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Ayesha Curry on Maintaining a Healthy Diet the Whole Family Can Enjoy

Ayesha Curry is a cookbook author and Food Network star, all while also being a wife and mom. Here are her tips for how she balances all of that while also maintaining her healthy diet -- and making sure her family eats healthy too.

Eating healthy doesn’t have to be a chore or an inconvenience. If you ask Ayesha Curry, author of The Seasoned Life: Food, Family, Faith, and the Joy of Eating Well and star of the Food Network show Ayesha’s Homemade, it can actually be easy and enjoyable. If you know what to reach for when you’re in a time crunch and have some solid healthy recipes on hand, then even a crazy day can still be a healthy one. As the mother of two young girls, a busy business woman, and the wife of professional basketball player Stephen Curry (who travels a lot for work), Ayesha knows a thing or two about how to be healthy on the go. 

We got to chat with Ayesha to learn about her go-to healthy meals, how she balances work, family, and self, and what her food philosophy is.

Before we get started on talking about healthy food, I wanted to get an idea of what your daily life is like. I know you’re very, very busy and that impacts pretty much everything.

AC: Yeah, I feel like as of late no one day is like another. That's been the toughest thing for me: trying to find a routine when the days are so crazy and so different every day. Ways I try to do that is by what I’m eating and [paying attention to] when I’m eating. Since the New Year has started, I’ve been trying to work out five/six days a week, and I’ve been successful thus far.

You mentioned that you try to eat at specific times. How do you do that and how do make that easier with your food choices?

AC: Well, one thing I learned a while back, especially as a woman, is we are supposed to be snacking throughout the day. For a long time, I would skip breakfast, maybe eat lunch, and then have a giant dinner. I learned very quickly that that’s just not the way our bodies work. For me, it was remembering to have something right when I wake up in the morning, even if it’s small. Then make sure I get snacks throughout the day and have a light lunch and a decent-sized dinner, but it didn’t have to be something enormous. 

One thing that’s been really convenient for me has been ZÜPA NOMA and their cold soups -- their whole motto is “whole without the bowl.” I know a lot of people think it’s weird to drink your soup, but it’s actually delicious and amazing and full of nutrients. For instance, with breakfast in the morning, nine times out of ten I will forget or just don’t have the time. Grabbing a soup, like their cucumber avocado fennel, has been amazing for me. It’s a little sweet but it’s full of good fat because of the avocado. I’m jump starting my day. I feel like making sure I get that little bit of breakfast in the morning makes the rest of the day better because I’m remembering to have a snack, when it’s time for lunch, and when to grab another little snack. It’s just that kick-start you need to get going.

So, you always choose soup on your most hectic days?

AC: Yeah, I do. Especially as a snack when I’m trying to be health-conscious, it’s the easiest choice for me. I’ll do a small snack too, like some almonds -- I’m intolerant to a lot of nuts, so almonds are really the ones I stick to. And I’ll do like pumpkin seeds or sunflowers seeds, or a yogurt. But it’s really the easiest choice for me -- I just grab it and go. 

Do you have a philosophy or general guideline for eating healthy? Or trying to balance eating healthy with also getting to enjoy food when you’re out and about?

AC: I feel like balance does exist when it comes to eating. I think for me it’s about not stressing, and realizing that it’s not going to be perfect all the time, and I am going to make bad food choices sometimes. But if I can make those good choices most of the time, those small little changes and small decisions will ultimately make for big change. That’s been the biggest thing for me, not stressing out about it or being miserable by not enjoying the things I like. I enjoy those things in moderation and then generally make the good decisions.

What nutritional lessons do you hope to instill in your daughters?

AC: The biggest thing for me is cooking with my girls. That’s really what I hope to instill in them -- especially right now when they’re so young (they’re four and a year and a half). Cooking is an easy way to build a relationship with someone -- just by cooking with my girls it opens up lines of communication and helps build that kitchen confidence in them so that when they get older they are more willing and prepared to cook a meal for themselves at home. 

Cooking at home is half the battle. Everyone eats out sometimes, but at least attempting to prepare a meal at home -- whether it’s through meal-prep or making dinner -- is just so important because ultimately you know what’s going into the food. You can control the salt, or sugar, or whatever it is, and that’s taking a step in the right direction. That’s been the biggest thing for me is making sure I cook with my kids and give them that knowledge of how to move about the kitchen and what the ingredients are and things like that. 

Speaking of cooking, what is your favorite recipe in your book?

AC: Oh, my absolute favorite recipe in the book is my Mom’s brown sugar chicken. That’s just because it’s so nostalgic. I think I say that in the book -- it’s like my childhood in a dish. That is the “special occasion” meal because it’s not necessarily the healthiest. 

On a night when we are trying to be a little more health conscious and pressed for time, I love my apricot salmon dish because it’s a one-dish meal and it's done in 15 minutes. It’s salmon, the glaze’s three ingredients, and then I can layer in whatever vegetables we have on hand -- it’s usually some squash, or zucchini, onions, corn, sometimes mushrooms, but everything cooks together and it’s really good. The whole family loves it, and the kids eat it as well. Kind of winning on all ends with that one.

Last Updated: February 23, 2017