Keep Your Health Tips

The Benefits of Snacking

You may feel regretful about snacking, but snacks aren’t necessarily bad for you.

In fact, mini-meals several times a day can be beneficial.

If eating a healthy snack keeps you from taking second and third
helpings at your next meal, you may actually consume fewer total calories for the day.

A wide variety of snacks can fit into a healthy lifestyle, so you don’t need to avoid
snacks. Rather, plan them with variety, moderation and balance in mind.

Choose Snacks Wisely

Select foods that cna satisfy hunger, supply your body with energy and provide important
nutrients. Choose a wide variety of these foods to ensure that you get all the necessary
nutrients, and to make your snacks more interesting.
Here are some of your best snack picks:

Whole Grains
Whole-grain snacks are rich in complex carbohydrates and fiber, which give you
immediate energy that has some staying power. Look for items such as low-fat whole-grain
crackers, whole-grain pretzels and whole-grain crispbreads.

Fruits and Vegetables
Eating fruits and vegetables provides a feeling of fullness with no fat and only small amounts
of calories. They provide vitamins, minerals, fiber and other nutrients.

Nuts and Seeds
Nuts and seeds are a good source of protein, which helps keep you feeling fuller longer.
The fat in nuts and seeds is monounsaturated fat, a healthy kind of fat. Nuts and seeds
are high in calories, however, so don’t eat them in large quantity.

Low-fat dairy products
Cheese, yogurt and other dairy products are good sources of calcium, protein, and other
nutrients. Dairy products can be high in fat, so choose the low-fat versions.
Yogurt may have alot of added sugar, so you should consider light yogurt to limit your
calorie intake.

Though snacks can contribute to a healthy diet, they can also be a source of excess
calories if not eaten in moderation. For example, a resonable amount of almonds
(about 23 kernels or a handful) contains 164 calories. But if you eat handful after
handful until it totals a cup of almonds, the calorie count jumps to 800-plus calories.

So remember:

Snacks are great!!
Eat Several mini-meals per day
Eat high fiber whole grain snacks
Eat low calorie fruits and veggies
Stick with the berry family

> Raspberries

> Strawberries

> blueberries

> blackberries
Stick with Dark Green Veggies

> Broccoli

> Asparagus

> Spinach

> Dark Greens

> Green Beans
Eating good quality nuts and seeds

> Almonds with skin on unsalted

> eat in moderation
Low fat dairy products are good

> low fat cheeses

> no fat cheeses

> unsweetened yogurts

Get Ready for a Snack Attack!!!!

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While I am not a registered dietician, I would like to just give you some general guidelines and tips to help you improve your diet. Now keep in mind that this is geared towards the average person, not the competitive bodybuilder, athlete, or any person with health problems or disease. The following will give you some easy-to-follow tips to help you get your dietary habits under control.

First of all, everyone should be eating five to six times per day. A lot of people make the mistake of eating only once or twice a day to lose weight. While you may see a dip in the scale doing so, you are probably losing muscle rather than just fat. The goal with supportive eating is to maintain your muscle while dropping your body fat. Feeding your body the calories it requires, or a slight deficit of them, will keep your metabolism high. Whereas doing the opposite, overly depleting your body of calories, will cause your metabolism to slow and your body to hold onto its body fat stores. When you don’t consume enough calories to feed your body, your body doesn’t know when to expect more, and so to keep from starving will go into a slower metabolism phase in order to preserve the body mass that it does have.

By eating five to six times a day (including snacks), your body will keep it’s metabolism at an optimum level, which equates to burning more fat by maintaining muscle. Every day should begin with a healthy breakfast; mid-morning can include a healthy snack, an example could be a few cashews coupled with an apple. Next comes a good lunch; mid-afternoon is fulfilled with a nice snack again, maybe some yogurt and a few carrots. And dinner seals the package.

Be sure and eat your dinner at a decent hour, because no matter how healthy the food is that you put into your body, if you don’t burn off the calories, your body will store them as fat. Another tip is not to exceed four hours between meals. After a few weeks of supportive, healthy eating, you may find that you are getting hungry more often. This is a good signit means that your body is burning the calories you are taking in faster than it was before.

You see, the more muscle your body has, the faster your metabolism. So optimally, you want to have as much muscle as possible, coupled with as little fat as possible. Hopefully that will make you think twice if you are a woman afraid of putting on muscle. First of all, women don’t put muscle on very easily. And when we do, it’s through hard work and dedication. Don’t worry that you will look “muscle-bound” from a moderate level of dedicated weight training. Women simply don’t have enough testosterone to put on an abundance of muscle naturally. You may be pleasantly surprised however, at the nice muscle tone you can achieve through dedicated weight training. So don’t be afraid to give it a try!

©Melissa Allen is a certified personal trainer, Blackbelt & fitness consultant, as well as the owner of Optimum Condition personal fitness training and kickboxing instruction. She is a self-syndicated columnist and a member of the San Diego Press Club and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. She welcomes input from her readers, so please contact her with any questions or comments that you may have by calling (619) 252-4993, email her at Opticondit@aol.com, or visit her website at http://www.optimumcondition.com

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It’s 5:30 p.m. and you’re heading home after a long, full day. All of a sudden your mind turns to the daily question, “What’s for dinner?”

Whether it’s just you or whether you’re preparing a meal for a whole gang, it’s not an energizing prospect to imagine planning, shopping for or cooking a meal from scratch at the end of a long day.

That’s probably why the fast food businesses are booming and why our health is suffering from the effects of these “easy” foods.

If you think meal planning is an unnecessary step, or that it would create a strict regimen that you’d be trapped by, read on about how meal planning can free you from worry and improve your health and well being.

REASONS FOR MEAL PLANNING

Less time and money spent at the grocery store

When you plan your meals out a week at a time, your trips to the grocery store become much more manageable. You know exactly what you’ll need and you’ll be less susceptible to “impulse” buying. Sometimes, when I’m feeling REALLY efficient, I even write my list in order of where I’ll find it in the grocery store. Plus, buying the ingredients to cook a meal from scratch usually costs much less than the ready-made version.

Healthier meals = healthier you and your loved ones

When you’re planning ahead, you’ll have much more control over what you eat, and you can consciously choose to improve the health of your meals.

Better-timed meals

If you BEGIN planning and cooking dinner when you get home, it could be quite late before you’re sitting down to eat it. The closer to bedtime it is when you finish dinner, the less likely you’ll have time to properly digest and for your body to absorb what you’ve eaten. For breakfast and lunch, having the meals planned out can help remind you to STOP and EAT them.

Variety

When we choose our meals in the moment, based on what’s fast, easy and enjoyable, we tend to stick to a few standby’s and don’t branch out very much. Nutritionally, this leaves us lacking. We also risk getting bored with our food and looking to fast food or unhealthier options for “excitement”.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR MEALS FOR THE WEEK

1. Keep some spontaneity. You could just plan one part of the meal. For instance, if you know that you always have plenty of fresh of frozen vegetables that you can choose from, then simply plan “chicken, potatoes and vegetables”. Then you can still have some spontaneity in your meal.

2. When you have time, make “frozen dinners”. Make a double or triple recipe; package the leftovers in single (or family-size) servings and freeze.

3. Factor in schedule changes. Maybe the night after the big meeting or the night of the soccer tournament aren’t the best nights to cook a meal from scratch. Plan a quick meal, take-out or your own “frozen dinner” for those nights.

4. Aim for balance. With the week spread out before you, look for balance between heavy and light meals, vegetarian and meat-based meals, and a variety of different-coloured fruits and vegetables.

5. Plan while you’re in the kitchen. That way you can easily check for the ingredients of the dishes you’re planning. If they’re not there, add them to your grocery list immediately.

6. Keep an active grocery list through the week. That way, when staples run out you can add them to list.

7. Grow your recipe collection. Use the Internet, the cookbooks of your friends and family, magazines, etc. and find new things to try. One new recipe a week will keep things exciting!

8. Get some expert advice. Consult a trusted source such as Canada’s Food Guide, or better still get individualized meal and nutrition suggestions from a registered dietician or a holistic nutritionist.

9. Make it a team effort. If you’re feeding others as well as yourself, make the planning a team effort so that everyone gets some of their favourites through the week.

10. Always follow your plan, except when you don’t. There are going to be things that come up, days that you just don’t feel like eating what you’ve planned, or days when you’ve forgotten to do your nightly prep. Create a list of healthy stand-by’s that you can throw together with the staples in your own kitchen. If you’re on the go, be prepared by having a list of healthy choices at your favourite restaurants.

A meal plan is not a rigid “diet” or set of orders. The meal plan serves you, not the other way around.

Start now with tomorrow’s meals. What can you defrost or partly prepare tonight to make tomorrow’s meals easier and healthier?

(c) Copyright Linda Dessau, 2005.

Linda Dessau, the Self-Care Coach, is the author of “The Everyday Self-Care Workbook”. For free resources, including your own Meal Planning Worksheet, visit http://www.genuinecoaching.com/resources.html

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