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Keep Those New Years Resolutions with these Diet Tips

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You have heard it several times that we are what we eat; nothing can be truer. What we eat is what defines our state of health. For some, healthy food means bland, uninspiring, uninviting and don’t seem to fill the tummy. But do you agree with that or just doing it because you have no alternative?

A healthier food doesn’t have to be unsavory eating. Sometimes, what you see and taste adds to the interest you develop for eating. We bring both tastes and look in our list of healthy recipes to help you stay healthy while you eat to your heart’s desires.

What is a healthy recipe?

Healthy recipes have so many relating concepts, but before you get confused, let’s look briefly at what it means. It is simply when your recipe meets daily recommended nutrition per food serving that is less than 2,000 calorie diet, giving that individual food nutrient per day agrees as follows:

  • Cholesterol is less than 300 mg
  • Fiber is about 25 mg
  • Total carbohydrate not more than 300 grams
  • Sodium Not more than 2,400 mg
  • Potassium at least 3,500 mg
  • Protein not more than 50 grams
  • Total fat not more than 65 grams
  • Saturated fat: no more than 20 grams
  • Trans fats limits overall intake to less than 1%

The following recipes for lunch or snack ideas agree with our healthy food recipe described above.

Think a healthy breakfast

Morning Pizza

Food items include last night pizza, slice bread, low-fat ricotta, tomatoes, olive oil, pepper, and salt.

  • Get a slice of last night’s pizza
  • Or you try a more sophisticated spin: Take a slice of crusty bread, spread it with 3 tablespoons of low-fat ricotta, and add tomatoes.
  • Drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil to finish and a little salt and pepper.
  • Broiling is optional.

Get up in the morning to a delicious, mouthwatering pizza to start your day on a brilliant note.

Think a healthy lunch

Tuna Nicoise

Food items for the Tuna Nicoise lunch are Nicoise salad, canned albacore tuna, olive oil, boiled egg, lemon juice, fresh flat-leaf parsley, lettuce, potatoes, green beans, kalamata olives, chopped scallions,

  • Mix 4 ounces canned albacore tuna, rinsed and drained,
  • With 1 teaspoon capers, 1 teaspoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, 1 teaspoon chopped scallions and 1 teaspoon lemon juice.
  • Top it with 1 cup Boston lettuce with tuna and 1 hard-boiled egg, quartered; 1/2 cup cooked fingerling potatoes; 1/2 cup green beans; and 2 tablespoons quartered Kalamata olives.

Ways to stay healthy

Various studies identified the leading causes of death in America to include the following: heart disease, some lung diseases, cancer, injuries, stroke, and HIV/AIDS. However, these are preventable by practicing a healthy lifestyle. You can stay healthy following the tips below:

  • Eat healthy foods
  • Control your weight
  • Do exercises
  • Watch your body responses and see a doctor at the right time
  • Rest well
  • Sleep well
  • Know that you are human, don’t over push when your body seems unwilling

 

Diet Wrecking Office Snacks to Avoid

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Snacking in the office is common practice, but cutting up a fruit like you would at home isn’t as practical in an office. For most, convenience is the biggest factor when choosing a snack. However, if you’re on a diet here are the top snacks to avoid:

  • Pretzels: This snack has a lot of calories per bite, but little in the way of nutrition. Therefore, you can snack on them for hours and your body won’t fill up. Pretzels are mainly refined flour and not the ideal food to satisfy your hunger.
  • Lattes: Office workers love their coffee, but consuming too many on a regular basis adds more calories to the daily allowance than you might think. In fact, most people don’t consider drinks to be culprits of a high-calorie intake problem, but they are.
  • Bagels: On your way to the office, you might see as many as 10 different places to get a bagel, but that doesn’t mean you should stop in for a quick breakfast. Each bagel has up to 4 servings of carbohydrates and there is a lack of fiber, minerals, and vitamins.
  • Beer: After work, co-workers like to melt away the stress of the day with a pint of beer. However, this drink has more than its fair share of calories that will do serious damage to any diet plan you are attempting.

Want some tips on how to plan the perfect week of meals? Check out our nutrition section to find out more.

How to Make Fitness a Priority

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We all know that exercise is beneficial to us, but making it a priority in our lives can be challenging. Research shows that it only takes 20 minutes of physical activity per day for you to start to see the benefits. Furthermore, the links between aging and fitness are so strong that it’s a no-brainer to make it part of your daily routine. So here are the top things that you can do to make fitness a priority in your life:

  • Accountability partner: it is much harder to skip exercise when you have an accountability partner that is waiting for you at the gym. You’ll see that it’s much easier to do the exercise than to face the shame of telling your partner that you are too tired to turn up.
  • Fun factor: to tilt the odds of success in your favor come up with can exercise plan that’s fun. If you hate jogging then don’t do it just because most people in your office are doing it. Try out a few sports or take up swimming – the point is to do something fun because it increases the likelihood of sticking to it.
  • Schedule: regardless of how busy your weekly schedule is if you try hard enough you can easily fit in three 20-minute sessions of exercise. Consider eliminating activities like TV and video games, or reduce the number of trips to the supermarket to once a week.

Looking to get your exercise routine started? Check out our great personal training classes!

Ideas for Making Extra Time for Exercise

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Do you feel like you don’t have enough time for exercise? This is the number one excuse that’s used by people to avoid exercising altogether. It might be the case that some people really do have such hectic lives that fitness has to be on the backburner. However, for most people there are strategies to make time for fitness and here are a few of them:

• Reduce TV time: you’ll be amazed when you count up all the hours that you spend in front of the TV during the week. Cutting a few hours is all it takes to have a fitness-rich lifestyle.

• Earn shower time: challenge yourself to only have a shower when you have actually earned it by getting sweaty as a result of physical activity. By developing this positive habit you’ll improve your level of fitness in no time at all.

• Examine how you spend your time: by taking a careful look at how you spend time can help discover ways of squeezing some fitness into your weekly schedule. For example, you could reduce the number of trips you make to buy groceries to once a week.

• Create a fitness plan and stick to it: whatever time you set aside for fitness make sure it’s used effectively. Don’t do something else during your weekly “fitness hours” because you might be feeling tired or lazy. Stick to the set timetable at all costs.

Foods Athletes Don’t Eat And You Shouldn’t Either

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To be able to perform at the top level, athletes must consume calories that are rich in nutrients. It aids recovery, improves performance, and gives them a competitive edge over those who do not stick to an optimal diet. There are many health benefits to the diets that athletes tend to stick to. These include increased chances of living longer, disease prevention, boosted energy, increased productivity, improved mood, and weight control.

Here are the top foods you should avoid:

  • Fruit Juices: It might seem as if fruit juice is a healthy option, but it has large amounts of sugar. Although fruit juices are portrayed as fresh, they sit on the shelf for up to a year until sold. Surprisingly, some fruit juices can have more sugar and calories than sodas.
  • Beer: It might be tempting to have a cold beer with your friends after sports or a heavy session at the gym, but it is a diuretic and therefore promotes dehydration. If you absolutely must drink beer consume plenty of water to stay hydrated.
  • White Bread: For athletes eating carbs is essential for performance, but empty carbs such as white bread isn’t the best option. White bread has been linked to weight gain, negative moods, risk of type-2 diabetes and high blood-sugar levels.