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7 Tips for Healthy Eating at Home

April 7, 2011 By psnatura 8 Comments

Article by Chef Todd Mohr

I’ve devised my 7 Tips for Healthy Eating at Home because I feel like crap. What the heck is going on? I’m a healthy guy, I’m not overweight. I exercise more than most people. I was the Executive Chef at a large hospital, so I know about nutrition and I can cook.

Why do I feel lousy? Why am I exhausted by the television at 9:00 pm? Why do I sleep 8 full hours and wake up tired? Why do I feel like I need a nap in the afternoon? Why is my attention-span shortening? Why does my memory seem to be duller? Why am I irritable sometimes? Why is this happening to me?

I’m very “busy”. Whew! I have so much to do! Perhaps I can chalk this up to the all-encompassing “stress”. That’s it. It’s just that I’m busy and I’m stressed. Regretfully, I don’t think that’s ever going to change. The question is now, “what CAN I change to feel better”?

The answer keeps coming back to me – diet. I don’t use the word “diet” like a fad-diet best seller. I use the word diet like the controlled sustenance they give to zoo animals. Diet is what you normally eat every day, not what you eat for a few weeks. Since food is fuel, and I can control what I eat, I need to scrutinize my overall diet.

These 7 tips for healthy eating at home are either small or large changes you can join me in making in our lives. Again, I’m healthy, not overweight, and I exercise a lot. However, I’ve found these small changes can make a big difference in returning my energy, wellness, and mental acuity.

1) Grocery Store Choices – The items you toss in your grocery buggy are your weeks’ fuel. Do you choose high-octane or low-quality fuel? Many food writers and bloggers advise that you shop around the perimeter of the grocery store. That’s where the vegetables, meats, and seafood are. The interior aisles of the store contain the chips, canned, and processed foods.

The problem is that the perimeter of the grocery can be more expensive, calorie for calorie, than the interior. Our Food Scientists have designed it that way. One dollar in the fresh produce section will yield a bag of spinach for about 15 calories. However, a bag of potato chips will give you 150 calories for the same dollar. Is this more fuel for the money, or just cheaper fuel?

Choose whole foods, those with less than 5 ingredients on the label, preferably only one ingredient on the label. If you like to eat beef, buy “beef”, not processed Steak-umms or frozen dinners that add fillers and empty calories to weigh you and your energy level down.

You can’t control what goes into take-out and restaurant foods. Honestly, their main objective is to make their business profitable, not improve your health. They will provide delicious food, hitting on all the comfort points the human tongue can perceive. They’re not looking out for your health and energy level, only you can do that.

Buy foods as close to their natural state as possible and you’ll have better results from what you eat.

2) Use Healthier Cooking Methods – All the other healthy eating tips can be absolutely ruined if you are cooking in a manner that adds unnecessary fat and calories to weigh you down. It’s not your fault if Grandma taught you to pan-fry everything in 2 cups of oil, or 2 sticks of butter. That’s the way she did it, but it’s time to consider alternative methods to increase your wellness and energy level.

The best methods for retaining the nutrition of the food you purchase are those that don’t add calories, but enhance the natural flavor of the food. Steaming is best for delicate items like fish and shellfish. Roasting or grilling are excellent methods for tougher items like beef or chicken.

The best and quickest way to turn healthy ingredients into healthy dishes is with Saute’. Saute is the stove-top method of applying intense heat directly to food through your sauté pan. The difference between sauté and Grandma’s pan frying is the amount of oil used.

In sauté, the object is to use as little fat as possible. The fat in this method is used to conduct heat from the bottom of the pan to your food item. It’s not meant to flavor or retain moisture. Saute cooks too fast for that.

Skip the breading. Chicken Parmesan is just as good with a grilled chicken breast than with a flour/egg/crumbs mixture adding calories and fat.

Cooking methods that use indirect heat like roasting and steaming, or direct heat like grilling and sauté are the best ones for healthy eating. Being able to duplicate these techniques with a variety of foods will result in more wholesome, nutritious, flavorful items.

3) Better Cooking Ingredients, Less Condiments – Choose real ingredients when you cook, but use less of them. Whatever you goal in improving your diet at home, removing the fake or inefficient foods in your diet can push you past the finish line.

If you must have a sweet taste in your beverage, use real sugar not a sugar-like substance from the food laboratory. Your body has no idea what that fake sugar is. If it has no idea how to categorize it, your body stores it as fat. Slowly train your palate to use less and less real sugar, skipping the chemicals.

The same is true for cooking ingredients. One tablespoon of real, flavorful olive oil will give health benefits and enjoyment that a full cup of hydrolyzed corn oil can’t.

If you learn to make your own simple sauces, you can avoid the additives in jarred sauces. Again, you have no control over what goes into a jar sold on the interior of the grocery store. A simple roux of one tablespoon REAL butter and flour will satisfy you much more than purchased Alfredo Sauce bound with modified cornstarch.

4) Start Portioning and Portion Correctly – Not every meal needs to be an endless buffet. That second helping may make you feel better at the table, but it’s what is keeping you awake at night.

The average adult will eat 12 ounces of food each meal. This should be 4-5 ounces of protein like chicken, meat, fish, or beans. Also, 3-4 ounces of starch like potatoes, pasta, or rice; and 2-3 ounces of vegetables.

Figuring these portions starts at the grocery store and ends just before the cooked food is placed on the plate. If you have a family of four, don’t cook 6 chicken breasts! Just don’t do it. Weigh your potatoes, pasta, and vegetables before cooking and only cook that amount.

Force-feeding leftovers because “they’ll go to waste” is another cause of over-eating, poor nutrition, and eventual lethargy.

5) Stop Snacking, or Eat Healthier Snacks – Respect meal time as the time to eat a meal. One of my best tips for eating healthy is not to eat “in-transit”. Stop eating in your car, stop eating engineered foods in a mylar bag as you move from place to place. This is where the empty calories are consumed that will make you feel lousy the rest of the day.

However, if know you are always hungry at 10am and 3pm, prepare for this eventuality with healthier snacks. I don’t mean carrot and celery sticks, that never lasts. But, switch from potato chips to pretzels, or from pretzels to nuts and dried fruit. If you’re on a special high-protein diet, your snack can be the leftover chicken breast that you planned to cook, but didn’t eat last night.

Plan your snacks, don’t be surprised by hunger, and your actual meals will be better accepted by your body, giving greater energy and happier outlook on life.

6) Drink Water – I’m not the first person you’ve heard say this. Soft drinks, drink powders, coffee drinks, and energy drinks can spike your metabolism, dehydrate you, and confuse your body with artificial sweeteners.

This can be the most difficult step for many people, as kicking the Coke habit can be as difficult as kicking the cocaine habit. An addict’s an addict. If you feel that you MUST have a can of soda, that should be a red flag to you. Your body is hooked on something and is now controlling you. Nobody is hooked on broccoli. Broccoli is not engineered to hit all the pleasure centers in the brain. Sweetened and carbonated drinks are.

Water is flavorless, but crucial to help in the digestion of all the other positive food improvements you’ve made. Start replacing everything you drink with water and you’ll see immediate results in your energy level. Buy yourself a cool new stainless steel water bottle and save the environment at the same time.

7) Educate Yourself – Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to Michael Pollan. Don’t listen to any single expert or guru. Listen to all of them and make your own plan and decisions.

Seek out the knowledge that will improve your life permanently, not just for a short period of time. Ask friends about their eating habits. Read books on health and nutrition, not fad diets. Subscribe to websites and newsletters that focus on healthy eating and lifestyle. Watch television shows that will improve your diet and approach to eating.

The information is available to you, but nobody is going to simply plant it in your brain. Nor will anyone give you the motivation to seek out this knowledge. It’s all up to you. Find what your healthy eating goal is and find the people that have gone before you. Study them, follow what they do and you can do the same.

You’re not too busy. It’s not too hard. You don’t have to be smart, educated, wealthy or famous to make small changes in the way you interact with yourself. What do you believe you can do? What do you believe you CAN’T do? Either way, you’re correct. You can only do what you believe and you definitely won’t accomplish what you don’t.

You needn’t use all of these 7 tips for healthy eating at home. Start with one of the tips that fits most comfortably in your life. When you start to notice that you’re sleeping better, have more energy, are nicer to your kids, lowered your blood sugar, lost body fat, don’t have allergic reactions, or just feel better, you’ll be motivated to try another tip. Then another tip, then another. Now, you’ve changed your life and lifestyle, not just your diet.

See the entire 7 Tips for Healthy Eating at Home video.

About the Author

Chef Todd Mohr is a classically trained chef, entrepreneur, cooking educator and founder of WebCookingClasses. You can experience his unique approach to no-recipe cooking with his FREE online cooking classes . The 7 minute class will change the way you think about cooking forever.

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How To Start Healthy Eating

April 7, 2011 By psnatura 5 Comments

Article by Len Kluver

If you, at the present time are not eating a healthy diet, as most of us know, it can be a task to get started on healthy diet plan. Healthy eating is essential for providing good bodily function and maintaining a life relatively free from decease. If you find eating healthy a struggle, then you maybe aware that trying to undo unhealthy habits can be the hardest part of the process. However, if you are committed to living the best lifestyle possible, it is essential to follow proven ways in order to begin eating a more healthy diet.

A good starting point to eating healthy diet is to remove all the foods in your home that do not fit into healthy food categories, such as junk foods and beverages to help prevent you from snacking during the day. If you’re concerned about perhaps getting hungry, stock up on healthy snacks like carrot sticks, yogurt, fresh fruit, or whole wheat crackers to satisfy your hunger. If you find it difficult to remove the sweets, try satisfying the sugar fix you crave, by eating something tiny, like a few chocolate chips. This will prevent you from disrupting your ongoing healthy eating diet

Another great step to healthy eating is, begin the process by taking a little time to familiarize yourself with what foods are the healthiest for you and how they function in the body. Most people aware that fruits, vegetables, and dairy products are healthy for you, but, don’t really know why they are a healthy food, educating yourself about nutrient value is the key. With the knowledge of how specific nutrients function in the body, you will understand the need for making these healthy choices for your body. Knowledge is powerful!

You should also prepare a schedule for eating your meals before starting a new healthy diet. If you are not following a schedule, chances are good you will be in a rush to eat at odd times of day, and possibly not eating the best foods for a healthy diet. Instead of eating a fast food lunch on the go, take a prepared bag lunch with a healthy sandwich and fresh vegetables or fruit. Eating healthy meals, such as in the evening, may require you to plan ahead that will allow you enough time to prepare healthy dinners. If time just prior to mealtime is not available for cooking your meal, you may have to prepare your meals in advance. This will allow you enough time so you do not have to be rushed into eating a healthy meal

If you must, take small steps to eating a healthy diet. By replacing a soda each day with a glass of water, you have begun to reduce your calorie intake. If you eat fast-food each day for lunch, try reducing that amount a little each time, and replace difference with healthy foods. While taking small steps, it allows you time to educate yourself about healthy foods that you will learn to enjoy later.

About the Author

Len has written several articles online for over 3 years now. Not only does this author specialize in health and fitness issues. Check out his latest website at fishingtackleboxesstyle.com which helps fishing enthusiast select the proper fishing tackle boxes to their type of fishing requirements.

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Healthy Eating Tips Aimed At Children

April 7, 2011 By psnatura 4 Comments

Article by Glen Williams

If you stay on top of the news, you probably already know that obesity is the number one health problem and type II diabetes is becoming epidemic among US children. Yet, many parents are baffled at how to get their children to eat more healthy foods. Getting children to eat healthy isn’t as complicated as it first appears. By following a few healthy eating tips for several months to a year, children will begin to prefer healthy food choices, because that’s what the body craves, anyway. The tips include healthy choices, variety, color, avoiding junk food and…very important, do-it-yourself instructions.

Make Healthy Food Choices: Controlling food choices is essential for children to begin eating healthy. Food choices don’t have to be controlled in the home, if they are controlled at the supermarket, cafeteria and restaurant. If only this tip were used, children would be far healthier than they are today. If it doesn’t get into the basket, it doesn’t come home. If it doesn’t come home, it can’t be eaten there. Simply by choosing low fat, non fat, sugar free, and fresh, unprocessed foods, you can deal a death blow to obesity. “But my son won’t drink diet soda.” Fine, there’s the water faucet! Which one of you is responsible for his health?”But my daughter’s school serves processed food meals for lunch.” Give her no lunch money…Send her with a bag lunch…if they insist she eat their lunch, find a more flexible school or one that serves only healthy food choices. You can always make ice cream or cake an occasional treat, but if someone is loading your child up every day on sugars, fats and salts, they are literally poisoning and addicting the child to things that will destroy their health.

One 4-year-old I knew naturally preferred vegetables over everything else. Her mother forced her to eat pork chops like mine forced me to eat spinach. If your child naturally prefers things that are healthy, don’t fight it. You can find creative ways to add proteins, like soy beans, nuts and beans that are high in proteins. Don’t fight success! Don’t accept failure, either. Another family I knew had the mother scurrying to meet every tiny food preference the children had. It turned out that the only thing all of them liked was pizza, beef (especially hamburgers), cheese, corn and ice cream. Needless to say, the whole family struggles with weight issues. The tip of making healthy food choices is only successful if you use the discipline to make those healthy choices consistently. Skipping back and forth can’t be an option if your aim is to teach your children to make healthy food choices.

Use Variety In Texture, Flavor And Color: One of the most helpful tips in aiming kids toward healthy foods is to use a variety. Young children are attracted to bright primary colors, which is one of the reasons yellow corn is popular. I didn’t like salad as a kid, but it was always the same…iceberg lettuce and tomatoes…on Thanksgiving we got croutons. There are so many beautiful colors and interesting flavors in the vegetable section, there is no reason to use one boring recipe over and over. Fruits are naturally colorful, full of many nutrients and unprocessed sugar. Fresh fruits are excellent snack and dessert substitutes. Many ideas for variety and color of snacks are in my article Making Healthy Snack Choices which is too long to duplicate here. Please…if you want kids to like vegetables, don’t use those mushy canned ones…they have no nutrients and are the most unpleasant things for a kid to eat. Almost everything in cans is also available frozen and is simple to cook, using a microwave. Use pepper, garlic powder, ground dill or basil for added flavor with no salt. Also, use variety in preparation methods by going from stir-fry, to baked, to BBQ, etc. The very changes in texture, color and flavor of foods gives kids an appreciation for the natural flavors of healthy foods.

Eating Healthy Saves Time And Money: Many people have the misconception that eating healthy is expensive and takes a lot of time. In my personal experience doing both, preparing healthy foods is no more time-consuming than preparing unhealthy foods. In fact, most recipes are faster and easier to prepare, and there’s no driving or waiting in line for the prepared foods. Time is just an excuse! As far as cost goes, well, there’s a huge difference. Eating healthy is far less expensive. The average family could save at least 75% of their food budget if they switched to fresh meats, fruits and vegetables and eliminated the prepared snacks and meals. Anyone can do this and improve the health practices of their children. All it takes is the decision to change and the discipline to stick to it.

Do It Yourself-Avoiding Junk Food: You may have noticed I talk a lot about preparing this and cooking that. That’s because one of the healthy eating practices every child should learn is the practice of doing it yourself. By doing the cooking yourself, you set the example that it can be done…you don’t have to bring your meal home already cooked from the store or restaurant. Doing it yourself puts you in charge of the amount of salt, fat, carbohydrates and proteins in your foods. It’s much healthier! Also, one of the things that makes food interesting is cooking it. If your kids get to take part in the preparation, they have a vested interest in eating the foods. You can’t do that with dinner-in-a-box.

When we talk about using “do-it-yourself” to aim your kids toward eating healthy, there is one tip that outweighs all others. If you want your kids to eat healthy, do it yourself. You can’t eat ice cream and tell them it’s only for grown-ups. While puffing on a cigarette, my Dad told us never to smoke “It’s a filthy habit.” I’ll bet you know how that turned out…four out of five of his children smoked. If you want your kids to eat healthy, set the example by eating healthy, yourself.

Of course, where kids are concerned, there is no guarantee, but the vast majority of children will eat healthy if their parents make healthy food choices, use variety, plan and prepare the meals, and provide a healthy eating example in their choices. The bottom line in most cases, childhood obesity isn’t an epidemic…it’s a choice. Choose health!

About the Author

Glen Williams is Webmaster athttp://www.e-health-fitness.com and Founding CEO of E-Home Fellowship (EHF), Inc. He has counseled and helped people on life and health issues since 1987. You can comment on his articles at hisHealth And Fitness Forums.

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