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The Holiday No Gain Guide

The holiday season is here!

It starts in October and goes through New Years… but all this celebrating may lead to the dreaded holiday weight gain O.o

On average, Americans gain 10 pounds from Halloween to New Years, but this doesn’t have to happen to you!

Three Ways to Avoid the Holiday Weight Gain without Giving Up your Favorite Foods

What if you had a plan? A daily action plan to keep you on track all season long so you could just avoid the holiday weight gain altogether? Wouldn’t that be awesome!

You are going to walk into your New Year’s Party in your favorite little back dress… and not have to worry about setting a New Year’s Resolution weight loss goal. You’ll be ahead of everyone else and feeling great too! read more

Clutter Free in 30 Days

Clutter Free in 30 Days

March is typically Spring Cleaning month. The air is warming up outside and people are starting to venture out of their winter caves. As part of our New Years resolutions this year, Adam and I decided that we wanted to be more organized in 2014 and tame the clutter. 

Neither of us are neat freaks, but we do both want a tidy house. We honestly did really good keeping our house tame of clutter until we had kids. They come with so much stuff (and some of it you only use for a few months, then it is no longer needed). read more

Three Tips to Getting More Sleep

3 Tips to getting more sleep
3 Tips to getting more sleep

There are a few foundations we should look at to make sure we are living out a healthy life:

Be aware of what you are eating.

Increase your Water

Include Healthy Fats in You diet

and Eat at Home

Are You Sleeping Enough?

 

One thing people forget about often is the importance of sleeping enough.

The CDC reports that insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic.  Lack of sleep is affecting our ability to concentrate, remember important information, negatively affecting hobbies, driving, taking care of money, and work. 

When we don’t allow ourselves to rest, we are actually hurting ourselves more than we realize. Beyond reduced learning and memory ability, lack of sleep is linked to increased weight gain by slowing our metabolism, increased hypertension, and increases our risk for disease.   read more

New You New Years: Week 4 – Eat at Home

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New You New Years Week 4: Eat at Home

In the past few weeks, we have talked about:

Increasing our water

Cutting the sugar and

Including healthy fats into our diet. 

This week we are challenging you to Eat at Home. 

eat at home

To save Money

This challenge won’t only affect your health, but will also affect your wallet. 

Have I mentioned that I’m cheap?

One of the first reasons I started cooking when Adam and I got married was because we couldn’t afford to eat out. I was in school and we were both commuting an hour to work and school (in opposite directions). Talk about burning through some cash! 

By eating at home and cooking from basic ingredients, we were able to save so much money and would usually be able to eat leftovers for a bonus meal. 

Know what is in the food you are eating

Have your ever looked at the ingredient list in a chicken nugget? Sometimes it is hard to find the chicken? 

As I became more and more aware of ingredients in processed take out and boxed foods, I began to cook more and more from scratch. This process didn’t happen over night. 

This challenge is to first make the decision to cook at home.

Second, take a favorite meal that your family loves and turn it into a whole foods meal.

That way you know exactly what you are eating! 

I am pretty much a self-taught cook. I’m no fancy chef. I started with simple Rachel Ray type 30 minute meals which helped me get more and more comfortable cooking. 

I’ve learned a few tricks over the years and can throw a meal together without a recipe now. When I started cooking, I was slave to the written recipe. 20131112-141917.jpg

Recipes don’t have to limit you, they can be a jumping off board. 

Start with a meal you know and see how you can modify it to make it healthier!

Do you have a favorite meal that uses canned cream of soup? Have you looked at the ingredients? MSG is usually one of them… besides hydrogenated yuckiness.

Here is a homemade cream of something soup you can check out! 

Stacy Makes Cents shares her homemade cream of soup mix here.  read more

Why You Should Add Butter to Your Coffee

Week one we increased our water intake.

Week two we cut out sugar.

Are you feeling better already?

No more Sugar crashes or highs? We want to keep our blood sugar smooth and stable.

 

This next tip will help not only keep your sugar cravings at bay, but will also help you burn more fat, fuel your body and help you focus…

Want to know the secret??

 

Adapted from: http://glutendoctors.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-i-allow-butter-on-diary-free-diet.html

This week we are going to focus on Healthy Fats!  

 

 

Fats from animal and vegetables are so vital to our health. They are a “concentrated source of energy.” (Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon). Using fats as an energy source is also understood in Trim Healthy Mama‘s satisfying or S meals.

 

Fats slow down nutrient absorption so we feel full longer and stay satisfied. They also help keep our blood sugar stable. Fats are also important in absorption of fat soluble vitamins (A, D E and K). Cultures (Japanese, French and traditional populations) that eat a lot of saturated fats have less coronary heart disease than Americans who changed their diets to be low in saturated fat (Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon).

 

What Is a Healthy Fat?

Saturated fats are healthy! Healthy fats are fats that are stable when heated. These include coconut oil, butter, and ghee. Extra Virgin Olive oil is good, but it is less stable because it is monounsaturated and so shouldn’t be cooked with.

 

Eating Fat doesn’t make us fat, Carbs do!

We have been lied to over and over when we have been told to eat low fat for weight loss. It isn’t the fat that is the problem, it is the carbs that cause excess weight gain (and the mixture of the two). Trim Healthy Mama goes into more detail about this in their book, but it is the core at why you keep the two sources of energy separate and also eat low glycemic.

When you eat too many carbs, the excess energy is stored in our cells to burn up later. When we also eat fat with excess carbs, the fat is also stored for later. If we keep our food choices to one source of energy or the other then we will continue to burn and not store extra to be turned into fat.

 

What about cholesterol? 

Cholesterol is NOT the devil. It is actually necessary for your health.

Cholesterol is vital for hormone production, for cell membranes, for creating bile, for serotonin production, and maintaining a healthy digestive wall for prevention of a leaky gut.

Oils to avoid.

Any oil that has been hydrogenated or homogenized. Most of these are in the form of corn or soy. So if you start avoiding those two then it gets easier. Polyunsaturated fats should be no greater than 4% of our daily caloric intake (Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon). Polyunsaturated fats include commercial vegetable oils like corn, sunflower and safflower.

Coconut is a super food!

In an earlier post, I talked about coconut oil and how great it is for us (click here to read more about coconut oil). Coconut oil is antimicrobial, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, soothing for skin and revs up metabolism. We keep one container in our bathroom and one in the kitchen. I have used coconut oil on sunburns, dry skin and for prevention of stretch marks in pregnancy.

 

Challenge Time!

So this week, let’s make the switch to include MORE saturated fats into our diet. We most commonly use coconut oil and butter. One easy way to get in more fats is actually in your coffee! Sounds a little strange, right?

 

When you combine coffee, grassfed butter and collagen, you get AMAZING RESULTS! 

More fuel for your body and brain means a more fit, fueled, and focused you! With Grass-Fed Butter and Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs), you can increase your body’s ketone production to rapidly breakdown fat, boost your energy, and sharpen your focus!

  • Contains fatty acids from Grass-Fed Butter and Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs)
  • Builds and restores vital proteins through essential amino acids and collagen peptides†
  • Boosts and sustains your energy output to burn more fat†
  • Sharpens mental focus and enhances mood†
  • Kills cravings and satisfies hunger†
  • Fuels your body and brain through increased ketone production†
  • Supports the results of your low-carb & ketogenic diet
  • read more

    New You New Years! Increasing Water

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    New You New Years Week One: Increasing Your Water

    You made it to the first week of New You New Years!  This week we are going to focus on increasing your water intake. 

    Last week we focused on awareness: Being mindful in what you are eating. Thinking about what you are feeding your body is the first step to changing your habits. Did you pick up on anything you need to change already???

    During New You New Years, we are going to take baby steps each week so you can be a Trim Healthy Mama!

    To increase our water intake, this could include drinking more water, tea, or fruit infused waters. My favorite way to drink tea is in Trim Healthy Mama apple pie sips. These are amazing!! I love them so much during these cold winter months when drinking a cold glass of water isn’t as appealing.

    My sister and her husband really like to drink sparkling water.

    Another tip is adding a little lemon to water with some stevia – a very simple lemonade! Adding lemon to your water also increases your vitamin C intake, which is great in these winter months for keeping you well and helps detox your liver!  I made some really good pomegranate tea over Thanksgiving and sweetened it with some stevia for a real treat. Fruit infused water is easy to make too!

    I really love drinking Greens in my water. It is an easy was to get in 38 superfoods and PLUS increase the water that I need too! I have a Probiotic that have helped a lot as well 🙂

    Something I’ve been trying more recently is doing fruit infusions in my water, it adds great taste and is really simple if you use an Infusion Pitcher, here’s the one I prefer!

    By drinking more water, you will help your body stay full. Sometimes when we feel the urge to eat, we really are just thirsty. Drinking Water is also good for constipation. Did you know that if you aren’t having a bowel movement at least ONCE a day (and 3x a day is the recommended amount)  then you are constipated??? (cue music: The More you Knooooooooow!)

    Summary: New You New Years Week 1: Increase your water!

    What are you favorite ways to increase your water? read more

    New You New Years!!!

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    New Years is next week! I know you are already thinking about what you are wanting for 2014. Some of you make the same resolutions every year and by February they are already a thing of the past.

    This year will be different. This year you will make a change and stick to it!

    How? You may ask. Because We are all going to be a part of New You New Years!!!

    So lets talk about what New You New Years is going to look like. Every week, a new challenge will be presented to focus on the whole week. It may be to eat one vegetable at lunch and dinner. Or maybe it could be focusing on eliminating white sugar for the week. Maybe we could even focus on adding a 20 minute walk in or another exercise each day for a week. 

    Every week, we will focus on one single step… and take this one bite at a time (wink, wink). 

    This is YOUR time! This is THE time to choose to be the person you want to be in 2014. A healthier you, a better feeling you! 

    Our first week’s challenge will be simple… We are going to be aware.

    Awareness is the key to change a habit.

    In speech therapy, when we would work with people who stutter, most of the time they wouldn’t even realize they had just stuttered in conversation. We would replay their speech, and help them identify the problem areas, then they could back and restate the phrase or sentence and fix the stutter. 

    I want you to be aware about your food choices you are making each day. Read ingredients. Read nutrition labels. Figure out what you are actually putting in your mouth… You really ARE what you eat.

    1) So look for the number of ingredients listed, and also can you pronounce or identify every item listed. 

    2) How many grams of carbs and sugar are you eating in packaged items?

    3) How many items have something with soy, the word hydrolyzed or hydrogenated, or corn? 

    Now I want you to comment or write on my facebook wall and let me know how you are doing during the week.

    What foods are you surprised to see sugar in or High Fructose Corn Syrup? How many carbs are in your favorite foods? Keep me posted! 

     

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