Category: Healthy Living

4 Tips to Eat Healthy on a Busy Schedule

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date October 13, 2021

If you’re too busy to truly just sit down and enjoy your meal, then there’s a strong chance that you’re juggling multiple roles at once such as your job, social life, or maybe even a parenting role as well. Sometimes for people on busy schedules, food becomes a super low priority. They’re too busy to the point that they forget to eat. For others, they simply don’t have time to get around to making a warm meal so they resort to eating convenient food such as a bag of chips or a chocolate bar since these can be eaten on the go. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can eat healthy on a busy schedule.

Whether you’re a workaholic or someone who is trying to escape the busy cycle of your day-to-day life, it’s so crucial to eat healthily. Healthy eating leads to feeling better, having more energy, but it also leads to mental clarity, as well. Here are four tips for having a healthy diet, even on the busiest of schedules.

Eat Healthy on a Busy Schedule Tip #1: Prioritize Breakfast

Many people tend to forget about breakfast, breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day. It’s crucial to get a full healthy meal before taking on the long hard day. Whether you’re trying to go vegan, or you want to have a healthy diet in general, you should try to break your fast with a nutritious meal.

Need inspiration? Try some of these ideas:

Tip #2: Cut the Coffee and Drink More Water

While it’s fine to have a couple of cups of coffee each day, you’re far better off trying to stick to water as your main beverage. If you can, try to bring a reusable water bottle with you to work so you have that to fill up and drink throughout the day. This is going to be far healthier than a coffee and there aren’t any calories in water either.

Our bodies need to stay hydrated and it especially needs water for that. Water helps us flush out toxins, regulates our digestive system, gives us better skin, but drinking water will also help energize us as well.

Eat Healthy on a Busy Schedule Tip #3: Create a Routine

Making your meal and having it at the same time every day is going to do wonders for you. This is going to give you the chance to create a daily routine, and it allows you to get in a bit more control of your schedule. Setting a routine is one of the best ways to make you feel like you have control and it also helps with feeling mentally free. Creating a specific routine for eating is going to ensure that you’re going to be able to sit down, have your meal, and your meal won’t be rushed. This routine can also be a part of making food for yourself such as learning how to make mushroom quiche from scratch.

Busy Schedule Tip #4: Watch Portion Sizes

This is a lot easier if you pack your meals or if you’re using a meal prepping service, but it’s so important to watch your portions. Watching your portions will allow you to fight off eating mindlessly but it’s also going to help out in watching the calories that you consume.

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Healthy Living

What Is the Mediterranean Diet and Why Is It Healthy?

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date October 12, 2021

The Mediterranean diet is a style of eating that follows the contours of the geography and climate of a specific region. The area encompassed by this nutritional plan includes southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. A balanced diet with plenty of plant-based foods, including vegetables, whole grains, legumes (beans), fruit and nuts; fish and poultry in place of red meat; along with healthy fats from olives and olive oil make up most Mediterranean dishes.

A pioneering researcher into disease prevention through diet has compared following a Mediterranean-style eating pattern to taking a daily low dose aspirin tablet. Ancel Keys, PhD – known as the “father” of the now popular eating strategy – found that people who ate a typical variety of foods common to the Mediterranean diet had a much lower risk of dying from heart disease.

What You Eat Matters

As reported recently in the journal Circulation, Dr. Ruth Fretts, an associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, has discovered that eating like the Mediterraneans also helps to reduce stroke risk. “What was most surprising was that we were able to demonstrate these benefits even among people who did not achieve the target amounts of fish or plant foods consumed within this population,” she says.

According to Fretts, this is important because it shows what you eat matters more than how much you eat (the two components often both assessed together). Also, people can make changes throughout their whole lives rather than having to radically alter their diet immediately.

Decrease Chances of Developing Diseases with the Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet is the only dietary pattern that has been proven to help decrease the chances of developing chronic diseases and even treat existing conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and type II diabetes.

A commonly cited mantra is: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” While it’s true that following a Mediterranean-style eating plan doesn’t mean subsisting on pasta alone, pasta dishes often do play a starring role in this balanced nutritional approach.

Mediterranean Diets Use Fresh Ingredients

At its core, this approach uses ingredients that are fresh and minimally processed, cooks meals from scratch using healthy preparation techniques such as grilling or poaching, and limits or eliminates processed foods, especially those with trans-fats.

Since the Mediterranean diet is based on ingredients readily available in supermarkets rather than difficult-to-obtain specialty fare, it’s an easy way to improve your eating habits. You may find that you already follow many of the same practices without even realizing it. Try this egg waffle recipe to see how easy it is!

Avoid Sugar

For example, if you avoid sugar and refined grains, then you’re well on your way to following a Mediterranean-style menu. The main steps towards adding this nutritious style of eating into your weekly routine are choosing healthy oils; increasing produce; including plenty of fish and poultry; using herbs instead of salt to flavor foods; and using red wine in moderation.

Recommended amounts for a healthy Mediterranean-style diet include:

2 1/2 cups of vegetables per day
1 whole fresh fruit per day
2 servings of whole grains per day
4 ounces of lean sources of protein (legumes, fish or poultry)
3 servings of healthy fats based on a 2000 calorie diet.

Olive Oil Paradox

In fact, the ” olive oil paradox” shows that despite high fat content, people who eat a Mediterranean-style diet tend to be healthier than those who don’t even though they typically have lower body weights.

This highlights the importance not only of what you eat but how much you eat since excess calories from any food source can lead to weight gain. In this case, the apparent contradiction is resolved since most people who use olive oil for cooking typically use far less than those who cook with butter or animal fat, even though the latter have lower calorie content per tablespoon.

Although it’s considered a high-fat diet, it’s actually moderate in protein which also helps keep blood sugar levels steady, promotes better heart health and makes you feel full longer. The recommended amount of protein is about half a gram per pound of body weight per day (or 15% of daily calories). That means that if you weigh 150 pounds, this would translate into 75 grams of protein.

You can get this amount by eating 8 ounces of fish, poultry or legumes at each of your 3 main meals. You’d also take in about 30 grams of protein if you ate a five-ounce piece of meat and a cup of cooked legumes – such as lentils, black beans or garbanzos – at dinner.

In Closing

Of course, it’s not always possible to eat a perfect diet every day. The key is simply to fit these extras into your daily calorie budget rather than allowing them to derail your efforts altogether.

Tags Mediterranean Diet

Healthy Living

How To Go Vegan

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date September 16, 2021

If you are thinking of trying to improve your diet, and you also want to do your bit in helping the planet, one option is to go vegan. A vegan diet is a relatively easy thing to have, as long as you know how to approach it.

The truth is that there are a few things to bear in mind, and as long as you do so, you should find that going vegan is a lot easier. In this post, I am going to take a look at how you can go vegan.

Take It Easy When You Go Vegan

The first thing to bear in mind is that going vegan can be a very easy and simple thing to do. There are a lot of ideas floating around about how difficult going vegan is, but it is simply not true: as long as you approach it in the right way, you’ll find that it is much easier than people tend to assume.

However, there is one thing in particular that you will want to do to ensure that you make it even easier: take it easy and slow. If you can do that, you should find that you are much more likely to stick with it and to enjoy it as you do it too.

Essentially, this means that you should have an end goal in mind, but begin at your own pace. There is really no reason to rush it, although if you do decide to do it overnight, that’s up to you: just bear in mind that a lot of people end up failing if they rush it.

Get Your Nutrients

One thing you do need to take care of is that you are still getting all of the necessary nutrients that a human being needs. This is not necessarily that hard to do, but you have to make sure that you are considering it at least, otherwise, you might well fail to get those nutrients as you would hope.

The best way to ensure you get your nutrients is to keep your diet as varied as possible. Fortunately, that is easy to do, especially now that there are vegan versions for pretty much any meal – so whether you want a vegan mac and cheese recipe or vegan salads, you can be sure that it’s possible to do.

As long as you have the nutrients that you need, you will be a lot healthier, have much more energy, and be able to enjoy it a lot more. You will also find that your mood is likely to be in a much better condition most of the time as well. All of this is vital to help ensure ongoing success with your attempt at going vegan. If you fail to think about your nutrients, you might actually end up much less healthy than you had been previously!

Go Vegan and Leave Your Comfort Zone

It can be all too easy to stay in one’s comfort zone, but ultimately this is going to make things a lot more difficult in general when it comes to trying out a new diet. You must be prepared to try new things as much as possible, as that is going to help ensure that going vegan is a lot easier for you. If you think you don’t like noodles or lentils, for instance, try them out in a different kind of recipe, and you might be surprised at how much that helps. Essentially the more you can expand your taste buds, the easier time you will have of going vegan.

Changing your diet in such a radical way can be a lot easier to do if you do it with someone else in tow. You can encourage each other, or even compete with each other for new recipes and delicious vegan meals. All in all, you are going to feel less isolated, and it will help you when it comes to trying to find success with your vegan adventure. It really is one of the best ways to ensure that you go vegan without any trouble, so it’s something you are going to want to think about. Ask around with your friends, your partner, or whoever else, and you should find that this really helps.

As long as you do all that, going vegan is going to be a lot easier and simpler.

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Creative Cookery Healthy Living

How to Persuade Children to Try New Food

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date September 15, 2021

Kids are notoriously picky eaters. They’ll try to avoid any food that’s unfamiliar, whether it be a vegetable or an animal protein. How can you convince them to give something new a chance? Here are some excellent ways to persuade children to try new food.

Be Calm When You Attempt to Persuade Children to Try New Things

If you get upset or angry about the fact that your children aren’t eating what you have given them, this will be quickly picked up by the children themselves, and then they will associate new foods with your disapproval. This can give them a mental block when it comes to trying new things, and they might not even realize it is happening. If you stay calm and ensure it is no big deal, it’s just something different on their plate, they’ll be less concerned with your feelings and more interested in the food itself. If they still don’t try it, don’t say anything. Just try again another time.

Fewer Snacks Can Help Persuade Children to Eat Better at Mealtimes

If you cut down on the number of snacks a child has, they will be hungry enough to try whatever is on their plate when it comes to mealtime. If they have had a snack long before, or they know they’ll get one later on when they ask, there is no incentive to eat what’s there – they’ll know they’ll never go hungry. Once they realize that there won’t be a snack later, they will try the new food (ideally), and hopefully, they will like it.

Don’t Make Them Eat It All

The point here is to encourage children to try new things rather than eat a lot of food, so you shouldn’t ask or expect them to eat everything you give them. Trying it is enough. Of course, if they do find that they like it, they may well eat it all, and if you have any in reserve, they might even have a second helping. Make a rule about food such as they have to try at least a bite of everything on their plate or they won’t get dessert. They know the rule, it’s not a big fuss, and they try new things easily.

Serve It In A Fun Way

Just putting some items on a plate and placing it in front of your child may not inspire their imagination too much – and the food, even if it tastes great, could come across as rather dull. To make them more likely to want to eat what you want them to eat, give them something to think about and to remember. This might be their favorite food with a special sauce, so finding the best mild sauce for chicken is a good idea. You could look at a home taco bar and put all the ingredients out on the table for the kids to build their own tacos with, for example. Or what about making your own pizzas from scratch? There are many ways to make food more interesting, which will help kids want to try new things.

Tags kid-friendly

Healthy Living

Veganism: Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Starting the Lifestyle

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date August 6, 2021

Becoming a vegan is not an easy decision. It takes dedication, patience, and the willingness to learn about new foods. If you are considering veganism or just want to know more about what it means before you decide, then this post is for you. It will answer some of the most common questions people have before starting their vegan journey.

Are You Getting Enough Protein?

Yes, one of the best parts about being a vegan is that so many different types of protein are available to you. You can get it from beans and soy products or even nuts! Make sure that you find something that suits your liking because as long as you make sure to eat enough calories in general, this should not be an issue at all. For example, the chicken stew slow cooker recipe is an excellent source of protein.

Should You Give Up Going to Friends’ Family Dinner?

No, not at all. It is crucial that you still go to family and friends’ function as a vegan because this will help them understand what it means to be a vegan and show them the benefits of being one. In addition, you want your loved ones on board with your new lifestyle so they can support you in any way possible.

Do You Ingest a Healthy Amount of Minerals and Vitamins?

There is no doubt that when you transition to veganism, it can be challenging because of the lack of meat. However, there are many other sources of minerals and vitamins, such as nuts or fruits, which will help you stay healthy.

How To Make Veganism Affordable?

One of the best parts about being a vegan is that it becomes so much cheaper! Vegan produce is affordable and on-demand. However, this does not mean that you will spend any less than if you were eating meat for dinner every day.

What Happens When You Crave Meat?

You might want to try and have some mock meats such as veggie hot dogs or even almondmilk yogurt, which will help satisfy your cravings!

A lot of people think that they need meat for protein, but this is false. In addition, being a vegan gives you many other benefits than being healthier because you won’t ingest cholesterol from animal products anymore.
The health risks of overeating meat can be too significant compared to what kind of nutritional value it has.

What About Your Children? Is Veganism Right for Them?

If you have kids, then this question is a very important one! It might seem difficult at first, but like with anything else in life, it’s doable. Plus, studies show that going vegan has had positive effects on health, so why not make an effort to involve your kids?

There are also great online resources if you need any more advice on getting started without overwhelming your kids.

Conclusion

Being a vegan has many incredible benefits that you should consider before starting. It can be hard at first, but it’s worth the effort to feel healthier and have a better quality of life!

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Healthy Living

How To Add More Healthy Foods To Your Diet

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date August 4, 2021

In the modern-day, ultra-processed foods are often easier to access than natural produce and other healthy foods. Most smaller grocery stores focus their efforts on selling nothing but pre-packaged snack foods, and it’s almost impossible to find a fast food outlet that doesn’t sell junk filled with fat, salt, sugar, and worse.

Failing to consume a nutritious, balanced diet can have a severe impact on both your physical and mental health, as you need to eat a variety of vitamins and minerals to stay fit and happy! Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might imagine to add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, as there are just a few simple steps that you can follow to totally transform the way that you eat (and feel). So, if you’re interested in finding out more, then simply read on to uncover some of the best tips and tricks that you can use now to bring more healthy foods into your diet.

Make Smart Swaps that Maintain Flavor

One of the easiest ways to transform your diet is by introducing a few smart swaps that can help you to say goodbye to unhealthy junk without having to miss out on flavor. There’s no point in trying to substitute a glass of sugar filled cola for a pint of plain water, as the two taste completely different and you will never be able to get the sweet kick that your taste buds are craving! That’s why your swaps have to be smart, otherwise you risk falling right back into your bad habits soon after. If you need a little inspiration, make use of the following swaps to improve your diet in no time:

switch chips for salted popcorn,
ice cream for fruit sorbet,
white bread for seeded wholemeal and
milk chocolate for dark.

When you’re still able to experience some of the textures and tastes that you are craving but end up consuming fewer calories and bad ingredients, that’s a smart swap!

Cook Your Own Healthy Foods From Scratch

Purchasing a ready-made meal is always a risk, as you never know what ingredients have gone into creating the dish, as well as what quality the aforementioned ingredients are. It can be hard to identify just how much fat, sugar and salt is inside a fast food dish or microwaveable meal, and you’ll no doubt be shocked to read the ingredients list of such products as there’s often hundreds of incomprehensible items that no doubt can do real harm when consumed in excess.

Cooking your own food from scratch gives you the chance to control every individual ingredient that goes into the food that you eat, from start to finish! You can substitute for healthier ingredients, cut back on salt and serve up a healthy portion size to ensure that you can truly benefit from the meals that you eat. It’s so easy to find healthy, tasty recipes online, whether you want a protein hit with a fresh blackened mahi mahi recipe or the perfect hydrating summer salad.

Healthy Living

Nutritional Tips To Keep Your Health In Check

Post author By Carma Spence
Post date July 6, 2021

We all heard understand, on some level, that eating a well-balanced diet is important for general health. But what does that mean on a practical day-to-day, in the kitchen, basis? It’s easy to become perplexed about what is genuinely beneficial to your health. Is coffee good for you or not? Is it better to consume fewer or more carbohydrates? Do I get enough protein in my diet? Though it is important for each of us to discover what is best for our bodies, there are some basic principles that appear to benefit the majority of people. I will cover some of the more universal nutritional tips here.

Be simple but creative with your food choices

This is one of my favorite nutritional tips! Keeping your diet simple prevents you from becoming overwhelmed by meal plans and grocery shopping trips. However, if you are a parent, you may want to get creative in order to keep your children interested in eating healthy foods. Vegetables appear to be the most contentious of all the foods that children get finicky about. Check your personal attitude toward them and make sure you haven’t set a bad example. (I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a parent when it comes to this metric! I’m very fussy about veggies.)

Limit refined sugar as much as possible

Our diet has a significant impact on our oral health and other systems in the body. This emphasizes the importance of monitoring your family’s sugar consumption. Even if you limit your sugar intake and clean your teeth regularly, acids and natural sugars can destroy teeth and cause decay. Having regular check-ups at your local dentist, such as https://www.northsidedentalgroup.com will go a long way to protecting your teeth as well as catching any problems before they get too big.

Eat five portions of fruit and veg a day

One of the most common nutritional tips is eating five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. This probably true because it has been found to help avoid major diseases like diabetes, cancer, and strokes. This type of fiber also aids in keeping your digestive system healthy and functioning as it should. If your family doesn’t love eating fresh fruits and veggies, try incorporating them into milkshakes, smoothies, and casseroles. The internet is a terrific source of recipe inspiration.

Eat plenty of protein

Protein is required for the body’s growth and repair. It’s also good for weight loss because it’s tougher to digest than other food categories, so you’ll remain satiated for longer. Fortunately, there are numerous high-quality protein choices available to us, including fish, meats, nuts, beans, and fresh vegetables. Therefore, even if you don’t eat animal products, there are still plenty of ways to meet your daily protein requirements.

Of all the nutritional tips in this post, this one can evolve with age and metabolic type. As you grow older, if you’ve been injured, or if you are insulin resistant, your protein needs increase. Be sure to talk with your doctor about your nutritional needs.

Nutritional Tips About Carbs

Talk about a hotbed of controversy! Contrary to popular belief, carbs are not bad. In fact, carbs are a vital source of energy for the human body. Sugars and starches are two types of carbohydrates. For most people, sugary carbs are the more problematic of the two. Overeating can result in a sluggish digestive system as well as weight gain. Starches like whole-grain bread, potatoes, and pasta can be a good supply of unprocessed carbohydrates. These foods are higher in vitamins and minerals, keep you fuller for longer, and keep your bowels healthy thanks to the high fiber content.

My own personal experience: I’ve been on a high-protein, low-carb diet since late last year. However, I kind of when overboard on the protein and started feeling a little ill. I upped my carbs, while still maintaining more protein than carbs in my diet, and started to feel better again.

Nutritional tips are generalities. You need to understand what YOUR body needs. And speaking with your doctor about your unique metabolism will help.