There’s more to life than eating your vegetables.Kids can be picky eaters, but here’s a short list of nutrition-packed, healthy foods that most will enjoy.
It’s always funny to me when people ask me how my kids ate when they were little. I’m sure many of them think that since I do what I do, my kids must have been perfect eaters––or that I had some special tricks up my sleeve that made them beg for broccoli and other healthy foods. Truth be told, my kids were no different from most other kids. They had their likes and dislikes. And they’d go on food jags where they’d want to eat the same thing every single day.
Naturally, it did concern me that their nutritional needs weren’t always being met. But there were several really healthy foods that they were almost always willing to eat. I just downplayed the “healthy” part, because once you tell kids something is “good for you,” that’s one of the surest paths to rejection.
So, here’s a list of my top-rated foods for kids––they’re good, and good for them.
Tuna fish – Many kids turn their noses up at fish, but they’ll eat tuna salad. Like all fish, tuna is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and is rich in protein. Try mixing your canned tuna with mashed avocado instead of mayonnaise for a healthier tuna salad, and serve with some whole grain crackers––kids love to make their own little cracker sandwiches.
A lot of kids fall short when it comes to meeting their calcium needs, and many don’t eat enough fruit, so smoothies can help fill both gaps. They’re quick and easy to make, and they’re great when things get rushed in the morning. Kids love to make their own. If you’ve got low-fat milk, protein powder and some frozen fruit at hand, your kids can take it from there.
Kids and vegetables often don’t mix, but sweet, crunchy, raw carrots are an exception. Carrots are rich in beta carotene to help support healthy-looking skin and eyesight, and they’re also a good source of fiber. They’re fun to eat plain or dipped in fat-free ranch, salsa or guacamole.
It takes just a few minutes to cook up some rolled oats, which are naturally rich in fiber and B-vitamins. Try making it with nonfat milk or soy milk rather than water to boost calcium and protein. Then sweeten lightly, and stir in some diced fruit like bananas or apples.
Kids love strawberries because they taste so good. They’re also packed with vitamin C, potassium and fiber. When fresh berries are unavailable, use the frozen whole berries in smoothies or mixed with yogurt.
Instead of chips, offer kids nuts to satisfy their craving for something crunchy and salty. Tree nuts like almonds, walnuts or pistachios provide beneficial fats, protein and minerals like zinc and magnesium.
Beans do double nutrition duty for kids. They’re not only a good source of iron, but they’re a great fiber source, too. Most kids will eat canned beans seasoned with a touch of ketchup, barbecue sauce or salsa. You can also try bean soup, or whirl some beans in the blender with a little salt, lemon and olive oil for a tasty hummus dip for raw veggies.
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Fish kabobs are easy to grill.If you haven’t already, now’s a great time to fire up the grill and make some delicious meals. Grilling is easy, quick, there’s not much to clean up and it’s a fun way to spend time with family and friends. If your grilling experience hasn’t taken you beyond chicken or burgers, maybe this is the time to try something new.
There’s no question that meat and poultry taste great after the barbecue treatment. The trick is to keep the grill temperature moderate. When the heat’s too high, you run the risk of charring the outside of the meat, but undercooking the inside. To solve the problem, you might be tempted to leave meats over high heat for a long time to make sure they’re cooked all the way through, but that can make them tough and dry.
There are a couple of things you can do to cook foods more evenly. When you arrange the charcoal in your grill, keep it off to one side. That way, you’ll have a hot side of the grill that you can use to start the cooking by searing the meat and sealing in the flavor. Then, move the meat to the cooler side of the grill, cover and continue cooking until done.
Another technique that works well with chicken pieces is to partially precook them in the microwave. Remove the skin, then rub the pieces with a bit of olive oil and your favorite seasoning. While your coals are heating up, microwave 4 to 6 pieces at a time on the highest setting for about 10-15 minutes. You don’t want to cook the chicken completely, but just get it heated through so it cooks along the edges. Then, transfer the chicken to your heated grill to finish cooking, and turn the pieces frequently. You’ll reduce your cooking time by about half and your chicken will end up tender and juicy.
Fish is tricky to grill since it tends to flake apart. What works best is to make kabobs with pieces of firm fish like swordfish or tuna, or whole peeled shrimp. You can also grill whole fish or fish filets on a piece of foil or in special fish grilling baskets. Fish cooks quickly, so there’s no need to pre-cook in the microwave.
While the grill is hot, why not take advantage of the heat to cook your side dishes, too? You can grill almost any veggie, but thick slices of eggplant, summer squash and onions are especially good. So are pepper wedges and asparagus spears. Thickly sliced potatoes are great grilled as a side dish on their own, or in a grilled potato salad. Brush veggies and potatoes with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, or use a bit of vinaigrette salad dressing, place them on the cooler side of the grill where there’s less heat and flip them over frequently until they’re tender.
You can even grill up some dessert. Pineapple, apples, peaches, nectarines and bananas all take well to a little time over the flame and they’re easy to prepare. To prepare, core the pineapple and cut into rings, or cut apples, peaches or nectarines in half, remove cores or pits and leave the skins on. Grill the rings or fruit (cut side down) until the sugars start to caramelize and the fruit is tender. Grilled fruit is delicious on its own, but you can dress it up with a drizzle of citrus juice or a dash of cinnamon.
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Running is great for burning calories.If you want to burn a lot of calories, you need the right workout. Try these six workouts to achieve the results you desire.
The number of calories you’ll burn during a workout can fluctuate greatly and is dependent on a variety of factors including your current weight, workout intensity, overall difficulty level, as well as your current fitness level. So, when looking at calories burned for each activity, the actual calories burned can vary greatly for each individual. (The numbers shown below are based on a 200lb individual).
Running is great for burning calories and requires no equipment so you can easily incorporate it into your fitness routine. Running at a pace of 8mph can burn 1,074 calories, and at slower pace of 5mph can burn 755 calories. You can increase your calorie burn by adding in hills (this is more muscle-building, especially for the butt and hamstrings.) Picking up the pace or extending your run past the one hour will increase the burn. Another way to make running more intense is to do bouts of sprinting with a little rest in between each 10-15 second burst. Training in this interval style can be a lot more fun.
Jumping rope is a high impact activity that challenges your body in the same way running does. It’s cardiovascular in nature, but unlike running using a rope requires a little bit of coordination. If you’re lacking in that department you can do the jumping action without the rope, but for one hour that may seem a little crazy. The speed and intensity of the jumping will heavily impact the number of calories you burn, so going fast is the key to maximizing the burn. Also, finding a pace that you can sustain for one hour is tough, so jumping rope in an interval style may be the best approach.
Swimming is an amazing, low-impact exercise that can burn a lot of calories. The higher calorie burning strokes are front crawl and butterfly. In order to achieve the higher calorie range with this exercise, you need to be proficient in the water and able to swim vigorously for the entire hour. The breast stroke is more gentle and less demanding on the body so if this is your stroke of choice, consider alternating in a front crawl or swim for a longer duration to maximize your burn.
Running stairs is an athletic favorite of mine. Running up and down the stairs is great for muscle building and improving your cardiovascular fitness level. Your speed, number of steps and the height of the steps will all factor in to determining your overall calorie burn. Keeping a faster pace up the stairs and walking down is the safest approach. You can vary your upward speed to increase the intensity level, or if you have the coordination, taking two steps at a time will make your muscles work harder and therefore increase your calorie burn. The more steps you climb overall, the harder your body is working.
High impact refers to activities where both feet leave the ground, such as jumping jacks, plyometric style hopping movements and some forms of dancing. This form of exercise is often fun and allows for a lot of variety. However, the impact on the joints is not for everyone. This type of exercise can be made more intense by adding in weighted equipment, keeping the intensity level high and doing exercise that specifically works the large muscle groups, such as the glutes, chest and back. This type of training done in a HIIT style, where you do timed work to rest intervals, can increase the overall calorie burn dramatically. However, when you’re working at a high intensity, a shorter, overall workout duration is important. A typical HIIT session will last only 20-30 minutes.
Carrying a backpack on a hike is a great form of outdoor exercise, and because you are carrying extra weight, it can help you to build muscular strength. The varied terrain is also great for improving coordination and working the small, stabilizing muscles in the legs and ankles. To burn more calories while backpacking, consider increasing the weight you are carrying, or choose a steeper terrain.
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Plan for smarter snacking.Here’s the truth on four popular myths about dieting. When you hear diet myths often enough, you may start to assume they’re true. Some diet myths, like the belief that “as long as you exercise, you can eat as much as you want,” almost make sense. Others, like “cookie crumbs don’t count,” simply fall into the territory of wishful thinking.
Many diet myths come and go, but some have stood the test of time. Why do we hang on to these food myths, even if we know they might not be true? Often it’s because the ideas behind the food myths just seem to make sense—and so we want to believe them.
With so much information and misinformation available at our fingertips, it’s not too difficult to find a source that supports what we hope to be true about our diet. Think of any popular strategy for weight loss that you’ve heard, and then do an Internet search. You’ll probably find just as many sites that support that strategy as those that debunk it.
Here are four of the most common dieting myths, and why they simply aren’t true:
Truth: Your body weight fluctuates from day to day. Sometimes it can be by as much as a couple of pounds. If you weigh yourself every morning, you’ve probably experienced this, especially after you’ve had a heavy dinner the night before. Yet many people believe that if you don’t see a consistent daily drop in your body weight, you’ll get discouraged and abandon your efforts. Instead, several studies have shown that those who keep daily tabs on their weight are more likely to lose weight and keep it off.
Truth: Carbs tend to have a bad reputation among dieters, but that’s largely due to the fact that carbs are so misunderstood. To most people, carbs means starchy foods like white bread or white rice or potatoes, or maybe sugars and sweets. Those are carbs, to be sure. But there are also carbs to be found in healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains. So, to lump all those foods together and claim them as fattening just isn’t right.
What matters is this: the healthy carb sources are simply more filling than the highly processed, not-so-healthy-for-you carbohydrates. These are the sugary drinks, sweets and refined flour breads, cereals, crackers and so forth. So, it can be pretty easy to take in quite a few calories from these refined carbs, hence their fattening reputation. And there are times when it’s tempting to choose these less healthy options––many people turn to sweets and carbs for comfort when they’re tired or stressed. But the stress relief will only be momentary––while the extra pounds may stay with you a lot longer.
On the other hand, high-fiber vegetables, whole grains, beans and fruits are more filling than refined carbs, so stick with them.
Truth: Many people believe that eating calories late in the day are somehow more fattening than when they’re eaten earlier in the day. The thinking is that you should eat more calories during the hours you’re active so you can burn them off, and that if you take in calories right before you go to sleep they’ll just get stored away since you won’t be using them. But if you take in more calories than you need at any time of the day, you’ll store them away.
One reason this weight related myth persists is because many people lose weight when they assign an early cutoff time to their eating. It isn’t because they stopped eating sooner than they used to, it’s just that they stopped eating—period. But that might not work for you, especially if you’re a night owl. If you’re up late studying, you may need some fuel during the evening to keep going. The trick is to save up some calories during the day so you can spend them on some healthy snacks in the evening. Which brings us to Food Myth #4…
Truth: Snacking is often seen as a bad habit for a couple reasons. Some people think it will add excess calories on top of the calories you need for the day. And many people think snacks only serve to dump lots of fat, salt, sugar and calories into your system. It’s true that not everyone snacks wisely. Plenty of people do snack on high calorie, nutrient-poor foods that contribute plenty of extra calories. But when it’s done wisely, snacking can be a healthy habit that can keep your weight in check, and can help keep your energy levels up throughout the day. Plan for smarter snacking and rather than waiting until you’re hit with a snack attack, keep healthy snacks––like whole fruits, yogurt, some nuts or a protein bar––in your bag to avoid getting tempted by the junk.
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Customize your shake with fruitsProtein shakes can do more than just provide balanced nutrition. Getting into the shake habit just might improve your eating habits, too.
There are plenty of reasons why protein shakes are popular. They can provide you with balanced nutrition that can replace a meal, they’re quick to make, and you can get creative and customize them with all kinds of add-ins. Those are all great reasons, but there are other ways that protein shakes can improve your diet and eating habits.
Including protein shakes in your diet can also address many common obstacles to eating well, as well as help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
Keeping track of your daily calorie intake is an important key to weight management. But it’s not easy to do; most people underestimate their calorie intake by 20% or so. Part of what makes calorie counting difficult is that it requires you to accurately weigh and measure everything you eat. Plus, you need to account for all the little details, like how the food is prepared or what condiments you eat with it. The beauty of protein shakes is that they’re usually made up of just a few ingredients that. are easy to measure. That allows you to get an accurate calorie count of the finished shake.
Customizing your protein shake by adding fruits and vegetables allows for almost endless variety—and you can easily add a serving or two to your shake. To make this quick and convenient, keep a variety of frozen fruits on hand in your freezer. And try adding veggies such as fresh or frozen spinach, carrots, kale or winter squash to your shake.
Many people have erratic eating patterns because they just don’t make time to plan and prepare what they’re going to eat. As a result, they may end up skipping meals or snacking more. There are few things that are easier to prepare than a protein shake. When you’ve got your protein powder, your liquid “mixer” and maybe some fruits or vegetables to add, you’ve got balanced nutrition in a glass in minutes—and no excuse for skipping meals.
A protein shake is naturally portion-controlled, which can help you in a couple of ways. First, when you use your protein shake as a meal, your portion is defined for you. Having a protein shake at one meal might also help you control your portion size at your next meal, too. Also, if your shake is nutritionally balanced and provides protein and carbohydrates to keep you satisfied from one meal to the next, you won’t be famished when you do sit down to eat. And that can make it much easier for you to control how much food you put on your plate.
No matter how careful you are with your food choices, it isn’t always easy to make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs every day. A protein shake made with milk or soy milk and the addition of a fruit or vegetable can help you meet your needs for several nutrients, including protein, calcium, vitamin D and fiber. And many protein shake mixes have vitamins and minerals added, which boosts nutrition even more.
When you’re on the run and hunger strikes, you might be tempted to dart into your local fast food place for quick satisfaction. But it can be challenging to find a healthy, balanced meal when you’re on the go. If you let yourself get too hungry, you’ll probably just grab the first thing you can—which may not be the healthiest thing. The fact that protein shakes are portable is a huge plus. Once your shake is blended, it’s ready to go—whether you’re on your way to work or school, running errands, or heading back to your desk at lunch. Protein shakes can be quick, healthy, convenient and delicious. What more could you ask for?
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A balanced breakfast shouldChoosing the right foods for breakfast can help boost energy and curb hunger.
Eating a healthy breakfast really can set the stage for healthier eating all day long. The right foods in the morning can provide you with the energy you need to power through until lunch. And with a healthy breakfast in your system, you’re less likely to experience mid-morning cravings for unhealthy foods. Eating the right foods can help keep you satisfied and energized until your next meal or snack.
The foods you eat for breakfast can affect how you feel and perform throughout your morning. There are several things that a good breakfast can do for you.
A balanced breakfast should provide you with a decent amount of protein (20-30 grams is a good target). This helps satisfy hunger and supports muscle health, and along with some healthy carbohydrates can provide sustained energy and fiber. Carbohydrates should include, at the very least, some fruits or vegetables. If your calorie budget allows, add some whole grains as well.
With these simple guidelines, it’s easy to put together a healthy, well-balanced breakfast. Here are 10 healthy breakfast suggestions:
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Water is critical to healthy digestion.Among its many functions in the body, water is critical to healthy digestion and supports the process from start to finish.
If you’re like many people, healthy digestion might be more top of mind than it used to be. Part of this renewed interest in digestive health may have to do with an abundance of emerging science on the importance of maintaining a healthy “gut microbiome” – the collection of bacteria that inhabits the digestive tract and which affects the health of many systems in the body.
And so, to keep your digestive system healthy and happy, you may be aware of the importance of taking in probiotics (the ‘good’ bacteria) as well as prebiotics (such as certain forms of fiber that serve as “food” for the probiotics) and adequate fiber, which helps move waste through your system and promotes regularity.
But there’s something much more simple and basic to keeping your digestive system running smoothly: water. Water is involved in literally every step of the digestive process, which is just another reason why staying adequately hydrated is so critically important to your health.
How Water Supports Healthy Digestion
Starting at the very beginning of the digestive process, water is a major component of your saliva. Saliva serves several functions: it helps to moisten your food, which makes it easier to chew and swallow, and it is also a vehicle for enzymes that begin the process of chemically breaking down the fats and carbohydrates as you chew.
As the food passes into your stomach, watery gastric juices are released. These juices also contain enzymes, which begin to break the proteins and carbohydrates in the foods that you eat into smaller parts, preparing them for their trip to the small intestine, where much of the digestion of your food takes place. (And, by the way, there’s no truth to the myth that drinking water with meals will dilute the digestive juices so much that they can’t do their job. Adequate fluid with meals helps promote the process.) Water is also needed to produce the mucus that coats the inside of your stomach, which protects it from the highly acidic digestive juices.
As the food moves through the small intestine, there’s a lot of digestive activity that is facilitated by water. More watery secretions are shot into the small intestine from the intestinal lining itself as well as from the pancreas and liver. Enzymes work to speed up chemical processes and help prepare for the absorption of the end products of digestion: amino acids from proteins, fatty acids from fats and individual sugar molecules from the carbohydrates that you eat. Most nutrient absorption takes place here in the small bowel, and then digested nutrients pass to the watery environment of your bloodstream.
As the digestive process continues in the large bowel, water is critically important, too. The soluble fibers that you eat (from foods like oats, beans and barley) dissolve in water, allowing them to swell and add bulk. And the insoluble fiber that you eat (from foods like whole grains and most vegetables) tends to trap and attract water rather than absorb it, which helps promote regular bowel movements. The lower bowel is also where your body takes up most of the minerals that you eat, and the watery environment there facilitates their absorption.
There’s no question that healthy digestion relies on adequate fiber (and probiotics are a good idea, too). Exercise is also important – when you move your skeletal muscles during exercise, you’re stimulating the smooth muscles of your digestive tract at the same time, which helps promote regularity. But don’t forget the simplest and most basic thing of all – make sure to take in plenty of fluids every day to keep your system running smoothly.
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Be mindful of how much you eat.Mindless eating can lead to overeating and digestive woes. But when you eat mindfully, you tend to slow down and eat less – just enough so that you’re comfortable, not stuffed.
Even if you’ve never heard the term “mindless eating”, chances are good that you’ve experienced it. Can’t remember what you ate for dinner because you were so focused on the television show you were watching? That’s mindless eating. Ever finish an entire bucket of popcorn at the movies and ask yourself, “did I really eat all that?” That’s mindless eating, too.
Mindless eating is what happens when you eat – and overeat – without really thinking about it. When you eat mindlessly, you don’t ask yourself if you’re truly hungry, or question whether your portion is too large, or if the food even tastes good to you. You just eat it. And that’s because you’re not paying attention to your body’s internal signals – like the ones that tell you that you’re hungry, or when you’re comfortably full. Instead, you’re responding other cues push you to eat and overeat. Maybe you’re stressed or anxious or bored, or you eat something that’s offered to you – even though you’re not hungry at all.
Mindless eating often leads you to take in a lot more calories than you should – and you may eat much too quickly, too. You may not chew your food thoroughly, which means you’re probably swallowing a lot of air while you’re gulping it down. And, during an episode of rapid-fire overeating, you may not immediately realize how full you are. That’s because it takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to let your brain know that you’re full – and by that time you’ve already overdone it. So it’s no wonder that discomfort – in the form of indigestion or bloating – can set in.
So what would happen if you turned “mindless eating” around, and practiced more “mindful eating” instead?
Mindful eating is just what it sounds like. When you eat mindfully, you try to become more aware of your internal signals of hunger and fullness – which means really listening to your body. You become more in touch with the eating experience – which means you’re likely to enjoy it more while eating less.
Mindful eating means slowing yourself down and taking the time to appreciate how the food looks on the plate, how it smells, and how it tastes. If you’re with others, you take pleasure in their company – and if you’re eating alone, you take pleasure in being able to focus on your meal and enjoy it without distraction. The other benefit? By slowing down, you’ll learn to be satisfied with appropriate portions – which will help curb the tendency to overeat – and your digestive system won’t be overburdened. Not only will this help keep your calories in check, but it gives your system time to properly digest your meal, too.
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When flights are delayed, take a walk.Traveling can disrupt your usual diet and exercise routine, but there are ways you can enjoy your vacation without gaining weight.
When you’re planning a vacation, you probably start by figuring out your destination, how you’re going to get there, where you’re going to stay, and what you’ll want to do once you get there. If you’re like many of my clients, there may be something else you might plan for when you travel—gaining weight. However, I’m going to tell you how you can take a vacation and avoid weight gain.
Many people tell me that they just can’t stay on their diets while they’re on vacation. Admittedly, it’s a challenge. But when people plan to gain weight when they’re traveling, it sounds to me as if they don’t even want to try to stay on track. Vacations can turn your structured world upside down, which is one of the reasons we enjoy taking them. But just because you’re traveling doesn’t mean you have to bring back excess baggage around your waist, hips and thighs.
No matter where you go or how you get there, it really helps if you’re well prepared. Aim to stick to your usual routines as much as you can.
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Make healthy meals on the grill.Grilling food outdoors is one of the great pleasures of summer. Here are some tips for making healthy meals on the grill.
Cooking over an open flame is such a relaxing way to prepare foods – everything looks, tastes and smells great, and cleanup is usually a breeze. And, generally speaking, grilling is a pretty healthy way to prepare meat, fish and poultry. Grilling also seems to bring people together – ever notice how everyone seems to gather around the barbecue when foods are cooking?
For all it has going for it, though, there are a few downsides to typical barbecue-type meals that you may want to consider. First, many people choose fattier cuts of meat for grilling, but those can add significantly more calories, fat and saturated fat to your meal than leaner cuts. And many of the traditional side dishes that are often served at a barbecue – like potato salad, coleslaw and baked beans – can drive up the calorie count of the meal, too.
The last thing to consider is that cooking meat, fish or poultry over extremely high heat increases your exposure to certain chemical compounds that may be damaging to your health. Compounds called HCAs are formed when meat, fish or poultry is exposed to high heat cooking. Other compounds (known as PAHs) form when fat and juices from meat fall into the open flame, creating smoke. The smoke rises, brings the PAHs with it, and clings to the meat’s surface.
The good news is that you can make meals healthier by starting with the right cuts of meat and paying a bit more attention to preparation. You can also make some healthy swaps for traditional side dishes, and even dessert. Here are some tips for healthier meals from the grill:
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