Fruits and Veggies

Fruits and Veggies
No matter what your health concerns – preventing cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, whatever – the bottom-line massage from every health organization (including the American Heart Association; the American Cancer Society; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; and the USDA) is to eat more fruits and vegetarians.

Yet more than 90 percent of Americans fail to consume the recommended amount.

Ideally, you should include a hefty portion of fruit and veggies in every meal and snack.

Here are some tips to help you boost your intake of these carbohydrate-rich foods that not only fuel your muscles but also protect your good health:

• Whip together a fruit smoothie for breakfast: orange juice, banana, frozen berries

• To your egg (white) omelet, add diced pepper, tomato, mushrooms

• Add blueberries or sliced banana to pancakes; top with applesauce

• No fresh fruit for your cereal? Use canned peaches, raisins or frozen berries

• Put leftover dinner veggies into your lunchtime salad or soup

• Keep within easy reach grap-and-go snack, such as small boxes of raisins, trail mix dried fruit, frozen 100 percent juice bars, cherry tomatoes, baby carrots and celery sticks.

• Add shredded carrots to casseroles, chili, lasagna, meatloaf or soup

Fruits and Veggies

Breakfast: The most Important Meal

Breakfast: The most Important Meal
You will notice marked improvements in mood and energy, with fewer cravings for junkfood, when you eat a breakfast that is high in water, protein, good carbs (loaded with antioxidants) and healthy fats.

But many people who struggle with their weight often skip breakfast altogether or have a light breakfast consisting of something like a glass of juice with bagel, a piece of toast or a bowl of cornflakes.

The typical American breakfast is essentially pure carbohydrate that is quickly absorbed and leads to a spike in blood sugar followed by a compensatory spike in insulin. This stimulates a steep fall in blood sugar, leaving you famished and sluggish by mid morning and susceptible to cravings for doughnuts, pastries, cookies, and junk foods and sugary drinks from the vending machines that are ubiquitous in the workplace.

This eating style is a vicious cycle that forces you to mindlessly consume excess calories leading t0 obesity, aging and disease. Instead, have a forever young breakfast with protein (eggs, whey protein, fish, or meat) and high nutrient, fiber rich foods (fruits, nuts, berries or veggies), and wash it down with tea, water, soymilk, or nonfat milk.

The rest of the morning you will walk straight by the box of doughnuts at work feeling compelled to indulge your self.

There was a study found that the breakfast bunch received four important benefits:

• Lower BMI (average body weight)
• Reduced risks of diabetes, metabolic problems and obesity
• Better long term weight loss maintenance
• Improved mental alertness throughput the day
  

Breakfast jumpstart your system when you roll out of bed in the morning by increasing your metabolic rate about 25 percent. This revs your energy up and improves your ability to perform both physically and mentally.

On the other hand, people skip breakfasts are stick in the hibernation mode and often plagued with the consequences of a slow metabolism like obesity, constant fatigue or sluggishness and chronically feeling cold.

Snacks eaten before bedtime are more likely to be converted to body fat while you sleep. In contrast, breakfast calories can be burned throughout the day supplying you with the energy you need to perform your best.
Breakfast: The most Important Meal