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Are you at a point where you know you need to make some improvements to your diet to include more nutrient dense items, higher nutrition and less processed foods? These easy and inexpensive suggestions will help!

Stop Buying Cold Cereal

Cold cereal is a huge waste of money. The nutritional value of cold cereal is almost nonexistent and does the body more harm than good. Cereal is made through a process called extrusion. Extrusion kills most of the nutrients in the grain. Source

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What can you eat instead of cold cereal on those incredibly busy mornings when everyone is trying to rush out the door? Here are a few higher nutrition suggestions to help you forget all about cold cereal.

• Muesli– mix it up the night before, put in a bowl in the morning, top with milk and breakfast is served. Just as quick as cold cereal but so much better for you and tastes great.
• Plain yogurt with fresh fruit and whole grain toast
• Fried egg(s), toast and fresh fruit
• Muffins or English muffins— made in advance and reheated or not– with milk or a smoothie
• Soaked Hot Oatmeal

Switch to Butter

I grew up in a time when butter became the enemy. We were encouraged to avoid butter at all cost because of the cholesterol and the ‘fact’ that it would give us heart disease.

I no longer buy into that.

Butter has been around forever and is made with no real processing (fresh cream, a quart jar and a little shaking and you will have butter or use your food processor) whereas margarine is a highly processed product.

Read a few of the advantages and nutrition of butter over margarine here.

Eliminate One Processed Food Item

Pick one processed or ‘junk food’ item to eliminate.

It could be store bought cookies or cakes, chips, soda pop, your daily drive-thru run, frozen dinners, rice and spice side dishes, etc.

Eliminating one item is fairly simple and painless.

Trying to eliminate all processed food at one time is harder especially if you are using a lot of processed items. You might end up wondering what to eat and how to cook it. Not a good place to be. 🙂

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Plan Your Meals

Take a few minutes one day a week to make a list of meals you will eat for the following week. You can include just dinners or all meals and snacks.

Having a plan in place makes grocery shopping easier and allows you to plan ahead to increase your nutrition. If you need help with menu planning or have specific diet needs due to allergies consider a menu planning service.

Don’t Stress

True change takes time. Any small change is a step forward. Start where you are and move forward as your ability and budget allows. In the meantime, educate yourself. Read all you can about nutrition. Education is inexpensive but priceless.

Some places to start reading:

The Basics from Food Renegade

The Nourishing Gourmet had an excellent conversation on eating on a budget. Be sure to check the comments.

And here is a conversation from Kelly the Kitchen Kop (once again, read the comments)

The Weston A. Price Foundation I can not even begin to tell you the wealth of information here. There is a section titled Basics. It is a good place to start.

What changes would you like to make to your diet? What is your favorite ‘Starting Out’ tip?

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