Heavy eating habits can build up in chilly winter months. Time to clean up your eating routine and refresh your meal plan in the true spirit of spring!

Home and Office Environment

• Clean out your cabinets, pantry and fridge of the expired foods, and treat food items that have been to filling you “out” instead of filling you up!
• Organize your pantry and fridge with whole food items that are easy to see and access.
• Reduce clutter to ultimately reduce your stress level and improve your success when finding items to successfully meal plan.
• At the office, clean out your office of any bulk food items (large bags of chips, chocolate covered nuts/dried fruit, processed granola bars, candies etc.). Replace them with handy little baggies of balanced snacks. Make baggies of roasted almonds and dried fruit, roasted and spiced chickpeas/ beans or baggies of your favorite trail mix for easy portion controlled snacks to enjoy between meals at the office.

Spring Menu Planning- A lighter take on winter comfort meals

• Replace a heavy macaroni and cheese dish with try a lighter pasta salad packed full of fresh chopped veggies, shredded chicken breast or salmon, fresh herbs, lemon juice, olive oil and spices!
• Instead of heavy lasagna take the ground turkey or lean ground meat and turn it into a flavorful burger. Mix together your ground meat with dried parsley, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. After your burger is grilled top with a little fresh tomato sauce and fresh grated mozzarella cheese. Serve on whole grain buns or grilled Eggplant rounds!
• For a lighter take on apple pie take an apple, chop it up and microwave with a little cinnamon. Serve on top of frozen vanilla yogurt topped off with roasted chopped almonds or pecans.

Buy in Season Produce. Find your inspiration in fruits and veggies that are in-season! Go to your local farmers market and try something new.

Pull away from processing and preservatives.

• If your head visualize the ingredient on the list, your body will know what to do with it.
• Processed foods are higher in preservatives, chemical, artificial colors, salt, added sugars (high fructose corn syrups, maltose, dextrose, sucrose, glucose, anything ending in “-ose”).
• Buy more whole foods this spring and process them yourself in your own kitchen where you add your own ingredients so you know exactly what’s going into your system. Your body will thank you for it.