Valentine’s Day would not be the same without a delicious sweet treat to share with the ones you love. In this blog post, I’m sharing 7 Low Carb Valentine’s Day Treats to help you celebrate love without sacrificing your health goals. So let’s get in the kitchen and get low carb baking!
Valentine’s day treats for me represent love and chocolate! A close second would be Cheesecake… and the ultimate treat would be chocolate drizzled on a cheesecake. As we all know, these treats would typically be high and sugar and not very good for a low carb lifestyle. read more
Angela of Grassfed Mama shares healthy tips for busy moms.
Trim Healthy Mama on a Whole Foods Diet
There is some criticism in the whole foods world about Trim Healthy Mama. I’d like to take the time to debunk the myth that Trim Healthy Mama can’t be included in a whole food’s lifestyle.
What is Trim Healthy Mama?
The Trim Healthy Mama (THM) diet is a lifestyle approach to eating developed by sisters Pearl Barrett and Serene Allison. It is based on the premise of separating fuels, where meals are designed to focus on either carbohydrates or fats, but not both together, to optimize metabolism and promote weight loss.read more
Glucomannan is becoming my favorite new cooking addition
I had never heard of glucomannan before reading Trim Healthy Mama. Since adding it to our pantry, I can’t believe this is such a secret! It has many health benefits too, so if you haven’t tried glucomannan yet – let this be your sign.
It is basically a thickener. It absorbs liquids without changing the flavor and without needing to be heated. It is able to turn 1 cup of liquid into a thick pudding with only using a teaspoon. This also fills you up and keeps you full longer, which can benefit people trying to lose weight. Glucomannan is fiber, so it helps keep you regular too!
It can be used to replace corn starch, flour rouxs, and xanthan gum in most recipes. It has zero carbs or calories, and add no bad aftertaste or slimy texture.
On the plus side, you don’t even have to heat it up to use it. You can whip it up in your cold smoothies and it immediately goes to work. I used it in these Asian Lettuce Wraps to thicken up the sauce.
Can Glucomannan Help with Weight loss?
In one study, participants lost an average of 5.5 pounds in eight weeks by adding one gram of glucomannan to their diet one hour before meals – with no other changes. Now that is something to get excited about! With any new supplement, you should always ask your health care provider if this is something you should try.
Where do you buy Glucomannan?
I buy my glucomannan from Amazon. You can probably find it in your local health store too. It is gaining more popularity, so it should be fairly easy to find. It also lasts forever, because most recipes don’t use a huge amount.
I don’t think my kitchen will ever be complete without having glucomannan in the cabinets.
Have you tried Glucomannan yet? What are you favorite ways to use it?
There was a recent study that showed that American’s have a limited amount of time devoted to health activities: cooking healthy meals or exercising. We all know that time is precious. Where we choose to spend our time should be focused on the activity that affects us the most overall health-wise. Both cooking healthy meals and exercising are both good things for improving your health, where will you decide to spend your time?
The study showed that this unconscious trade-off was made across all demographics: men, women, single, married, with and without children. As the time spent on cooking healthy meals increased, the activity spent on exercising decreased in a given day period.
Where should we spend our time for the biggest health benefits?
There is much discussion about the best way to improve your health. Should you eat better? or workout more?
Psychological Science reported that people who thought that eating right was the key to weight loss showed lower BMI (body mass index) compared to people who thought exercising was the key to weight control.
Maybe the people who valued eating right for health benefits, ate healthier in general and this choice caused lower BMI numbers. Or possibly the people who thought working out was the key to weight loss, had more muscle mass and that skewed their BMI numbers.
Both eating right and exercising are beneficial to your health… so if you have to choose where you spend your time, what choice do you make?
When asked most people agreed that it was easier to change how they ate then adding exercise into their schedule. Everyone finds time to eat. When trying to figure out what was more important for certain goals, Women’s Health Magazine reports that diet was most important for weight loss and reducing heart disease. Exercise was more important for boosting energy, prevention of diabetes, and improving mood. Both eating right and exercising were important for cancer prevention.
Every day you make the choice for where you are going to spend your time. Some days we may decide to spend a little more time moving and exercising and another day we may spend it preparing healthy meals in the kitchen.
Tips to save you time in the kitchen for days that you exercise:
Take one day to prepare foods in advance
Use a crock pot for making healthy meals
Prepare extra of some meals to freeze to use on busier days
Where do you choose to spend your time on health?read more
For a family who loves brunch, but doesn’t love all the typical carbs in brunch recipes. Here are the Top 8 Sugar Free Pancake Recipes your whole family will love!
Starting your day the right way is the key to feeling your best all day long! With these sugar free pancake recipes you can enjoy your favorite comforting breakfast food without the sugar or guilt!
ditch your sugar cravings
8 Sugar Free & Healthy Pancake recipes
Pancakes bring up so many warm and fuzzy feelings inside me. They just scream Saturday mornings with the family. Traditional pancake recipes are full of carbs and sugar (with fat too!). All these together do not help a mama stay healthy. read more
It took a lot of research for me to even consider this… I loved my carbs and bread and pasta… so why did we choose to go grain free?
Is there research about going grain free?
First, I learned about phytates that are part of the grain. This is mother natures way of “protecting” the grain so it would pass through the stool and then germinate once “deposited.” These phytates bind to other nutrients (like magnesium) in your foods and aren’t digested or absorbed. read more
This is not a new idea. Lots of popular diets have come to the conclusion that our sugar is out of balance in our Modern diet and this is the cause of our expanding waistbands.
Management of your Sugar and Carbohydrates is crucial for weight loss and your general health.
We know sugar is so important to get under control.
A low glycemic diet in general is healthier than a diet focused on lots of carbs. When our system gets overloaded with too many sugar and carbs, our cells start storing extra carbs as fat in our cells.
Our cells love to store carbs, so they are very eager and ready when we over eat our carbs. If we eat a moderate or low carb diet, then we can burn those carbs before they get the chance to be stored as extra fat.read more
I don’t know about your family, but my family loves brunch! We love a slower morning where you have time to drink an extra cup of coffee (or two.) These Healthy Low Carb Biscuits and Sausage Gravy are the perfect way to enjoy your breakfast or brunch in a delicious and low carb way!
Angela of Grassfed Mama shares healthy tips for busy moms.
Can you make a healthy low carb sausage gravy?
Biscuits and Sausage Gravy are one mine and my husband’s favorite weekend treat.
These are not traditionally a healthy meal. Traditional biscuits are full of processed carbs and hydrogenated fats. These processed carbs are likely to send your blood sugar soaring. Sausage gravy is usually thickened with processed flour, mixing carbs and fats.read more
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 onmy facebook walland 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!
. I’d like to take the time to debunk the myth that Trim Healthy Mama can’t be included in a whole food’s lifestyle.
