We don’t do vitamin supplements at my house. Some of you may think that that is just terrible, but I take it as a challenge to make sure that we are feeding the kids (and ourselves) the way that we are supposed to…thus, not needing to “supplement” in order to fill in any nutritional gaps. I didn’t supplement during my last pregnancy and my Doctor seemed astounded that my iron levels were perfect just after having my baby…so clearly I’m doing a pretty good job at it.
Anyway, we have this simple rule that we live by, and even on those rare occasions that we need to buy something quick (like the pizza shown), we especially make sure to follow it. Our rule is that you don’t get seconds, or dessert, if you don’t finish your veggies. We usually try to have the vegetables take up a large portion, if not half, of the plate. This is a lead by example rule for my husband and I too. The rule actually helps to stretch the main dish quite a bit and there is usually enough left-overs for another meal (because we fill up on veggies instead of main dish). Thus, making me spend less time cooking because I just reheat the left-overs. (If you cook from scratch like I do, you know how much time this saves and it is wonderful! It makes cooking from scratch much less daunting).
Luckily, Costco makes buying lots of healthy foods very easy with their huge yet inexpensive bags of veggies. Most of which are organic too. We always have carrots, sugar snap pea’s, spinach, and/or a dark leafy salad mix on hand. Because it is so inexpensive, there really is no excuse not to do it. Plus, the money we save in supplements makes it even more affordable.
