I cannot stand picking up a magazine that advertises on the front "Easy Healthy Dinners in 20 minutes" and you go to the recipes and all of the meals are extremely weird and have about 20 ingredients in them. Stuff I would NEVER make and don't even know where to buy most of the ingredients! That isn't "EASY" to me. I want easy, simple, few ingredients meals that are quick to make. It really is simple if you just go back to the basics.
Meals should be simple and easy to make, especially for those of us with families and busy schedules. I like to start with my protein, whether that is chicken, fish, pork or beef and just add a few things to it. Here is my favorite Chicken recipe... Put chicken breasts in a pan (no oil needed) on medium heat and let them cook about 8 minutes, covered. They will release from the pan when they are cooked on that side. Turn them over and cook another 5-8 minutes depending on how thick they are. Add 1 T. Butter, 1 T Olive Oil, 2 T. Honey, 1/4 cup Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice, 2 T capers. That's it! You have a tangy wonderful healthy chicken picatta! I usually serve this with brown rice or quinoa and green beans. It is a family favorite around here.
Did you notice the ingredients? Simple and not a lot of stuff. It seems to me that the less ingredients that are in something, the better it tastes. REAL food tastes better than packaged and preservative loaded foods. You can make so many easy dinners with just a few things, even just adding seasoning to your fish is a great healthy meal. So back up, stop trying to make things complicated and do more with LESS!!
The same is true for foods you buy. In an ideal world we wouldn't eat any packaged food, but that isn't realistic for most families. So start to look at the packaged foods you buy and look at the ingredients. You will notice that foods that have less ingredients are not only better for you, but they really do taste better. Cereal is a big one. I buy all of our cereal in the organic/natural foods section. Look at the ingredients some time! It will shock you that most cereals you probably buy your kids you can't even understand 75% of what is in there. Why are you feeding them that junk? There are so many brands of great cereals that have wonderful ingredients. This is true for almost all packaged foods. So if you are going to each something packaged, look at what is in it and make a better choice. Look at the ingredients and if you can't understand or don't know what something is on the list then you shouldn't eat it.
Simplify. Eat basic and healthy foods from the outside of the grocery store. Don't make meals or dinner complicated: steam some veggies, season some fish or meat and make a salad. Less ingredients, easier to make, and better tasting too. Start to really look at what you eat, look at the ingredients and remember that LESS INGREDIENTS IS BETTER!
Monday, November 25, 2013
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Eat when you are NOT hungry!
I know that sounds crazy, but I truly mean it. Eat when you are NOT hungry! It is contrary to what most diet programs tell you, and think about that, most diets FAIL! So are you going to listen to that advice? You shouldn't. If you wait to eat until your body tells you it is hungry, guess what? You are too late. Your blood sugar has already dropped, your body has needed food for a long time because the signal has already gotten from your stomach through your nervous system and into your brain. Now your brain has processed it and now you realize you have been hungry for awhile. So what happens then? Typically when we already have hunger pains we are past the point of making good choices. It also takes a long time for your body to signal that you have eaten and to turn off the signal in your brain telling you it is hungry, typically 15-20 minutes after you eat your body finally tells the brain to stop thinking it is hungry. By then you have probably over eaten or eaten something that isn't healthy because it was convenient and you start feeling guilty. Make sense? I hope so! So believe me if you start eating when you are NOT hungry you will increase your metabolism and burn through those fat reserves. So how do you do this?
Set a timer if you have to. Eat within 30 minutes of waking up. If you don't typically eat breakfast, start. Coffee is not breakfast either! Studies have proven that people who eat a healthy small breakfast either lose weight faster or are more successful at keeping weight off. This first meal of the day revs up your metabolism and jump starts your body to start burning energy. Every meal you eat should be smaller than you would typically think, smaller than we are trained to think we need. So every 2 hours set a timer and eat something small, even if you are not hungry. Here is a sample of what I eat:
7:30am Egg white omelet with veggies (I cut the veggies on the weekend so this only takes about 3 minutes to make)
9:30am Banana or other fruit
11:30am Apple and Light Baby Bell Cheese round
1:30pm Salad with turkey and light dressing
3:30pm Orange or other fruit
5:00pm Raw veggies or small salad while I am preparing dinner
6:30pm Grilled chicken, steamed veggies, small sweet potato
8:30pm Rice crackers and garlic herb laughing cow cheese
This entire day of all of that food is around 1100 calories. This is typically what I eat if I am trying to lose weight. If I am in maintenance mode then I add in about 400 more calories of good fat foods, like nuts, avocados, etc.
When your body knows it is going to be fed frequently, it doesn't go into starvation mode, it does the opposite. It truly become a fat burning machine. You will find that your portions are automatically smaller, you make better choices and your body learns how to metabolize your food and burn through your fat stores much more efficiently.
Remember that you are not on a diet, you are creating a lifestyle. You need to train your body to learn how to burn through the food you eat to trigger it to get hungry every 2-3 hours so that you increase your metabolism. Start to eat every 2-3 hours even when you are not hungry. Eat less, drink more water, and you won't get STARVING. Your body will start to tell you when it has been about 2.5 hours, you will feel that tiny little first twinge of hunger and that is what you want! That means you have trained your body to increase it's metabolism and burn more calories. You will learn to recognize those first signs of hunger before the blood sugar really drops and before they get worse. You will learn to eat then and your body will be telling you it is time. Train your body and listen to it! This may take 2-3 weeks... so start now. Eat every 2-3 hours when you are not hungry and train your body to be a fat burning machine!!!
Try it and let me know how it goes for you. I promise that if you give this a try for 3-4 weeks it will become a habit and you will be thrilled with how satisfied you feel. It is so great to never feel those hunger pains and know that my body is burning through fat because I taught it how to do that. YOU CAN TOO!!!
Set a timer if you have to. Eat within 30 minutes of waking up. If you don't typically eat breakfast, start. Coffee is not breakfast either! Studies have proven that people who eat a healthy small breakfast either lose weight faster or are more successful at keeping weight off. This first meal of the day revs up your metabolism and jump starts your body to start burning energy. Every meal you eat should be smaller than you would typically think, smaller than we are trained to think we need. So every 2 hours set a timer and eat something small, even if you are not hungry. Here is a sample of what I eat:
7:30am Egg white omelet with veggies (I cut the veggies on the weekend so this only takes about 3 minutes to make)
9:30am Banana or other fruit
11:30am Apple and Light Baby Bell Cheese round
1:30pm Salad with turkey and light dressing
3:30pm Orange or other fruit
5:00pm Raw veggies or small salad while I am preparing dinner
6:30pm Grilled chicken, steamed veggies, small sweet potato
8:30pm Rice crackers and garlic herb laughing cow cheese
This entire day of all of that food is around 1100 calories. This is typically what I eat if I am trying to lose weight. If I am in maintenance mode then I add in about 400 more calories of good fat foods, like nuts, avocados, etc.
When your body knows it is going to be fed frequently, it doesn't go into starvation mode, it does the opposite. It truly become a fat burning machine. You will find that your portions are automatically smaller, you make better choices and your body learns how to metabolize your food and burn through your fat stores much more efficiently.
Remember that you are not on a diet, you are creating a lifestyle. You need to train your body to learn how to burn through the food you eat to trigger it to get hungry every 2-3 hours so that you increase your metabolism. Start to eat every 2-3 hours even when you are not hungry. Eat less, drink more water, and you won't get STARVING. Your body will start to tell you when it has been about 2.5 hours, you will feel that tiny little first twinge of hunger and that is what you want! That means you have trained your body to increase it's metabolism and burn more calories. You will learn to recognize those first signs of hunger before the blood sugar really drops and before they get worse. You will learn to eat then and your body will be telling you it is time. Train your body and listen to it! This may take 2-3 weeks... so start now. Eat every 2-3 hours when you are not hungry and train your body to be a fat burning machine!!!
Try it and let me know how it goes for you. I promise that if you give this a try for 3-4 weeks it will become a habit and you will be thrilled with how satisfied you feel. It is so great to never feel those hunger pains and know that my body is burning through fat because I taught it how to do that. YOU CAN TOO!!!
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