The Mediterranean approach to eating is widely accepted as one of the healthiest diets in the world. In this case, the word “diet” refers to a particular cuisine, but experts have found that this same method of eating can provide rapid and healthy weight loss!
The Mediterranean diet combines cuisines from southern France, Greece, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, and southern Italy. Made up mostly of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, heart-healthy oils and fats, nuts and beans, and lean protein, this diet enables you to eliminate unhealthy processed foods with little effort.
Obesity has the power to shorten your life span by five to twenty years! The Mediterranean diet can help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight, without the deprivation associated with most diets. Amazing health benefits have been attributed to this particular diet. These benefits include a decrease in the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia, heart disease, and even cancer!
Consider for a minute the ten power foods of the Mediterranean diet: almonds, bell peppers, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, blueberries, grapes, strawberries, olive oil, and whole grains. Imagine the enjoyment you can get out of incorporating these nutrient-rich foods into your meals!
Most weight loss plans avoid fats of all kinds. The Mediterranean diet encourages you to use extra-virgin olive oil. The addition of this heart-healthy oil provides a sense of taste and satisfaction that we associate with “comfort foods.” You will be eating foods so rich in flavor that you will be satisfied with less, and shocked when the weight starts falling off.
The Mediterranean diet is not about counting calories or fat grams. If you eat the right foods in reasonable portions, and combine that with daily activity, you will experience rapid and healthy weight loss! You will discover that you are not really “dieting” but that you have simply changed your way of eating. Unhealthy processed foods will no longer hold any appeal for you. You will be tempted and enticed instead by fresh, nutritious foods that are full of color and flavor!
There are many Mediterranean diet books available and delicious, free Mediterranean diet recipes are easy to find. To get started, you simply need to focus your meals on fresh produce, olive oil, whole grains, and lean protein. Make it a point to learn more about this healthy cuisine and enjoy a long and healthy life!…
Tag: healthy
Holiday Party Survival Guide – 8 Tips to Have Fun and Remain Healthy
The holidays offer many opportunities to have fun, see good friends and indulge. The holidays are also the best time to put on the unwanted pounds of winter insulation.
Set the intention to maintain your good health rather than gaining winter weight. This year consider indulging in excess fun with ice skating parties, boardgames with friends, dancing, skiing and holiday shows.
As you RSVP for your next holiday party, keep these easy tips in mind and share them with your friends for a healthy and happy holiday.
When you’re invited to bring something to a party, make it a healthy dish. You can do a Google search to find the healthy version of many holiday favorites. This is the perfect way to ensure you have something nutritious to eat.
If you have a dinner party to look forward to don’t skip breakfast and lunch. You’ll be famished and will eat more than you need and feel stuffed all evening.
For a cocktail party, have a balanced meal beforehand and let the party be about enjoying your friends, not indulging in all the snacks you can pile on a cocktail napkin.
Let the festivities lift your spirits and keep alcohol to a minimum. Have a wine spritzer, order seltzer with a twist or slow down with a glass of water between each beer or glass of wine. Avoid sweet mixed drinks; they’re loaded with calories and sugar.
You’ll enjoy your food more, digest better and eat less overall if you sit down and eat slowly, rather than standing and talking all evening.
At a generous buffet party, choose a table far from the buffet and just serve yourself once. Create a balanced plate with small portions of your holiday favorites and fill the rest with salad and vegetables.
Walk into every holiday party with an abundant attitude – there’s no need to stuff yourself as if you’re starving and will never eat again.
Last but not least, a dessert tray trick: when the cookies and pie are passed around choose your favorite and tell yourself “I will have the last piece”. Sometimes the treats will vanish before your eyes – and your waistline will thank you – and other times you will enjoy that last, but not least, indulgence.
The key to healthy and happy holidays is all about your mindset and intentions. To stay connected to your goals, take extra good care of yourself at this often stressful time of year. Get plenty of sleep and time to yourself, go easy on sugar and alcohol, and drink plenty of water.
To your awesome life,
Heather…
Essential Nutrition Tips to Stay Healthy
A nutritious diet is a well balanced diet that has all the ingredients necessary for maintaining a healthy body. Consumers today are misled with advertisements that promote processed foods and beverages which are falsely considered to be healthy. A home cooked simple meal will be packed with nutrition than the packaged foods. Here are a few nutrition tips to stay healthy,
Include fruit and vegetable servings
Increase the portion of fruits and vegetables that you eat regularly in your daily diet. Visit the grocery store at least once or twice in a week and buy fresh vegetables and fruits.
Stop buying junk food
If you find junk food items and fried foods in the supermarket shelves, leave them there. Once, you start practicing not buying them the eating would stop, consequently.
Avoid sugar-loaded snacks
Opt for nutritious and healthy snacks that are nourishing instead of eating stomach full of sugar laden treats that have no nutrition in them.
Stress on a balanced diet
Nutrition tips include the importance of eating a well balanced diet. Eat balanced diet that is rich in vitamins, carbohydrates, minerals, proteins, fruits, vegetables and less percentage of fat.
Divide meals into smaller portions
Divide the three meals you take everyday into six or seven smaller portions and eat them at an interval of two-three hours. This practice will keep your metabolism rate higher and help you remain nourished all day.
Make breakfast compulsory
You deprive your body of essential calories when you don’t eat breakfast which leads to overeating. Breakfast helps you to stay energetic throughout the day and supplies the body with enough nutrition.
Say ‘no’ to soda and caffeine and ‘yes’ to water
Nutrition tips stress the significance of avoiding caffeine or soda consumption and opting for water to fight fatigue, cleanse the system, regulate the metabolism and to suppress your appetite.…
Eating Healthy When You Have Diabetes
It is always important to eat a healthy diet, but for those who have such medical conditions as diabetes, it is even more important. There are certain foods that are not good for diabetics and certain foods that they should be getting more of in their diets. Obviously, it is important to make sure that the foods that diabetics eat are not high in sugar and fat, and it also helps to eat foods that will help diabetics maintain a healthy weight.
What Is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a disease that causes the body to either not produce enough insulin, which is necessary for breaking down the foods we eat, or not using the insulin it does produce properly. If you have been diagnosed as having diabetes, it is more important than ever to make sure that you are eating right. There are three types of diabetes: Type 1 diabetes, or juvenile diabetes; Type 2 diabetes; and gestational diabetes. When a person has diabetes, it means that they have extremely high sugar counts in their blood and this must be controlled. Depending on which type of diabetes you have, controlling your sugars could be as easy as making some dietary changes-or you may need to take insulin to keep your sugars regulated.
Type 1 Diabetes – People who have Type 1 diabetes do not have enough insulin coming from the pancreas and must rely on insulin shots to make sure that they have enough. At one time, this involved taking needles, sometimes several times daily. Today, there is a device called an insulin pump, which is attached to the stomach and will supply insulin to the body as it needs it. Often, Type 1 diabetes is caused by an autoimmune disorder, and the person with this type of diabetes has an immune system that actually destroys the pancreas cells, making the organ unable to produce enough insulin.
Type 2 Diabetes – When the body does not properly use the insulin created by the pancreas, it is known as Type 2 diabetes. Often, this is a condition that is caused, or at least worsened, by being overweight. It is thought that excess body weight will inhibit the body’s ability to absorb and use insulin, and one way to alleviate this is by losing weight. This can be done by eating a healthy weight loss diet that is meant for diabetics. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of the disease, affecting between 90 and 95% of all diabetics.
Gestational Diabetes – This is the only type of diabetes that is a temporary one. It usually occurs when a woman is in the latter half of her pregnancy. It is always important to eat healthy when pregnant, but when gestational diabetes comes into play, it is even more important. When a woman has gestational diabetes, her pancreas is not able to produce enough insulin, and she will have to make some dietary changes, as well as monitor her blood sugar levels regularly. Fortunately, this form of diabetes usually goes away once the baby is born, and it is rare that it will cause the baby to be born with diabetes. It is important for women who are pregnant to be tested for gestational diabetes, so they can start making the dietary changes necessary to control the condition and have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.
What Are the Symptoms of Diabetes?
There are many different symptoms of diabetes and although many people experience many of the same symptoms, others may not, depending on the type of diabetes they have. Some of the most common symptoms associated with Type 1 diabetes include:
– Extreme thirst and hunger
– Frequent urination
– Loss of weight
– Blurred vision
– Extreme fatigue
The symptoms of Type 2 diabetes are often very similar to those of Type 1 diabetes, but they are not usually as severe and they come on more gradually. Weight is a huge factor and about 80% of people with Type 2 diabetes are overweight.
Risk Factors for Developing Diabetes
There are a number of risk factors for diabetes and if you find that you have some of these risk factors, you should have your physician test you for diabetes. The risk factors for diabetes include:
– If you have a family history of diabetes, you may be at risk of developing the disease yourself.
– Being overweight can greatly increase your risk of developing diabetes and the more overweight you are, the greater the risk.
– Certain ethnic groups are at a higher risk for developing diabetes, including Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, and Latinos.
Blood Sugar Levels
When a person has diabetes, it is essential that they monitor their blood sugar levels and take the appropriate steps to make sure …
Healthy and Delicious Nutrition Tips
To a lot of people, going on a diet or simply consuming a healthy nutrition signifies a world of dry toast and water. However, healthy nutrition is not comprised of such unsatisfying foods. These days, we have the privilege of consuming some of the finest foods in their reduced-calorie format. For instance, instead of whole milk we have low fat dairy products and instead of refined grains we have whole grains. We have the opportunity to eat all of the foods which we love with only minor alternations. In this article I will provide the reader with several healthy and delicious diet alternations.
Switch to low fat dairy. It tastes the same and provides your body with the same amount of calcium
Make the change to whole grains. Refined grains are obsolete.
Attain more calories from the foods you eat rather than the beverages you drink. For instance, instead of drinking sugar infused fruit juice, eat a piece of fruit along with a glass of water.
Be sure to increase your daily intake of fruits and veggies. These low calorie foods are laden with beneficial and sustaining fiber.
Switch to low fat condiments. Believe it or not, low fat ranch dressing tastes exactly like regular ranch. So go ahead and make the switch, you will be amazed at how many calories you will be eliminating.
Remember that meat is not the main source of protein. You should also consume plenty of fish and beans.
These are just a few healthy and delicious nutrition tips. Consuming a diet which is low in calories and high in beneficial nutrients can help you attain the weight you have always wanted. If you want to lose weight fast, you can also seek help from all natural diet pills and whey nutrimelt shakes. …
Nutrition College Teaches You About Healthy Food Choices
In today’s hurried life, many of our food choices are less than optimal. This is not only leading to the increase in the number of overweight and obese individuals it is also leaving a number of other people feeling sluggish and fighting health concerns like high cholesterol or abnormal blood sugars. Due to this rising concern in the general population, a career in nutrition will secure one with a long lasting marketable skill. There are a number of job options available to one who attends nutrition college. Dietitians and nutritionists only scratch the surface of the available options when one graduates with a degree in nutrition.
While food science programs focus on foods and their ingredients and how they affect our bodies, at nutrition college one will also study the effects of food and its chemical breakdown and how it affects our economy and culture. Individuals with degrees in nutrition can work closely with large companies studying how food breaks down, what causes it to spoil and ways to eliminate this creating longer shelf life for the company. Moreover, they can research ways to store foods or help market a certain product.
Because of the diverse employment options, nutrition schools will cover a wide scope of study revolving around food, its ingredients, nutrients and its biological structures. In addition, the student will engage in classes that better their communication skills both verbal and written. There are classes based around management, organizational skills, self-discipline and of course math to compute weights and measurements.
Once you decide that nutrition is the path for you, research your options carefully. Choosing the school and degree that is right for you is imperative. A reputable nutrition college will offer a variety of degrees related to nutrition.
Certificates are a great option for those that already hold another degree and are just looking for a way to specialize in particular area or the newcomer who is not completely sure that nutrition is for them. A certificate may be a great choice for the RN that wants to specialize in pediatric nutrition, for example.
However, if one decides this is the career for them, there are bachelor’s degrees as well as master’s programs to pursue opening a wide variety of options for one graduates with a degree in nutrition.…
Healthy Weight Loss Diet Tips – 7 Steps to Healthy Digestion
Digestion is an often overlooked part of a healthy weight loss diet.A� A good digestive process is critical to weight loss success.A� With poor digestion, you are making your gut vulnerable to harmful bacteria and inflammatory response, which cause that ugly distended fat belly and many diseases.
Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to aid your digestive process and ensure optimal function for weight loss success.
1) Stop Eating Processed Foods
Processed foods contain a large number of chemicals used to preserve the food for long periods of time.A� These chemicals are toxic to your body and must be fought off to keep them out of the intestines and colon.A� This generates an inflammatory response and the toxins end up getting stored in your fat tissue along with a whole lot of excess water. A�
Eliminate processed foods from your diet and you will see a world of a difference in your weight loss efforts as well as the comfort of your digestive system.A� There is never room for processed foods in a true healthy weight loss diet.
2) Eat Fewer Grains
Many people are intolerant to the stuff used to produce grains for consumption and don’t even know it.A� If you have a food intolerance, this will lead to serious digestive problems and cause bloating, constipation, abdominal pain/pressure, and weakened abdominal muscles.A� None of these things are very good if you are trying to get healthy and lose weight.
3) Drink Water 15-20 Minutes Prior to Each Meal
Hydration is critical to the digestion process.A� Water is needed to move everything along and, eventually, out of the system.A� By drinking a glass or two before a meal you are preparing your digestive system for the work it is about to partake in.
It is also important to stay hydrated throughout the day, as the digestive process is working even when you are not eating.
4) Eat Vegetables With Each Meal
The properties in vegetables provide a great natural digestion aid.A� They work to better break down food and ease the particles all the way through your digestive system.A� Some work better than others, with the leafy greens generally being among the most effective.
5) Get a Good Amount of Fiber in Your Diet
Dietary Fiber is indigestible.A� Therefore, it must pass all the way through your system.A� This helps you become more regular and “finish” the digestive process.A� Good sources of fiber include almonds, pears, avocados, apples (with skin), and flax seed.A� You may also want to try to use a psyllium supplement, such as psyllium hulls, before bedtime to aid in regulation.
6) Do Not Eat Until You Are “Stuffed”
When you are “stuffed”, you are typically actually overstuffed.A� These means that your food particles will not all be able enter the colon, where they are supposed to go.A� The extra particles will float around and be directed to other areas where they can cause problems.A� By eating smaller meals throughout the day, you can avoid these problems.
7) Chew Your Food Until It’s as Liquified as Possible
This tip makes the whole digestive process easier.A� Liquid is much easier to digest than big solid chunks.A� By chewing more, you are making the workload much easier on your digestive enzymes by starting to break down the food for them.A� This will make the transport of food through the body much smoother and avoid problems of particle leakage.
Digestive health is crucial to weight loss success.A� Use these tips to create a healthy gut.A� And remember, a healthy gut is a happy guy; and a happy gut is an attractive gut!…