Good nutrition & convenience can go hand-in-hand



 Focus on good nutrition while making use of pre-prepared foods and you’ll find that healthy eating is easy.

One of the biggest complaints people have about eating healthily is the perception that it requires more hours in the kitchen to prepare nutritious meals.  But there are so many convenience items available now that preparing healthy meals is a snap.
For protein, you can buy fish or poultry that’s already seasoned and ready for quick grilling or frozen pre-cooked shrimp that can be tossed with some pasta and veggies for a quick dish.  And don’t overlook canned tuna, salmon or chicken breast that can be added to salad greens, rice dishes or soups.
You can also boost the nutritional value of condensed soups by mixing them with nonfat milk or soy milk instead of water.  As the soup is heating, toss in some frozen mixed vegetables, or some loose pack spinach to add nutrition, flavor and bulk.  Frozen-loose pack vegetables allow you to use only what you need and are ready to eat in minutes.
Salad preparation can also be quick thanks to pre-washed salad greens, all sorts of pre-sliced and chopped veggies and baby carrots.  Add a splash of low-fat bottled dressing and some pre-cooked chicken or shrimp and you’ve got a quick and healthy meal.
Fresh, pre-washed and cut veggies are available in the produce section, and if your market has a salad bar you can often find them there, too.  Pop them in the steamer, toss with some pre-chopped garlic or onions when they’re crisp/tender, and you’ve got a gourmet dish in minutes.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD

How to make your New Year's resolutions that last all year

New Year’s resolutions – don’t make promises you can’t keep. This year make a few small changes in your eating habits that can yield big results instead.

Do you remember the New Year’s resolutions you made last year? Let me guess…. if you’re like most people, you probably vowed to eat better, get more exercise – and maybe floss more often. So, looking back, how did it go? Did you accomplish all you set out to do? Or, did you start the year out strong – then fall back on your old patterns, so that you’re making the same resolutions again this year? This may surprise you, but I think that’s okay – and here’s why. If you make the decision every January to shape up, it says that taking better care of yourself is important to you. If it weren’t important, you wouldn’t keep working at it. And just because you make the same promises to yourself every year, it doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t accomplish anything last year.

Any improvement is good
Maybe you didn’t exercise as much as you planned, or ate as carefully as you intended. But if you’re still doing better now than you were the year before, maybe it’s because you managed to chip away at a few bad habits. And that’s great – because the little changes to the way you do things every single day can really add up. And, you can continue to build on these small successes this New Year.
Don’t do too much at once
It’s great to be ambitious, but if you try to tackle too many changes at once, you could be setting yourself up for defeat. Making resolutions is the easy part – making them stick is what’s hard, because you’re having to do things differently. It takes time to undo a bad habit, which is why repetition is so important. But it’s a lot easier to repeat a small, relatively easy task than one that seems positively Herculean. And, you have to figure out what’s getting in the way of your progress, and figure out how to move these obstacles out of your way.
Let’s say you don’t floss your teeth as often as you should. What’s getting in your way? And what steps can you take to make sure you’ll do it regularly? It’s not really a time issue – it only takes a couple of minutes. But you need to make sure you have the floss in the house. You need to make sure you see the floss whenever you brush your teeth. You need a mirror, so you can see what you’re doing.
So, maybe you decide that rather than tossing the dental floss in the back of the medicine cabinet where it gets lost in a jumble of half-used toiletries, you’ll instead make a little ‘dental kit’ for yourself – one that includes your toothbrush, your toothpaste, your floss, and maybe a little dental mirror. With everything conveniently in one place, it’s more likely that every time you pull out your ‘kit’, you’ll not just brush – you’ll wind up flossing, too.
Move obstacles out of your way
Same thing goes with your eating habits – you have to figure out why you’re not doing what you plan to do, and how you can make it easier. It’s easy to say you’re going to eat more fruits and vegetables, but it’s hard to do if you don’t keep them in the house. But that’s not enough. Once you’ve got them in the house, you have to make it easier to eat them. So maybe you make sure to keep a stash of fruit in the freezer to add to protein shakes, or you keep a bowl of fruit on your kitchen counter to remind you that fruit makes a great snack, or you keep some cut up veggies handy in the refrigerator where you’ll see them every time you open the door looking for something to munch on.
But make sure that whatever changes you plan to make are things you know you can really do. If you’ve never brought your lunch to work, it’s unlikely you’ll suddenly start doing it every day. So set a reasonable goal, and make it specific – not “I’m going to bring my lunch to work more often”, but “I’m going to bring my lunch to work twice a week”. That way, at the end of the week it’s easy to determine if you’ve met your goal or not.
Small changes do add up
And just because the changes are small, doesn’t mean they don’t add up. If that twice weekly homemade lunch has 300 fewer calories than your usual lunch from a restaurant, that’s a savings of over 31,000 calories in a year, which could translate into a loss of 9 pounds. If you grab a piece of fruit instead of a bowl of ice cream every night after dinner, you could drop another 10 pounds by next January…from just that one small change.
January is a good time to think about changes you want to make but don’t think your New Year’s resolutions need to be dramatic to make a difference.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about how the small changes you make can add up – changes in the way you shop, prepare and serve your food, and changes in the way you approach menus and restaurant dining. I’ll give you my best tips for making changes that will last – and hope you’ll share your best ones with me, too.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD.

Meal Deals -� when more isn't necessarily better

A “meal deal” is no bargain if you’re just buying extra fat, sugar and calories.

There’s an old joke that goes something like this:  two women are having lunch in a restaurant they haven’t been to before.  As they’re finishing up their meal, one says to the other, “You know, the food here is really terrible!” To which her companion snaps back, “I’ll say!  And such small portions, too!”  It’s so true, isn’t it?  No matter what we’re buying, we’re always looking for a good value – even if it’s food that isn’t very good…or very good for you.

Getting more for your money is generally a good thing, and we’ve been conditioned to look for the best value in everything we buy – from laptops to laundry soap.  But if getting more for your money means getting more fat, more sugar and more calories, that can spell trouble for your waistline.

How often have you felt prodded to overeat – swayed by sales pitches that encourage you to buy more and consume more – and, by implication, “save” more?  Order the bigger burger, and there’s a good chance you’ll be offered a meal deal for a discount on your soda and fries, too (after all, you’ll need more liquid to wash it all down).  Order a large pizza, and you also get a sack of free breadsticks delivered to your door (just what you need for dinner… bread, with a side of bread).

Too bad the same doesn’t seem to hold true for healthy food.  Most of the time, when you buy fresh fruits and vegetables, you buy them by the pound – it doesn’t get any cheaper the more you buy.   I’ve been to movie theaters where I’ve been charged for a cup of water (just the cup, mind you – I had to fill it myself with water from the water fountain).  That’s because the cup probably costs the theater a lot more than the soda does – they could practically give it away if they didn’t have to pay for those darn cups.
How can you keep yourself from giving in when you’re feeling outside pressure to overeat?
Focus on getting nutritional value, not just a huge amount of food
Is your goal really to buy “more food for less money”? What you should be thinking about is how to buy the most nutrition you can with your money.  Spend $3 on a fast food meal and you’ll get about 40 grams of fat and a quarter-cup of sugar.  For the same three bucks, you could buy a carrot (all your vitamin A for the day) an orange (all your vitamin C for the day) a banana (a hefty dose of potassium), a bunch of broccoli (nearly all your folic acid for the day) and a can of black beans (22 grams of protein and 15 grams of fiber).
Practice saying “no, thanks”
A few weeks ago, my local supermarket was giving away a one-liter bottle of soda with every purchase of $25 or more.  The checker just couldn’t believe that I didn’t want it – “but it’s free!”
So practice saying “no”…“no thanks”… “thanks, but no thanks”…”I’m good”…
You’re the one who determines how much you should be eating
Remember who’s in charge.  Just because a restaurant is willing to throw in an extra helping of food and call it “dinner”, doesn’t mean it’s an appropriate amount of food for you.  You know what how much you should be eating.  Keep a mental image of your portion sizes, and do your best to stick to them. 
Don’t buy it if you don’t want it
Sure, it sounds like a deal if you “buy one and get one free”.  And, if you’re good at taking home the extra for another meal, this might work.  But if you don’t want it – and you know you’ll be tempted to eat it – don’t buy it.  A “good deal” isn’t so good if you’re getting something you really don’t want.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD.

Five Bad Eating Habits You Should Break

Bad eating habits lead to unhealthy behavior. Five of the most common bad eating habits are skipping meals, eating while distracted, eating comfort food, not using portion control & eating too fast. Skipping breakfast can lead to later becoming overly hungry & then over eating. Eating too fast can also cause you to eat more than you should. Herbalife nutrition expert Susan Bowerman says that keeping your bad eating habits in mind could help you break them.

http://video.herbalife.com/#!/video/1286143/35573

Nutritional Health For Kids

 Healthy Foods For Kids

With these tips from Herbalife and Susan Bowerman, getting kids to eat top-rated foods does not have to be a struggle

http://video.herbalife.com/#!/video/639108/35573

For a quick nutritional snack that your kids will love try. Herbalife shakes for kids. Herbalife Kids™ Shakes provide essential nutrition including protein, fiber and 100% of key nutrients to meet growing kids’ daily needs. Because they taste great, kids will ask for one every day—that’s the start of healthy eating habits they’ll rely on as they grow older.
This and other all natural health and nutrition products can be found at Ian's Herbal http://valparaiso.herbalhub.com

Why we need to eat well

 

Eating healthy food not only makes you feel good, but it also boosts your energy and improves your memory. Additionally, getting important nutrients in your diet helps ward off heart disease, cancer, diabetes, depression, and other health conditions, says Sarah Krieger, MPH, RD, LD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. A good diet also helps you maintain a healthy weight, which is critical to feeling good and preventing illnesses. Formula 1 Shake Mix from Herbalife provides you with all the nutrients you need for a balanced diet. Check what Dr. Liugi Gratton MPH had to say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxkT8Oc8FSs&feature=related

Get yours today at http://myfigure.greatshapetoday.com