestive system starts its process to digest food. Once these processes start, the body sends signals telling your body that it doesn’t need too much more food to complete what it needs to get done and as a result your body doesn’t give you the desire to eat as much as had your digestive system not been activated before eating.

While drinking a different type of liquid with your meals will not kill you, drinking water definitely has a few clear advantages over other types of drinks. These benefits range from diet help to simple quality hydration. If you don’t like water, try buying flavor packets that can be added to water from the store. They are usually low in calories and relatively healthy for you.

Dieting Facts Dieting Meals Healthy Fat Loss

Discover the facts on dieting. Learn what types of foods are good or bad for you, how to lose weight fast, how your body reacts when it’s hungry and much more!

Dieting Facts Dieting Meals Healthy Fat Loss

Dieting, is it really that hard? Perhaps not, but to effectively lose weight must be because more than half of America are on a diet and not losing! Here are five tips that will help you to a slimmer body in no time.

Pay Attention to Your Metabolism!

Biologically speaking, your metabolism is defined as biological process that uses the heat (calories) that you store for energy. Most people focus on eating less, which isn’t particularly bad if you have a habit of binge eating.

However, focusing on increasing or speeding up your metabolism will result in long term success because you’ve trained your body to use up more calories. For example, let’s say you are trying to lose weight, and you consume a sleazy 1000 calories per day.

This little calories may not be enough for your body and you will feel tired and less active as a result; since you’re eating less and not focusing on your metabolism, you may lose a small weight just to gain it back because your body thinks that you are starving in the desert and start actively accumulating fat in your body to save for later.

Now, let’s say if you consume 2,500-3000 calories per day but you feel great and full of energy. This energy will get you moving, and your metabolism speeding up, which in effect burns your calories at a faster rate!

Change How You Relate to Food.

This may sound funny but studies shows that by eating more, your metabolism may actually get a boost and help you lose weight at a faster rate. Most of us undergo a vicious cycle when we diet; we tend to fall back into the old routine of motivation, diet, failure and depression.

We must change this habit before we are able realistically lose weight, keep it off, and not miss what we’ve lost. Stable weight loss can only be achieved by allowing ourselves to look at food in a different light. Food is there for us, it’s good for us. We need food to survive, food is not evil, too much may not be healthy, but it’s something that we need and is a part of our life processes.

You can starve yourself, or hate food for the rest of your life, just to find that you have to come running back to it, binge on it, and then be with filled with regret as floods of failure pours through you. We all know about the forbidden apple, the more our mind label it evil, the more tempting it appears and thus, the more we become obsessed with it.

Eat breakfast

This is very, very important! Eating breakfast not only starts your metabolism on the right track; it actually helps rid of bad breath as well. Eating breakfast can do tons of wonder in giving you a brain and productivity boost, starting your day off right, and controlling your appetite as well.

I normally don’t notice it, but when friends take notice that my appetite seems to wane after a humongous breakfast, or that during lunch, I don’t go seem to have weird ice cream and cake cravings, it usually correlates with the days I eat breakfast. Although this is just a personal experience, this is also biologically proven and you can ask the doctor the next time you visit him or her!

Eat in Smaller Portions but Multiple Times per day.

When you eat in smaller portions, your metabolism has to work harder because the initial energy is used many times and it’s the initial energy that burns the most calories.

Keep Track of Your Body’s Reaction to Drugs

Many times, we get so busy trying to lose weight that many of us fail to look at patterns in our weight fluctuations. Pay more attention to the food that tends to add a pound or two to your weight as well as medications like birth control pills, anti-depressant, herbal remedies, etc. These medications may also play a role in weight gain if not properly analyzed.

Consume more fruits and vegetables with high levels of antioxidant to help with your energy levels. Green tea, pomegranate Juice, and green leafy vegetables are health foods that will fight radicals and protect your body. This will keep it active and help you to deal with stress levels and lose weight at the same time.