How Do You Convince Your Kids and Spouse to eat Clean?

For my next few #minionmondays (yeah, I’m a day late #life?) I want to field some clean eating with kids questions I often get in my DMS. This week is: How did you convince your kids and spouse to eat clean?
.
My husband ate clean before I did. I literally told him clean eating sounded too extreme and I was good with my moderation (insert whole tube of Oreos here ?). Once I realized chasing “moderation” wasn’t getting me anywhere but deeper into negative food habits, I came around. But, I didn’t have to convince my husband of anything. I know that is a bit rare (like ? rare) and my heart goes out to those of you who’s spouses are not on board. That has not been my journey and I would love to hear more from those of you who it is and how you have helped this.
.
My kid’s journey started out by watching ‘That Sugar Film’ on Amazon. Not on purpose, my husband and I were sitting down to watch it for ME #sugaraddict and the kids were drawn in, as it has interesting cartoon graphics to explain any of the sciencey stuff. It was a huge starting point of conversation for us as to why mom and dad eat this way. And agreed, you can tell your kids ALL day long how good veggies are for them, that doesn’t make them love brussel sprouts. But, still – have those conversations as to WHY this is important to you (spoiler – you can’t fake this and have to know this yourself first).
.
Two of my kids started asking to eat Paleo. The other three were not jazzed. Finally, we decided to “rip off the bandaid” and dive into clean eating all at once. I had been hemming and hawing with “should I just take out dairy” or “what if we just cut out all refined sugars,” but I, for whatever reason, needed that all at once plunge. Maybe because it’s easier for the brain to handle firm, dramatic changes than “moderate, baby step” kind of changes? We picked our main offenders – dairy, gluten, and refined sugars – and a month, July 2017. It was NOT convenient – it was summer and we were traveling, but it was time to just do it.
.
I got the kids on board by having them look through #paleo cookbooks, help me pin paleo recipes, and making a list of options that we could have each meal. I told them we were just going to try it for a month and go from there. I told them if we didn’t feel like it was working, we would stop after a month.
.
Then I fought like a momma bear for her cubs to get my hand on EVERY resource and recipe, filling our cupboards with ALL the options, making #paleo everything for my kids. It was a LOT of work. But I was fighting for something I was committed to and, like anything new, I knew it would get easier with time (ps – it absolutely has!). My kids loved all the variety and having options. They kept commenting how they loved having more than just cold cereal and sandwiches. At the end of the month no one asked to go back. More to come next week!