‘ve heard of the government trying to regulate health and other aspects of our lives and the decisions we make with it, but now this one I think is going way overboard. Apparently there are some in New York who think that New Yorkers need to be forced to cut back on their salt intake. Yes, salt intake here in the US is disgustingly high, and it probably has been the cause of certain health issues, however, so have fats and calories.
I am one who thinks that cutting out certain types of foods or trying to legislate them in public places where people dine is only going to go so far as to hurt business, and I am against anything that hurts businesses right now. I mean, if you want to really control salt intake, you would have to have a presence not only in the restaurants that citizens frequent, but also in their homes, and even in the grocery stores.
Think about it, you can only regulate the public places, not a person in their own home, so what is the point of hurting business when you know you can’t regulate it all the time?
Of course, chefs in New York are in a tizzy (I would be too). While there may be such a thing as social responsibility, being forced to not add any salt or salt spices to your dishes is downright “absurd” and is the government going overboard. I would have to agree.
I know that I need to cut my salt intake down, but if I were forced to eat a saltless, less flavorful dish at a restaurant every time I dined out and wanted to enjoy myself, well I’d be a little bit salty (ok I think I just committed one of the worst puns ever).
The bill has been introduced by a Democrat in New York, and it proposes to fine restaurants in violation of using salt or salt derivatives in it’s cooking $1,000 per violation. I can’t believe we’re focusing on something so ridiculous. How many lives do they really think they’re going to save by doing this? Let’s hope this bill gets squashed pronto.
It seems like as soon as the acai berry became a sensation for it’s potentially stellar antioxidant properties, and it’s trace element of omega 3 fats in the berry, that there was an instant monsoon of acai “diet products” on the market that purported to help you shed pounds through it’s antioxidant power. Wait a second here, antioxidants help you lose weight? That was certainly news to me, so I thought it sounded somewhat like hype, and apparently I was right.
The fact is, acai berry is definitely a great source of antioxidants for the human body. Just the fact that it is such a VERY deeply pigmented fruit that it’s almost black should tell you that it’s an excellent, nutrient packed and antioxidant packed fruit, just going off of the conventional wisdom that darkly pigmented fruits and veggies are traditionally the most nutrient dense.
Does ingesting a lot o nutrient dense foods make your weight loss goals a lot easier and more attainable? ABSOLUTELY! So, it’s not a stretch to imagine that eating a lot of acai fruit will help you lose weight, if the rest of your diet is in order too, but that’s true of any nutrient dense, calorie-spare food. What of it’s weight loss benefits in a pill?
Well, a good, but real and pure acai supplement can definitely help you achieve higher energy levels, and certainly adds a boost to your body’s antioxidant stores, but what most likely helps you to lose weight in most of these supplements is not the acai berry itself, but the stimulants that are included in the supplement, like caffeine or something similar that acts as an appetite suppressant, since there have been no singularly weight loss benefits identified in the acai berry yet.
I still say that if you are looking for a great antioxidant and a great diet pill, maybe you could try an acai “fat loss” diet pill, but make sure it’s actually pure acai in the ingredient label, since there are really no regulations governing this labeling yet. If it doesn’t at least make you feel better, then it may not be worth it if you are using it just for weight loss, or as just an antioxidant supplement, so judge for yourself how it interacts with your body and benefits you.
Well, I’ve officially found a great new sugar substitute that does not have the nasty after taste nor the chemicals that so many other sugar substitutes have. It’s called Truvia, and it’s not cheap, but it’s also very tasty, and does not have that same after taste that the chemical ones that aren’t good for you have, like Equal and Sweet n Low, which contain aspartame and saccharin. Do you remember Tab, the first diet soda, and how awful it tasted? It’s because it was made with saccharin. That was before we knew how bad these chemically altered sweeteners were for the human body.
I myself was a user of Sweet n Low for years. I really thought that I was doing something healthier for my body by eating this sweetener, which is made with saccharin, instead of eating sugar, and the fact is, that not only was I not saving significant calories, but I was also loading my body with chemicals that eventually convert into some sort of formaldehyde.
Artificial sweeteners have been linked to a bevy of health problems, most prevalently, they have come up as potential candidates for being a cancer causing agent, or carcinogen. Then, about five years ago, I found out about Stevia as my interest in natural health and eliminating as many unnatural things from my diet as I could, increasing my holistic outlook on medicine and living.
Stevia is a plant, and there are certain part of that plant that are reaped to make the stevia powder that is used to sweeten drinks, cereals, you name it. It is supposed to not affect your blood sugar at all, and has no calories. It also has not been linked to any major health problems, since it is all natural.
Truvia is actually made with “the sweetest part” of the stevia plant, and some other natural ingredients. It supposedly is all natural, and I hope it’s true and something doesn’t come out about it being a lie, because I REALLY like the flavor of this natural sweetener. It is not bitter like pure stevia extract and powder can be, or overpowering with an aftertaste at all, but it’s very smooth and natural tasting, almost like real sugar, but I daresay even a bit better of a sweetness.
I’m going to keep my eyes and ears peeled for any bad press on this Truvia stuff, because I’m hooked on it for now, and am hoping that it truly is all natural and healthy to consume. By the way, they are also having coupons online for a dollar off, I’ve been using them while I can since it runs almost $4 for a box of only 50 packets, so I’d try to use those while I can if I were you, get the deal!
So, I’ve told you before how I’m crazy about making soup, especially in these cold, dreary months where you are locked indoors for weeks on end before you see a sunny day where you can actually be out and about without freezing your nanos off. Well, I just got a recipe from a friend that I tweaked a bit to make it my own. I’m going to share that recipe with you in a moment, but a word about this and other low fat soups that use a lot of broth as their base first, and lots of veggies.
Soups can be very filling. They are, after all, hot liquid, and this fact alone makes the other foods you eat with them sort of swell in your stomach, and for some reason just hot foods alone make you feel fuller, for what reason exactly I’m not sure. They are a great natural appetite suppressant.
They are a great way to not only warm you up in the winter, but I like them because they are the ideal side dish to a healthful, low calorie meal. They help to fill you up and keep you satisfied, and yet they still contain few calories because they consist mainly of broth, which contributes minimal calories, a lot of fiber rich veggies, and maybe some kind of starch in minimal content, like a brown rice or a whole grain pasta.
That’s what this soup uses, a whole grain pasta, and the whole pot of it only uses about one to one and a half cups of whole grain pasta, I like to use the kind of whole grain pasta that also has omega 3’s added to it, I think it’s made by Barilla, so that it adds not only extra nutrients to the soup, but it also helps contribute to keeping you full, since omega 3 fats actually make you think you’re fuller, faster.
Ok, enough with talking about this soup, let’s get on with how to make it!
I’m going to list all the ingredients. All you do is put them all together in a stock pot, bring them to a boil for a minute, then turn it down to simmer for as long as you’d like so the flavors all blend together. I like to simmer mine for a while, it just gives a better flavor.
Here’s the ingredients :
4 cups of either chicken or vegetable broth, fat free (most of them are naturally fat free)
1 can of black beans, drained
1-2 cups (depending on how you are watching your carbs) of whole wheat rotini pasta
1 bag of mixed vegetables (corn, peas, green beans carrots)
2 cans of petite diced tomatoes. You can use regular too, I just prefer petite in soups
2 Tablespoons of Italian seasoning
3 cloves of garlic, crushed or garlic salt
1 bay leaf (you will take this out when it’s done simmering, it’s simply to infuse the flavor into the soup while it is heating initially)
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The Kardashian sisters – heck, the whole family, has become quite the reality sensation lately. Kim started off being known as the BFF of Paris Hilton, guess that relationship went kaput, because you never see pics of them together on the internet or in magazines any more, and I read somewhere that Paris Hilton even made kind of snide remarks about Kim’s round rear end (which by the way, lots of men like, and I happen to think she looks great with all her curves).
The only thing I know about Khloe is that she was on a season of the Celebrity Apprentice (Donald Trumps reality show where celebrities try to win the coveted prize of being Donal’s pick for his apprentice, although I don’t know that anything has really ever come of that for anyone), and she’s married to a very tall NBA basketball player.
I also know that she lost a ton of weight recently, and she looks fabulous, and very healthy to boot. I’m not sure if both the sister’s weight loss is really due to Quick Trim or simply hard work and dedication, but they are both endorsing the QuickTrim diet supplement as a way that helped them to lose weight.
Quick Trim is basically an appetite suppressant and diet supplement that helps you to eat less and crave less food, so you can lose weight more quickly, and with less of the struggle that is typically endured during the diet cycles when you cut your food intake down and seem to be endlessly starving. Of course, as with most other diet and weightloss supplements, you do have to also make the right food choices, but the right supplement has always helped me to kick start my diet, call it the placebo effect, but I feel like I have more control when I’m taking a good diet supplement.
The rest, of course, I know, is all up to me to actually get the weight off and keep it off and also work out on a regular schedule to burn off extra calories. Let’s not forget that the hallmark notion that you must reduce caloric intake to effectively lose weight, because after all, excess weight is excess calories. You can usually safely lose weight by reducing calories and learning how to suppress your hunger, eating about 1500 calories a day, which is totally doable if you pick the right foods that fill you up and don’t leave you wanting for more all day.
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Apparently there was a not so happy customer of a supplement that Jillian Michaels, the most famous personal trainer in the world right now and one of the stars of Biggest Loser along with Bob the trainer, endorses. Let me preface this story by telling you a piece of my mind. I’m getting awfully sick of the sue happy mentality of people here in the US. This person actually wants to start a class action lawsuit over what she claims are false claims made by the diet supplement which claims to suppress the appetite by taking two pills before each meal, called “Maximum Strength Calorie Control”.
The woman says that the pill did not suppress her hunger as claimed and also did not cause her to lose weight as the product claimed. Now, I’ll admit, I’m all for supplements, and they have helped me immensely in my life, not only in my quest to lose weight when I need to shed a few extra pounds, but also in many other facets of my life, so I may be a little biased, but this seems like it’s really nothing more than a bid to get paid for something that didn’t make you lose weight.
I’m not sure why this angered her so much that she wanted to start a class action lawsuit over it .I mean, shoot, if I had a nickel for every time a product didn’t do exactly what I wanted it to, I might be rich, but at the same time I know that I was also to blame, I maybe didn’t follow the instructions or I didn’t actually do my part to get the expected results either. I’m a realist, and I wouldn’t want to waste my time or anyone elses with such claims.
I just have this fear that lawsuits like this, where no one was actually hurt, maimed or otherwise psychologically really hurt, don’t set the bar for the way things are going here, because there are much more important things to waste time on, where people actually suffer terrible side effects or become ill in some way, not where their expectations just weren’t met all the way. I think this type of litigation is dangerous to free enterprise. That’s just my opinion, and it’s a free world for me to express it.
It seems like there is always some completely over the top, scary way that people are trying to lose weight and endangering their health. The last really scary one I can remember was a lot of women and men, rumored to be a trend in the ever-looks conscious Hollywood and the reason behind some starlets drastic and sudden weight loss, was trend to start taking a dangerous drug that wasn’t even meant for human consumption.
The drug I’m talking about is Clenbuterol, otherwise known as Clen, and it’s a horse asthma medication that causes dramatic weight loss and fast fat loss and body mass decline very quickly.
It also happens to do serious and very fast damage to the heart of people who abuse it. It apparently can lose it’s effectiveness very quickly as well. That was probably the second scariest one I heard of, but this one actually tops it simply because it makes me squirm since it has to do with creepy crawlers that aren’t meant to be in the human body.
The worst part about this dangerous trend is that unscrupulous companies in China are offering this as a weightloss method on the internet, and it’s actually a good way to either get yourself very sick or possibly even cause your own death. It’s a trend especially right now in Hong Kong, the metropolis the offers many of life’s most guilty pleasures and also some of it’s most dangerous.
The diet products have the ascaris worm in them, which is a type of roundworm. Because the worms can lay thousands upon thousand of eggs per day in the system, and consume much of your food before it can be absorbed by your body, you lose weight. But along with the weight loss you also get severe diarrhea, cramping and malnourishment because you aren’t absorbing any of the nutrients, the parasites in your system are. I’m kind of surprised that with China’s strict internet policies and patrolling, they have not caught these guys yet and taken them down. Maybe as of this moment they have!
Well, we’ve been hearing more and more about the mediterranean diet, which is a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables and omega 3 fatty acids, and eschews a lot of animal and dairy protein in favor of plant based proteins and fish. Just hearing that makes it sound healthy to me.
I think of how much healthier I feel when I’m foregoing a whole lot of red meat and other types of meats, and instead going for plant proteins like hummus, nuts, and whole grains and fish, and it makes total sense to me that this also helps with mental function because when I’m eating a diet that resembles this, I totally feel like I’m on my A game mentally.
Which is why researchers are finding that being on the mediterranean diet actually helps do two things. First, it helps you to stave off mental decline and dementia, and it also helps to increase your mental acuity, your “fastness” and your total brain power, which makes you feel, well just a whole lot smarter and more focused!
People who were on this diet were found to be almost 50% less likely to suffer from dementia and other mental decline symptoms, showing much higher ability to focus and concentrate, and to recall things and think clearly. This is a huge reason, amongst other benefits like heart disease and stroke prevention and anti cancer properties, that people should really think about trying this type of diet out.
You don’t even have to go 100% on the commercialized version of the mediterranean diet, as long as you follow some semblance of the principles of this type of diet, you should notice a substantial increase in energy, a better ability to focus, accelerated fat loss, lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and a whole bushel of great health benefits that are just waiting to be plucked off the tree for your picking.
Ok, so I know that this is a blog all about healthy eating and making the right food choices, but as you well know if you’ve been reading my blog for any period of time, I also like to revel in the occasional pigout, and like to talk about eating bad as well. C’mon, who doesn’t throw the rules out the window once in a while and enjoy a nice greasy cheeseburger, or a gigantic slice or two of New York style pizza? After all, variety is the spice of life,and sometimes it’s oh soooo fun to be bad.
Our day to kind of throw the rules out the window for dinner was this past Saturday, the Saturday before Valentines day. We were very excited to indulge in something super naughty and not feel any guilt about it, and we also had two very good movies on Blu Ray DVD that we were going to watch. Bliss, my friend, pure bliss, and mine and my husband’s idea of a night of heaven! However, instead of choosing one of our regular favorite naughty food indulgences, we decided to give the “new” Dominos pizza a try.
After all, I had told him my interest was piqued when I saw and hear the ads on the tv and the radio for this new recipe, and was alos intrigued that they were so upfront about how bland and tasteless their pizza was before they supposedly changed it with this new fangled recipe.
Also, the $6 a pizza was very appealing since we were trying to really watch our budget, and didn’t want to blow a wad on a naughty dinner that we were just going to wolf down during a movie anyways. So, we got the two pizzas, since there was a minimum with the $6 medium pizzas of 2. We ordered one with mushroom and extra cheese, and one with pepperoni and onion.
On the ride home, the pizza sure did smell good, so I got my hopes up that it might be good, however when my husband asked me to open the box so he could see if they looked any different, his face dropped when he saw that it looked like the same pre-fab crust they had before. I said, no fear, it may taste a lot better, maybe it just still looks flat, but there are lots of good pizzas that aren’t thick out there!
So, to make a long story short, the pizza does not taste any different at all. The only difference I may have noticed is that they added a little more spice to their crust, maybe some sort of garlic spice, but other than that, it still tasted like it was a frozen premade crust. The cheese was the same lifeless, tasteless cheese they’ve always used as far as I could tell, and there was barely any cause or toppings on the pizza, which made it taste totally bland. In other words, this pizza was so unsubstantial that I felt like I could eat an entire pizza and still be hungry an hour later.
Save your money and go somewhere else where they actually have good pizza. This “new” recipe is for the birds, Dominos!
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As anyone with common sense of a realistic outlook on life and the way that fitness and weight maintenance works, you know that being a couch potato does not serve you in any way at all. First off, sitting in front of a computer or a TV all day often involves activities that are time wasteful and not getting anything accomplished, unless of course you are working.
I myself work a lot at a computer and can attest to the fact that it’s only about 60% work and 40% other things that happen to catch your attention and make you drift off.
Watching television for hours a day is even worse. Really, what does watching TV accomplish for you? Nothing. It doesn’t serve any purpose. Occasionally you may learn something useful by watching TV, but in general, it is a colossal waste of time.
Of course, the physical fitness and weight part of it is that sitting all day does nothing for your metabolism. It is as stagnant as it can be when you are in a seated position all day, and this is awful for your blood flow (circulation), so you know that it’s not good for you heart or your circulatory system either.
Now though, there is real evidence, including statistical numbers that just might blow your mind, that show the couch potatoes – those that sit down for long periods of time habitually, whether it be watching television or doing some other seated activity, are more likely to die earlier than those that are more active throughout their day.
Most of the danger to this type of lifestyle is the damage it can do to your heart, especially if you are overweight as well, although skinny people bear some risk as well if they are inactive.
Scientists took into account other factors as well, and still singled out sitting down for long periods of time relaxing as one of the common denominators in early death. This included factors like gender, waist measurements (a lot of belly fat and larger waists have been correlated to shorter life spans and higher incidence of coronary issues), age, and level of fitness activities.
Sitting for long periods of time actually can increase the levels of sugar (blood sugar) and fat in your blood, increasing your risk for a variety of life threatening and life shortening issues.
