3 Ways to Make Dinner Less Stressful During the Week
Often when I’m working with clients, we look at what a typical day of eating looks like, where the biggest hurdles are when it comes to quality nutrition and which efforts would have the biggest benefit.
Most often, we work on dinners.
Typically, dinners are a major source of stress. We’re busy…more than we’re not. Whether we’re juggling work and home life, kids activities or a busy schedule (or maybe a combination of all of it), dinners can feel overwhelming.
You don’t have time to spend hours in the kitchen, but you want to offer a nutritious meal to your family.
Maybe you know the importance of whole foods and how they impact our health, but you aren’t sure how to incorporate them into your family routine.
I’m sharing three ways that I make dinners less stressful for our family during the week.
These are strategies that I use every week and every day to simplify nutrition and life in the kitchen. Offering my family whole foods and great recipes is incredibly important to me, but I have to make it work for our busy lives.
Here’s what I do:
#1. Make a Plan
Yes, a plan. This honestly makes a HUGE difference when it comes to preparing healthy meals. How can you cook a healthy, nutritious meal if you don’t have the ingredients you need?
And what happens when it’s 5pm and you realize you don’t have the ingredients? You’re making something from frozen or you’re grabbing takeout.
Don’t get me wrong, I love frozen, convenient options and I love a good takeout night, but this routine is likely not part of your goals.
By setting a plan for what you are going to cook and serve throughout the week, you can plan your groceries and your week accordingly. I always stress the importance of being flexible, even when you have a plan.
If Tuesday night’s dinner doesn’t happen, shift it to Thursday.
If you have a ton of leftovers on Thursday, no need to make a new meal.
The plan doesn’t need to be set in stone, rather it serves as a guide through the week and removes any last minute decisions or grocery runs.
#2. Prep AHEAD
Ahh yes, the prep ahead. This strategy is often met with resistance, but I think because it’s so often misunderstood.
When I say prep ahead, I’m not saying you need to spend your full Sunday in the kitchen making every meal for the week. That might work for some, but for a lot of people, they don’t want to spend their whole weekend cooking. I get it, I like to sit on the couch and watch football too.
BUT, there are things that you can do — not just on Sunday — that set your week up for success. Think things like:
Washing your produce as soon as you get home from the grocery store
Making a batch of overnight oats for breakfast for the week
Putting a chili in the slow cooker for quick lunches
Cutting up veggies for quick snacks, stir fries or side dishes for the week
Wash all of your lettuce for dinner side salads
Cook a batch of quinoa or rice to have as quick sides or as a base for lunch bowls
You can start to see how each of these things only take a few minutes, but cut down the amount of work you need to do throughout the week on a daily basis.
#3. USE SIMPLE RECIPES
I can’t be the only one who saves recipe after recipe on Pinterest, on Instagram, on Facebook, on any other platform. Then I used to spend hours flipping through them, trying to find one I actually wanted to make, clicking past all the ads only to realize the ingredient list was way too long for what I had time to make and then I’m back at square one.
I’m not alone, right?
One of the best things I did to minimize my stress and reduce the meal overwhelm, is stick to simple recipes.
Truthfully, these are the recipes that my family enjoys the most. And these are the recipes that bring me joy because they don’t take me an hour to cook and I might even be able to get a full meal cooked without a 16-month-old trying to climb up my legs.
We’ve found family favourites that we keep going back to, and always exploring new, simple recipes to add into the mix.
I’ve really been practicing what I preach in that, healthy eating and nutritious foods don’t need to be hard or complicated — or bland.
Need some recipe inspiration?
Grab a copy of my 20-Minute Dinners Recipe e-Book from the button below. A sure way to inspire new tastes and new flavours in the kitchen without the overwhelm.