Prospero's Kitchen

Healthy Eating, Healthy Life

Beginning with the New Year 2011, this blog will be about the benefits and joys of healthy eating. You'll have more vigor, joy, and stamina, and you'll look forward to every day. This is not a traditional diet plan, but a new way of being. The changes in your body and mental health may be slow, but you'll find they are lasting.

Look below for the following posts:

Healthy Eating/Healthy Lifestyle Plan

Some Tips for Making Healthy Eating Easier

Why Exercise in a Healthy Eating Plan

Water: How Much

Exercise as Part of a Healthy Diet

Exercise: Costs and Commitments

What Nutrients Are in a Healthy Eating Plan--1 Fats

Sugar and Salt in a Healthy Meal Plan

Processed foods are high in sugar and salt content, which hook you into needing more and more of both of them. Salt, or sodium, increases the likelihood that you will have high blood pressure and too much sugar leads to diabetes. The Nutrition Facts Label on the packaged food will list the salt contents by the amount of sodium in each serving. And the amount of sugar in the foods to which you have become addicted is listed under the category of Total Carbs as Sugars. You will be shocked by the amountof salt and sugar added to processed foods.

Avoid high fructose corn syrup, used by manufacturers because it’s cheaper than cane or beet sugar. High fructose corn syrup is found everywhere these days. There are reasons to avoid it because it blocks the messages your body sends that you are full and because it’s hard to digest.

Your body, though, needs some sugar for energy. But get it from an apple or another fruit, not sweetened foods.

Try to gradually cut down on the amount of salt and sugar you add to your fresh foods. In time you will find extra salty and extra sweet foods are unpalatable and you will discover the natural goodness in foods.

There are many options for selecting relatively good sweets. You can add a tablespoon of maple syrup to your whole wheat pancakes or a bit of honey to your fruit and yogurt.  By adding cinnamon, nutmeg, or vanilla to certain foods, you can cut down on the necessity to sweeten.

Don’t try to cut down on sugar by using artificial sweeteners. These will add to you need for something sweet and you will end up eating and drinking more, searching for the satisfaction of eating a sweet. Some nutritionists say we don’t need any added sugar to our diets. However the official recommended intake is 32 total grams of sugar. There are 4 grams of sugar per teaspoon. That adds up to a mere 8 teaspoons of added sugar per day

You can cut down on salt by flavoring foods with herbs and spices instead of the saltshaker. We need as little as 2400 mgs. a day, depending on your heart health, body mass, and energy expended.

Next Milk and Cheese

 

 

Whole grains play key role in a healthy diet

Whole grains play a key role in a Healthy Eating Meal Plan. There are many kinds and when a recipe calls for a particular grain, I’ll identify it and describe its use. Most grains can be found at large supermarkets and you may be familiar with many kinds already. You can start on the journey of eating whole grains by avoiding white flower in breads, cakes, and pasta, and instead buying whole wheat products.

You will see that these whole wheat products contain a portion of white flour. Check your Nutrition Label. The first ingredient listed should be whole wheat. Gradually, when you have the opportunity, buy whole grains. These are intact grains and should be stored in an airtight container and placed in the refrigerator. The oils in them will go rancid otherwise.

Dried Beans, a good source of protein

Dried beans are actually a vegetable, a good source of protein as well as nutrients. You can cook the dried beans yourself or buy canned beans, already cooked. The advantage of cooking them yourself is to save money and time. What you don’t use for preparing a recipe, you can freeze in small packets for future use.

Tofu is made from dried soybeans and can be used as a substitute for meat in many recipes. You may not have tried tofu yet, but it is well worth your experimenting with it. I have included a recipe or two using tofu.

Omega 3: an essential fatty acid

Omega 3 is called essential because our bodies need it to function well and because we can’t make it without a little boost. It is vital in the construction of cell membranes, especially in the eye and brain, as well as in sperm cells and some hormones. Omega 3s, along with Omega 6s, play a role in heart disease protection.

This fat is found mostly in fish so you should plan on having fish about two times a week in order to get enough. The fish with the highest levels of Omega 3s are fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring, and sardines. Try to have less fish with mercury or PCBs: canned albacore tuna, shark, swordfish, and king mackerel. These are all larger fish that feed on smaller fish.

Other sources of Omega 3s are walnuts, canola oil and other vegetable oils, ground flaxseed or flaxseed oil, beef, and Brussels sprouts. If you have trouble getting enough Omega 3 and Omega 6 from your food, fish oil capsules are a good alternative.

Continued with Fruits and Vegetables

 

What nutrients are in a Healthy Eating Plan?--1 Fats

Fats—the good kind, which means no trans fats and little saturated fats. Trans fats come hydrogenated vegetable oils and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Manufacturers use trans fats because they store easily. However, trans fats are even more dangerous than saturated fats from meats and dairy products because of their ability to clog arteries. Recently more and more manufacturers have announced they are no longer using trans fats, including Wal-Mart, Nabisco in some of its products, and some fast food outlets.

Good fats are vital to a healthy functioning body and brain. These kinds of fat are found in every cell in your body, and not in your arteries. In order to get an adequate amount of good fats, you can use 93% lean beef, pork tenderloin chops with fat removed, skinless turkey and chicken breasts, fat-free or low fat dairy products, and most vegetable oils, not including coconut oil.

I use a small pat of salt-free butter plus vegetable oil in a pan when I’m sautéing. Just a bit of butter adds to the rich taste of those foods and does not add significantly to the level of cholesterol in your total foods.

You can make a good meatloaf using the lean ground beef with ground turkey. Do use the ground turkey breast, though, because that will make the meatloaf too dry.

Continued with Fruits and Vegetables

Exercise: Costs and Commitment

Cost and availability

If you can afford it, join a gym. But that’s not necessary. There are aerobics classes often held for little money. Watch the papers for times and places. Brisk walking and. running in your neighborhood or on a jogging path will achieve the same results.

The equipment you need costs little. Buy a set of hand weights or use canned goods in a plastic shopping bag to lift. The resistance bands and Thera-bands are cheap. Stretching is free.

There are many books and pamphlets available on exercise. You can get them at your library. The government publications office has several booklets on exercise for a nominal fee. (Go to http://catalog.gpo.gov and type in exercise and physical activity in the search space.)

Your life

As you can see, there’s no excuse for not exercising. I find that if I get up and go straight to my exercising routine without thinking, I can do it easily and it readies me for the day. I feel very good. I know that exercise has made a huge difference in my life.

You need to try it and find the best way for you to exercise. But, most important, you need to commit to exercising and a healthy way of life.

You can do it!

Exercise as part of a Healthy Diet and Healthy Lifestyle

Exercise is a vital part of a healthy diet and healthy lifestyle. You expend calories when you exercise, the calories you have consumed as you eat. If you don’t exercise, the calories turn to fat, but when you exercise the calories turn to muscle and keep our bodies running smoothly.

Calories are the energy that food puts out. A high calorie meal will take a lot longer to burn or use up with exercise. Without exercise, those calories, no matter where they come from, will turn to fat.

            If you’re new to exercise

            If you have a sedentary lifestyle or you have avoided exercise because you don’t like it or you think it’s too much trouble, commit yourself to some exercise everyday.

            Start out with ten minutes walking or even cleaning the house or raking the yard. Every day add a few more minutes until you are exercising thirty minutes a day.

You’ll find that exercising relieves depression, adds joy to your life, makes you feel better overall, helps in making your brain work better, lowers your blood pressure, and adds to your overall health.

Exercise as a way of life

If you are already exercising, keep going. Many people I know exercise an hour at a time, engaging in both aerobic and weight bearing exercise. You can alternate days with aerobic, such as walking briskly or running or taking an aerobics class, and days with weight bearing exercise, such as lifting weights or using a resistance tube or Thera-band for strengthening.

Work stretching into your exercise regime. You can stretch before you begin a session of either aerobic or strengthening exercise.

Water. How much?

There is a great deal of controversy over how much water you need for a healthy lifestyle. It has long been said that we absolutely need eight ounces of water eight times a day--or 64 ounces. But that amount doesn't take into account various body sizes, different activities, or climate variations.

Also there is water available in certain foods. Clearly we need water for our kidneys and bodies to work. But are we getting enough without drinking that much water?

The key, as with many aspects of healthy eating, is to listen to your body. Are you thirsty, have you been working out, is the weather hot or windy? Sometimes fatigue is associated with not drinking enough water. You might try drinking a glass or two of water--just plain water--to see if that relieves the problem. And constipation may be caused by not drinking enough water.

Experiment with your water intake, and make sure it's water, not soda or fruit juice. Plain, good, refreshing water. Either from the tap, which is how I get mine, or from a bottle.

Why exercise in a Healthy Eating plan?

You eat to provide energy to your body and nutrients to keep your system working at the optimum level. The calories that you put into your body should match the calories that you burn through your daily activities. That's one of the reasons you need to exercise--to burn calories. But there are even more compelling reasons.

Exercise is linked to your cognitive functions helping you to be more alert, to your emotional well being leading you to become more positive and less depressed, and to a healthy body that works smoothly and efficiently . Exercise, too, lowers blood pressure and eases the effects of diseases on your system a thing of the past.

All you need to do is choose the exercise that suits you best. That could be a walk, gradually working up to the level till you're walking twenty to thirty minutes a day. Or a swim. Or sit ups in your bedroom. Or any activity that allows you to be committed to doing it everyday.

Some tips for making Healthy Eating easy

Tips for making your commitment to healthy eating easier:

Start out with adding fruit to your diet.

When you want something sweet, eat a banana, grapes, an orange, or another piece of your favorite fruit.

Don’t let yourself get starved before eating. This is not a deprivation diet. It is a Healthy Lifestyle. Go to your snack food that you have on hand and try to eat on schedule. If you’re starved, you eat much more to satisfy both the physical and emotional needs.

If you get the urge to eat an unhealthy food, try distraction. Take a walk outside. Call a friend.

Learn to read nutrition labels on what you buy at the grocery store. Soon certain restaurants will be required to post nutrition labels on menu items