Eating a healthy diet can help you control your weight and make you feel better, so it is important to eat healthy meals even when you are busy. You can prepare a healthy meal quickly if you keep it simple and use a variety of nutritious ingredients that you have in your kitchen or make ahead of time.
Basic Patterns
A basic guideline for planning a healthy meal is to include foods from different food groups so that you can achieve recommendations for a healthy diet such as those in the 2010 Dietary Gudelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In general, your meal should have some vegetables, some lean protein such as chicken or fish, a whole grain such as bread or pasta, some fruit and a serving of fat-free or reduced fat dairy such as milk or yogurt.
Easy Ingredients
Make your meal easier to prepare by using ingredients that are ready to use. Stock your pantry with healthy staples such as canned fruit and vegetables without sugar or salt, canned salmon or tuna, whole grain pasta and bread, tomato sauce, low-fat salad dressing and spices. Have vegetable mixes in your freezer so that they are always available for quick preparation. Take advantage of prepared foods from the grocery store, and consider picking up a rotisserie grilled chicken and a bag of salad on your way home from work.
Help Yourself Out
If you have time on the weekend, you can prepare a few healthy dishes to use later in the week. You can make a few main courses, such as chicken with vegetables or vegetarian chili with tomatoes and beans. Freeze them in the portions that you will need for one night, and defrost them in the refrigerator the night before. Then you can quickly heat them up and serve them with a grain and some vegetables for a quick, healthy dinner.
Remember Breakfast
It's hard to think of a faster meal to prepare than cereal, and your meal can be very healthy with a few good choices. MayoClinic.com suggests a whole-grain cereal that has at least 3 to 5 g dietary fiber and no more than 13 g sugars per serving. Make it a balanced meal by having your cereal with some fruit for extra fiber, vitamins and minerals, and some fat-free milk or yogurt for calcium and protein. You can have cereal for breakfast or at any meal, and your children will probably think it is a treat to have cereal for dinner.
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