5 Easy Ways to Motivate Yourself To Eat Clean (Even If You are Tired or Stressed)

Clean Eating Motivation and Inspiration for Tired Moms

Do you want to eat healthy, but feel too tired to overhaul your diet?  I get it!  Here is what used to happen all the time at my house:

The clock reads 6:00.  The kids are hungry, the kitchen is a mess, and I am very, very tired.  I don’t want to stress myself out trying to cook something, so we eat frozen pizza again.  I am still tired after we eat.  So, the kitchen stays a mess, and I finish up my day and go to bed.  I wake up the next morning and start out my day overwhelmed again.

This used to be my life.  I didn’t eat good, I didn’t feel good and I didn’t know how or what to change.  I was dealing with some health problems and I felt bad a lot of them time.  So I really thought that it was going to be almost impossible to change my eating.  But, then I began to realize that food might actually help my health problems to go away.

I started realizing that if I ate better, I might have more energy.  And if I had more energy, I could make other changes.  Then one day I might wake up feeling great, and I would be able to do things that I really wanted to do in life.  That is when I got serious about changing my food.

It was really difficult for me because I really did have some serious health issues going on, but I believed the benefits of clean eating would be worth the work. So I changed my eating.  And because of the changes I made (and some help I had along the way) I now enjoy feeling good! 

Since I know what it is like to change my eating while battling chronic fatigue, I figure I am the expert at teaching other tired moms how to start eating clean.

Here are some clean eating tips that can work even if you are really tired and overwhelmed. These are the tips that helped me when I was struggling A LOT with my energy levels.

1. Motivate Your Kids to Eat Healthy

Motivating your kids to eat healthy can be easier than you think. Here is my number one way to do that: don’t make your family eat healthy food.

I know that it sounds weird to tell you not to make your family eat healthy food.  But, it can be really tiring to “try” to get your family to eat healthy.  Here is what I do instead: I eat healthy food and enjoy it.  My kids see me eating and get curious about what I am eating.  (Plus they are never allowed snacks or desserts unless it is a designated time.)  So, they are hungry and all that is around is the healthy food that I seem to be enjoying!

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My kids often try new things without any prompting from me because they are curious and hungry.  Since I have done this with my kids since they are young, they are really great eaters now.  My youngest begs me for things like black eyed peas at the grocery store.

If you are just beginning to switch your family over to real food, the kids may only like the meat and not the vegetable.  I think that is ok in the beginning.  Just keep serving healthy real food with yummy ingredients like butter, coconut oil, and jasmine rice.

Another thing that will motivate your kids to eat healthy real food is to learn to cook. This is so wonderful for them and for you. In fact, just this morning my youngest daughter cooked eggs. She learned how to do this on the Kids Cook Real Food course, and now she makes eggs better than anyone else in the family!

Wondering if your family is ready for kids in the kitchen? Grab the Life Skills Goals {in the Kitchen} to see what your kids could be capable of at every age! Find the Life Skills Goals at the bottom of the Kids Cook Real Food course page.

2. Utilize Your Freezer for Easy Meals

Here is one of my favorite clean eating tips-take advantage of your freezer! My chest freezer saves me a lot of time because I always have healthy food available so I only grocery shop around 2-3 times a month.

I buy lots of frozen vegetables and they are super simple to cook.  I either boil or roast them.  Both ways take less than 5 minutes for me to prepare.  I either cook the vegetables in a pot with water, or lay them on a baking dish with some drizzled oil and seasonings and bake them.  (If your family wants more flavor on their boiled vegetables, you can always add butter when you are ready to serve them.)

I also use my freezer to freeze raw meat in pretty big portions. When I am ready to cook, I defrost and cook a lot of meat at one time.  That way I only have to reheat the protein for my meal, rather than cooking it from scratch.  Sometimes, we can go days without any major cooking because we have meat ready in the refrigerator.

Lots of recipes are super easy when you already have cooked meat available-like this Rainbow Stir Fry.

3. Use Disposables

When I was really feeling badly, one thing that helped me so much was using disposable plates and forks.  This may not be ideal to keep up forever, but it really helped me when I needed to spend my time and energy just making sure we had something healthy to eat.  If it helps you to make the switch to clean eating then I think it is totally worth it. 

We still use a fair amount of paper towels because it is easier than using hand towels and making more laundry.

4. Don’t Make Everything from Scratch

Once you get going on your clean eating journey, you might be excited to learn how to make homemade bread or elaborate meals.  But, when you are overwhelmed, it is a lot easier to buy premade things.  There are some healthy ready made foods in your grocery store like plain dried fruit or applesauce in glass jars.  Here are a few other ideas of things that you can buy instead of making them yourself:

• Larabars are a healthy ready made snack.

• I also buy healthy bread from the grocery store, but am very picky about which ones to buy because bread can hide a slew of chemicals.
• There are some brands of frozen potatoes which are only potatoes with no other added ingredients.
• If you need cut up vegetables for a recipe, consider buying frozen or fresh vegetables that are already cut up.

5. Think About Feeling Good (How to Mentally Prepare for Healthy Eating)

This is one way I motivated myself to cook whenever I didn’t feel like it.  I thought about how good I would feel if I kept eating healthy food.  I also thought about how bad I felt when I didn’t eat well.  I trained myself to think good food=good feelings.   This really motivated me to keep going even when times were tough.

Now that I am feeling so much better, I want to encourage you  that you can feel better too.  Healthy eating does pay off.  You can make little changes even when you are tired.  (I am saying this from experience!)

Once you have made enough little changes, you will feel better and it will be even easier to keep eating healthy food.  I am living proof that it is possible to eat clean and healthy food even if you are a really tired mom!

More Clean Eating Inspiration:

Clean Eating Tips to Make Healthy Food Easy

Clean Eating Food List Printable-Complete List for Beginners

Printable Clean Eating Grocery List for Weight Loss

* Disclaimer: This post is not medical advice. I am not a doctor or medical professional. I share only from my own experiences and research. Consult your own practitioner before making changes in your diet or supplements.