Top Antioxidant Rich Foods

Here are 10 of the best antioxidant rich foods - start incorporating them into your diet.

1. Blackberries
2. Blueberries
3. Strawberries
4. Walnuts
5. Artichokes
6. Cranberries
7. Raspberries
8. Pecans
9. Cloves
10 Coffee - yes but see my other posts about coffee!

More Cheating on Your Diet

When you're cheating, you can always add in some healthy foods as well. For example, if you're going for the ice cream, top it with fruit or nuts.

If you're going for the chips or pretzels, add some peanut butter, avocado or hummus. These are all healthy choices that add some protein in the snack and help you burn the carbs in these snacks.

Ways to Control Portion Size

Here are some tips to help control portion sizes. Start out with half of your usual portion of your favorite foods. Then substitute vegetables and fruits for the rest of your portion. This is a great place to start.

Try to avoid the big snack bags of chips and cookies. Either buy the smaller pre-portioned sized bags, or if you buy the big bag, as soon as you get home, immediately divide the bigger bags into single serving plastic bags.

Nutrients That Make Your Body Work #1

There are seven major nutrient groups that are necessary for your body to run in good condition. Most of these you know, but hopefully you will learn a little from this.

The first group is carbohydrates. Yes, you do need them. Carbs are the chief source of energy for the body. You really need them for muscle activity and they help in the regulation of fat and protein metabolism.

Carbs are broken down in the body to form glucose which is converted by the cells into energy. This glucose can be stored as glycogen in the muscle or it can continue to circulate in the blood stream. Diabetics tend to have a lot circulating in the blood stream because they are not able to get it into the cells. Once the glucose is in the cells, it must combine with oxygen to become energy.

The biggest problem we have today is that our American diet incorporates way to many carbs in the form of grains, ie pasta, bread, etc. Your greatest and best source of carbs should be coming from fruits and vegetable.

High Blood Pressure

You may be surprised to learn that in 2007, the American Medical Association indicated that 30% of US adults have hypertension or high blood pressure. I believe that number is quite a bit higher today. The interesting part is that they also reported the 70% of people with high blood pressure do not have it under control.

While medicine may be necessary to get your blood pressure under control, there are somethings you can do to get it under control without medication. Cut down on the amount of salt in your food and certainly remove the salt shaker from the table. Get on a good balanced diet that will help you attain your appropriate weight. There are a lot of extra miles of blood vessels for every pound of extra weight that you are carrying. Start exercising on a regular basis. If you can find a hundred excuses why not to exercise, go pick up my free ebook and making exercise simple.

Decreasing Sodium Tips

Yesterday I mentioned reading labels carefully. Add up all of the sodium from the foods that you eat and if you're over your limit of 2300 or less, cut something out.

But there are other ways to cut sodium. Most of the sodium as I mentioned yesterday comes from processed foods. the other place that we get a lot of sodium is in restaurant food. So if you eat out a lot, ask about low sodium items on the menu. You can also ask to see nutritional content for the menu items you're thinking of choosing. If you're doing fast food, not to pick on McDonald's, but a Big Mac has 1040mg. So almost half of your day's allotment is taken in that one thing. If you do the large fries, you're adding about 300mg, so now you would definitely be over half way to your daily limit. Wendy's Baconater has 1880mg!! The Burger King Whopper has 1020mg.

If you're eating out, either stay away from foods with sauces or eat very little sodium at any of your other meals for the day.

When cooking, do not add salt to the food. My mother had heart disease, so I learned to cook without salt and while my mother-in-law was a big user of salt in food, my husband is just fine with very little salt. We use other spices for flavor so no sodium is required.

Know Your Sodium Limit

Sodium is becoming more and more of a problem within our society. This is because we have a large portion of the population with high blood pressure, heart disease, and/or stroke. People at risk for these diseases are anyone over 40 years of age, African Americans, and anyone with high blood pressure. Almost 70% of the US population is at risk.

So how much sodium should you be getting each day. Most of the federal and nutritional guidelines indicate that 2300 mg of sodium each day is the right amount, as long as you are a healthy, normal adult without heart disease, stroke or hypertension. If you have high blood pressure, then you need to decrease the amount of sodium intake each day to 1500 mg.

Now the first thing is how much is 2300 mg. In the form of salt because that is how we get most of our sodium, 1 teaspoon = 2300 mg approximately. If you have heart disease or hypertension, the 1500 mg is about 2/3 of a teaspoon of salt per day. Now this means total intake. This does not just mean you can add that much salt each day to the food you eat.

Read the labels. Especially processed food contains large amounts of sodium. Tune in tomorrow for some tips on deceasing sodium in your diet.

#3 of 7 Ways to Lessen Stress in Your Life

The third tip to decreasing stress in your life is to eat nutritiously. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Foods with omega 3 are great like fish. Fast foods and foods high in fat and calories are not helpful for many reasons, but they definitely do not decrease the effects of stress in your life. In fact, they put greater stress on your body internally, compounding the effects of stress on your well-being.

Slow Down and Enjoy You Food

For the holiday, slow down your eating. In other words take more time to eat and really enjoy what you're eating. By eating slowly, you are likely to eat less. This also gives your brain time to turn off the "hunger" button and you are less likely to feel too full or like you've eaten too much.

If you have a fast eater, you are likely to consume more food because your brain doesn't tell you you're full until after you've eaten way too much. So just take it easy and really enjoy what you are eating.

The side benefit here is that you get to eat some of those favorite foods and you may actually consume less and not gain weight through the holiday!

Some last thoughts on Yogurt

Just a couple of last thoughts on yogurt. I know I mentioned that you should buy active live culture yogurt. Be sure to read the label to see that it is "Live and Active Cultures."

If you are concerned about calories, the buy plain non-fat yogurt. You can add your own fresh fruit for flavor. This will give you better nutrition than buying the already flavored yogurts.

Sources of Vitamin E

Vitamin E is found in varying amounts in multiple foods. Some of these foods are soy beans, nuts, seeds, egg yolk, avocado, green leafy vegetables, vegetable oils, and whole grains. Wheat germ is one of the foods that has the highest amount of Vitamin E.

The most active form of Vitamin E is in the foods mentioned above. The synthetic or Vitamin E supplements is less potent than what we get in our food. So eating the right foods will help you get this all important vitamin.

Tomorrow I will get into more of the details about what Vitamin E does.

Three Rules to Help You Decrease Calories

If you really don't want to gain weight during the holidays, read yesterday's post and here are three other pieces of advice to help.

One, be sure to eat 3 meals a day with protein at each meal.

Two, if you're going to a party, eat something before you go like a couple of whole grain crackers and cheese - be sure you have a little protein. Then drink 20-24 ounces of water.

Three, when you get to the party, avoid the foods that are dippable (or at least avoid the dip) - eat the raw veges. Avoid the foods that "you can't eat just one."

This will make you holiday party fun without you overeating! Enjoy!

Soy Beans and Phytic Acid

You may be asking what is phytic acid and why should I even be concerned about it. Phytic acid is present in the hulls and bran of all seeds and beans. Phytic acid is also referred to as phytates. Phytates block the body's ability to absorb esstentials minerals like zinc, calcium, magnesium and iron. Unfortunately, soy contains the highest amounts of phytates and are pretty resistant to the ways that we have to remove phystates such as long slow cooking.

What does decrease the phytates is a long fermentation process. This is what occurs in the production of miso and tempeh. If you have eaten in a Japanese restaurant you may be familiar with miso soup. Miso is a paste made from fermented soy beans. Koji which is a yeast mold is added to soy beans and other ingredients which then are allowed to ferment.

Tempeh is made by cooking soy beans and dehulling them. The beans them have a culturing agent like rhizopus oligosporus added and they are left to ferment. This agent is a fungus which helps to break down some of the less desirable components in soy beans.

Soy - Good or Bad

Many of us have heard about how good soy is for us, but is it really? There is a lot of controversy over how healthy soy really is for us. Yes, it does contain essential amino acids in it's raw form, which by the way, we cannot eat and digest. For us to eat it, soy must be processed. That in and of itself should raise some red flags. While there is still a good amount of amino acid present in the processed soy, there are other things present as well that may not be as good for us. More on this tomorrow.

Another thing to consider when thinking about soy is that the beans have been genetically altered and some sources suggest that you cannot even trace back to the wild growing soy bean. That always gives me a bit of concern that we are ingesting something that has been genetically programed, usually to increase the yield and not necessarily the quality of the bean.

More tomorrow.

Eat Your Vegetables

Do you remember your Mother or Grandmother telling you to eat your vegetables? They may not have understood exactly why, but they are definitely right. Vegetables contain antioxidants which help our immune system keep us well during cold and flu season. While you may think you are healthy, if your immune system is not fortified with antioxidants, it may not be able to fight off diseases like colds and flu.

Eating 1-2 servings of vegetables is not enough to fortify your immune system. You need to be eating 8-10 servings of fruits and vegetables each day to get enough antioxidant to really make a difference with your immune system. You may have noticed that I threw in fruits, so between the fruits and vegetables you need 8-10 servings. Unfortunately, our American diet usually does not include more than 2-4 servings. So look at what you're eating.

Feeling Good with Serotonin

More on Serotonin here. You may be aware of serotonin by the initials that are sometime used to refer to it's chemical structure. Serotonin is 5-HT. Many weight loss programs refer to having 5-HT in their product. One of the things that Serotonin does is to help regulate appetite. It's really not clear if this is a direct action or if by alleviating some depressive symptoms the individual actually eats less. Many individuals with depression eat more than usual and gain weight.

If you think about it, feeling good about yourself does not make you want to eat more. Not feeling good, can definitely make you want to eat more in the hopes that food will make you feel better.

So what can we eat to help promote serotonin production? More on this tomorrow.

Benefits of Chocolate

Some of the benefits of raw chocolate or cacao are the high levels of antioxidant and magnesium content. Raw cacao is the highest food source of antioxidant. It is higher than green tea or red wine. How great is that. You can protect your cells by eating raw cacao!! So chocolate in it's raw form is good for you!

The high levels of magnesium contained in raw cacao supports heart health, relaxes muscles and eases menstrual cramping, increases flexibility, and improves brain function.

The greatest benefit here is cacao's effect on the brain. It actually assists the body in the production of brain chemicals like serotonin, phenylethylamine, theobromine, and tryptophan. These brain chemicals are responsible for making us feel less depressed, less stressed, and less anxious. Bottom line, these chemicals help increase our pleasure and I sometimes referred to these as the feel good chemcals.

Chocolate

We all love to hear about and eat chocolate. So I thought I would revisit this topic. There has been a controversy around chocolate and whether it is good for you. There is a form of chocolate which is very good for you. The form is raw chocolate or cacao. This is not the sweetened processed milk chocolate that you get in a candy bar.

Raw cacao usually comes in the form of bits of the dried cacao bean. The bits are hard and you definitely don't want to bite them. If you're going to eat raw chocolate, put a few bits in your mount and suck on them until they are soft. Then you can chew them up. If you bite into the hard bits, they taste like dirt or something worse! You can also take the bits and grind them up into a fine powder - like cocoa powder that you buy in the store. Except this will not be sweet and it will not have any hydrogenated fats in it. You can use it to make things like cocoa. Use Stevia to sweeten it.

More on the benefits tomorrow.

Ginger and Inflammation

Ginger has been around for a long time and has been used for multiple medical problems. Most people are familiar with using ginger to alleviate nausea and gastrointestinal upsets. It definitely helps with gas, diarrhea and stomach cramping.

What you may not know is that ginger has also been used to decrease inflammation especially in arthritis. Fresh ginger is best, but you can use ground ginger. Use some caution in not taking too much ginger. A little goes a long way.

More on Reducing Inflammation

So how do we reduce inflammation? What foods are good for us to do this? Foods that are high in Omega-3 fatty acids are the foods you shuld be focusing on. Not only will they help decrease the inflammation, but they will also help you to be healthier in general.

I spoke about this before and you can read more on omega-3 by clicking on omega-3. I also suggested some foods that were high in omega 3 in another post, just click on post. Some foods that I did not list in that post were the brightly colored fruits and dark green leafy vegetables.

For those of you with teens or who are teens. Look at the diet. Why teens? because one of their greatest concerns is acne or having their face break out. Acne is basically an inflammatory process and by eating a diet that decreases inflammation, there will be less break out.