10 Easy Ways To Stop Eating Your Kids’ Leftovers

Skip the bites of your children’s plate scraps with these 10 ways to stop eating kids’ leftovers. You will get that much closer to your health goals!

No matter what kind of dinner you make for your kids, there are bound to be a few bites left on their plates.

You know the bites.

The ones that appear to not have been licked, are mostly intact, and are perfectly good food that is about to go to waste if you don’t eat it.

It’s those bites of that food your child simply couldn’t get enough of last week, but refuses to touch this week.

The bites that you figure you could just finish off quick with no harm to your own health goals, so you make it quick.

For how much children eat and how many of us are pinching our pennies, any kind of food waste feels like a huge wrong.

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Instead of gobbling down what is left on your child’s plate, use a few of these 10 easy ways to stop eating your child’s leftovers so you can skip the extra calories and keep your meal as your meal without the “dessert”.

Serve your kids smaller portions

Some days it feels like you barely have enough food in the house to feed your growth spurt of a child. Others it seems like you will never get through everything because they are barely trying a bite.

Regardless of the growing or the lack of appetite, give your child smaller portions. From those smaller portions, she can eat what she wants and ask for seconds, which should be another small portion.

Keep second helpings to smaller portions

My kids tend to ask for seconds on the parts of the meal they loved the lost. I do. Little dance every time they ask for seconds on everything that was on their plate.

When you’re dishing up that additional helping, make it an even smaller portion than the first. Your kids might just want another bite or two to be satisfied.

Yes a smaller portion on their plate may mean you have to get up more often to get the food, but it also means you won’t be eating multiple bites of leftovers.

Institute a no thank you bite

Early on with feeding Zoey we decide to institute a no thank you bite. This means the kids have to try at least one bite of everything on their plate before declaring they do not like it.

Some meals it’s a discussion to get them to try the food. Other meals they just do it on their own.

Wether they like the food or not from that bite is not the issue, but more the trying of it. Best case scenario, they find a new food to enjoy and leave less behind on their plate for you to munch.

Save what you can from their plates

One of my personal issues with wanting to eat the kids’ leftovers is that I hate wasting food.

A way to mitigate the food waste and not overeat myself is to save what I can from their plates.

I freeze fruit, or save it in the fridge for later. For grains a and veggies, I throw them in a food storage container to have on hand to add to adult salads the next day.

It keeps the food waste to a minimum and means I am not eating bites of things I am not actually hungry for.

Remind yourself of your health goals

Before you reach for that forgotten piece of toast or spoonful of rice, remind yourself of your health goals.

Does your weight loss goal or running nutrition plan fit with these rogue bites of food? Sure a bite or two here and there is not going to make or break your success, but it can certainly make it a longer time coming.

Before you reach for those leftover bites, pause and evaluate your fullness level. If you have already eaten a nutritious meal that has left you satisfied, why would you want to have more food?

Leave it for later or just toss it.

Make your own meals more nutritionally dense

Still feeling hungry after you have eaten your own meal is another reason you are reaching for the kids’ leftovers.

Start building more nutritionally dense plates so you feel satisfied and full enough to not even be tempted by the half eaten pieces on your kids’ plates.

A nutritionally dense plate contains:

• Half a plate of vegetables
• A protein – plant based or not
• Some healthy fat

Combining your plate like this will ensure you feel more satisfied after you eat and make you more likely to skip the scraps.

If you are still feeling peckish after your meal, then you need to do more learning on nutrient dense food to eat. You can easily learn how to build a more nutrient dense plate in the Healthy Meal Plans, Confident Meal Prep course.

Be real about where those leftovers have been

It is very likely that those kid scraps you are eating have already been in a mouth, fallen on the floor, or touched multiple times in some way.

If you remind yourself of those facts, is it still something you want to eat? I cannot tell you the amount of times Rob will pick up a rogue Goldfish left on a plate, eat it, and then say, “That one was wet.” Meaning, William probably had it in his mouth and then took it out.

Throw them out

Yes, I know you do not want to waste the food, but it is probably a fairly minimal amount.

Toss it.

Compost it.

You really don’t need to eat it. The frustration of not reaching your health goals because you keep eating bites here and there of the leftovers is not worth those actual few soggy bites of leftovers.

Feed your kids the same foods you feed yourself

95% of the time, we feed the kids the same things we are eating. The exception here is with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (I opt salads, Rob does chips and salsa), dressing on salads (the kids do not like it), and some of their snacks like applesauce pouches, plain raisins, and fruit leathers.

Since we eat the same things as them, my temptation to eat what is on their plate goes way down since I literally just had the same food and am full.

If you tend not to make your kids the same meals that you eat, then you are probably going to be tempted to take those leftover bites of the kids’ “junkier” foods.

In this case, let yourself have a your own small portion as part of your meal so you are not overeating on a full portion for you plus a mini portion from the kids.

Taste it. Enjoy it. Fill the rest of your plate with vegetables. Move on.

Meal plan and meal prep

Are you eating the leftovers because you are too busy during meal time to make your own food? I feel that on a deep level.

Since Hazel was born, I often joke with Rob that I either have time to eat or make food, but not both. Having a clear meal plan in place and doing some meal prep whenever I can makes getting in healthier foods so much easier. You can do a lot of meal prep in 20 minutes!

Stop stressing about what is for dinner at 5 pm and instead follow these five simple steps to meal plan for the week quickly and efficiently. In this free download, you get 11 tips to save money on groceries, 8 easy to make recipes, and a printable calendar and shopping list.

Snag this free download to take the guesswork out of meal time here.