Eat Well Even When You Are Too Tired to Cook

You rush from work to an evening event. Then from the event to home … and on the way home you think “I’m too tired to cook, so I’ll just run by ___ to grab dinner.”

That sets you up for hidden sugars, empty calories, and unbalanced meals.

But you don’t have to choose between either cooking healthy or living life. You can have both with this plan.

In this video I show you the two essential parts of healthy cooking.

Planning and Preparation are key. But did you know you don’t have to be the one to plan and prepare?

That’s right. Both can be delegated.

How?

Discover the three options for Meal Planning and Preparation.

My clients and I have used all three options with great success. I walk you through how to delegate healthy cooking so you get to have delicious dinners, healthy meals, time with family and friends. And you still have time to rest.

Sound good?

After you watch, let me know in the comments which options you will use.

Eating Healthy while Traveling Means Balance Not Boredom

Think about the times you’ve traveled and been stuck with energy-zapping meals.

Or when you’ve worried “The only way to eat healthy is to skip the restaurants and pack weird food?”

You aren’t alone.

The research on business travel and health shows that - on average - frequent travelers eat poorly, gain weight, and are less healthy than people who don’t travel.

The good news?

You don’t have to be a statistic. Nor do you have to live on protein shakes.

Here’s a realistic way to eat healthier when you travel.

On a recent business trip, I videoed my experiments with ways to overcome these common nutrition issues:

• Airport food options that are limited

• No time to get the if-fy airport food

• No healthy restaurant options

• To mini-fridge or not to mini-fridge

• What food to pack vs what food to buy on arrival

All of this for you to feel your best, have more fun, and get more done.

Top Foods for Prebiotics and Probiotics

Your gut health strongly impacts how happy you feel and the health of your body.

What impacts the health of your gut?

Most importantly is how much good and bad bacteria live there.

You get to determine which ones hang out in there. Did you know that in just a few days you can change - yes, change - that ratio of good to bad bacteria in your gut?

Through the right prebiotics and probiotics.

Feeling happier and thinking clearer is only a few days away.

In this short video, I introduce you to the top foods for prebiotics and probiotics.

What is a prebiotic and a probiotic?

A prebiotic is the fiber the good bacteria love. Hint: Some of the foods with prebiotic fiber are superstars because of other compounds you’ll discover in the video.

A probiotic is the good bacteria itself.

Some of these foods will be new to you.

Here’s your 7 Day Challenge:

Over the next 7 days, eat a few prebiotic foods and at least one probiotic food.

Here’s to your healthy gut and your happy brain!

To learn more … Join me at the Nourished Festival

https://www.nourishedfestival.com/gluten-free-expo-spring

Or check out my Nourish Your Life workshop

http://www.thevireolife.com/video-store

This will make you Stop Craving Sugar

You don’t crave sugar for “no reason.”

I’ve found there are 5 common sugar-triggers and one is likely what’s causing you to overeat sugar - especially high processed sugar foods. (a.k.a. “sweets”)

When you want to eat healthy and live healthy, but you can’t seem to control your sugar intake, it can be frustrating. You can feel like you have no willpower or discipline when it comes to taming the sugar beast.

There’s also a truth you need to understand about each trigger. In this video you’ll discover the truth.

And you’ll learn the 3 steps to stopping your sugar cravings.

After you watch the video, here’s a challenge.

What is your biggest trigger? Put it in the comments. And - as important - how you will act on the truth.

Sugar. Ah, Honey, Honey

Summer time is lemonade time. And in the south, it’s pitchers of sweet tea on picnics.

A new connection on LI messaged me that she is decreasing the sugar she consumes by eliminating sweet tea and lemonade.

Within a day, a new client found out his A1C is almost double where it should be.

(Side note - A1C measures the average of your blood sugar over a 3 month period.  So he got really motivated to manage his sugar intake.)

A little warning: If you have diabetes or are dealing with an eating disorder, please pay attention to your health care team’s personal advice.  This article is for general information.

How do you lower your sugar intake, without getting into yo-yo dieting?

First, I wanted to see how you consume sugar.  So, this week I reached out to you on LI, IG, and FB.  (And if we aren’t connected on social - you are missing out.  So, wherever you hang out most, let’s connect.)

I asked if you tended to eat sugar, drink it , or avoid it.

Your responses were insightful.

20% drink

50% eat

20% limit

10% avoid

Comments included not consuming processed, but didn’t consider juice -- which is concentrated sugar -- as processed as long as it was fresh juice.

Someone else said they wanted to know how to have discipline and willpower with sugar - so that’s going to be part II

Why is this important?

This is sticky … so let’s be careful not to demonize sugar or make it a saint.

Let’s go to science.  

Sugar is not toxic, at least not in the sense that true poisons are dangerous.

The only health issue sugar is confirmed to cause is tooth decay.

Malnutrition, obesity, and even diabetes have not been shown to be caused directly by sugar itself.

All of these have multiple factors at play.

For example, if sugar is replacing nutrient-rich foods that your body needs, you may get the calories you need for fuel, but not the vitamins and minerals you need. That’s the essence of malnourished.

For diabetes, the evidence is conflicting and interesting.  In some populations in the world, an increase in sugar consumption has tracked with an increase in Type II diabetes.  In other populations, no relation has been found.

However, in some animal studies diets very high in sugar can cause diabetes like disease.

For obesity -- research is clear that you can gain weight whether you eat too much carb whether starch or sugar, protein, or fat.  However, because you can drink sugar, it is easier to get excess calories from processed sugar than from other sources.

What to do?

This is about understanding the principles vs. creating food rules

1.  Know the difference between sugar occurring incidentally in a whole food vs. in processed or concentrated form.

2.  Consume foods in combination.

It is not just about if the food has sugar in it.  It is about how quickly does the food digest and raise your blood sugar … and then if it makes you hungry quicker.

How does sugar fit in with IE?

Three components of IE that I teach you are eating what you really want and eating slowly, savoring your food, and stopping when you are satisfied.

If you are not following a medical diet, then try this experiment.  It is one I’ve used in workshops and with clients for years.

1.  Before you eat or drink something sweet, ask yourself “on a scale of 1-10, how much do I want this now”  and “on a scale of 1-10, how much do I want what I will feel like later”

2.  Second, pay attention to the pleasure of the food or drink.  Perhaps it is not savoring 3 bites of a brownie that is causing issues for you.  Perhaps it is eating multiple brownies, distracted while you watch YouTube videos.

3. Third, when you eat slowly you are more able to stop when you are satisfied.  3 bites might be enough.

How do you handle sugar? Let me know in the comments.

Makeover Your Pantry This Weekend Part Two

Now that you have the staples and spices you need to stock your pantry and you have the boxes/bins to organize them (Part One), it is time to invest part of a weekend cleaning out and organizing.

Why? It is so much easier to cook when you can get to everything you need quickly, without having to reach over other stuff or have things knock over.

So here’s your final step:

• Clean out everything that is expired or that you know you will never use.

• Then group items into your bins, leave a little space for new foods you may purchase, and LABEL so everyone knows where to put food.

When my husband saw this transforming, he said two things -

“This makes it look appealing to cook.” (So, I get more help in the kitchen.)

“Now I know where to put something back.” (Which means I don’t have to look for things later.)

Makeover Your Pantry This Weekend Part One

This seems to be the time of year for deep-organizing house projects. It is too cold or rainy to be outside, or even open the windows, so everyone is cleaning out closets and junk drawers. I challenge you to makeover your pantry this weekend - it is one adventure that will help you eat healthier the rest of the year.

To really deep-organize your pantry for healthy meals, I teach a simple six step process. You’ll need parts of two weekends, so I’ll walk you through this in a two-part series.

This weekend focus on Steps One - Five. Next weekend is Step Six.

Step One: Review your menus for a Powerful Plate. Do you have enough combinations of vegetable, protein, fats, and complex carbohydrates? What ingredients do you need to stock up on?

Step Two: Purchase the foods you need for a Powerful Plate and order any specialty items so they will arrive by next weekend.

Step Three: Look through the food in your pantry. Begin to organize it in your mind. What goes with what? For example, “protein powder” for me could go with protein snacks (since I use it as a shake) or with breakfast/oatmeal (since I use protein powder in my oatmeal every morning).

Step Four: Take measurements. Both of the shelf space and of any items that you are going to group and crate together. For example, if you usually keep 20 cans of fruit, vegetables, and tomato sauce in stock, measure how wide a bin you will need to store them.

Step Five: Decide on the supplies you need and then go shop. Shelf liner? Plastic bins? Wood crates? Glass jars? Shelving unit pull-out for a deep pantry?

Step Six - next weekend is clean out and organize.

Eliminating the hassle of expired ingredients - or simply not having healthy options on hand - will make these two weekends worth your effort. Turn on some music, get the family involved … whatever it takes to make it fun and make it happen.

How to eat for energy when traveling

One of the dilemmas of travel is how to eat.  Rely on fast-food?  It is quick, but leaves you sluggish and not able to learn from a conference or play on vacation.  Rely on sit-down restaurants?  Better food selection, but who wants to go from sitting in a cold meeting room to sitting in a chilly restaurant for every meal?  (Not me.)

When I go on vacation I usually rent a place with a kitchen.  Simply having a full-size refrigerator and stovetop makes healthy cooking easy.  It is vacation ... no complicated recipes for me.

However, when I go to business conferences, eating healthy is more challenging.  What can I do with a refrigerator and coffee maker?  A lot, actually.  

I made this video at a recent conference Doug and I went to in Indianapolis.  It is funny I did not think about making a video until 2 days into the conference.  (Oops, no mic or tripod.  The camera was balanced on a stack of books.)  So, while the sound has a little echo, you get to see exactly what we bring to eat - including a bag of organic chips.  (No apologies to the diet purists, thank you.)

Let me know what you do to eat healthy when traveling.

Take Three: Healthy School Lunches and Snacks

I don't mean take three lunches.  (Though, if you can take a mid-morning snack, a lunch, and a mid-afternoon snack that's great.  However, not all schools allow a place and time for snacks.)

Here's what I do mean: a reader asked for ideas for healthy lunch options for her son going back to school.  My response:  Powerful Plate, of course.  A whole-sprouted-grain bread sandwich with chicken or turkey (no nitrates or junk), lots of cut veggies with hummus or peanut butter, and fruit.  But a year of just that would get boring and the ice cream bin at school would become a very tempting substitute.

So, I reached out to some friends and got three great takes (hence the "Take Three") on Healthy School Lunches and Snacks.  One of the coolest things I noticed -- there is a lot of overlap PLUS a lot of individualization, depending on likes/dislikes and personal schedules. Just the way it is supposed to be. 

Enjoy (and personalize) their ideas --

"I do try to have fresh fruit in my kids' lunches, and buy lots of healthy protein bars for snacks- I'll mix a big salad and put it in separate containers for the week and add dressing the morning of and mix. I buy whole grain bread and make sandwiches and I do cheese and crackers a lot, string cheese, and peanut butter or ranch dressing and carrots. (My girl likes pb and my boy likes ranch) I also do yogurt a lot for snacks and lunches. And I actually feed my kids a full meal after school, because they both have sports until later in the evening. So after sports they will snack."  Thanks for sharing...Christine Carter at TheMomCafe.com

"From Pinterest I make batches of healthy breakfast cookies. There's all kinds of recipes. And then I send one or two with each of my kids to eat when they get hungry. Could be snack time for my young ones or after school on the bus for the older ones. They decide. It's homemade, healthy, and tasty. They loved it!" Thanks for sharing...Lois Pearson at SunnysideWoman.com

"I provide my kids with healthy snacks to have during school time, and they only bring water to drink. I make their lunches so I know they're eating healthy. They have lunchmeat that qualifies for the heart check program, whole wheat bread, baked chips, yogurt or fruit." Thanks for sharing...Brenda Melendez at brendalovessharing.com

The other thing I noticed...all of these ideas work for adults, too.  Prep ahead the salad, make the breakfast cookies, and toss in some yogurt and fruit.

Share what you do for healthy lunches.