By Wednesday most weeks I’ve lost the plot with food. There’s netball training on two nights, a science project due that nobody mentioned until 8pm, and a fridge that looked full on Sunday and now holds half a cucumber and some very tired coriander. That’s usually the point where I reach for a coffee I don’t need and tell myself I’ll eat properly tomorrow.
Here’s the thing I’ve made peace with: healthy eating when busy is not about doing it perfectly. It’s about a handful of habits that hold up even on the days that fall apart. None of it is fancy, and most of it I learned the hard way, standing at the pantry at 6am wondering what I could throw at three kids before school.
The morning sets the tone, so protect it
When I skip breakfast or grab something beige and sugary, I’m ratty by 10am and grazing on whatever’s around by lunch. A breakfast that actually holds you needs a bit of everything: some slow carbohydrate like oats or wholegrain toast, a bit of fibre, some protein to keep you full, and a little healthy fat.
My go-to on a hectic morning is yoghurt with oats and chia soaked overnight, a handful of nuts, and whatever fruit hasn’t turned to mush. Eggs on the weekend when there’s time to sit down. Nutrition Australia has a good rundown of what a balanced plate looks like if you want the detail, and it’s worth a read once so you stop second-guessing yourself: nutritionaustralia.org. If you want breakfast ideas that don’t need a recipe card, our nailing nutrition guide is where I send friends first.
Coffee is not a food group, sadly
I love coffee. I am not here to take it off anyone. But I went through a stretch where I was drinking four or five a day to paper over the fact I wasn’t sleeping or eating well, and it made everything worse. It dehydrates you, it messes with your blood sugar, and by the afternoon I’d crash and reach for another.
What helped was capping it at two in the morning and swapping the afternoon one for a herbal tea. Peppermint and green tea are the ones I keep in the cupboard. Some days I have our honey and lemon tea just because it feels like a small treat, and it stops me raiding the biscuit tin out of boredom. If coffee is the thing keeping you upright, that’s usually a sleep problem wearing a caffeine costume, and it’s worth looking at.
Drink more water than you think you need
This is the least exciting advice in the world and also the one that makes the biggest difference to how I feel. Half the time I thought I was hungry or foggy, I was just dehydrated. I bought a decent bottle, keep it on the bench, and top it up all day.
A couple of small things I’ve picked up: sip through the day rather than sculling a litre at dinner, and go easy on big glasses of water right on top of a meal. If plain water bores you, sparkling water with lemon and a few muddled berries feels a bit special and gets the kids off the cordial too. Betterhealth has sensible guidance on hydration without the wellness-influencer hysteria: betterhealth.vic.gov.au.
Sunday you, meet Wednesday you
The single biggest thing that changed my weeks was accepting that I will not make good food decisions at 5:45pm with three hungry kids orbiting the kitchen. So I make them on Sunday instead.
It doesn’t have to be a full meal-prep operation with fourteen identical containers. I roast a big tray of vegetables, cook a pot of grains, boil some eggs, and cut up snacks into containers so I can grab them on the way out the door. When the fridge has ready-to-go bits and pieces, I stop buying servo food out of desperation. My honest opinion, having tried both: batch-cooking one thing well beats prepping five things badly and watching three of them go off. If you want a repeatable Sunday habit, our gut health challenge pushed me to keep more whole foods in the house, and the meal-prep muscle came along for free.
Lean on real food, not the packet
I use the grandparent test in the supermarket. Would my nan have recognised this as food? A tin of tomatoes, yes. A shelf-stable sauce with fourteen ingredients I can’t pronounce, not really. It’s a rough rule and I break it happily for the odd packet of crackers, but it keeps the trolley honest.
Whole foods just do more for you: fresh meat and fish, grains, nuts, seeds, and a good pile of fruit and veg. The white, processed stuff has its place, but it’s not doing much heavy lifting. The government’s eatforhealth.gov.au guidelines are the plain-English version of all this if you’d rather trust a dietitian than a bloke on the internet, which is fair enough.
Ease off at night and let dinner settle
We eat late a lot, because sport. What I’ve learned is that a heavy meal right before bed sits like a brick and wrecks my sleep. When we do eat late, I keep the evening meal a bit smaller and lighter, and I try to leave a couple of hours before lights out.
Eating out with the family, I look for words like steamed, baked, grilled and poached on the menu, and I go easy on the deep-fried and the crumbed. Not because those are forbidden, but because I feel the difference the next morning when I’ve got an early netball run. Small stuff, but it adds up over a busy season.
A word on supplements and doing less
People always ask me what to take. Honestly, I’m not the person to hand out a supplement list, and I’d steer clear of anyone online who confidently is. If you think you’re running low on something or you’re constantly wiped out, that’s a chat for your GP or a dietitian, not a comment section. Healthdirect is a solid, no-nonsense place to start reading before you spend money on capsules: healthdirect.gov.au.
What I’d rather you take away is this: pick one habit off this page, not all seven. Maybe it’s a proper breakfast. Maybe it’s the water bottle. Get that one steady for a fortnight, then add the next. Busy life isn’t going anywhere, so the food routine has to survive contact with a normal, chaotic week. Mine does now, most weeks. And on the weeks it doesn’t, I have leftovers in the freezer and I don’t beat myself up about it.
— Nicole Barnes, Golden Door Living
