Friday, November 17, 2017

***8 Healthy Holiday-Eating Strategies ***

***8 Healthy Holiday-Eating Strategies ***
**The Strategy: Bring Your Own Food
Contribute a healthy dish to a gathering to ensure there’s something you can indulge in.
Tricks to Try
Eat the best-for-you offerings first. For example, hot soup as a first course―especially when it's broth-based, not cream-based―can help you avoid eating too much during the main course.
Stand more than an arm's length away from munchies, like a bowl of nuts or chips, while you chat so you're not tempted to raise your hand to your mouth every few seconds.
Concentrate on your meal while you're eating it. Focus on chewing your food well and enjoying the smell, taste, and texture of each item. Research shows that mealtime multitasking (whether at home or at a party) can make you pop mindless calories into your mouth. Of course, dinner-party conversation is only natural, but try to set your food down until you're finished chatting so you are more aware of what you're taking in.
**The Strategy: Don’t Go Hungry to the Mall
To cut down on the lure of the food court, never go to the mall on an empty stomach.
Tricks to Try
Plan your shopping route so you don’t pass the Cinnabon stand a dozen times. The obvious reason? Both sights and smells can coax you to eat, and with some vendors purposefully wafting their aromas your way, saying no can feel impossible.
Choose a proper restaurant over the grab-and-go food court whenever you can. And request a table away from loud sounds and distractions, which can cause you to eat more. The bright lights and noisy hard surfaces can speed up the rate at which you eat and lead to overeating.
**The Strategy: Keep Track of What You Eat
Maintain a food diary to help you stay committed to your goals during this risky eating period.
Tricks to Try
Weigh yourself daily and use that number to guide your actions. (Food diaries are helpful, but only if you’re totally honest and diligent about recording every morsel you eat.) Research has shown that women who step on the scale every day and then act accordingly, either increasing their exercise or being stricter about their eating, are 82 percent less likely to regain lost weight than those who don’t weigh in as often.
Zip yourself into your favorite pair of slim-fitting pants once a week and note how they fit. Too tight? Adjust your eating and exercise habits. Just right? Keep up the good work.
**The Strategy: Eat Before Going to a Party
Before going out, have a healthy snack to curb your appetite.
Tricks to Try
Eat breakfast. This has been shown to prevent overeating later in the day.
Limit the number of high-calorie foods on your party plate. Research has shown that when faced with a variety of foods with different tastes, textures, smells, shapes, and colors, people eat more―regardless of their true hunger level. Cutting down on your personal smorgasbord can decrease what you end up eating by 20 to 40 percent.
Choose foods wisely, filling your plate with low-calorie items, such as leafy green salads, vegetable dishes, and lean proteins, and taking smaller portions of the richer ones. That way, you can eat a larger amount of food for fewer calories and not feel deprived.
**The Strategy: Keep Healthy Snacks at the Office
Stash healthy foods in your desk at work so you’re not as tempted by the treats piling up at the office.
Tricks to Try
Try to keep communal office goodies out of view, either in an area that isn’t as highly trafficked as the kitchen or the break room, or in dark containers or covered dishes. In one study, people ate 26 percent more Hershey’s Kisses when the candies were in clear dishes versus white ones. And when the chocolates were placed six feet away, the average person ate only four a day, as opposed to nine a day when they were within arm’s reach.
Before you allow yourself a splurge, do something healthy, like eating a piece of fruit, walking around the office for five minutes, or climbing a few flights of stairs.
Plan on taking whatever tempts you home, and delay the daily indulgence until just before bedtime. At that point, you’re less likely to crave another treat immediately than you would during your afternoon coffee break, especially if the whole box is no longer around.
**The Strategy: Manage Portion Size
Take sensible portions so you don’t end up eating too much.
Tricks to Try
Use smaller plates and serving utensils. Try a salad or dessert plate for the main course and a teaspoon to serve yourself. What looks like a normal portion on a 12-inch plate or a troughlike bowl can, in fact, be sinfully huge. In one study conducted at the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, even nutrition experts served themselves 31 percent more ice cream when using oversize bowls compared with smaller bowls. The size of the serving utensil mattered, too: Subjects served themselves 57 percent more when they used a three-ounce scoop versus a smaller scoop. Pour drinks into tall, skinny glasses, not the fat, wide kind.
**The Strategy: Keep Up the Exercise
You’re determined to squeeze in at least one or two workouts a week, no matter how busy you get.
Tricks to Try
Break it up. If you don’t have time for your daily four-mile walk, do a few 10- or 15-minute spurts of exercise throughout the day (to accumulate the surgeon general’s recommendation of 30 minutes a day). They can be just as effective at maintaining overall fitness as one continuous workout.
Tell yourself that all the running around you’re doing (cleaning for houseguests, dashing through a million stores to find the perfect presents) can help keep your weight in check. In one Harvard study, people who were simply told that they did enough in their daily lives to meet the surgeon general’s recommendations lost weight and body fat without consciously changing a thing. A possible reason? Believing that what they were doing was having a positive effect may have led to subtle changes in their overall health behaviors.
**The Strategy: Choose Your Indulgences
You intend to stave off feelings of deprivation by allowing yourself a “cheat” day a week.
Tricks to Try
Plan in advance to eat a little more and be a little more flexible at this time of year, when you face daily temptations. That way, you can savor the culinary joys of the holidays a little more often and you'll be less likely to binge. For instance, rather than inhaling four sugar cookies on your cheat day, allow yourself one as a dessert when the mood strikes. Then make one little switch during the day to account for those calories―maybe skipping that morning latte or cutting out an afternoon snack.
Choose your indulgences wisely. Instead of wasting calories on foods that you can have at any time of the year, pick items that are truly special and unique to the season, like your grandmother's candied yams or your daughter's first batch of Christmas cookies.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s 7-Day Crash Diet (Approved by Dr. Oz)

Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s 7-Day Crash Diet (Approved by Dr. Oz)
Dr. Oz recently introduced his approved crash diet on his show (7-day crash diet devised by Dr. Joel Fuhrman). People can supposedly lose up to 10 pounds per week using this diet method (including fluid loss).
Under this crash diet, you can eat the following foods as much as you want:
Dark leafy vegetables
Fresh fruits
Starchy vegetables
And must limit the following to less than 10% of your meals.
Meat
Dairy
You pretty much have to cut out sweets and other treats.
When asked the question whether it’s safe to lose so much weight in 1 week, Dr. Joel Fuhrman replied that basically in this diet you would be getting all of your nutrient needs met.
Weight-loss guru Dr. Joel Fuhrman claims he can get you on the fast track to dropping the pounds in just one week. The secret? It's not a starvation diet, but the exact opposite. His plan allows you to eat all you want and still lose weight. The key is in feasting on nutrient-dense foods — rich in vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and antioxidants — that are low in calories. Many of the superfoods you are familiar with fall under the nutrient-dense category. According to Dr. Fuhrman, the more of these kinds of foods you eat, the faster you will lose weight.
Why does Dr. Fuhrman’s plan work?
Every meal you eat according to his specifications also helps you stave off hunger. Hunger is one of the major roadblocks most dieters face when attempting to lose weight. Dr. Fuhrman’s findings suggest that eating a diet of nutrient-dense foods results in a sustainable eating pattern that can lead to weight loss and improved health — even if you are consuming fewer calories. It’s the nutrients that satiate you for longer and make the periods of hunger between meals more tolerable, so you won’t feel desperate to reach for an unhealthy snack or comfort food. His plan focuses on healthy, whole foods – but makes no room for anything processed, including fake diet foods.
Dr. Fuhrman’s Crash Diet is only extreme in that you dive right in. The idea is that the new habits you learn in the next 7 days will become part of your lifestyle. It will no longer feel like a diet, but your default method of eating. Here are the 3 simple steps for everyone who wants to slim down in a week:
Step 1: Follow the 90/10 Rule Every Day
For the next 7 days, you’ll eat 90% nutrient-dense foods — veggies, fruits, seeds and nuts, beans and whole grains. For the remaining 10%, you can have healthy oils, meat and dairy.
A typical day on the Crash Diet would look like this:
Light and Lean Breakfast
While eating protein, like eggs, is often touted as the right way to start your day, the same rules don’t apply here. Many people eat too much protein, resulting in an overconsumption of calories and weight gain. Think of only light and lean foods, like fruit, oats and flax. You may be asking yourself, what about the yogurt? None here. If you are concerned about calcium, consider this: Natural unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables have calcium. For example, an orange has 60 mg of calcium.
Belly-Blasting Bean Lunch
Ignite your body’s fat-blasting furnace by eating beans. Beans are a dieter’s best friend. They keep you full, and are high in resistant starch, meaning that half the calories consumed can not be absorbed. They also reduce blood sugar, and create the fatty acid butyrate, which may burn fat faster. Studies show that butyrate improves mitochondrial function in your cells, leading to a decrease in fat. If you’re worried about gas, fret not. The more beans you eat, the more your body will build up the good bacteria you need to digest them. You can enjoy beans in a burger patty, in chili or as a dip.
Lean Green Skinny Supper
Think outside the salad bowl. Make greens and vegetables your main dish in other creative ways — enjoy a veggie pizza, eggplant roll-ups or a veggie stir-fry. You can even add an ounce of chicken to your stir-fry for a little bit of extra flavor.
Step 2: Use Secret Weapons
Dr. Fuhrman recommends eating “BOM’s” to really kick your body’s fat-burning mechanisms into high gear. BOM’s are Berries, Onions and Mushrooms. These foods are anti-angiogenic. Why is this important? Because anti-angiogenic foods can starve fat cells by cutting off the blood supply to your fat. Dr. Fuhrman maintains you can also block the blood supply to fat cells by eating anti-angiogenic foods. The more of these foods you eat, the more weight you lose..
Step 3: Detox With Skinny Shakes
To flush fat from your body, you’ll need to release the toxins that are keeping you swollen with fat and fluid. To repair cellular damage from processed foods, make a Skinny Shake of pomegranate juice, strawberries and lemon. Pomegranates are anti-angiogenic and can reduce inflammation. Strawberries are anti-angiogenic and protect against oxidative stress. And lemon juice has vitamin C, natural antibacterial properties, can aid digestion, and helps reduce stress.

A Low Carb Diet Meal Plan

Low Carb Diet Meal Plan
A low-carb diet is a diet that restricts carbohydrates, such as those found in sugary foods, pasta and bread. It is high in protein, fat and healthy vegetables.
There are many different types of low-carb diets, and studies show that they can cause weight loss and improve health.
This is a detailed meal plan for a low-carb diet. What to eat, what to avoid and a sample low-carb menu for one day.
A Low Carb Diet Meal Plan
What foods you should eat depends on a few things, including how healthy you are, how much you exercise and how much weight you have to lose.
Consider all of this as a general guideline, not something written in stone.
The Basics
Eat: Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, high-fat dairy, fats, healthy oils and maybe even some non-gluten grains.
Don't Eat: Sugar, HFCS, wheat, seed oils, trans fats, "diet" and low-fat products and highly processed foods.
Foods to Avoid
You should avoid these 7 foods, in order of importance:
Sugar: Soft drinks, fruit juices, agave, candy, ice cream and many others.
Gluten Grains: Wheat, spelt, barley and rye. Includes breads and pastas.
Trans Fats: "Hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" oils.
High Omega-6 Seed- and Vegetable Oils: Cottonseed-, soybean-, sunflower-, grapeseed-, corn-, safflower and canola oils.
Artificial Sweeteners: Aspartame, Saccharin, Sucralose, Cyclamates and Acesulfame Potassium. Use Stevia instead.
"Diet" and "Low-Fat" Products: Many dairy products, cereals, crackers, etc.
Highly Processed Foods: If it looks like it was made in a factory, don't eat it.
You MUST read ingredients lists, even on foods labelled as "health foods."
Low Carb Food List - Foods to Eat
You should base your diet on these real, unprocessed, low-carb foods.
Meat: Beef, lamb, pork, chicken and others. Grass-fed is best.
Fish: Salmon, trout, haddock and many others. Wild-caught fish is best.
Eggs: Omega-3 enriched or pastured eggs are best.
Vegetables: Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and many others.
Fruits: Apples, oranges, pears, blueberries, strawberries.
Nuts and Seeds: Almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, etc.
High-Fat Dairy: Cheese, butter, heavy cream, yogurt.
Fats and Oils: Coconut oil, butter, lard, olive oil and cod fish liver oil.
If you need to lose weight, be careful with the cheese and nuts because they’re easy to overeat on. Don’t eat more than one piece of fruit per day.
Maybe Eat
If you're healthy, active and don't need to lose weight then you can afford to eat a bit more carbs.
Tubers: Potatoes, sweet potatoes and some others.
Non-gluten grains: Rice, oats, quinoa and many others.
Legumes: Lentils, black beans, pinto beans, etc. (If you can tolerate them).
You can have these in moderation if you want:
Dark Chocolate: Choose organic brands with 70% cocoa or higher.
Wine: Choose dry wines with no added sugar or carbs.
Dark chocolate is high in antioxidants and may provide health benefits if you eat it in moderation. However, be aware that both dark chocolate and alcohol will hinder your progress if you eat/drink too much.Drink
Coffee
Tea
Water
Sugar-free carbonated beverages, like sparkling water.
A Sample Low-Carb Menu For One Day
It provides less than 50 grams of total carbs per day, but as I mentioned above if you are healthy and active you can go beyond that.
Monday
Breakfast: Omelet with various vegetables, fried in butter or coconut oil.
Lunch: Grass-fed yogurt with blueberries and a handful of almonds.
Dinner: Cheeseburger (no bun), served with vegetables and salsa sauce.
Again, if you’re healthy, lean and active, you can add some tubers like potatoes and sweet potatoes, as well as some healthier grainlike rice and oats.
Some Healthy, Low-Carb Snacks
There is no health reason to eat more than 3 meals per day, but if you get hungry between meals then here are some healthy, easy to prepare low-carb snacks that can fill you up:
A Piece of Fruit
Full-fat Yogurt
A Hard-Boiled Egg or Two
Baby Carrots
Leftovers From The Night Before
A Handful of Nuts
Some Cheese and Meat
Eating at Restaurants
At most restaurants, it is fairly easy to make your meals low carb-friendly.
Order a meat- or fish-based main dish..
Ask them to fry your food in real butter.
Get extra vegetables instead of bread, potatoes or rice.
A Simple Low-Carb Shopping List
A good rule is to shop at the perimeter of the store, where the whole foods are likelier to be found.
Organic and grass-fed foods are best, but only if you can easily afford them. Even if you don't buy organic, your diet will still be a thousand times better than the standard western diet.
Try to choose the least processed option that still fits into your price range