Nutrition
Zucchini Love
10 Whimsical Ways to Cut 100 Calories
One hundred calories doesn’t seem like a lot, but you can easily add at least one or two of these fun, easy strategies and they will add up over time.
I’m not lazy by any means, but in my opinion, if you have to strain or deprive yourself, you may not keep it up. To eliminate calories, you can either burn them up by adding a preferred activity or avoid the calories by making a smart substitution of some common food you are eating.
I have listed only healthy, green tips. Hopefully these examples will help jog your mind to others. What steps do you take to be active and be smart?
1. Dance Skinny
Click on your MP3 player right now, dance with a little passion to just four songs and you will look and feel 100 calories lighter. The new Footloose movie is sponsoring a video dance contest around the globe. It’s never too late to participate!
2. Substitute Sugar with Stevia In Your Coffee or Tea
Stevia has practically no calories and because it is so much healthier than sugar, we consider it a powerfood. It has none of the problems of white sugar and is not artificial. It takes no time to reach for stevia instead of sugar and your life could change because of it.
3. Invite Your Friends to Dinner
This sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? But even before your guests arrive you will be working to prepare the meal. It happens that 38 minutes of chopping and cooking will cut 100 calories and make a great meal. You could achieve the same results just for yourself, but you probably wouldn’t bother and it would not be as much fun.
4. Lighten Your Salad Dressing
I find all commercial dressings way too sweet so I just add about half water. This also cuts about two tablespoons of oil which means 100 calories less. Time: 30 seconds.
5. Romancing the Pounds Away
You would think the heart pounding effects of romance would burn the calories off quickly but not so. It would take a full 50 minutes of smooching to burn the first 50 calories and another 30 minutes in bed for the final 50. I doubt if anyone is complaining.
6. Eat Two Apples a Day
Besides keeping the doctor away, an apple is low in calories. Eating two of them instead of of two bananas or two mangos would eliminate 100 calories. Apples are powerfoods with many benefits.
7. Digitally Demolish Those Coke Calories
Microsoft’s Xbox program called Kinect Sports Calorie Challenge tracks your body movements and displays them in a virtual contest against various food items. You can fight against a Coke, for example, or a chocolate bar (177 calories). It keeps you playing and active until the required amount of calories is burned up. If someone one gave me an Xbox and the game, I wouldn’t mind trying it out.
8. Go Fly a Kite!
This is not an insult but one of the quickest and most exhilarating ways to shed 100 calories. Find a beach or grassy hill, wait for a good gust of wind and then run like crazy. You only have to do so for 12 minutes to burn 100 calories. Hint: if you bring a small child with you, no one will suspect you are reliving your own childhood.
9. Balance with Tai Chi
Tai Chi is not extremely active but has tremendous health benefits and once you learn the basic set of movements you are encouraged to do it every day. Doing one set slowly takes about 20 minutes and it takes 24 minutes to get to the 100 mark calorie-wise.
10. Walking Them Blues Away
Studies have shown besides living longer, walkers enjoy improved mental health and spiritual benefits. About 20 minutes burns 100 calories. This is a no brainer.
By now you get the picture – almost everything burns calories – some things just faster or slower than others. Just move in some way and you will feel better and slim down in the long term. Also with a little food planning, you can make big changes in the quality and number of calories you are inputting.
I personally prefer activities that are outdoors. That way you get the sunshine, the fresh air and the big skies around you. Some inside activities can burn up calories very fast (like a rowing machine at just over eight minutes for 100 calories) but I don’t have that machine at home and it sounds like work!
Quinoa a Powerfood for You
Cabbage – the Big Powerfood
Eat Cabbage for Beautiful Glowing Skin and Hair
by Diana Herrington
If you want beautiful glowing skin, and an immune system powerful enough to fight off just about anything, don’t forget this highly nutritious but common vegetable.
Cabbage is powerful. Ancient healers thought it contained moon power because it grew in the moonlight. Modern nutritional science understands its power comes from its high sulfur and vitamin C content. Either way – it’s worth adding to your weekly diet.
Cabbage Benefits:
- Ideal for weight loss because it is very low in calories and fat.
- One of the least expensive vegetables per pound for nutritional content
- High in sulfur – the beautifying mineral. (see below).
- For women cabbage is a great source of iron and calcium.
- Cabbage has 6-8 times the vitamin C content of an orange.
- The Romans used cabbage to reduce hangovers from heavy drinking.
- Sinigrin, just one of the glucosinolates in cabbage, has well-known cancer preventative properties
- Cure for headaches: used externally as a compress and internally as raw cabbage juice.
Sulfur is called “Natures Beauty Mineral”
Just sitting in sulfur hot springs for a short time can create a noticeable improvement in ones’ complexion. It helps dry up oily and acne skin since it has a drying affect. Internally sulfur is essential for keratin, a protein substance necessary for healthy hair, nails and skin. It also aids the body in resisting bacteria, assisting the immune system, and cleansing the blood.
Cabbages can also be BIG. See this picture of a prize winning cabbage over 125 pounds with leaves over 5 feet. Big Cabbage
“My mother was a great cabbage fan; she loved her coleslaw the best. She made great cabbage rolls from a recipe her best friend Mary who was Ukrainian gave her. In honour of Mom I am posting this information about this powerfood cabbage. Soon I will be posting my healthier version of coleslaw. ”
Cabbage belongs to a class of vegetables called Brassica which includes broccoli, kale, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. They are also known as cruciferous vegetables because their flowers are cross-shaped.
Types of cabbage:
Bok Choy: A Chinese cabbage with dark green leaves and white stems. Has the highest beta carotene and vitamin A content. (see right)
Green Cabbage: the most common variety; is pale green in colour tightly compacted leaves. Top picture is typical green cabbage.
Red Cabbage: this dark purple red cabbage is similar in taste to the green cabbage but with coarser leaves. Red cabbage has almost 3,000 times more anthocyanins (an antioxidant) as green cabbage
Savoy Cabbage: is green-yellow in colour, with crinkled leaves and is less compact than the green cabbage.(see left)
Cato the Elder, a famous Roman senator and author, praised this vegetable for its medicinal properties, declaring that “It is the cabbage that surpasses all other vegetables.”
Check out this Great Recipe - Cabbage Walnut Salad
Please share your original cabbage recipe below.
Raspberries: Summer Powerfood
Sweet juicy red raspberries are so good!
Did You Know?
- Raspberries are a member of the rose family.
- They are not just red: there are also black, purple and gold raspberries.
- The average raspberry has 100 to 120 seeds.
- Unripe raspberries do not ripen after they are picked!
Good news is that raspberries are one of the Powerfoods! Read the rest of this entry »
Cooking With Wild Plants
When the weather get warm I get excited about picking wild greens (also known as Weeds) and wild berries as saskatoons are my favorite berry.
All of my life I have eaten wild plants. My father would bring in dandelion greens and boil them up for us. (sometimes it was out of necessity as there simply was no food in the cupboards).
Benefits of eating wild plants:
• Full of more nutrition than the same plant grown domesticated.
• Are fresher than store bought as vegetables and fruits are shipped long distances to market, sit on shelves, losing flavour and nutrition. Read the rest of this entry »
The Simple Approach To
Great Health
