If you want to eat healthier and lose weight, a fridge makeover may be just what you need. Keeping these foods on-hand will help you make smart choices when you're tired, busy, or craving junk.

Nut Butters
Smear them on whole-grain toast, add them to smoothies, or slather them on apple slices for a quick snack that will keep you full.

Lemon
Squeeze lemon into your water or tea to jazz up your drink without adding calories. Might we suggest keeping a pitcher of this cucumber, ginger, and lemon detox water in your fridge to stay hydrated and energized.

Greek Yogurt
Instead of opting for a high-calorie dessert, grab a helping of Greek yogurt topped with fruit. Greek yogurt also makes a healthy replacement for sour cream, butter, or any of these other ingredients you an substitute Greek yogurt for.

Eggs
Keeping a few hard-boiled eggs in your fridge makes having a healthy, protein-filled breakfast effortless.

Hummus
The high-protein dip is great with veggies for a low-calorie snack, and you can use it in place of salad dressing or mayo. Buy a tub, or get creative and make your own flavorful hummus recipes.

Baby Spinach
Baby spinach is an easy way to add nutrients to almost any meal. Throw it on pizza, pasta, sandwiches, soups—basically anything—for a dose of vitamin A and other nutrients.

Full Article: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/healthy-fridge-food

How to Find the Healthiest Meals in the Frozen Foods Aisle

Convenient and relatively inexpensive, frozen meals come with the reputation of being an unhealthy, unwholesome option for your dinner. While perhaps not the best thing you could be eating this evening, it is hard to escape the ease of removing the box from your freezer, throwing the tray on a baking sheet in the oven or popping it in the microwave, for a quickly served hot dinner that requires no real thinking. When life gets hectic, the frozen entrée can save you stress in the kitchen and valuable time. That simplicity doesn't necessarily have to come at the cost of your health.

By following a few basic guidelines and carefully reading the packaging, you can navigate your way through frozen entrées with ease, and select the best bet for dinner. To be a savvy shopper, know what you need a frozen meal to have before you go to the grocery store in order to pick the ready-made meal that won’t wreck your diet and health.

Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD, writing for WebMD, categorized frozen meals into two categories: “light meals” and “regular” dinners. For the first, Zelman says to keep the meal under 300 calories, and with less than 8 grams of fat. The second should not have more than 25 grams of fat, and you’ll want around 360 to 400 calories per serving.

Sodium can quickly balloon out of control when frozen meals are involved, and there are two main ways to approach controlling for sodium. The first is to find meals that do not contain more than 800 milligrams of sodium in a serving. If that is even too high for you, you can divide the amount of sodium you aim to have in your diet each day by three, and find meals that fall under that amount.

We all need sodium in our diets, the Mayo Clinic states, but the average American has too much of the substance. Most people should have 2,300 milligrams or fewer each day, and people over 51 years of age need to aim for less than 1,500 milligrams each day. Other health, age, and demographic factors can play a part in a person needing a lower sodium intake, and individuals need to be aware of their personal limits when shopping in the freezer aisle.

Another consideration is the ingredient list itself. Don’t let yourself be fooled by packaging that makes health claims to entice you into purchasing the product. To do this, you’ll need to be able to sort out the nutrition label. Self has a few items to be wary of when reading the label — like manufacturers listing “galactose,” “dextrose,” or “dextrin” on a label instead of sugar.

With a little bit of Internet searching, you can find diet-specific assistance too. The American Diabetes Association has this reference sheet, tailored to helping diabetics find the best bet. Celiac.com doesn't do any of the health research for you, but if you cannot consume gluten, the website does have this page where you can see the various options that are gluten-free in the freezer. The advice available doesn't have to be this narrow though.

Having created lists about the best and worsts frozen meals, many diet and health websites can help guide your selection. The Daily Meal has found what it considers to be the top fifteen choices on the market, and from Consumer Reports you’ll find a ranking of pizzas by taste. Other places combine elements of both. In the pantheon of pizzas, websites abound highlighting positives to be found in some frozen pies.

Eat This, Not That gives all Kashi pizzas a high mark, but it singled out the Kashi Mexicali Black Bean Pizza as the best pizza choice in the frozen food aisle. The serving size is one-third of the pizza. That serving size has 210 calories, 560 milligrams of sodium, and 7 grams of fat. Low on the sodium scale as far as frozen foods are concerned, it also will provide 13 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber.

The Whole Foods Market Buffalo Mozzarella with Cherry Tomatoes has 310 calories per serving — which is half of the pie. A tad more sodium (690 milligrams) and fat (11 grams) than the Kashi pizza, Cooking Light points out that the ingredient list is full of fresh, simple items. To that, we’ll add you can actually pronounce everything that is listed too.

Want side-by-side comparisons without clicking through lists or extra commentary? There is a website for that too. Find the Best will take you on a virtual frozen food tour, letting you narrow down your options based on cuisine, calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Out of that list, you can compare choices to see how one meal holds up against a similar entrée. The detailed view of a particular item will give you even more information, including ingredients and sodium per serving.

The easy option doesn't have to be an unhealthy part of your diet. When you know that a frozen entrée is going to end up in your shopping cart, having all of these facts and ideas sorted before you shop will prevent you from blindly choosing once your in the store. Not only will it save time in the store, but it might remove a bit of the stigma attached to frozen foods, too.

Original Article: http://wallstcheatsheet.com/life/how-to-find-the-healthiest-meals-in-the-frozen-food-aisle.html/?a=viewall

5 Effortless Tricks To Make Healthy Eating Easy

There’s no question about it: eating healthy 100% of the time can seem like a near impossible goal—especially if you’re not used to eating that way on a regular basis.

But along with consistent exercise, healthy eating is what’s really going to help you reach your goals. It can be the difference between finally achieving the body of your dreams and never quite getting there. Plus, it’ll make you feel better, give you more energy, and help you perform better in your workouts.

And the great thing about it? Healthy eating doesn’t have to be that difficult.

Because when you know what you should be focusing on and how to structure your meals around your busy days, eating healthy can actually be enjoyable—and surprisingly effortless.

Here are five tricks to make healthy eating easy:

1. Eat a protein-packed breakfast every morning

Protein is what keeps you full, fuels your muscles, and helps you keep a strong and lean physique. Starting your day out with around 30 grams of protein will not only help get you through the morning without feeling hunger pains, it will also help you feel less snacky and get less cravings for sugar and carbs later in the day.

As a bonus, since protein is harder for your body to break down than carbohydrates, a high-protein meal can actually increase your metabolism by up to 30% for as long as 12 hours at a time.

2. Carry healthy snacks with you everywhere

I don’t know about you, but if I don’t get food on a regular basis, I become what can only be described as “hangry.”

This used to be hard on my family and friends, because they would never know when I would get too hungry and “turn on them.” And as a result, I would usually be forced to get something unhealthy to snack on such a muffin or a bagel, both poor choices to fuel your body throughout the day without packing on the pounds.

But preventing “hangry” moments or unhealthy snacking when out and about is easy—as long as you do a little planning ahead of time. Doing so will not only help you avoid unhealthy foods, it will keep you from being hungry constantly and make the people around you very, very happy.

Here are a few ideas of easy, healthy snacks you can carry with you at all times:

• Almonds and other nuts (but avoid sugary trail mixes)
• Hard boiled eggs
• Protein powder (just mix with water for a quick and easy protein shake)
• Apples, oranges, grapes and other fresh fruit
• Protein bars (just avoid ones with high amounts of sugar or added ingredients)

3. Make veggies a main part of every meal

If you’re not a big fan of vegetables, I’m going to take a wild guess and assume you’ve just never had them cooked right.

Because canned, over-sauced or flavorless veggies aren’t on anyone’s list of favorite foods. But fresh, just ripened, in-season veggies? There are so many good ones to choose from—broccoli, kale, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peppers, and more—you’re bound to find at least a couple you like.

And once you find a few that you love (or at least can tolerate), start making them a main part of every meal. Add them to omelets, toss them in salads, make stir fries with them, and even include them in smoothies. Aim to make them at least two thirds of your plate as often as possible.

Before you know it, you’ll not only find that you might actually start to like vegetables, your body will start to crave them because of how good they make you feel after eating them.

And when you fill up on veggies, you’re much less likely to gorge yourself with junk food later on.

4. Eat whole foods whenever possible

One of the easiest ways to eat healthier without trying too hard is to simply focus on avoiding processed foods and include as many whole foods as possible in your diet.

So what exactly are whole foods?

Whole foods are foods that have been processed or refined as little as possible and are free from additives or other artificial substances. They typically don’t come in a box, can, or container, contain little to no added ingredients, and unlike their processed counterparts, are packed with complex micronutrients and dietary fiber.

Eating whole foods mean you’ll frequent your local farmer’s market instead of the canned foods isle, choose whole grains over refined ones, and eat fresh local fish over highly processed TV dinners.

It may take a little getting used to, but once you discover how food is supposed to taste, eating healthy will become much more natural to you.

5. Don’t deny yourself your favorite foods

Do you dream about chocolate chip cookies? Love a good burger once in a while? Crave pumpkin pie on a crisp fall day?

Good. Don’t stop eating those foods. Limit them, yes, but don’t cut them out of your diet altogether.

Why? Because while it may seem counterintuitive, when you cut all of your favorite foods out of your diet completely, not only will it cause to you feel deprived and bitter about eating healthy, more often than not it also leads to a binge eating session of those very same foods when you’re at a moment of willpower weakness.

And the truth is that if you’re working out and keeping active on a regular basis, allowing yourself a few small treats every once in a while will not only make you happier about eating healthy the majority of the time, it will also make it more likely that you’ll stick with healthy eating in the long run.

But just remember, while having your favorite not-so-healthy foods here and there is a perfectly acceptable part of any healthy diet, don’t forget to treat them as they are—special treats.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/5-effortless-tricks-make-healthy-eating-easy.html

8 Summer Foods that Flatten Your Belly

Want to look better in your bathing suit? Eat more fat. Strange as it may sound, studies show that monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), a type of plant-based fat, fight heart disease and help you lose weight from your most troublesome spot--your belly. 

The following summertime favorites contain fat-burning MUFAs: 

Smoothies 
Why they're a flat belly food: Smoothies are not only packed with antioxidants but can also be rich in MUFAs. Adding a nut butter and flaxseed oil to fruit and yogurt boosts your intake of healthy fats while imparting a rich, nutty flavor. Enjoy a slimming sip as a snack or on-the-go breakfast. 

Guacamole 
Why it's a flat belly food: Don't be shy when this popular dip appears at your next pool party. With nearly 10 g of MUFAs per half an avocado, you'll fill up without feeling bloated. Avocados also contain more beta-sitosterol, a fat that reduces the amount of cholesterol absorbed from food, than any other fruit. So enjoy a quarter-cup serving guilt free. 

Pesto Pasta Salad
Why's it's a flat belly food: Pesto, a rich green sauce made of garlic, basil, nuts, oil, and cheese, is delicious and a natural waist whittler. Nuts and oils are rich sources of MUFAs, so this savory side dish is a healthy way to get a pasta fix, especially when it's made with whole wheat pasta and tons of veggies. Steer clear of pasta salad made with creamy, white sauces. These typically contain mayonnaise, which packs in 90 calories and 10 g of fat per serving! 

Wraps
Why they're a flat belly food: Load these low-carb options with plenty of fresh veggies and a tablespoon of either olive tapenade or pesto and you've got yourself a superslimming lunch. A light coating of these zesty sauces is all you need for maximum flavor, which makes it easy to boost your intake of MUFAs without adding loads of calories. 

Almonds
Why they're a flat belly food: A 2003 study found that dieters who ate 3 ounces of almonds a day lost more weight and had smaller waists than dieters who ate similarly but swapped almonds for complex carbohydrates. Packed with MUFAs, almonds can be added to cereal, sprinkled on salads, or grabbed by the handful (just one!) as a belly-shrinking snack. 

Dark Chocolate
Why it's a flat belly food: Don't eat the entire bar; add just ¼ cup of dark chocolate to fresh fruit to quiet a sugar craving without wrecking your waistline. Choose dark over milk chocolate for the heart-healthy, belly-slimming benefits. A 2008 study from the University of Copenhagen found that participants who nibbled dark chocolate before a meal ate 15% fewer calories than participants who had milk chocolate. 

Veggie Pizza
Why it's a flat belly food: Turn this splurge into a skinny slice by loading up the veggies and slimming down the dough. Take a thin whole wheat crust; pile on low-cal peppers, onions, and mushrooms; and top with some belly-slimming, MUFA-rich pesto or olive oil. You've just made a better-than-delivery dinner. 

Fresh Seafood
Why it's a flat belly food: Most seafood is low in calories, packed with protein, and filled with good-for-you ingredients like heart-healthy omega-3s and immunity-boosting selenium. But you can make them work for your waistline too. Simply coat salmon, tuna, or shrimp with MUFA-rich olive oil, pesto, or nuts and toss on the grill for a flat belly meal in minutes. 

Written by Mara Betsch, Prevention 

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/8-summer-foods-flatten-belly-161000798.html

5 Ways to Jump Start Your Weight Loss

In the 12+ years I have been working as a personal trainer, I have met a lot of very smart, very successful people with a broad knowledge of weight loss tips, tricks & secrets….and yet most of them weren’t able to get the results they wanted.

And sometimes, the answer to their weight-loss problems was as simple as one little tweak.

Here are some of my favorite “little weight-loss tweaks”

Cleansing

Most people think that cleansing is all about…

• starving yourself, and/or
• drinking a mixture of lemon juice, maple syrup & hot sauce, and/or
• shoving a colonic tube up your butt

WRONG.

In it’s essence, cleansing is all about…

1. ignoring our taste buds for a SHORT period of time, and
2. putting our Gastro-Intestinal track in the spotlight for a SHORT period of time

And as un-fun as that sounds, your guts will thank you.

Without getting all alternative-health-y on you, just about every client of mine has seen health & weight-loss improvements via the occasional use of cleansing protocols.

HIIT

The beauty of HIIT training is that you don’t need to mess with your usual routine to reap the benefits.

For example, I worked with a cyclist a couple of years ago who was interested in increasing his power. Unfortunately, he and his coach weren’t willing to cut back on his high-volume cycling regimen. So, I integrated a series of HIIT sprints into his cycling program.

And while we weren’t able to test his strength improvements in the gym as I usually do, he did see a vast improvement in performance and a perceived improvement in power when race season began.

Nutrient Cycling

There are many different ways to cycle nutrients to maximize recovery from exercise and encourage fat loss. This is my favorite method:

1. Simple carbs during workouts – Gatorade, Fruit Juice, etc.
2. “Fill you up” carbs post workout – starchy veg, grains, etc.
3. Crunchy carbs & greens the rest of the day – spinach, broccoli, etc.

The idea behind this plan is to manipulate insulin secretion to minimize fat storage and maximize muscle recovery via the re-filling of muscle cells with blood sugar & micronutrients.

Eat Dinner Like A King

This sounds counter-intuitive to common sense…and it is..sort of.

Normally, I advise clients against eating a big dinner because their day is winding down and that big blob of dinner calories is going to get stored as fat while they watch tv and drift off to sleep.

However, with this dietary tweak…

• I ask them to have a medium sized breakfast made up of protein & fat foods with next to no carbs (ex scrambled eggs & peppers)
• I ask them to have a small lunch consisting of protein & fat foods with next to no carbs (ex Greek salad with 1/2 chicken breast)

This plans works best with people who are busy throughout the day. We’re trying to take advantage of the appetite killing effect of a busy work-day.

At the end of their work-day and before they eat dinner, I ask them to exercise. It might be a trip to the weight room or a group exercise class or 20 minutes of swimming or even a 10 min session of HIIT bike sprints.

After the workout, they get to eat a nice big satisfying dinner consisting of whatever foods they want. This big meal results in a ton of pleasurable brain chemicals and related hormones being dumped into the body…resulting in emotional pleasure and no sense of dietary deprivation.

An Open Mind

There is a Chinese proverb that states “a closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood”.

And when I look at the mainstream approaches to weight loss, I see a whole lot of closed minds recycling the same old inefficient weight loss techniques year after year after year… with little real-world success.

What I want you to do is come at your weight-loss with an open mind.

• Think of yourself as a really small-scale science experiment.
• Stop repeating the same old weight-loss techniques that have failed you in the past.
• Try something new for a month or two
• Evaluate it
• If it’s not working…dump it
• Try something else…until you find something that works.

And if you still can’t find something that works, come back to Health Habits. I have lots more weight-loss tips & tricks in my back pocket.

http://www.healthhabits.ca/2012/11/09/5-ways-to-jump-start-your-weight-loss/