Some tips on balancing good nutrition with busy schedules for our kids and our whole family
Netball, running, soccer, golf, gym – our house is 24/7 sport, and we are constantly on the go. Add in two working parents, a needy (but very cute Cocker Spaniel puppy), a couple of businesses, book release promotional activities and a very active, sporty tween and we have a pretty full on schedule and household. Probably a lot like yours. I certainly don’t have it 100% sorted, but here are a few (hopefully) helpful tips.
Our sporty tween is in the midst of a growth spurt (she hopes) and is constantly hungry. She has early morning starts for cross country and late finishes for rep netball. We make protein a priority in her diet and we try really hard to ensure she gets good, nutritious home cooked meals. She is a bit of a sugar fiend so we have to balance that with ensuring she gets all the nutrients she needs.
We have late nights for netball (straight from school) a couple of nights per week, so I batch cook on the weekend and dinner is served (for the whole family) from a thermos on those nights. I do dishes like chicken and cashews with brown rice, chicken san choy bou, meatballs with wholemeal spaghetti, chicken Caesar salad, minestrone – all homecooked with low human interference foods. My husband and daughter eat meat, I’m a vegetarian so that adds further complexities but I am a big fan of soups and always have one cooked and in the fridge for my meals. We have great fun picking different scenic spots to eat our dinner from thermoses prior to netball games (we live 30 minutes from her school, so going home before her netball game is often not feasible).
I meal plan and shop for the whole week on either Friday or Sunday morning and I always batch cook on Sunday afternoons. I make homemade chicken breast schnitzels for our tween’s lunches (she has them in wholemeal sourdough rolls and the they really sustain her). My schnitzels are crumbed in wholemeal flour and breadcrumbs and cooked in a shallow pan with olive oil spray, she adds fruit, cheese or yogurt and crackers and one sweet to her lunch.
I have just started making her protein balls and they have proved a game changer. I pack snacks in a small esky in the boot of my car. I repack it every Sunday and add an ice pack to it each morning. It always includes protein balls, bananas, homemade muesli bars, grapes, nuts, sultanas, water and some electrolyte mix. She goes straight to this esky the minute she is picked up from school and then heads off to sport. I make a point of letting her decide what and how much she wants – I’m just comfortable that all the contents are healthy.
For breakfast we try hard to get her to have oats and banana but we aren’t always successful. I’ve started baking breakfast muffins which I load with oats, fruit and proteins – for now they are a yes, but she is notoriously fickle with breakfast choices and she changes her mind on the turn of a dime. She has scrambled eggs a couple of days a week and on weekends I make protein pancakes with bananas and nuts. We do a protein smoothie along with protein balls for the days she has early morning running sessions at school.
She has great energy on the netball court and loves her sport so I feel like her diet is working well but her weekly lunch order is atrocious and her choices of sweets with her pocket money make my pharmacist/sugar police husband breath into a paper bag. I’m trying to be pragmatic and aiming for 80/20 goodness in her diet and trying hard to educate her to make good choices. It does help that she absolutely loves her sport and anything that gives her the edge on the netball court moves up her list. Still, we are a work in progress.
All recipes mentioned are on my website. Enjoy and feel free to comment if you have any questions.
