Happy, Healthy, Fit and Fine

Like Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast,” and some days it moves so fast you don’t have time to stop and eat. I’ve done a lot of eating in my car. I’m not proud of it, and it’s not easy to vacuum all those crumbs out from under your seat either.

Sadly, the hardest thing to eat while driving is a salad. Believe me, I’ve tried. The only thing harder to eat while driving is frozen yogurt!

If the healthiest thing you can get on the run is the hardest thing to eat behind the wheel, what can you get on the go that’s good for you?

Have It Your Way
You can make special requests when ordering fast food. Hold the sauce is a big one of mine when I get sandwiches and wraps. Those weird sauces have a lot of calories in them. I try to keep mustard packets (picked up from fast food establishments) in my car since mustard adds a lot of flavors and little calories.

Act Childish
Kids meals are a great option. The portions are smaller and the sides are often healthier. Some meals include apple slices and give you the option of milk as a drink. At the fast food restaurant I worked at as a teenager, the hamburger in the kid’s meal was half a regular hamburger patty. That’s great if you have a taste for a hamburger, but don’t want all those calories.

All Chicken Is Not Created Equal
A chicken sandwich seems like a go to meal – healthy and easy to eat behind the wheel. If you can find a chicken wrap, take it. Eating a tortilla is better than eating a bun. And believe it or not, the nuggets, if they’re all white meat, are often the lowest calorie chicken option.

It’s Not What You Eat, It’s How Much You Eat
What if there is no healthy option? This is a reality. If this happens don’t panic. Eat what you need to eat, just don’t eat a lot of it. Sometimes portion size overrules the actual food.

Don’t Be Fooled
Fast food and quick restaurants are doing a better job of listing calories. This information comes in handy when you go to order what you think is a “healthy” meal. Sometimes what a restaurant bills as “healthy,” is actually more calories than one of their regular items.

Drinking Calories Won’t Quench Your Thirst
When you roll through the drive through, you’re probably going to order a drink. Pick a zero-calorie drink – tea, diet soda, or a bottle of water. More places offer water bottles these days. And as for diet sodas, I’m not as anti-diet soda as some people. Having one every now and then won’t kill you.

Eating on the run doesn’t have to blow your diet. Just make sure you ask for extra napkins!

It’s an age old adage – The Power of Positive Thinking. Thinking positive has been known to help in a lot of situations. After all what’s the alternative, thinking negatively? That’s not going to get you anywhere.

What about when it comes to improving your health? Can positive thoughts really change your health? According to the new book “Change Your Mind, Change Your Health” by Anne Marie Ludovici, MS, they sure can.

The great thing about this book is that it doesn’t just tell you to think about better health. It tells you HOW to think about better health. In life things are always easier said than done. To be successful, the more steps and hand holding the better. Especially, when it comes to changing habits that are deeply ingrained.

Anne Marie not only gives us seven ways to tell our brain how to make changes, but she tells us anecdotal tales about her life and previous clients which are very relatable. Hearing these stories made me feel like my story wasn’t so unique, and making changes was doable.

The book talks about being ready for change; how to make change happen; and what I feel is most important, how to sustain change. It’s like when people lose weight, keeping it off is as hard as losing it. Sustaining change is especially hard when unexpected events happen in life. Anne Marie gives you the tools to handle this type of situation without losing the benefits of the work you’ve done so far.

If you work on the insider secrets presented in this book every day:

-Am I ready to change?
-How do I start?
-Return to recess.
-Building confidence through mastery.
-Change the way you think about it.
-Make a new Life plan.
-Game on!

you’ll be able to hold onto the healthy habits you’ve created. It takes work, but with this book, better health is possible.

To order a copy of Change Your Mind, Change Your Health; go to amazon.com at Change Your Mind, Change Your Health. Change is only a click away!

How is your new year going so far? Are you still trying to keep a resolution to lose weight? Is it working? Unfortunatley, no matter what kind of diet or plan you’re on, it always comes down to how many calories you’re eating.

There’s just no way around it. Eating is a numbers game. If you’re a little high for one meal, you better come out a little low in another. If you’re low all the time, you’ll lose weight. If you’re too high, you’ll gain weight.

The time has come to get ahead in this numbers game. No one likes to sit and spend all day counting. but maybe just a little keeping track here and there is all your need to finally conquer the calories.

Pick a Number
To start with, you probably have no concept of how many calories to eat in a day. There’s no one number for everyone. No one can tell you if you eat this many calories every day, you’ll lose weight. Your calorie intake depends on your height, weight, and activity level. You can get a general idea by plugging your info into websites like Free Dieting.

When you see what goes into determining how many calories to eat in a day, you see where you can make changes. Obviously you can’t change your height! But you CAN change things like activity level.

Make Calories Count
Have you ever wondered if some calories make you gain weight more than others? No, a calorie is a calorie.

But some calories are going to maximize your numbers more. If the food you eat contains fiber, it’s going to fill you up more. You’ll feel full longer than if you used the same amount of calories to eat something that didn’t fill you up as much, such as potato chips.

Ideally, you want to eat low-calorie foods that fill you up such as:
-grains like brown rice and oatmeal
-black rice (the lowest calorie rice there is)
-greens: broccoli, asparagus, zucchini, etc.
-watermelon
-beans: chickpeas, fava beans, edamame, etc.
-broth-based soups
-fat-free dairy products

Losing Count
Are you up for the challenge of counting calories? One reason why some people give up counting calories is because it’s just plain hard. Say you make yourself a casserole. How many calories is that? There’s just too many ingredients to keep track of to figure out how many calories you’ve consumed.

Don’t let this deter you. You can handle this situation in a few ways. First you could estimate the calories based on something else you’ve eaten that you do know the calorie count of. Or you can go to a calorie count website like Calorie Count where you list the ingredients and the website calculates the ingredients for you. This is great for recipes you make all the time. With help like this, you have no excuses!

Don’t Count on it Forever
Counting calories a good thing to do for a few weeks to kick of a new lifestyle. But, it’s not something that you should do long term. Different things affect our body every day: hormones, metabolic rate, exercise habits. Counting calories for a little while helps you realize how many calories you’re taking in every day. But there’s no need to do it long term once you see a pattern in your numbers.

When you see how things add up, meals, snacks, drinks; you’ll see where changes can be made. Foods that you thought were low in calories, might be thing making your numbers go up too high. Once you get the idea of where your calories are coming from, you’ll be able to establish better eating habits.

Now that you know it’s all about about the numbers, get out a pencil and paper and start counting!

How is your new year going so far? Are you still trying to keep a resolution to lose weight? Is it working? Unfortunatley, no matter what kind of diet or plan you’re on, it always comes down to how many calories you’re eating.

There’s just no way around it. Eating is a numbers game. If you’re a little high for one meal, you better come out a little low in another. If you’re low all the time, you’ll lose weight. If you’re too high, you’ll gain weight.

The time has come to get ahead in this numbers game. No one likes to sit and spend all day counting. but maybe just a little keeping track here and there is all your need to finally conquer the calories.

Pick a Number
To start with, you probably have no concept of how many calories to eat in a day. There’s no one number for everyone. No one can tell you if you eat this many calories every day, you’ll lose weight. Your calorie intake depends on your height, weight, and activity level. You can get a general idea by plugging your info into websites like Free Dieting.

When you see what goes into determining how many calories to eat in a day, you see where you can make changes. Obviously you can’t change your height! But you CAN change things like activity level.

Make Calories Count
Have you ever wondered if some calories make you gain weight more than others? No, a calorie is a calorie.

But some calories are going to maximize your numbers more. If the food you eat contains fiber, it’s going to fill you up more. You’ll feel full longer than if you used the same amount of calories to eat something that didn’t fill you up as much, such as potato chips.

Ideally, you want to eat low-calorie foods that fill you up such as:
-grains like brown rice and oatmeal
-black rice (the lowest calorie rice there is)
-greens: broccoli, asparagus, zucchini, etc.
-watermelon
-beans: chickpeas, fava beans, edamame, etc.
-broth-based soups
-fat-free dairy products

Losing Count
Are you up for the challenge of counting calories? One reason why some people give up counting calories is because it’s just plain hard. Say you make yourself a casserole. How many calories is that? There’s just too many ingredients to keep track of to figure out how many calories you’ve consumed.

Don’t let this deter you. You can handle this situation in a few ways. First you could estimate the calories based on something else you’ve eaten that you do know the calorie count of. Or you can go to a calorie count website like Calorie Count where you list the ingredients and the website calculates the ingredients for you. This is great for recipes you make all the time. With help like this, you have no excuses!

Don’t Count on it Forever
Counting calories a good thing to do for a few weeks to kick of a new lifestyle. But, it’s not something that you should do long term. Different things affect our body every day: hormones, metabolic rate, exercise habits. Counting calories for a little while helps you realize how many calories you’re taking in every day. But there’s no need to do it long term once you see a pattern in your numbers.

When you see how things add up, meals, snacks, drinks; you’ll see where changes can be made. Foods that you thought were low in calories, might be thing making your numbers go up too high. Once you get the idea of where your calories are coming from, you’ll be able to establish better eating habits.

Now that you know it’s all about about the numbers, get out a pencil and paper and start counting!

Lately things haven’t been going well with my “operating system”, which is a polite way of saying I’ve been having gut issues. The doctor told me flat out to avoid gluten.

The first thing I did after hearing this was to take a look at what I eat. I’m one of those weird people who love to eat dry cereal as a snack. My two favorites are Rice Crispies and Cheerios. I thought I was safe with those – a rice cereal and an oat cereal. But on a hunch, I googled both of them to see if they contained gluten.

What an eye opener. Both cereals have gluten in them!

I was stunned. Gluten in a rice cereal? How could this be? But, barley malt is an ingredient in Rice Crispies. And what about my Cheerios? They contain wheat starch. It turns out nothing is safe, even Frosted Flakes contain gluten, Tony the Tiger, say it isn’t so!

I started to panic. If these two food that I thought were “safe” contain gluten, where else is gluten hiding?

If you’re trying to avoid gluten, these are some food that seem safe, but aren’t:

-multi-grain or “artisan” tortilla chips or tortillas
-cheescake filling (may contain wheat flour)
-eggs served at restaurants (some restaurants put pancake batter in scrambled eggs and omelets)
-pre-seasoned meats
-salad dressings and marinades (could contain malt vinegar or flour)
-soup (cream based soups are often thickened with flour)
-french fries (batter may contain wheat flour)
-gum (some companies use flour to coat the gum so it doesn’t stick to the wrapper)
-soy sauce
-mustard (some contain wheat flour)
-instant coffee (gluten is used as a bulking ingredient)
-pickles (some are made with malt vinegar)
-flavored potato chips (wheat flour is used to distribute the flavor on the chips)
-anything with carmel color (it’s usually made from corn, but sometimes it’s made from malt syrup)

Reading labels is a must when looking for gluten at the grocery store. Obviously you’ll look for words like barley, brewer’s yeast, rye and wheat. But gluten also goes by aliases like malt (made from barley) and hydrolyzed vegetable protein.

Keep in mind that when a product is labeled “Gluten-Free” that may not mean it’s 100% gluten-free. There may still be traces of gluten in it. As long as those traces are very small, it can be labeled “Gluten-Free.” Remember gluten is gluten. Wheat-free doesn’t mean gluten-free. Gluten is also found in rye and barley.

Eating a gluten-free diet takes a little time, but once you know what to look for, it’s a easy as making a sandwich with lettuce instead of bread. Now that’s gluten-free!