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Though your grocery store’s freezer section is packed with affordable and nutritious items, there are certain frozen foods to skip if your goal is healthy weight loss or good nutrition in general, for that matter.
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Every year, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) issues its Dirty Dozen Fruits and Vegetables. This is a list of the twelve types of produce that are likely to be highest in pesticides. These “dirtiest” among fruits and veggies have been making the list since 2004.
Many of us are taught that if we want to start living healthy, we need to lose weight. That said, many experts in the field suggest that it is better to take that perspective and flip it around. By learning to live a healthful life, weight loss will result. It is a natural part of adopting these various lifestyle habits and is more sustainable than a plan meant only to reach a goal on a bathroom scale.
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Though it might be new information to you, you should understand why artificial sweeteners while dieting are not automatically a good idea. It’s important to understand, first and foremost, that these are made up of substances that do not provide nutrition. Therefore, deciding whether or not they are appropriate for you needs to be a consideration of their own inherent risks and the risks compared to what you are replacing – typically speaking, sugar.
It’s a staple of summer fun, yet we need to find healthier recipes for a summer picnic. So many of us will set out to enjoy a delicious and festive picnic in the warmer months, but we won’t realize just what we’re eating. There are some foods that we accept as the norm when really, they need a healthy overhaul. If you are eating these foods, then it’s time to do some re-evaluating.
Before getting started, it’s important to acknowledge that efforts to stop holiday weight gain should not be at the top of your list this year. There are far too many things going on. The last thing you need is to take moments of enjoyment and celebration and turn them into experiences of guilt and struggle. This is meant to be a happy time of year, but it’s also a busy and stressful one. Remember that you deserve to relax and enjoy yourself, too.
There is a difference between making an effort to stop holiday weight gain and filling your head with it. Yes, it’s most certainly important to practice mindfulness. Your nutrition and physical activity level are vital to your overall wellbeing and physical health. However, when it comes to enjoying specific days of celebration, give yourself the opportunity to let go and enjoy them. If you’re focused on treating yourself well throughout the year, one day per month isn’t going to set you back so far that you can’t quickly recover.
If you spend celebration days focused on trying to stop holiday weight gain, you’ll feel frustrated, deprived, and likely won’t keep up your healthy efforts over the long term. That would be a shame as the true value in what you’re doing is in the long term, not in what you do on specific holidays.
All that said, it’s still important to avoid falling into the trap of letting go of everything throughout the entire season. You can stop holiday weight gain while still sitting down to a Christmas feast on December 25th. However, if you’re feasting regularly and a handful of cookies have become a part of your everyday life throughout November and December, that’s where the problems may lie.
Use these tips to help keep yourself on track while still enjoying the special days of celebration this year.
You may keep up your traditional dishes on the big days, but what about the days in between? What about what you’re doing with leftovers? Consider making healthy holiday meals on the days surrounding the big events. That way, you’ll still feel festive and will be treating yourself and your loved ones to special foods throughout the holidays, without overdoing it.
Once you’re done your healthy holiday meals, head outside to walk in the snow and look at the lights on the houses. Make it a brisk enough walk to get your heart pumping, but take the time to look around you, too. Check out what your neighbors have done with their decorations. Think about how all the different styles create a beautiful neighborhood that shines in the darkness. This will be great for both your mental and physical fitness.
You may not be able to plan everything to stop holiday weight gain throughout the next month, but you can plan some things. For instance, you can plan your breakfasts. Start your day off right with nutrition and the intention to avoid feeling hungry and ready to snack. Plan your lunch and, if possible, bring it with you. This avoids the inclination to get take-out.
Is a vitamin B complex all you need to boost your weight loss effectiveness? Is it really just a matter of regularly taking an affordable nutrition supplement? Unfortunately, there isn’t a single nutrient or even combination of vitamins that will cause the pounds to slide away without requiring you to make any other changes. That said, your nutrition can play a role in helping you along.
A vitamin B complex can play a role in your weight loss strategy, even if it’s not doing all the work for you. These nutrients play a part in your body’s process of metabolizing the food you eat. They can also promote better appetite control in certain circumstances. Moreover, research has shown that there is a link between deficiencies in some of these vitamins and a heightened risk of obesity.
If you think that you may not be getting enough of these nutrients from your daily diet, it’s a good idea to talk about whether you should take a supplement to support your weight loss. It may seem like a nuisance to make a doctor’s appointment, but even a telehealth appointment can help you to better understand the ways these supplements should and should not be used.
It’s important to remember that your daily diet may be doing the job for you already. Keep in mind that a vitamin B complex supplement will only help with your weight loss and overall wellness if you aren’t getting enough of it.
When it comes to most nutrients, more isn’t always better. In fact, while a good balance can help your body to run at its best, taking to much can be harmful or even toxic in certain ways. Therefore, before you decide to purchase a bottle, make sure it will do you good as opposed to harm.
If your doctor suspects that your health and weight loss may benefit from a vitamin B complex, your next step will likely be to have a quick and simple blood test. That way, you will know for certain what your levels look like and whether they require supplementation to put them where they should be. You may find that it helps your dieting strategy, or it could just bring you comfort in knowing you’re giving your body what it needs.
Mood-boosting foods can be a terrific way to keep your emotions and weight loss motivation in a good place. That’s right, the foods you eat can actually have a positive (or negative) impact on whether or not you feel happy. Therefore, it’s worth your while to choose the options that will help support your happiness.
After all, the right mood-boosting foods can help you to keep up with your day. They can also help you to cope with whatever life throws in your direction. Overall, they can make you feel better. There’s a reason that experts call the stomach a “second brain”!
Your stomach is filled with nerve connections with your brain. As a result, the right mood-boosting foods provide signals directly from your belly to your brain. The right foods provide you with energy, a sense of calm, or can give your mood a shot in the arm.
Therefore, take care to select the right types of dishes to suit what you need from your mood. Do you need mood-boosting foods to power you up for a workout? Do you need them to settle you down after a long day, so you can get a good night of sleep? Are you just asking for the ability to handle things throughout your day, so you can stay driven? Choose the right foods!
It’s easy to think that your best mood-boosting foods are the same as your favorite comfort foods. However, you may be surprised to hear that they’re not at all the same thing.
Your cheesy bacon macaroni tastes amazing, but it might not help your energy or wellbeing the way you want it to. The same can be said about that creamy soup, a bag of your favorite chips or a container of gummy bears. These foods are all great while you’re eating them, but they could actually do more harm than benefit to the way you feel
The best mood-boosting foods are those that will provide your body with hydration and nutrition. For example, recent research has shown that eating large amounts of raw veggies has a very positive impact on mood. In fact, it’s strong enough that it can help to prevent anxiety and depression.
Lean proteins are also positive choices because they give you lasting energy. Helping to prevent spikes and crashes in energy is always beneficial to keeping up that positive feeling.
Now that you know about the types of mind boosting foods you should be eating, make sure that you’re using them to your best advantage. After all, regardless of the nutrition they contain, if you’re continually forcing yourself to choke down flavors you strongly dislike, you will feel punished, not uplifted.
Use the following tips to help you enjoy your mood boosting foods so they can help to support you.
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to learn several dishes – not just one or two. The variety will keep your healthy options from becoming boring. The more you keep up your choices, the more you’ll be able to select what appeals to you most and will enjoy what you have.
Instead of thinking of mood boosting foods as something healthy you should be eating, think of them as treats you’re giving yourself as a gift. Think of them as something special to keep up your health and wellbeing. Instead of forcing yourself to eat them, prepare them in a way that makes it special. This could mean making a dish that is as complex or as simple as you want, provided you enjoy it.
You might find that simple tastes best to you. If that’s the case, consider trying to make it visually appealing. Put a touch of effort into it. What would you do to the dish if you were going to post a picture of it on Instagram? Instead of making the effort for social media, think about doing it just for yourself.
Just because a food is more expensive, it doesn’t mean that it’s better tasting or better for you. That said, sometimes the more expensive version is indeed more nutritious and/or more enjoyable. Consider your mood boosting foods to be your special purchases. Make them your splurge for the week or for the month.
This may mean getting a great piece of salmon instead of choosing canned. It may mean getting organic strawberries instead of conventionally grown ones which are on the Dirty Dozen list of the produce with the most pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers in them. Make your choices carefully and enjoy the rewards of that care.
Though a New Year weight resolution in the past may have focused on cutting fat, more recent strategies suggest eating more protein. That said, which type of macronutrient balance is best for you? Which one will give you the nutrition you need to be at your healthiest as you work to burn fat?
A new Purdue University study has shown that eating more protein on a daily basis may be very helpful in boosting your efforts in your New Year weight resolution. This is particularly true among dieters who are making active changes to strength train and cut calories in order to build – or at least maintain – lean muscle mass while burning through excess body fat.
The research revealed that people who were actively losing weight – as you plan to do with your New Year weight resolution – and who ate more protein each day were more successful. It also re-confirmed the daily recommended dietary allowance of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (or 0.36 grams of protein per pound). It showed that this amount was appropriate for most healthy adults.
What does this mean in terms of what you should eat to reach your New Year weight resolution? If you’re a 150-pound adult, for example, it means that you should eat about 54 grams of protein on a daily basis. This could mean, for instance, three cups of dairy, three ounces of lean meat and an ounce of nuts or seeds.
Not necessarily. You may not need to change a thing in terms of how much protein you’re eating as you pursue your New Year weight resolution. It all depends on how much you’re already eating. Many Americans already eat quite a lot of protein each day. Therefore, if you were thinking of upping your protein intake or adding more powder to your workout shakes, you may want to hold off.
Start by tracking your nutrition for a couple of weeks. Make sure you’re using a tracking app or web-based service that tallies up your macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates). Discover how much protein you’re consuming in the average day. Once you know, you can decide whether you can keep up your existing intake or whether you need to eat more or even less. Be sure to also pay attention to your nutrient and calorie intake. If you can, watch your fiber intake as well. This combination will help you to better understand your nutrition and improve your choices for your health and weight management.
Many people are surprised when they hear there are pumpkin health benefits. After all, a lot of us have come to think of these gourds as Halloween decorations, not food. Think about it. If someone says the word “pumpkin”, are you more likely to think of a Jack-O-Lantern, or a side dish?
For those of us who do eat them, it’s typically exclusively in the form of a rich, calorie-packed pie, or a teaspoon for flavoring our favorite fall latte (provided there’s any pumpkin at all and it’s not just artificially flavored).
