Back to School Health Hacks You Need to Try
August is a month of transitions. Summer to school. Lazy summer nights to activities and meetings. Staying up late to bedtime routines. Packing for vacation to shopping for school supplies.
Regardless of when (or if) your kids head back to school, this month’s blog will help you tackle 3 oft-lamented areas of back-to-school prep with more ease:
Packing lunches
Planning dinners
Supporting immune systems
Eating for Energy: Lunchbox Edition
I don’t know about you, but if there is one thing I can’t stand about the school year, it’s packing lunches. One of my biggest hang ups with making lunches is that I want them to be this perfect Venn diagram of what my kids will eat + what’s actually nutritious and will give them enough energy to get through the rest of the afternoon.
Of course, lunches aren’t always perfect, but this lunchbox matrix really helps. Click here to get your copy! I created it after seeing this idea in a different blog and tweaked it so you can plug in your kids’ names, their preferred foods, and have 2 weeks of lunches mapped out for you. It’s pretty awesome and I’m grateful I discovered this tool to pass along to you!
When it comes to feeding our kids, we want their lunches (and breakfasts) to keep them energized and focused throughout the day. In my coaching work, I often talk about “eating for energy” (this blog post is helpful if you’re curious!) and I like to tie this into how I pack lunches as well. It really helps avoid those afternoon crashes.
First, have a protein option. This helps sustain energy levels and keeps kids feeling full longer.
Second, aim for complex carbohydrates — avoid white flour and sugar. I know, I know. Those crackers and chips are super easy to toss in a lunch box, but they’re empty calories for the most part and don’t have the fiber that will help sustain energy.
Fruits and veggies are a must. We’re all supposed to fill half our plate with produce at every meal, so I try to use this as a gauge when I’m packing lunches as well. (Am I 100% successful? Definitely not!)
Finally, skip the sugary drinks. Juice boxes and the like are loaded with sugar (even natural sugar) and are likely to cause an after lunch crash. Opt for water whenever possible!
If you want some ideas of what an “eating for energy” lunchbox looks like, when you get the lunchbox matrix, you’ll see some of the lunch options that I had already plugged in for two of our kids.
Meal Plan for Insane Weeknights
Meal planning is soooo helpful. You’ve heard it before, but meal planning — while it can be annoying — is truly a lifesaver. I really can’t recommend it enough for 1: your sanity, 2: serving nourishing foods, and 3: saving money!
When I help my clients meal plan, the first step is to choose what day you’ll do your planning based on when you tend to grocery shop.
If you usually shop on Saturdays, then you want to plan your meals on Thursday or Friday. If you go on Sundays and tend to run out mid-week, split planning in two and only plan for the first few days and have a tentative plan for later in the week that you’ll firm up before your second trip to the store.
As you think through which meals you and your family might want to eat, step 2 is to take your schedule into account. What days need to be super quick or leftovers? What days are you not even home? What days are you more flexible? Plan a crock pot day, a leftovers day, an eating out day, a breakfast for dinner day…whatever fits your schedule the best.
If the thought of meal planning stresses you out, remember: you don’t have to plan a whole week at a time. If you’ve never done it before, start with planning 1 or 2 dinners each week.
You can check out this blog post for some other tips on weeknight dinners, and be sure you get my weekly emails so you don’t miss the new resource I’m working on to get healthy dinners on the table in 20 minutes or less!
Prep for Those Back to School Germs
Last, but certainly not least, let’s talk about our immune systems. It’s good to take care of your immune system year-round, but I know many parents really start thinking about it as the school year starts and then bleeds into the cold and flu season (aka fill-our-kids-with-sweets-season). 😆 Helping them to A) get good sleep, B) get physical activity, and C) eat a wide variety of fruits and veggies are the best things you can do for your kids’ immune systems — and yours, too!
Let’s start with sleep. Having a bedtime routine — even for the tweens and encouraging the teens to start one — is incredibly helpful when school starts up again. A couple weeks before school starts, decide what this routine should look like and then start getting used to it. You can read more about sleep and see the bedtime routine I created for myself a couple years ago in this blog post.
If you were using my Screen Time Checklist over the summer — or if the kids already play sports or are just naturally more active — you’ve probably got the physical activity piece covered. If not, before school starts, make it a point to spend some time outside each day, even if it’s a short walk around the block or encouraging the kids to get on their bikes. Fresh air and physical activity will help them sleep better at night.
Finally, those pesky fruits and veggies. This is a BIG challenge for so many parents. Even if your kids aren’t “picky” eaters, it can be hard to get them to eat a wide variety each day. Heck, it’s hard for us as the adults to eat lots of different colors of fruits and veggies!
Enter my ultimate immune-boosting, stress-relieving, mom-win easy button: Juice Plus+. These amazing capsules and delicious chews are just food. It’s not a vitamin — it’s an entire rainbow of fruits, veggies, and berries that have been dehydrated and powdered so that your kids can eat 30 different plants in less time than it takes to add more ranch to your kid’s plate of broccoli. It’s uh-mazing.
The best part is, kids can get their Juice Plus+ for FREE when an adult in their life orders some for him/herself.
I really can’t say enough about this product. We’ve been eating it since 2014 and while it doesn’t replace eating fruits and veggies, I think of it as our nutritional “seatbelt”. No matter what we eat in a given day, I have some peace of mind knowing that we’ve all gotten a ton of nutrients. Plus, it has tons clinical research that shows the benefits to our immune system — and much more!
Full disclosure: I loved the product so much that I decided to partner with the Juice Plus+ company not long after experiencing the benefits for myself. If you purchase through me, I will receive compensation. I love taking care of my Juice Plus+ customers…it’s how I discovered my love for coaching!
