How often does this happen to you?   You come home from work, its 6:30 pm, your hungry, the kids are hungry, and you have no idea what you are going to fix for dinner?   Are Chinese take out and pizza part of your daily routine?

Stop the cycle with these four tips for making healthy food choices even with your busy schedule.

Whether you’re off to a picnic in the park or staying indoors with the family, Memorial Day calls for food and relaxation. So don’t go crazy cooking—serve up these delicious sliders which can be prepared in 10 minutes! Melissa d’Arabian, mother of four, and host of Food Network’s Ten Dollar Dinners with Melissa d'Arabian (www.foodnetwork.com/melissa-darabian) shares her recipe.

[recipe by Melissa d'Arabian; photo courtesy of Food Network]

I don’t know about your children, working mummies, but mine is a contender for the Pickiest Eater in America title. When Hayden was born, I vowed to exclusively breastfeed and make my own baby food to instill great eating habits in him. Starting at four months, my little man was eating purees of fresh spinach, tomatoes, leeks, root vegetables, all fruits imaginable, lean ground meats, peas and every other healthy item under the sun. I patted myself on the back for a job well done when he refused the smash cake that was offered on his first birthday.

I have a confession I’ve never admitted to anyone. I’m a copycat. I don’t trust myself enough to make my own decisions or be who I am, so I imitate others. From work, to dieting to parenting, I study what others do before I make a move.

At work I’ll ask others what they think before making a decision. “How did she handle this situation in the past?” “What would you do?”

With dieting, I ask others how they are keeping the weight off, read success stories in magazines and study every diet book ever made to try to obtain the same level of success.

Sometimes my kids may ask for a bowl of snow for dinner. And when they do, they may just get it.

One of the most natural and urgent instincts of a mother is to feed her child. No mother wants her child to go hungry. But according to the Hungersite’s Facebook page, about 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes and three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.

Consumer Reports Health, released May 10th, did a side-by-side comparison of popular weight loss methods like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig—shedding some new light on what works for dieters and what doesn’t. For instance, while the old adage remains true that you need to burn more calories than you consume, some calories have been found to be more filling than others like protein according to research. Limiting carbohydrates, as famously promoted by the Atkins diet, is becoming an increasingly accepted weight lost strategy according to the report.

So,