Nutrition on a Mission Comes to Albertville Kitchen

With the multitude of convenience foods at our finger tips, it’s no wonder eating healthier has become a chore. As a society, we are always in a hurry and reading ingredients isn’t as easy as it used to be.

It’s precisely the reason Albertville work-at-home mom Jenn Schoemer invited InFit/Anytime Fitness owner and personal trainer Ashley Darkenwald over to help.

(Full disclosure: Schoemer is the wife of , from St. Michael Patch, and trains with Darkenwald at InFit.)

“Before having kids my husband and I were pretty good at planning our weekly healthy meals," Jenn said. "But with both of us working full time jobs and having three kids under five, planning for meals is sometimes an oversight. Our lack of planning ended with us at some fast food place or dialing up for pizza more times than I would like. I asked Ashley  to come over to help remind me that with a little planning I can put healthy meals on the table even with a crazy schedule. Sometimes I think we just need a little help to get back on track.”

Prior to their meeting, Ashley (who and meals) gave Jenn a grocery list of items to have on hand, items like: sweet potatoes, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, nuts, dried fruit, chicken, yogurt, string cheese and much more.

Then the ladies got to work preparing simple, yet healthy meal and snack options. As any mom knows, often you are the last to get ready and the last to eat at any given meal, sometimes that means you end up snacking on your kids’ leftovers or just grabbing a bag of chips to munch on.

Ashley wanted to show Jenn and others how easy it is to have healthy options as long as you plan ahead.

“Really, you should only have to do this once or twice a week, and you'll have meals and snacks for the entire week prepared and ready to go,” Ashley said.

Some of Ashley’s tips included:

-Plan ahead. “One of the biggest challenges for families is not planning ahead. A couple hours a week can go a long way. Plan the school lunch out the night before. Pack snacks before running errands with the kids so you are not tempted to stop at fast food establishments and always have a back-up plan (healthy granola bars in the purse).”

-When packaging snacks for the week, never use bigger than a 100 calorie snack-size Ziploc bag.

-. Ashley said that, “groceries should be focused on balanced nutrition with complex carbohydrates and fruits and veggies at the center of every meal and lean protein and healthy fats.”

-Use vinegar and pineapple juice, instead of oil, when cooking stir fry or other meals over the stove that would usually call for oil.

-Not all marinades are bad. Look for ones that don’t have high fructose corn syrup or MSG.

-Buy peanut butter without fully hydrogenated oil. “Eating this kind of peanut butter (Jif) is like eating poison,” Ashley explained. (Editor's tip: Jif has a natural peanut butter that, when personally taste-tested, tastes no different. It's really good!)

Some of the things Ashley and Jenn made together were: a healthy, low calorie breakfast; a rainbow salad for lunch that would last both quantity and quality wise for the week; stir fry for dinner that was all made but just needed re-heating the night it was served; snacks both for adults and kids; and smoothies (that can even be made with those big bags of frozen berries during the upcoming winter).

Jenn was satisfied and excited about the day.

“Ashley gave me the push I needed,” she said. “One of the biggest realizations I’ve had is that a healthy meal doesn’t mean I have to spend hours in the kitchen making a big meat and potato meal most of us got when we were growing up.  I just don’t have the time to do that, and spend time with my kids. A meal can be, and has been for us, as simple as fruit, yogurt and cereal. We figure if they have some fruit and veggies with every meal we are doing pretty good. “

If you’d like to learn more about healthy meals and snacks for healthy families, contact Ashley at InFit at 763-424-4435.

Do you have any healthy eating tips that have worked for your family?