EATING HEALTHY? WHO’S GOT THE TIME?!
By far, one of the biggest reasons that we hear from people for not eating healthy isn’t that they don’t know where to start, it’s because they don’t have time. Between trying to get the kids to school, partners who deserve more attention and meeting after meeting, most of us can only squeeze in enough time to wolf down whatever we can carry in our hands whilst ducking off to the next appointment.
Does this sound like you? Well then read on….
Let’s start by saying that we’re not trying to be all sanctimonious here – we at the MB Active Team are also constantly rushing from one most-important-thing-ever to the next most-important-thing-ever.
Except that they aren’t that important really. The one thing that will stop you in your tracks and inhibit you from doing the “most important thing ever” is your health (or lack thereof).
Australians are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than ever before (in fact 30% less than 15 years ago^) and with soaring rates of chronic disease and obesity, we’re slowly killing ourselves with heart disease, fatty liver, diabetes, high blood pressure and more. Australians also make 51.5 million visits to fast food restaurants every month**. In 2013, it was estimated that globally 30% of the entire population was overweight or obese….that’s 2.1 billion people!*.
With obesity rates this high, is it good enough to simply accept that “we don’t have time to be healthy”?
Our avoidance of healthy eating is also pushing us towards other unhealthy behaviours to counteract our ballooning waistlines including extreme dieting, fad diets and magic weight loss pills, which are now a multi-billion dollar industry.
Why do this to ourselves?
Being healthy doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it out to be. Important first steps are taking responsibility for ourselves and being smart with our time.
For example, in rushing around to media events and photo shoots, Michelle was impressed how Jennifer Hawkins would take her own food and drink to a photo shoot, which to some may seem weird as there is never a shortage of food at photo shoots. But Jen was smart enough to deliberately take responsibility for her own nutrition because she knew just how important it was for her health and her career to have the right food around her and it was so important that she wasn’t about to leave it to someone else to organize.
SO HERE’S A FEW TIPS FROM MICHELLE AND THE MB ACTIVE TEAM TO GET YOU IN THE GROOVE:
1. Treat time spend upfront as an investment as it will save you a lot more of it in the long run – for example, most people waste several minutes each day pondering what they are going to have for lunch and then another several minutes pondering over dinner when you can sort yourself out for the whole week with a quickie 15 minute to plan on the back of a napkin!!
2. You’ll never have enough time to cook at home if you don’t have a fridge full of healthy food to start with.
3. Clear your cupboards of rubbish junk foods and replace them with healthy snack foods. If these come in bulk, then organise them into single portion sizes ahead of time so that you can grab them on the go.
4. Do big cook ups on the weekends and freeze your healthy meals in single portion containers to keep you going throughout the week. Nothing is faster than grabbing something you’ve already made from the freezer – even take away uses up 15 to 30 min!!!
5. Stock up on Delicious Nutritious, Mish’s healthy frozen food range – they’re jam packed with natural nutritional goodies including alternative sources of protein, 3 or more serves of veggies and natural sources of fibre.
6. Try to bring your own food where possible – because you know what’s gone into it. For example breakfasts and lunches at work can be easily brought in from home and this saves you money too!
7. Finally start a cooking co-op amongst your friends, family or people from work – all you have to do is cook up a big batch of a healthy meal each and then swap amongst each other so that you have a variety of healthy meals to last you through the week.
