Fitness Friday ~ Healthy Family Lifestyle

Many of you are moms with busy lifestyles. Since I don’t have children, I interviewed my good friend Jamie to discover some of her secrets to living and modeling a healthy lifestyle.

After all, she’s fit and healthy. She’s a wife and mother to five children ranging in age from 4 months to 14 years old. And did I mention that she also home schools?

I wrote Part 1 of this interview on a previous post. If you’ve not read that, you may want to link there first.

Jamie runs at least one or two marathons a year. Do you remember the photo of her running that she tapes to her mirror? It reminds her of how good it felt to cross the finish line of this race.

Although she tries to model healthy eating habits in her home, she admits that she’s far from perfect.

But here are a few of the tips she shared:

• Sugars and processed foods are kept to a minimum.


• She does not purchase candy, soda or chips.


• Oatmeal, granola and wheat bread are staples.


• Snacks include pretzels and low fat/sugar peanut butter and jelly.


• Lunch includes fresh veggies and fruit on the side.


• Her family tends to eat five smaller portion meals/snacks each day.


• Dinner is not a huge meal unless they have company.

Jamie mentioned that her son doesn’t like to drink water and gravitates towards sweets. The pediatrician suggested that they all drink a glass of water before sitting down to eat a meal so they wouldn’t eat as much. Hmm …that’s good advice for adults too. It also helps with hydration and digestion.

Do you ever feel like a short order cook in your house?

Trying to manage and cook healthy meals for a family requires some planning.

Jamie has put together a spreadsheet with all the grocery items in her kitchen. All of the commonly used foods are listed in grouped sections like dairy, veggies, breads, canned goods, and household items. Using this list helps make her grocery shopping go faster and easier and she avoids extra trips for those forgotten items.

Jamie spends Sunday evenings planning the family’s dinner and lunch meals for the week. She tries to keep it simple so she doesn’t have to spend too much time in the kitchen. Another spreadsheet consists of all the meals that she likes to fix for quick reference.