by kelsey | Nov 22, 2016 | Cooking Tips, Diet, Food, Holidays, Weight Management, Wellness/Health
Happy Thanksgiving to you! The Thanksgiving holiday is always a fun one enjoyed by all as we stuff ourselves and then resort to the couch to watch football or the start of the holiday tv shows. Here are some tips for you to get through the holiday without putting on all those undesired extra pounds.
- Survey the entire table before you take any food. Decide what foods are worth eating and what can be ignored, and then stick to that decision. Why waste calories on foods that don’t bring you pleasure?
- Eat a snack before you leave home. If you arrive at a party starving, you’ll be more likely to overindulge.
- Eat your calories instead of drinking them. Stick to lower calorie or calorie-free drinks (diet sodas, water, light beer, or wine spritzer) instead of punches, eggnogs, and mixed drinks that can have up to 500 calories per cup.
- Sip a large glass of water between every alcoholic drink or non-alcoholic punch or eggnog. This will help keep you hydrated and you’ll drink fewer calories by the end of the night.
- When you are the host or hostess, include nutritious and lower-calorie foods like fruits, vegetables, and lean meats on the menu. When you are a guest, bring along a lower-calorie dish to share.
- Try not to hang out near the food. Find a comfortable spot across the room and focus on people instead of eating.
- Watch your portion sizes. Don’t cover your plate completely with food. In most cases, especially when it comes to holiday sweets and alcoholic beverages, less is better. Use a smaller plate or bowl and have just a sliver of pie like the picture shows.
- Drop out of the “clean plate club”. Leave a few bites behind every time you eat, especially if you are eating something you don’t really care for.
- Enjoy your favorite holiday treats but take a small portion, eat slowly, and savor the taste and texture of the wonderful foods of the season.
- Skip the pie crust and go for the filling.
- Choose light meat over dark meat.
- Use home-made cranberry sauce over canned cranberries that are jam packed with added sugars.
- In soups, sauces, puddings, and desserts: Replace whole milk or cream with low-fat milk, evaporated fat-free milk, or nonfat dry milk.
Lighten up your recipes:
- To make dips and toppings: Use low-fat or nonfat cottage cheese or sour cream, or non-fat Greek yogurt.
- To make salad dressings: Use nonfat Greek yogurt or low-fat buttermilk.
- In place of 1 whole egg in recipes: Use 2 egg whites or 1/4 cup egg substitute.
- In place of regular cheese: Use fat-free or reduced-fat cheese.
- In place of full sugar: replace half with Splenda or reduce half completely.
- In place of fats: use unsweetened applesauce or oil (1-1 replacement), or prune puree (1 cup of fat=1/2 cup puree).
More importantly is ENJOY your family and friends and all that have to the THANKful for!
-Kelsey
by kelsey | Nov 17, 2016 | Cooking Tips, Diet, Food, Holidays, Weight Management
As Thanksgiving approaches, you may be thinking about your grocery list and all the goodies you will be making. County Fair Foods has a great recipe that is healthy and tasty! The recipe has some great substitutions for lightening the sugar, fat, and calories. Give it a try and enjoy!
Healthy Pumpkin Pie 15 oz can pumpkin
8 oz skim or low fat soy milk
3 egg whites
2/3 reduced fat graham cracker crust (take off the sides of the crust and discard)
¾ c Splenda
Pumpkin pie spice
2 egg whites for the crust
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix pumpkin, milk, and egg whites until smooth. Gradually stir in Splenda ¼ c at a time. Add the pumpkin pie spice, taste and add more if needed. Pour into crust and spread evenly. Bake for 15 min then reduce the temp to 350 degrees and bake for another 45 min. Let cool and serve your favorite way. To make the crust less soggy beat the egg whites and brush over the crust and bake for about 5 min. at 350 degrees.
-Kelsey
by kelsey | Nov 16, 2016 | Cooking Tips, Diet, Eating Out, Food, Weight Management, Wellness/Health
The American Dietetic Association has a great public feature to their site that offers great nutrition tips. I thought I’d share these with you as you work to trim your waistline. These tips don’t require huge changes, however will give you great results!
- Downsize Your Dishes. Use smaller plates and bowls to help you eat less. We tend to fill up the dish we’re using and then eat it all. Our brains also think we are getting more when the same amount of food is placed in a smaller dish.
- Savor Your Meals. Eating slowly helps you consume only what your body needs to feel satisfied. Eating too quickly, in less than 20 to 30 minutes, leads to overeating and feeling uncomfortably full afterwards.
- Leave Some Food on Your Plate. This is especially important if you grew up in the “clean plate club.” By leaving even a few bites, you can focus more on your internal signals of satisfaction and less on eating food just because it is there.
- Don’t Eat Out of a Bag or Box. When you eat out of a package, you are likely to keep eating until it’s all gone – no matter how many servings the package actually contains. Pour one serving into a small bowl.
- Choose Your Glass Wisely. Here’s another place where our eyes play tricks on us. When glasses are short and wide, we tend to fill them with more fluid and to drink more. Use a slender glass for any beverage except water.
- Rethink Your Drinks. High-calorie beverages like soft drinks, juice drinks, energy drinks, specialty coffees and alcohol add calories just like solid foods. Whenever possible, replace these drinks with plenty of water.
http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=6849
-Kelsey
by kelsey | Nov 10, 2016 | Cooking Tips, Diet, Food, Weight Management, Wellness/Health
As the weather starts changing and it gets colder out, we tend to change our pattern of eating to more soups, stews, and casseroles. These selections are a great way to pack a variety of nutrients into one dish. In addition, they can be very cost effective due to the excess garden produce present in our grocery stores and farmer’s market lately. Here are a few nutrition tips to consider when you’re prepping your favorite meal:
- When using store bought broths or soup mixes such as cream of chicken, choose the low-sodium or reduced fat varieties.
- Use herbs and spices to season rather than salt.
- Add more vegetables and lean meat to the recipe to give you more nutrition.
- Thicken with pureed beans, potatoes, or vegetables.
- Sprinkle your soups or stews with low fat cheese for added flavor and nutrients, without too many calories.
- Think about balance: incorporate something from each food group into your meal to provide your body with a top notch quality and nutritious meal.
- Practice portion control: it’s easy to dish up your plate with casserole or fill up a big bowl of stew and not realize how much you’re eating, so measure out your foods and eat mindfully to ensure appropriate portion control.
-Kelsey
by kelsey | Nov 9, 2016 | Diet, Food, Goals, Weight Management, Wellness/Health
Does your plate look like the one above? It can be challenging at times to meet the dietary recommendations for the 5 food groups. Our meals are often in-balanced and over-portioned due to our lack of knowledge, time, or effort in preparing the meal. Meal planning is a great tool to help you make healthy meals, use appropriate portion sizes, and help you meet your health and wellness goals (as well as a budget!). Choosemyplate.gov has some excellent resources in helping you get started with meal planning. They also have menus to give you some ideas on what a week’s meals should look like. Go visit: https://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget for more information and tips and direction on how to get started! I recommend doing weekly meal planning and if possible incorporate some batch cooking into that to help you save time and efforts on those week nights that you’re short on time and energy! If you’d like individual help with this, please contact me…more than happy to help get you started with improving your nutrition!
-Kelsey
by kelsey | Oct 27, 2016 | Diet, Food, Weight Management, Wellness/Health
Tuesday night’s STRIVE lecture offered some excellent treats –thanks County Fair Foods! Be sure to give these recipes a try!
Cucumber, Tomato, and Avocado Salad (pictured above)
Ingredients: 1 English cucumber, 4 roma tomatoes, 3 ripe avocados, 1/2 red onion, juice of 1 lemon, salt and pepper to taste, 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil.
Directions: place sliced cucumber, tomatoes, avocados, onion, and cilantro in a large bowl. Toss with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Enjoy!!
Garden Fresh Cottage Cheese Salad (pictured above)
Ingredients: 2 containers (22oz) of 1% cottage cheese, 1 cucumber diced,1 tomato diced, 1 pkg Good Seasoning Italian Dressing.
Directions: Mix together and put in refrigerator for a few hours before serving. Can serve plain or with whole grain crackers.
Enjoy!!
