Entries Tagged 'nutrition' ↓
June 19th, 2008 — Meals, alternative ideas, healthy eating, nutrition
All of us know that we need to start eating healthier and get more fruits and vegetables into our diets. The hard part is actually doing it. For many people, it’s just hard to get past the taste. However, there are ways that you can easily add more servings of fruit or vegetables to your diet with little effort. We’ll show you ways to cheat and still enjoy your food.
1. Start with salsa substitution.
If you eat a lot of dips, you’re adding a whole bunch of useless calories into your daily rotation. Put away that dip and bring out the salsa. It contains numerous vegetables and fruit and the taste is terrific. Better yet, it’s fat free and extremely low calorie. You can use salsa on just about anything to make it taste better and you’re getting the benefit of adding more servings of these important foods to your diet with little effort.
You can use it with chips, or tortillas, on eggs or pretty much anything. If salsa is not really your thing, try experimenting with a couple of different brands or you can even try to make your own with vegetables you like. Fruit salsa is surprisingly good when combined with cottage cheese or other low fat dairy products. This is probably the easiest way to get more fruit and vegetables into your diet with little effort.
2. Add one more serving of vegetables or fruits with every meal.
At breakfast, have some low sodium tomato juice or a sliced apple. At lunch, you can add in some delicious corn or a pear. With dinner, try experimenting with a tossed salad with low fat dressing. This makes it easy to get at least three more servings of fruits or vegetables into your diet without any effort at all. What’s more, these servings will help you fill up faster and avoid overeating other foods that are less healthy.
3. Retrain your palate.
Some of us simply just don’t like fresh fruits or vegetables. The key here is to retrain your palate and make your brain think that you actually enjoy them. Start small and add low fat sauces or little things to make the vegetables taste better. For example, you can spread a little bit of peanut butter inside a stalk of celery. Suddenly, that tasteless stalk actually tastes good and you’re getting the added benefit of more protein. This makes a great afternoon snack. Just don’t overdo it on the peanut butter or you won’t be getting any benefit.
Simple things can make vegetables and fruits a lot better. However, you can also try experimenting a little. Just because you don’t like one fruit or vegetable doesn’t mean you may not love another. Get creative and go outside your usual routine with new vegetables you’ve never tasted before. You can actually have a lot of fun by trying out all sorts of new foods and seeing which ones you enjoy.
Photo Credits: 1
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June 8th, 2008 — diet, exercise, moderation, motivation, nutrition, weight loss, wellness
This week from the Fitness Health Network I present to you more of my favorite posts:
Here are some other articles that I found noteworthy this week from other blogs. Take a look at them:
- Andrew posts A run in the fog. Toward the end there was a segment on walking with a baby backpack. Forget the stroller; if you want a workout carry your baby around for an hour.
- Mizfitonline presents Guest Chef Time Thursday with three easy on the go meals and snacks.
- For some spot on healthier living choices, and I do mean living… read Reducing Allergies in Your Home posted by Nutrition Fitness Life for a room by room makeover.
Thanks to TheraputicReki for having us in their #141 - June 7 2008: Carnival of Healing and to Workoutebooks for Workout Blog Carnival - June 2, 2008
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May 30th, 2008 — Book Review, diet, exercise, healthy eating, nutrition
With summer coming, many of us are focusing on how we’re going to look at the beach or the pool. There is a lot of money to be made off of spring diet books and every year, we are besieged with the latest plans that will help us get that bikini body we’ve always wanted. (Editor’s Note: review written by Weight Ladder’s wife 
) The main problem with many of these titles is that they don’t focus on healthy weight loss and that weight does tend to creep back on once you stop the diet. This book promises results in just two weeks, and that set off our radar systems right away. While you can lose a lot of weight in just two weeks, the majority of it is going to be water weight and this can give a false sense of hope to dieters and work to actually derail them from the diet when that water weight comes back.
While there are some very good tips in the book, such as eating the right kind of fats and focusing on foods that contain the nutrition you need to get healthy, the one major failing is that it requires a huge commitment for exercise. For many dieters that are just getting started the two hour daily minimum commitment is going to be just to hard to reach. This can lead to feeling like a failure and instead of staying on track towards getting healthy and losing weight, many people may just give up.
More than 75 recipes are offered and most are delicious and well balanced. The exercise plan is actually quite reasonable, but the time commitment required is a major drawback. The exercises in and of themselves are not terribly difficult, but it’s the sheer amount that may turn a lot of people off of the program. Some people just cannot do that level of activity, especially if they are just starting out.
Our main problem with this diet is the promise that you’ll be ready in two weeks. It takes a lot longer than that to lose weight in a healthy fashion and unless you’re only wanting to lose 5 to 10 pounds, this diet will be pretty discouraging. That and the fact that the two hour exercise requirement is really kind of glossed over, the whole book fell short of what it could have been.
Although it contains healthy recipes and some great advice on lifestyle changes, we just cannot recommend this book as a healthy way to lose weight. If you’re in it for the long term and you have an extra two hours a day, this may be the perfect diet for you. But you’ll need to go in with the right expectations and realize that Rome wasn’t built in a day and if you want to look good in your bikini, it may take a little longer than 2 weeks. That said, there is some useful information and if you go in with the right mindset, this diet may actually work for you.
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May 25th, 2008 — exercise, nutrition, wellness
With Memorial Day this Monday I just wanted to take the time to say just how grateful I am for the service of our country’s Veterans. God bless.
For those of you that don’t already know… All Top is attempting to aggregate all of the very best blogs in a plethora of topics. Alltop has selected Weight Ladder for an addition into the Health topic… There are a lot of other great blogs here and I am honored to be included… You should check out alltop… here is a little more from their about page:
We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections — “aggregations” — into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.
You can think of an Alltop site as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In other words, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation” by providing “aggregation without aggravation.”
Now it is time for the weekly roundup of the Fitness Health Network. The following are my personal favorites for this week:
- Did you know that most Americans suffer from depression? Lazy Man and Health brings up this interesting fact with Fight Depression with Talk Therapy on Friday.
- If you’re on a diet you might want to check out 20 Worst Foods in America written by Journal of Healthy Living. Just be sure you’re not one of those people who gain weight simply by thinking about food.
- So if you’ve read that, by now you’re probably thinking you might never eat out again. But wait! 10 Healthiest Chain Restaurants posted at Get Fit Slowly could just change your mind.
- Rising Gas Prices Can Help Your Weight Loss That’s right, they can. Save money on gas this summer, this fall, this year simply by finding an alternative way to go besides your car. Learn how at Fat Man Unleashed.
Here are some more blog posts that interested me. I hope you like them as well.
Thanks to Natural Pain Relief for having us in their The Best Blogging Carnival of Healing #139.
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May 19th, 2008 — about, healthy eating, moderation, motivation, nutrition, rewards, weight loss, wellness
I have been tagged by Fat Man Unleashed to write a 6 word memoir. His was Be About It!
My 5 word memoir is Healthy, Happy, Wealthy, and Wise.
At the end of the day, this is how I will remember my life.
- Healthy — this one is pretty self explanatory, but it does require work to get there from here. I am currently perfectly healthy, however I know that without choosing to lose weight and exercise regularly NOW that will not always be the case. It will be the case and I am committed to losing the weight and maintaining the healthy lifestyle. I have had a wonderful first 30 some odd years and I intend to have another healthy 100 or so in front of me.
- Happy — I have met the woman of my dreams, I have a wonderful child, I played basketball in college, I am good at and enjoy my job, enjoying every minute, doing what I enjoy, experiencing the best things in life, fulfilled.
- Wealthy — In spirit and eventually monetarily. Content. Wanting for nothing.
- Wise — At least in my own mind.
And now it is my turn to tag a few people to write their own 6 word memior
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May 16th, 2008 — blood pressure, calories, fats, food labels, healthy eating, nutrition, sodium
If you’ve ever tried reading a food label, chances are it’s tough to get through all of the different amounts, crazy names and percentages. However, there is an easy way to read those labels to get exactly the information that you need to know in a lot less time. By targeting those labels you’ll know right off the bat if it’s something that will be beneficial for your diet, or might sabotage it.
The calorie count is probably the first thing that you should look at, since it is the most important. You’ll need to keep track of how many calories you’re eating every day to stay under your required amount. If the calories are too high, see if there is something you can replace that will keep you under your limit. Just remember to write everything down so that you can keep track.
The second most important piece of information on the label is the amount of fat contained in it. Most Americans eat more than 60 grams of fat a day, and that is usually considered to be too much. While on a diet, it’s a good idea to keep your fat grams to around 30 per day. Log this information and if the fat content seems too high, find an alternative.
Next up is sodium, and this is an area that many people don’t pay enough attention to. The average requirement for daily sodium intake is around 2400 mg. Unfortunately, most people eat way more than that. Always look at the sodium content to make sure that you’re staying under your required amount. The foods to look out for in this area are ramen noodles, canned soups and vegetables as well as prepackaged lunch meat. Too much sodium can lead to high blood pressure as well as water retention.
You’ll also want to look at the amount of carbs in a serving. Once again, most of eat far too many carbs. Think of carbs as sugar - one teaspoon of sugar usually equals about 4 carbs. That means one can of soda can have more than 8 teaspoons of sugar in it. If that seems like a lot (it is) this will give you a better appreciation of how much sugar you are really eating.
The last thing to look at on a label are the ingredients. One common ingredient contained in canned foods is monosodium glutamate. Many people believe that this is responsible for excess weight gain and if you are sensitive to it, you can end up with a migraine headache. While the studies are still out about the harm that monosodium glutamate or MSG as it is commonly known, it is best to avoid it. Yeast extract and autolyzed yeast also contain MSG, so watch out for those names as well.
Reading labels doesn’t have to be hard. With this system, you can tell with a simple glimpse whether or not you should be eating that food. With practice, you’ll be zipping along.
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