Category Archives: Healthy Eating Tips
Eating Healthy with Family
Hello from the tail end of a family visit!
Please tell me that some of your families are as food-oriented as mine. Maybe it’s because mine is Italian and my grandmother feels happiest when she’s providing food for us, but there was hardly a second this weekend that I wasn’t either eating or being offered food.
Luckily my grandmother is a fabulous cook and my grandfather has excellent taste in restaurants!
The visit started out with a Saturday lunch at Mykonos – a family favorite Greek restaurant. The eggplant medley was completely vegan and came with a rockin’ veggie-packed starter salad:
The main dish was hands down the star of the show. The plate was packed with huge portions of nearly every Greek vegetable imaginable {tomatoes, spinach, peppers, onions, mushrooms, onions and eggplant} and served on a bed of yellow rice and lettuce.
Even though this was the first time I’d ordered the eggplant medley, it’s hands down one of my favorite restaurant dishes of all time!
Other delectable eats provided by the family included:
It’s easy to find myself waddling around the house by the last day of my visit, but this Mother’s Day was distinctly less gut-busting than other vacations with the family. I ate as mindfully as possible– enjoying reasonable servings of my favorite dishes and skipping over the “meh” foods that didn’t exactly appeal to me. Between mindful eating and a long Saturday morning run, I headed home feeling like I hadn’t completely gone off the health wagon on the trip .
Some of my other favorite tricks for staying healthy with the family:
- Don’t be afraid to ask for modifications. Want to skip the cheese or opt for a meatless dish? Family is usually understanding enough to modify.
- Offer to prepare a healthy meal. My grandma was grateful to have Mother’s Day dinner covered, and my grandpa actually loved the sesame tofu stir fry I whipped up for the group.
- Don’t feel obligated to eat all the food offered. If I said yes to every edible my mother tried to give me, I’d have been simultaneously eating Oreos, pretzel sticks, smoothies and buttered toast. Just because it’s available to you doesn’t mean you have to eat it!
- On that same note, let the access to someone else’s pantry make you more adventurous. I enjoyed plenty of honeydew and Nutella over the trip – two foods I realized I love but rarely purchase on my own grocery runs!
How do you stay healthy when visiting family?
Get Hungry {for Veggies}, Get Happy
Whenever new research is released in support of a plant-based diet, I can’t help but get excited about sharing it. It can be difficult to pass along these tidbits without sounding like a crazy veggie-power-chick…but just maybe, despite my aversion to dietary debates, I have a little bit of crazy veggie-power chick in me.
Go, greens!
Loving the 3:1 veggie to egg ratio in this morning’s breakfast.
Crazy awesome veggie-power news of the day:
Omnivores typically have more arachidonic acid in their bodies than vegetarians do. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things? The spidery-sounding substance promote mood-altering processes in the brain, leading to higher rates of stress and depression. In a recent short study, omnivores had overall worse moods than vegetarians did. Even consumption of fish-sourced eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) – two fats that are thought to counteract arachidonic acid – didn’t make a significant impact on the omnivores’ moods.
Moral of the story? Get hungry for veggies, get happy!
For vegetarians: how do you share information about plant-based diets without being “that preachy vegetarian?” For carnivores, how open are you to hearing about plant-power research?
Can Skipping Meals be Part of Intuitive Eating?
I loved reading through all of your comments yesterday – it seems like we all go through occasional periods where we don’t really feel like eating much.
In light of my MIA appetite, I began to wonder: is there ever a scenario in which skipping a meal is an acceptable part of intuitive eating?
Let’s look at it this way: the basic tenets of intuitive eating are to honor your body’s hunger cues, to eat when you are hungry and to stop when you are full. What’s the case, then, when you’re full before you even start? Is it OK to intentionally skip a meal because your body is saying “thanks but no thanks, I don’t need the fuel right now?”
To be clear: I’m not talking about skipping a meal when you are physically hungry with the intent of cutting calories. I’m talking about evaluating your hunger without paying any regard to whether or not it’s “time” for you to eat, and choosing to pass on food if you genuinely aren’t hungry.
In a case like that – which I found myself in yesterday afternoon – I feel like intuitive eating can entail skipping a meal. Since the whole principle is listening to your cravings and hunger cues, and my body was sending me “I’m not hungry” signals, I feel like I wasn’t being unhealthy by not forcing myself to get lunch just for the sake of getting lunch. In fact, I think it’s healthier to listen to the occasional “I’m not hungry” voice rather than overriding your body’s non-hunger cues and forcing yourself to eat. Isn’t that essentially the same as overriding your hunger cues and forcing yourself not to eat? It’s when you stop listening to your body’s needs that a habit becomes unhealthy.
However, I can see where skipping a meal – regardless of intention – can trigger an unhealthy chain of actions. For anyone who hasn’t struggled with disordered habits, it can be hard to think of starving as an addiction, but there is a specific “high” that a disordered mentality can obtain from the light, empty feeling of skipping a meal. This could have an avalanche affect; passing on one meal could lead to a string of skipped meals, even after your appetite comes back.
Heavy stuff for a Friday morning! At least I was in the mood for a decent dinner after opting not to force myself to have lunch:
First course: green smoothie made with spinach, almond milk, a banana and peach soy yogurt:
Second course: a sandwich of melted mozzarella Teese, fresh tomato and fresh basil with a light spread of veganaise:
It wasn’t massive, but it was substantial enough to satisfy me. Even after passing on lunch, I wasn’t ravenous for dinner (mental reinforcement that I made the right choice) but I still enjoyed every bite – something I probably wouldn’t have been able to say about lunch, had I bought one!
Weigh in: do you think it can ever be healthy or safe to skip meals if you are genuinely not hungry?
Some foods just don’t need to be healthy.
The other day, I dreamed about biscuits, eggs and gravy. Let’s not even talk about the fact that I dreamed about food. Let’s just focus our attention on how amazing that sounded – warm, fluffy, buttermilk biscuits, straight out of the oven, topped with a comforting, savory gravy. I scanned a few recipes until I found simple recipes for the biscuits and the sauce and got to work putting my own {healthy} spin on dinner.
It tasted just about as good as it looked – and since it looked like baby food smeared over packing peanuts, I’ll spare you the visual.
Lacking all desire to take a second stab at dinner, I grabbed a quick order of tempeh tacos from College Park’s Infusion Café. They tend to go a little heavy on the seasoning, but the amazing local cabbage slaw cooled things down.
Moral of the story: Gravy should just be broth, flour and maybe a dash of rosemary or thyme. No turmeric for anti-inflammatory properties, no nutritional yeast for B12, no cumin for culinary flair and definitely no liquid smoke for the heck of it. Biscuits should come from Cracker Barrel, and scrambled tofu doesn’t exactly sub for scrambled eggs on the side.
Other foods where the “healthified” versions fall short:
- Bagels. Don’t even try to pretend that bagel thins are in the same food group as their thick, pillowy, doughy counterparts.
- Ice cream. To me, fat-free ice creams like Skinny Cow have a funky, grainy taste. I’d much rather have a smaller portion of a high-quality, full-fat vanilla than a gallon of reduced fat every-topping-in-the-world-with-a-sugar-free-fudge-ribbon.
- Hummus. The dip is already healthy– I just can’t get behind omitting the tahini for a fat-free version. Without the signature sesame paste, hummus is chunky, pasty and gross. Save your calories by serving it on carrots instead of chips, or use it as a more heart-healthy sandwich spread than mayonnaise – either way, don’t ditch the tahini!
- Salad dressing. This one’s actually scientific; many of the nutrients in your salad’s vegetables are fat-soluble, meaning they’re best absorbed when paired with a healthy fat, like those found in olive oil or even a creamy Caesar. Although dairy products can quickly turn a light salad into a calorie-bomb, don’t be afraid to top your veggies with something more indulgent than a fat free ranch!
On the other end of the spectrum, some things are even tastier with a healthy twist:
- Pizza. The way I top my pizzas, it really should count as a vegetable! Pizzas are a great way to up your veggie count for the day when topped with colorful goodies like peppers, mushrooms or spinach. It’s also awesome with less popular vegetables like eggplant and artichokes.
- Yogurt. I like the soy kind, but with so many awesome lower-fat, higher-protein Greek options like Chobani, there’s no need to ever pick up a tub of the sugar and chemical-laden regular yogurt.
- Whole wheat pasta. There’s hardly a flavor difference between whole-grain noodles and nutritionally empty white flour noodles, so why not opt for the fiber-rich wheat version?
What are some foods that just aren’t as good “healthified?” Foods where you will always take the healthier option?
A Week’s Worth of Groceries for Under$25
You know you have the coolest job ever when you don’t even look up from your assignments until nearly 4 pm!
When I finally snapped my head out of the books I’d been taking notes from, I realized I had a short window of time to decide on a produce stand to head to after work. My veggie stash had dwindled to half a box of alfalfa sprouts and a lonely onion, and the situation needed to be remedied pronto.
As I’ve shared before, one of my favorite grocery bill-slashing secrets is to purchase my fruits and vegetables from a fruit stand or farmers market. Not only can I walk out with an abundant week’s worth of fresh goods for under $15, but I also feel better about supporting local businesses whenever possible.
A handful of web reviews for Orlando produce stands pointed me in the direction of Clemons Produce. After taking Haley for a quick walk, I headed off to check out their bounty for myself!
At first, I was expecting an open-air booth of sorts, and I passed it by – twice – before realizing that it was in a shopping plaza!
Once I ducked in, I was met with far more goods than I’d expected. Naturally, there was a wide range of standard goods:
As well as several specialty areas – fresh cheeses and meats, dried beans and nuts, grains and even dressings and honey!
Although the fresh, outdoorsy feel was notably absent from the fluorescently-lit indoor market, the selection and prices more than made up for what it lacked in atmosphere.
An incredibly budget-happy total of $8.80 sent me home with:
- 5 Ruby Red Grapefruit (locally grown)
- 2 boxes of strawberries – unbelievably only $1/each (locally grown)
- 2 bananas
- 2 peaches
- 2 plum tomatoes
- 1 red potato
- 1 six-ounce carton of blackberries
- 6 assorted peppers (organic)
Apparently I wasn’t the only shopper who found $.69 bunches of kale to be a great bargain – by the time I’d gotten there, the entire stock was gone!
I supplemented my Clemon’s Produce haul with a few items from Publix and Dollar Tree.
Although certain items are hit-or-miss, it’s entirely possible to find healthy foods at dollar stores! Somewhere beyond the off-brand Fritos, canned artificial beef products and sad excuses for cake mix, I scored a shelf-stable box of WestSoy Soy Milk and a jar of Naturally Fresh Italian Salad Dressing.
The only catch with Dollar Tree is to keep an eye on the expiration dates. Thankfully, the soymilk is good until January 2012.
Sold!
A final stop at Publix rounded out the week’s groceries:
After spending a whopping $8.80 at Clemon’s, $2 at Dollar Tree and $10.96 at Publix, I managed to bring home an entire week’s worth of groceries for under $25. Although having a meat-free shopping list and only one mouth to feed does contribute to the low expenses, I’m always thrilled to lower my weekly food spending whenever possible!
Okay, darlings, off to whip up a hearty breakfast from the depths of my well-stocked fridge! Have an awesome Tuesday!
What did your last grocery bill come to? How much do you budget weekly/monthly for food?
The College Kid Kitchen – A Cheat Sheat
Well hello, calendar. It’s August 18th, you say? Are you KIDDING ME? Wasn’t it just June?
This year I’m not wandering up and down the aisles of Target, grabbing sparkly pencils (What? You mean I’m not still in sixth grade?) and extra-long twin bed sheets to stuff in the trunk of my car in anticipation of move-in day at my university.
I may be the only person in the world who gets done with college with nothing but amazing things to say about dorm living…but I can’t lie, I loved it! My campus was gorgeous, the dorms were (relatively) new and (relatively) stinkless, and there was always something going on. Having the majority of my friends within a five minute walk was an added bonus!
The only downside of living on campus was the meal plan requirement. Our cafeteria left MUCH to be desired, yet all residents were required to purchase a pass for a minimum of 10 meals per week. Most of the time I’d eat about 7 of those in the cafeteria, getting the rest of my food from my minifridge or a fast food joint. Looking back, I would have done far better relying more on the former and less on the latter – no surprise there! Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Dairy Queen does not a healthy diet make.
By the last semester of my senior year, I had a pretty good handle on my health, began stocking my fridge much more wisely, and got creative with dormifying recipes. There was a far better balance of appropriate choices to go along with the requisite pizza consumption.
With enough planning, it’s entirely possible to avoid the freshman 15. There really are quite a few nutritionally viable options for the lucky dorm-dwellers of 2010!
Breakfasts
- Oatmeal. NOT the flavored, sugar-infused individual packets from Quaker, but the plain and simple instant rolled oats in a canister.
- Natural Peanut Butter. Not only is it a perfect fat-and-protein packed oatmeal topping, but smeared on an apple (which you can often klepto from the cafeteria), it’s a perfect study snack.
- Greek Yogurt. These bad boys take up minimum fridge space and are portable enough to bring along to your 6 am class if you oversleep.
- Cottage Cheese. Pair it with a piece of fresh fruit for a no-prep-required light morning meal!
Lunches
- Deli-style sandwiches. You can’t get much easier than a few slices of lean ham or turkey (or hey, even Tofurkey!) with a slice of part-skim provolone or cheddar and a squeeze of mustard!
- Dippers + Hummus. A classic assortment of veggies (such as carrots, cherry tomatoes, and broccoli heads) and a slice of whole wheat pita are a fab midday pick-me-up paired with a substantial dip like hummus.
- Cold salads. Most major grocery stores offer small bins of pre-made lunch salads, such as tabbouleh or a cold couscous. Check the chilled cases near the deli for selections, but avoid mayonnaise-loaded selections like potato salad and cole slaw.
- Salad kits. Look for a bag that includes a dark leafy green like romaine, extra veggies such as carrots, cabbage, and mushrooms, and a satiety-boosting component such as shredded chicken or mozzarella cubes.
Dinners
- Low sodium canned soups. Amy’s is my go-to brand for their Low Sodium Lentil and vegetarian Minestrone, but Muir Glen and even Progresso have viable options. Just don’t forget the can opener!
- Microwavable instant brown rice. The possibilities are endless: Top with a sliced avocado, organic canned black beans, and salsa for a Mexican theme; use feta crumbles + cucumber + canned beet slices for a Greek variation, or organic canned pinto beans + part-skim cheddar.
- Amy’s frozen dinners. While I normally don’t advocate resorting to microwave meals, the reality is, in college, it happens. Her Indian and Spanish choices are on the better end of the frozen meal scale and stick with mostly respectable ingredients.
Snacks
- Nuts
- No-sugar-added dried fruits
- Clif/Luna/Lara Bars
- Whole grain pretzels + Part-Skim Cheese
- Raw veggies + honey mustard, dijon, or a light ranch dressing
- Dry cereal (Kashi is always a good place to start)
Have any questions or concerns about staying or getting healthy during college? As a fresh-outta-college gal, I’d love to give my perspective on them! Shoot me an email or leave a comment and let’s get a dialogue going!
How to Navigate a Buffet Like A Pro
I really could kiss the mastermind that developed the concept of a buffet. In terms of important inventions, this one may rival running water or air conditioning.
I mean seriously…massive quantities of food from multiple cuisines, already cooked and laid out to be dished up and and devoured consumed in a civilized and ladylike manner? Sheer genius.
It’s daunting – but definitely possible – to pull together a healthy meal at a buffet.
I’m the kind of girl who likes to arrive with a game plan. My offensive playbook maximizes food-samplage while carefully crafted defensive plays prevent against waddling to the car on injured reserve with a food baby.
In the locker room…
- Some coaches subscribe to the “get your money’s worth” theory; I’d like to rename this “getting your tummy’s worth”. True, you’re paying for unlimited food, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat like it’s your last meal. (Unless, of course, it is, in which case, get your sorry self away from the computer and find something more last-day-on-earth-worthy!) Don’t skip meals leading up to the buffet!
- If necessary, pop a quick snack a bit before so you’re not tempted to just bring a fork up to the buffet and eat straight out of the serving line.
At kickoff…
- Take a quick survey of the offerings. This is doubly important if you follow a special diet. I’ve had times when I’m so thrilled to see a good vegan/vegetarian option that I snag several scoops of the first dish I see, not expecting there to be much else available for me to eat…until I get to the next table, packed with bigger and better things, and no room left on my plate. A pre-game go-round lets you prioritize!
- Beeline for the salad bar. Even buffets I’m not usually impressed by tend to have a fairly hefty selection of leafy greens and toppings!
- Keep portions small the first time around. Not only does is it reduce waste in the event that you don’t like something you chose, but this way you don’t have to deprive yourself of the more indulgent selections. The beauty of a buffet is that you can always go back for seconds of the good stuff!
For the win…
- Seek out volume-eating heavyweights (or, more aptly, lightweights!) such as raw, steamed, or sauteed veggies, fresh fruit, and broth-based soups.
- Watch your sauces. Creamy salad dressings, pasta sauces, and cream-based soups hide a great deal of fat and calories. Meanwhile, teriyaki and marinara varieties are often packed with added sugars.
- Take advantage of the rotisserie for a smart lean protein option.
- Splurge smart and maintain common sense. Sure, you can have your cake and eat it too, but make sure it doesn’t follow a slice of pizza, chicken tenders, spaghetti and mashed potatoes! When you make your rounds upon arrival, pick one treat and plan around it!
If there’s a dish that you wouldn’t feel good about ordering or making at home, don’t feel compelled to try it just because it’s available to you. Stick to your guns!
How do you stay healthy at the buffet?
