Susnane – aka The Hillbilly Housewife here again with another blog post. Over the past few days we’ve talked about how meal planning saves time and money, the different types of meal planning you can do as well as some time-saving grocery shopping tips. What we haven’t really talked about is the fact that planning and making these meals does so much more than just feed your family.

Sure, that’s an important part of it, but the dinner table is also where our families reconnect.

Make it a point to sit down at least once during your busy day to share a meal with your loved ones and encourage conversation. Find out what’s happened to each family member during the day.

Sitting down for a family dinner has shown to reduce obesity (which makes sense considering you’re eating a wholesome homecooked meal instead of fat and caloray-ladden fast food), but it does so much more. A study from Columbia University has shown that “teens from families that almost never eat dinner together are 72 percent more likely to use illegal drugs, cigarettes and alcohol than the average teen”.

Teenage daughters are also less likely to engage in unsafe sex and become pregnant when they have close family ties like those built and strenghened at the family dinner table.

Keep this in mind the next time you feel to tired to cook and of course make dinner faster, easier and less expensive with Christine’s wonderful Meal Planning Service.

We’ll talk about this in more detail in tomorrow’s post, but get your kids (no matter what age) involved in meal planning, dinner preparation and cleanup after. Remember you don’t have to do it all alone. Dinner is a family affair and that includes making it and doing the dishes after.

Warmly,

Susanne Myers – The Hillbilly Housewife
http://www.HillbillyHousewife.com

P.S. Leave a comment and share how dinner has helped you and your family reconnect. Remember Christine and I will put all commenters in a drawing and give away a subscription to her Meal Planning Service and one to the Hillbilly Housewife Club. Please comment away.

With Memorial Day just around the corner, we’re all starting to think a little more about our weight and what we will look like in a bathing suit this summer. No wonder this time of the year is the prime time to start a new diet or weight loss program. And of course we want to drop those pounds as quickly as possible, but that may not always be in our best interest. I came across an interesting blog post here about quick and healthy weight loss. It talks about various ways you may be risking you health and may even cause damage to your heart by losing weight to quickly and restricting your calories too much.

One of the problems of those crash diets that so many of us tend to go on is that it forces our bodies to go into starvation survival mode. Basically if we don’t eat enough, our bodies turn on an old survival mechanism back from the days when food wasn’t always as plentiful as it is today. Our metabolisms slow down and the body tries to store every gram of food it does get as fat. Unfortunately it stays in that “survival mode” for a while after we’ve given up on the crash diet (after all, who can stick to eating just cabbage soup or drinking a bright orange drink all day for long). That’s why we often gain even more weight after a diet… this is also referred to as the “yo yo effect”

So, how should you lose weight? By making changes to your lifestyle that you can stick with. Drink plenty of water, eat 3 to 5 balanced meals a day including plenty of lean protein, whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables. A great way to get into this new healthy eating lifestyle is to use the Healthy Meal Plan that’s part of the Menu Planning Central Menu Pack.

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There has been a lot of talk in the media lately about mercury in fish. If you, like my family enjoy tuna sandwiches and the likes, you’re probably wondering how many cans of tuna you can still safely eat each week. The bad news is that there isn’t just a set number, since it depends a lot on how much you weight. In other words, a small woman can eat a lot less tuna safely than a 250 lb man.

The good news is that there is a Tuna Calculator that will tell you exactly how many cans of tuna you can safely consume per week. Once you punch in your weight, the calculator will tell you how many cans of albacore tuna and how many cans of light tuna you can have per week and still stay under the FDA recommended levels of mercury.

By the way, if you have kids under the age of 5, the FDA recommends that you don’t feed them any albacore tuna as it tends to be much higher in mercury and those levels could be dangerous to young children.

My husband and kids love to snack, and to be honest so do I. So I’m always on the lookout for healthy snacks that provide good nutrition, while tasting good of course. One of our new family favorites is crunchy, savory chickpeas. Here’s how to make them.

You’ll need

• 1 can of chickpeas drained and rinsed
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cumin

Get out a heavy nonstick skillet and set burner to medium high heat.

Pour the chickpeas on a clean kitchen towel and wrap them in it to soak up most of the moisture. Dump the chickpeas in the warm skillet and season them with salt, pepper and plenty of cumin. Cook them, moving them around from time to time for about 10 to 15 minutes or until they are nice and crunchy. Pour in a bowl and serve.

You can play around with the seasonings to make all kinds of different flavors.

I like the fact that the chickpeas provide a good bit of protein and fiber, but still make for a nice crunchy, salty snack.

I just added an interesting article by our nutritionist to the member area of Menu Planning Central. She talks about how so many of us have already given up on our New Year’s resolutions by now and I have to admit that I’m not doing all that well with my resolve to exercise every day. It’s more like once or twice a week, if that much. Hey, at least I’ve not given up completely.

She gives a couple of great tips on what you can do to stay on track. If you’re a member, you can read her article here.

I thought I’d share a few of my own ideas…

• Keep a Journal
  Just writing everything down be it what you eat if you’re on a diet, how much you exercise or how you are feeling about not smoking helps, helps you stay on track.
• Find A Buddy
  Find someone with the same or similar resolutions and support each other.
• Make Small Goals and Reward Yourself
  A huge task like losing 20 pounds or giving up smoking for good can seem pretty daunting. Instead break it down into smaller chunks like losing 2 pounds this week, or not smoking for the next 3 days and then give yourself a small reward. The positive reinforcement will keep you going.

How about you? What has helped you in the past to stick to a resolution or goal you’ve made for yourself? Share your ideas as a comment below.