How-to Wellness: Clean Meal Ideas For Homemakers

One of the biggest struggles as a homemaker is actually coming up with the clean meal ideas that taste good and stick to the ribs  — before you ever get into buying or preparing them.

Amen?

I’m often asked what we eat on a weekly basis since we started the clean eating lifestyle, have kept the weight off, and live as such a vibrantly active family. I touched the tip of the iceberg with prep here, but this week I purposely tried to take many shots of my plate as possible. Nothing complicated – just lots of real food!

Simple Healthy Hacks: combine real food from the real food groups and prepare them “clean.” Repeat

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Let’s get to those healthy meal ideas, shall we?!

So here’s the deal: We eat five meals a day – three main meals and two snacks. Each main meal or snack comes two to three hours after the last one. That’s simple, isn’t it? Each main meal consists of lean protein, good carbs, and veggies. The morning snack is a protein and fruit and afternoon snack is a protein with optional veggies.

We needed to kick it up a notch on the clean eating since the holiday’s ending. Along with eating the five meals, the 10 day challenge adds probiotics, fiber, and vitamin Bs at specific times while strictly avoiding white starches, dairy, sugar, salt, and high-calorie salad dressings. That’s it.

So simple.

Of course, you don’t have to do our 10-day challenge but wow, oh wow, by day 4 or 5, most feel so lean without the foggy brain and low energy. Whether you want to begin by adding what we did or not, everyone can benefit from clean meal ideas. Here’s the truth I keep coming back to no matter which “diet” women are clinging to these days {paleo, low carb, weight watchers, etc} …

Until you avoid certain foods consistently (processed, sugary, fried, flour-y stiff), while pouring nutrition in (with real food and supplementation) — Your body will never operate on all cylinders. Period!

Before you get in a huff with me, you know this fact to be true like I do – it’s so hard to cut out the sugar, grains, and bread-like stuff most of the time. We struggled with this for years-calling ourselves having a “treat” but typically we would do it too often and our portions would be too big.

Most of us have trouble indulging in just a “now and then experience.”

Healthy Meal ideas for Lunch & Dinner

For the three main meals, I choose a lean protein from a “suggested ideas” list that I’ve memorized from our 10 day challenge  sheet like chicken breast, ground beef, turkey, beef, tilapia, etc. For lunch and dinner, I add any vegetable that I want {prepared cleanly, of course}, and then I add a complex carb that is listed on the sheet as well like sweet potatoes, beans, quinoa, etc.

Clean meal ideas that are pictured below: Homemade vegetable soup, homemade hamburger-onions-sweet potato chips, baked chicken-roasted broccoli-quinoa, grilled steak-baked potato-grilled asparagus, beef tips-whole grain rice-broccoli, roast-whole grain rice-limas & black eyed peas.

 

 

 

 

 

As you see, all our clean meal ideas had a protein, veggie, and complex carb except burger night which just had sweet potatoes. When I make each night’s healthy dinner, I make enough of it so that all of us have leftovers for lunch the next day.  Boom.

Don’t complicate this.

I realize that knowing how to prepare these gems so that they are clean and healthy is the second step but you have to start somewhere on the road of being less overwhelmed! When you have a simple system of knowing what kinds of food specifically you can choose from in each food group and when to put them together in order to be full, healthy, and feel fabulous …

It’s revolutionary! 

I pray that this helps you get a “big picture” mentality and just do it. Let me know if I can help.

What overwhelms you the most when you think of clean meal ideas for the family? Comment & Share below …