Tag Archives: on a budget

Healthy Breakfast Ideas

A lot of studies and research has shown that kids who eat breakfast perform better in school and have a healthier diet. Eating breakfast will help promote the proper growth and maximize school performance as well.

Breakfast is often times a victim of the morning time crunch. Even though you may be tempted to skip breakfast, you can simplify your morning routine by following these 8 tips:

  1. Finish homework and pack school bags at night.
  2. Decide on what your children will wear to school before you go to bed and locate lost shoes for the following day.
  3. In the morning, get up 15 minutes earlier.
  4. Give up computer games and morning television.
  5. Have healthy foods on hand. You should also shop for breakfast foods with your kids and take into account their personal preferences.
  6. Set the cereal out the night before. For younger children, fill a zippered plastic bag with her portion, then add the milk in the morning.
  7. Allow your children to use the microwave often, as most breakfast foods can be prepared in under 5 minutes.
  8. Allow your kids to eat in the car or on the way to school.

There are several foods that you can eat for breakfast, even leftovers from supper if they are sufficient. You can eat bagels, pizza with fruit juice, pretzels, or the normal bacon and eggs that breakfast is known for. Most foods are a snap to prepare, and won’t take you but a few minutes.

The next time you are in a hurry in the morning, remember that you are probably about to skip the most important meal of the day. If you follow the tips above, you’ll find that you have plenty of time for breakfast.

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Fight Stress With Healthy Eating

Whenever we get too busy or stressed, we all tend to make poor food choices that will actually increase stress and cause other problems. To get the most of your healthy eating and avoid stress, follow these simple tips.

Always eat breakfast
Even though you may think you aren’t hungry, you need to eat something. Skipping breakfast makes it harder to maintain the proper blood and sugar levels during the day, so you should always eat something.

Carry a snack
Keeping some protein rich snacks in your car, office, or pocket book will help you avoid blood sugar level dips, the accompanying mood swings, and the fatigue. Trail mix, granola bars, and energy bars all have the nutrients you need.

Healthy munchies
If you like to munch when you’re stressed out, you can replace chips or other non healthy foods with carrot sticks, celery sticks, or even sunflower seeds.

Bring your lunch
Although a lot of people prefer to eat fast food for lunch, you can save a lot of money and actually eat healthier if you take a few minutes and pack a lunch at home. Even if you only do this a few times a week, you’ll see a much better improvement over eating out.

Stock your home
As important as it is to get the bad food out of your house, it’s even more important to get the good food in! The best way to do this is to plan a menu of healthy meals at snacks at the beginning of the week, list the ingedients you need, then go shop for it. This way, you’ll know what you want when you need it and you won’t have to stress over what to eat.

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Fast Facts On Potatoes

Throughout America, potatoes are the most popular vegetable, even being ahead of other well known vegetables such as lettuce and onions. You can cook potatoes in a variety of ways, and they are included in one out of three meals eaten by almost all Americans. When they are prepared in a healthy way, a potato can be an excellent source of energy and also pack a nutritional punch.

Like oranges, potatoes are very high in vitamin C. The fact is, one medium potato contains 45% of the vitamin C that’s recommended for good health. Potatoes are also high in fiber and carbohydrates and contain more potassium than a banana.

A potato is naturally low in calories and contains no fat, sodium, or cholesterol. The skins of the potatoes provide a helpful dose of fiber, iron, potassium, calcium, zinc, phosphorus, and several B vitamins.

You can prepare potatoes by boiling them, steaming them, or even roasting them. If at all possible, you should avoid putting potatoes in the refrigerator or freezing them, as cold will turn the potato starch to sugar and cause them to turn dark when they are cooked.

When you store potatoes, keep them in a cool, dark place. Too much light will cause them to turn green. You can store them in the basement if you have one, as the basement is the best place to keep potatoes.

From mashed potatoes to baked potatoes, a potato is something we all know and love. They serve many different tasty foods, and they provide our bodies with plenty of healthful benefits. We all eat potatoes, some of us even grow our own. Whether you grow your on or buy them, the potato is the one vegetable that makes everything just a little bit better.

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Facts About Nutrition Labels

The nutrition label located on each and every food item, will tell you all the information about that food. For some however, this information isn’t exactly that reader friendly. Fear not, as it’s actually easier than you think.

Serving Size
This size is based on the amount people eat. Similar food items will have similar serving sizes, thus making it easier to compare 2 foods of the same category.

% Daily
Value This indicates how food will fit in a 2,000 calorie diet. This will help you to understand if the food has a lot, or just a little of the important nutrients.

The middle section
The nutrients you’ll find listed in the middle section are the ones that are most important to your health. This information can help you to calculate your daily limit of fat, fiber, sodium, and other nutrients.

Vitamins & minerals
The percent daily value found here is the exact same as the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance for vitamins and minerals.

Now that you know what the nutrition label actually means, it’ll be a lot easy to eat healthy. Eating healthy is a great thing – especially when you use the nutrition label to assist you with your food choices.

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Eating Healthy When Eating Out

If you go out to a restaurant to eat, you probably watch your calories very closely. To assist you with your calorie watching when dining out, these tips will help you make the most of it.

  • Always order salad dressings or sauces on the side, as this way you have control over how much you add to your meal.
  • When you order grilled fish or vegetables, you should ask that the food be grilled without butter or oil, or prepared with very little or either or.
  • Anytime you order pasta dishes, be on the lookout for tomato based sauces instead of the cream based sauces. Tomato based sauces are much lower in fat and calories, and tomato sauce can even be counted as a vegetable!
  • You should always try to drink water, diet soda, or tea instead of soda or beverages that contain alcohol.
  • If you order dessert, share with a friend. Half of the dessert will equal half of the calories.
  • When you choose a soup, remember that cream based soups are higher in fat and calories than other soups. A soup can be a great appetizer, as most are low in calories and you fill you up pretty fast.
  • When ordering a baked potato, ask for salsa instead of sour cream, butter, cheese, or even bacon. Salsa is very low in calories and provides a healthy alternative with plenty of flavor and spice.
  • When you are full, stop eating. Listen to your body and what it tells you.
  • If you get full, take half of your meal home. The second portion of your meal can serve as a second meal later. This way, you get two meals for the price of one.
  • If you’re looking to eat less, order two appetizers or an appetizer and a salad as your meal.
  • If you get a choice of side dishes, get a baked potato or steamed vegetables instead of french fries.
  • Always look for food on the menu that’s baked, grilled, broiled, poached, or steamed. These types of cooking use less fat in the cooking process and are usually much lower in calories.
  • Plain bread or rolls are low in both fat and calories. When you add the butter and oil, you increase the fat and calorie intake.
  • As key ingredients to your meal, choose dishes with fruits and vegetables. Both fruits and vegetables are great sources of dietary fiber as well as many vitamins and minerals.
  • Choose foods made with whole grains, such as whole wheat bread and dishes made with brown rice.
  • If you crave dessert, look for something with low fat, such as berries or fruit.
  • Always remember not to deprive yourself of the foods you truly love. All types of foods can fit into a well balanced diet.
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Knowing The Risks Of Restaurant Eating

Few of us can really say that we would not enjoy the chance to eat in a good restaurant more often, and there is no reason that we should turn our backs on restaurant eating once we go on a diet. However, the truth of the matter is that eating in a restaurant is not a risk because there are no healthy options or even that they are limited, but that we know so little about the healthy option.

When we take care of the cooking of food ourselves, we know exactly what is going into it and how it is being prepared. In a restaurant we leave it up to the chef. When you look over the menu in a restaurant, it is a good idea to have a healthy option or two in mind, and then ask the waiter when ordering how exactly the food is prepared.

Different restaurants will have different policies for how the food is cooked. Sauteed vegetables are usually healthy and delicious, but the difference between frying them in vegetable oil and fat is quite marked. Asking a few questions before committing to an order is never a bad idea, as long as you are polite and reasonable in doing so.

There may be some concern that the serving staff will lie to you or tell you what they think you want to hear in order to make you pipe down and order – but if you are reasonable and polite to them, they will be likely to reciprocate, and take on board your specifications on how you would like something to be cooked.

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Beware The Demons In Disguise

If eating healthily was as easy as it should be, then the diet industry – books, DVDs, diet plans themselves and exercise equipment – would be in the doldrums. The fact that it is thriving to this day is a sign that, as much as we would like to think it, dieting is not easy or straightforward.

We like to think of pasta as being the healthy option – many of us will replace fries with a serving of pasta when we are trying to lose weight – but unless we are careful, we can end up gaining more weight for the addition of pasta to our diet. A lot of it comes down to what we eat with that pasta. In some cases it is a thick, creamy sauce or a salad dressing that contains a bunch of calories. And even plain pasta can be a weight gain nightmare if we don’t get the exercise to work off those carbs.

Very often it is not what we eat but how we cook it that is the issue. Many of us will, for example, quite enjoy a nice steak every once in a while – as long as the fat is trimmed. But how we cook it affects how good it is for us. If you are frying it in oil or butter, then it will become unhealthy very quickly. If, however, you grill it or sear it in a pan, there is certainly no harm to enjoying it.

One of the most enjoyable quick meals is a chicken breast with baby potatoes. Now, boiled potatoes can hardly be a diet destroyer, can they? Again, it depends what is done with them. If they are tipped out of the pan and have a mound of butter melted over them, they’re as much a risk as fries. If they are drizzled with a little olive oil, then they’re more than fine.

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Healthy Drinking Is Important Too

It is not at all uncommon to meet a person who cannot understand why they are unable to lose weight, and curses the fact that although they are eating all the right things, their weight hangs around the “few pounds overweight” barrier. They will tell you all of this and wonder what they are doing wrong, and in the next few moments will take a gulp from a can of soda, a glass of beer or something similar, and admit on questioning that it is their third of the day or night.

Now, it is far from impossible to maintain a healthy diet while continuing to enjoy the occasional glass of wine or can of soda. Neither is it unthinkable to stop drinking these things entirely, but it is not compulsory. However, it is important to realize that issues with weight gain or weight loss can often be down to what you drink as much as what you eat. You will not be at a healthy weight if you drink a bottle of wine a day, or get through a family-sized bottle of soda.

If you have to have a drink with food, then often a glass of water will be the best option. There are more reasons for this than just the weight issue. A glass of water will keep you from getting thirsty and will help you enjoy the meal, but will not interfere with the taste. And if you are thirsty, a glass of water is the best thing you can drink – it replenishes the body’s hydration levels and allows you to enjoy the occasional glass of wine or soda more, because you get to really savor the taste.

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Treats – Diet Killer Or Valuable Savior?

When people embark upon a diet, they are often given to mention that the big test for them will be how much they miss a certain food. For a diet to be effective it needs to be stuck to – often to the extent that people who have lost weight on a diet put it all back on in weeks once they revert to their old ways. So it can be hard to stick to a diet if you tell yourself that it’s over between you and your favorite chocolate bar, or that you can never again eat cheese.

If a crash diet is required for health reasons, it must be stuck to. But if you simply want to lose weight and keep it off for your own reasons, the best way of sticking to a diet may be to allow yourself to relax it at certain points. If you eat chocolate every day, and often several times a day, then you’re not going to lose weight. But only a diet fascist will say that the occasional bar as a treat is off limits.

This is not to say that you can carry on eating chocolate as regularly as you wish, or having fried food every few days. For a diet to mean anything, the healthy options have to be the norm. However, a small treat once or twice a week as a reward for sticking to the diet is not going to be the end of the world – and it can enable you to keep to that diet indefinitely, aiding you to lose weight in the long run, which is what you want.

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