Healthy Protein and Granola Bars
Thanksgiving 2014
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope you all are able to spend this wonderful holiday with family, friends and delicious food! Here are a few tips to help you enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with out over indulging :).
Pre-dinner:
v Eat breakfast!! Don’t skip meals to save up all of your calories for the big meal. You will make better portion choices if you don’t come to the dinner table on an empty stomach
v Start the day out with activity! Even if it’s only for 20min, it will make a difference!!
- take a class
- Do the Turkey Trot!!
- Or just go for a walk and take in some fresh air
v Stay hydrated throughout the day, drink lots of water J
Dinner:
v First, get a visual for what 1 serving of Thanksgiving Dinner actually looks like http://greatist.com/health/serving-size-thanksgiving-portion-guide
v When serving yourself at dinner, take small amounts or single scoops. Remember you can always have seconds!
v If you have an option, pick a smaller plate so that your plate will seem full.
v Honor the food! Take the time to say thanks and appreciate the food and the nutrients it will provide you. Don’t forget to appreciate who made it too!
v Talk to family and friends during dinner. This will give your body time to enjoy the flavor of the food – you might even stop eating when you’re full instead of over indulging.
v Get away from the table when you’re done eating and entertain yourself with something other than food.
Looking for some healthy holiday recipes?!? Here’s 30! Click the link below to view an eCookBook that myfitnesspal put together with recipes from Cooking Light:
https://myfitnesspal.uberflip.com/i/421086
Here are a few examples of the recipes you’ll find:
- Sweet and Sour Meat Balls
- Butternut Squash, Caramelized Onion and Spinach Lasagna
- Wild Rice, Roasted Chestnuts and Cranberries
- Easy Eggnog
- Hot Chocolate Fudge Cakes
Yours in Health and Wellness,
Meredith
An Apple A Day Does More Than Keep The Doctor Away :)
Good Morning McKinley!
We’ve all heard the saying, “An apple a day keeps the Doctor away”, right? The benefits actually go beyond avoiding a visit to the Doctor. Some of these benefits you may already be aware of. For instance, the fiber in the apple can keep you feeling fuller longer and the sweetness of the apple can satiate a sugar craving that may have led you to indulge in a piece of cake or hand full of cookies :).
I’m sure the last time you ate an apple you weren’t thinking about the fat burning effects it was going to have on your body, were you? Well, according to a study conducted by scientist at the University of Iowa, apples can actually help you burn fat and hold on to lean muscle mass because of a pentacyclic triterpeoid (a natural chemical) called ursolic acid which is found in apple peels. Here are a few of the benefits:
- Helps burn fat. How? Increases brown fat cells. You might be thinking “Yikes” but this is actually a good thing. I’ll keep this simple…there are 2 types of body fat, white fat and brown fat. The purpose of white fat is to store fat. You could refer to this fat as inactive. The purpose of brown fat is to burn calories and keep you warm. You could refer to this fat as active. To gain a better understanding of the these fats, click the link below:
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-truth-about-fat
- Reduce muscle atrophy and stimulate muscle growth. This will also lead to greater fat burning potential…the more lean muscle you have, the more fat you will burn throughout the day 🙂
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311100177X
- Reduce blood sugar levels, cholesterol and triglycerides!!
How many apples do you really need to eat to experience the benefits? Well, it really depends on the person. In the article I’ve linked below, a woman went from eating no apples daily to eating one apple daily and gradually lost 20lbs. She did not disclose the rest of her weight loss regimen, but did attribute some of her success to eating an apple a day. Click the link below to read her story:
http://voices.yahoo.com/apples-health-weight-control-12548795.html.
There are some ursolic acid supplements on the market today, but I don’t know enough about them to say a supplement would be better than consuming it from a natural source. For now, I would recommend getting your daily dose from foods that naturally contain it. If you are going to try an ursolic acid supplement, PLEASE check in with your Doctor before you start taking a high potency supplement.
Other foods that contain ursolic acid are cranberries (with skin), prunes, basil, bilberries, peppermint, rosemary, thyme, sage and oregano (the pictures above are in the order of the foods just listed). Ursolic acid is potent in apple peels, but according to www.ursolicare.com, sage holds the greatest concentration of extractable ursolic acid. I personally don’t eat sage leaves daily so I will probably stick to an apple or 2 a day 🙂.
If you’re interested in reading more about apples and the benefits of ursolic acid, click the links below:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304830704577497111487022018
http://yourbrainonbliss.com/Blog/?p=1456
Yours in Health and Wellness,
Meredith
12 Healthy Late Night Snacks
Do you ever get the late night munchies? Sometimes you want to eat something because you’re bored and other times you want to eat something because you really are hungry. Below are 12 healthy snacks options you could eat before bed. Keep in mind, if you are going to indulge in one of these healthy snacks, allow yourself one hour before going to bed so you have plenty of time to digest 🙂.
1. Veggies and 1/3 cup of hummus
2. 10-12 slices of cucumber
3. 1 cup of pretzels
4. 1 small apple
5. 10-15 almonds, pistachios or walnuts
6. 2 hard boiled eggs
7. 1 cup of cheerios dry or with your choice of low fat milk
8. 2 cups of popcorn, no butter. If you want seasoning, try lime powder, cayenne pepper or cinnamon
9. 1 low moisture (low fat) cheese stick
10. 1 piece of dark chocolate, 72% cocoa
11. ½ cup of frozen berries (I love frozen blueberries)
12. 1 plain greek yogurt sweetened with frozen fruit or 1 tsp of honey
Enjoy 🙂
Yours in Health and Wellness,
Meredith Mitchell
Hassle Free Meal Planning!
Hi Everyone!!
Part of the hassle with meal planning is thinking of all the ingredients you need for the week and making the grocery list. Emeals.com takes the hassle away!! It’s pretty awesome. This is what they provide:
1. Monthly meal plans for:
Option 1 – Dinner
Option 2 – Lunch and Dinner
Option 3 – Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
2. All the recipes
3. Ingredient/grocery list
They give you several meal plans to choose from:
~ Classic Meals
~ Clean Eating
~ Paleo
~ Low Calorie
~ Slow Cooker
~ Low Fat
~ Low Carb
~ Portion Control
~ Simple Gourmet
~ Mediterranean
~ Natural and Organic
~ Gluten Free
~ Vegetarian
Check out their website:
http://www.emeals.com/
There is a groupon available for the next 8 days for all three options!! If you only wanted the dinner option, you would receive 12 months of weekly online meal plans for only $29! The prices go up from there if you would like to add on lunch or breakfast. Click the link below for the groupon:
Yours in Health and Wellness,
Meredith Mitchell
What you thought was an allergy, might not actually be one…
Hi Everyone!!
Have you ever felt sick, had a hard time pin pointing what might be the cause so you start looking up your symptoms online to give yourself a self diagnosis? Most likely we have all done this just to avoid a trip to the doctor. There’s a lot of great information online BUT I don’t think you should substitute a doctor’s consultation, for the information you find on your own…I think you should do both.
Sherrie Ngo shared an article with me a couple weeks ago that I wanted to pass along to all of you.
http://www.today.com/health/allergy-myths-busted-guess-what-you-didnt-know-about-gluten-8C11545200
In the article, Dr. Stukus an allergist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and assistant professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University, separates fact from fiction in the cases of 5 well known allergies (or at least what we thought were allergies). Dr. Stukus blames the internet for the widespread misinformation about allergies. I would encourage you to read the whole article but I wanted to highlight one of the myths. Gluten. According to Stukus, a gluten allergy does not exist! The only three disorders that can be attributed to gluten are celiac disease, wheat allergies and non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Wheat contains gluten, so if you have a wheat allergy it’s very easy to assume you have a gluten allergy when in reality you may not.
More and more restaurants are offering a gluten free menu and grocery stores are offering more gluten free products. This is great news for those with celiac’s disease. However, if you do not have celiac’s disease, it is not necessarily healthier for you to switch to a gluten free diet according to Peter H.R. Green, MD, director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University. Green tells WebMD “unless people are very careful, a gluten-free diet can lack vitamins, minerals, and fiber”. Click the link below to read the whole article. It’s very interesting and a quick read.
http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthy-kitchen-11/truth-about-gluten?page=1
Here’s the bottom line. If you have celiac’s disease you need a gluten free diet (I know you already know this). If you do not suffer from celiac’s disease, you should eat a balanced diet with whole grains, fruits, veggies, protein and healthy fats. Unless you have been medically diagnosed with a condition such as lactose intolerance or celiac’s disease, I don’t think you should completely cut anything out from your diet. It is possible you might need to cut back on something, like sugar, but you do not need to cut sugar out completely. Let me be clear. If you cut pop out of your diet, I am not suggesting you add pop back into your diet as sugar is found in a variety of other healthier sources 🙂
Have a great day!!