Nutrition Facts and Health Blog

Healthy eating during holiday festivities is just plain hard for a lot of folks. The temptations to overindulge are great. Comfort foods surround us. Calorie-rich, once-a-year treats come round at every party. For many of us, it’s cold outside, and warm goodies add an extra pull.

With some planning, you can enjoy the splendors of holiday eating, though maybe not as much as you’d like! Whether hosting or hanging out, here are tips for healthy holiday feasting, without any regret.

1. Bring the health food. If you’re headed to a party, be the one to offer a nutritious dish. You can have a healthy portion of your contribution before nibbling on a few heavier items. Some ideas include hummus with vegetables, a bean or whole-grain salad, a roasted vegetable platter, and vegetable sushi.

2. Quench your thirst before you dig in. When we’re thirsty, our body signals us to drink and eat to obtain water. Having a full glass of water before eating helps to quench any thirst first, and adds a mild feeling of fullness to the stomach, helping to tell the body you’ve had enough sooner.

3. Offer veggies with those dips, in place of chips. Replacing chips with carrot and celery sticks, pieces of broccoli and cauliflower, and other veggies can cut calories and add color and nutrition to your spread.

4. Step away from the buffet. If there is a table (or tables) of food at your next gathering, catch up with friends and family out of arm’s reach, or even view, of the food. This will help quell temptation. When hosting, try passed hors d’ouevres rather than a buffet table, because people generally eat fewer appetizers this way. Can’t afford a wait staff? Teens and tweens can make great passers and may offer you a better deal.

5. Save up for your favorite holiday foods. If you are looking forward to grandma’s legendary pumpkin pie or some other decadent holiday treat, plan it into your spending – your calorie allowance, that is. Skip the appetizers, have a light dinner with plenty of veggies, drink water instead of nogs or other calorie-heavy drinks, then enjoy grandma’s pie without the guilt.

6. Don’t starve yourself before parties. You might think that denying your hunger before a party will help you eat less, but by letting yourself get really hungry, you are more likely to overeat when you get to the food. If you’re headed to a party later and won’t be eating for a while, go ahead and eat something small and healthy to keep your spirits high and your energy level up.

7. Give your traditional holiday dishes a makeover. Look for versions of your favorite dishes with reduced-fat, salt, and sugar. You may be surprised at how tasty some of these dishes can be! The Mayo Clinic also offers some great tips for cutting sugar, sodium, and fat from your recipes – just follow this link.

8. Look for ways to add physical activity into your days. Keep moving through the holiday season and plan for extra physical activity to balance out extra eating. Every little bit helps – even parking far away from your destination so you have to walk more, or taking the stairs whenever possible.

9. Beware of drinks with hidden calories. Cocktails, nogs, punch, spiked coffees, etc., all pack in a good helping of calories and are easy to consume. Go for calorie-free drinks whenever possible – otherwise, follow tip 5 above, and budget in your drinks.

10. Skip the guilt. Many of us fall easy prey to the all-or-nothing mentality, giving up completely when we deviate from our well-intentioned eating plan. Well, here’s your pass – leave that guilt at home, or chuck it into the garbage, it’s not helpful. If you do indulge in one too many of your favorite treat, take a breath, and get back to your plan with the next meal. And don’t forget you can add in extra exercise.

And, since it’s the time for giving, I’d like to offer up one more tip: Practice stress relief techniques. The holiday season can be stressful for many, leading to stress-eating. A focus on things that help reduce your level of stress may also help curb associated cravings.

Here’s wishing you a happy, healthy holiday season!

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About the Author:

Bridgette Collado

 Bridgette Collado, MA, RD, is a health communication consultant and registered dietitian who writes for Health Dialog. As a passionate explorer of the intersection of health and technology, she advises health care and wellness companies, as well as public health organizations, on design and evaluation of all types of health communication, including new media. Her focus areas include gaming for health, user experience design, and social media. Follow Bridgette on Twitter:www.twitter.com/bcollado.

Undoubtedly each and every parents love their children and they want to build up their children healthy, strong and powerful. In fact, we do not want to be tormented by the problems of their lives because they are overweight. As a result, each of us tends to any type of choice for children in order to generate things for them. It’s the same thing similar to eating routine. We all make a decision food, mainly because we had to have faith that they were most effective.
Consequently, it is not surprising that we all did not generally understand far more about nutrition than they. In fact, the shocking truth is that we are the prompt for their weight problems. Why? Children learn from us. They learned the wrong things about nutrition, and also led their lives to exploit such bad advice.
What precisely in fact should we do then? Do you know the real good nutritional approach to weight loss that works appropriate for adults and youth? To begin, note that if you or your baby is sick, always seek the advice of healthcare. The same goes for the exact program of weight reduction. Always seek the advice of your doctor, just before you or your child starts.
Recognize your problem: Recognize that you or your young has fat problem and now it is time to put things in order. Do not put the liability on yourself or your child’s. Rather, to regain the confidence that going back to the previous shape is possible by working perfectly and functioning properly.
Guide by example: Your consuming habits must be Change and also get rid of harmful foods from your home by abolishing them gradually. When you disclose that you simply choose to be a model, your baby’s are much more likely to follow suit.
Use smaller plates: To reduce your amount of food you eat use small plates. This will limits the amount of food you eat and is particularly good protection against the introduction of calories to your diet or your child. More over don’t allow more then single serving at a time.
In the course of your diet plan try to get rid of those drinks which are full of sugar. In many drinks they used lots of calories to attract consumers but that does not contain any nutritional value. The truth is we do not want them to be in your life. This is one of the main reasons why many grownups and young’s are obese. Replace the drinks with water. It does not only save you from the damaging calories, but water can help to get rid of toxins in your body too.
To make it easy, the first factor to remember to stay away from sugar and “Girly” thing. This means that, lactose, fructose, sugar and cane sugar. It’s just not an exhaustive list, but it’s a great starting list.
The next point to consider is the fat. What fat is good for you? You can find polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and saturated fat. It is a not correct to belief that you should really avoid fats. There are many fats which are really very good for your health. Despite popular belief that saturated fats are bad, they are not, if they are from free range, grass or wild animals. Highly processed polyunsaturated fats such as oils such as soybean, corn and cottonseed oils are what you need to steer clear of reducing weight.
Most of us when hungry do not limit our eating. We don’t maintain any time table, we eat all the time. Keep healthy snacks available. Have the fruit, carrots and vegetables around. These are foods with high volume of calories, which means they fill up faster without adding many calories in ourselves. This way, you and your children can handle more weight.

Great variations in calorie amount in belowmentioned chicken foods are mainly due to different portions or added bread or sauces.

Calories in Grilled Chicken Breast, Louis Rich

• Serving size: 3.5 oz = 100 g
• Calories: 98
• Calories from fat: 5 (5%)
• Calories from carbohydrate: 13 (15%)
• Calories from protein: 80 (80%)
• Total fat: 0.5 g, saturated fat: 0.2 g (very low)
• Cholesterol: 52 mg
• Carbohydrate: 4 g
  • Fiber: 0 g
  • Sugars: 1 g
• Protein: 20 g
• Sodium: 1142 mg (very high)

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If you indulge into high-fat foods occasionally you may be able to avoid weight gain by staying active. A recent study from the University of Wisconsin in Madison found that regular exercise helps the body fire up metabolism more quickly to adjust for an increase in fat intake.

The researchers assigned a group of 10 sedentary women to exercise at two different intensity levels as they switched from a low-fat diet (with 30 percent of calories from fat) to a high fat diet (50 percent of calories from fat). The team then compared the volunteers’ ability to burn calories when the women were sedentary when they burned up 150 calories during an hour on a stationary bicycle, or when they burned 300 calories on the exercise bike over a two-hour period. The more each woman exercised, the faster she was able to burn fat calories after switching to a four-day high fat diet. The team reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

It’s not clear why exercise helped the women burn more fat calories. Dietary fat is often stored in fatty tissue, rather than sent to muscle tissue where it is used for energy. Working out may have helped shift dietary fat toward more metabolically active tissues, like muscle, and could have increased the activity of fat-burning enzymes in muscles, the researchers speculate. So another good reason to get a move on and control one’s own health destiny and at the same time enjoy the taste of favorite dishes which many avoid in order to look good.

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