Don't Be Afraid to Go Nuts!

Does the idea of snacking on a baggie full of celery stalks for your afternoon snack leave you feeling more than slightly uninterested?

Getting through the stretch of time between light lunch and healthy dinner can be the downfall of anyone's weight loss program. Unless you plan in advance for a snack that you will like and that will satisfy you, you'll probably toss the celery and head for the vending machine.

That's where nuts - a food that combines protein, fiber and healthy fat into one small package- can come to your rescue.

A handful, depending on the size of the hand, can be the ideal snack portion: a quarter cup. You can keep roasted, unsalted mixed nuts on hand or choose any variation of nuts. Almonds, walnuts, peanuts, pistachios, pecans, and macadamias make great snack choices - alone or in combination. One of my favorites is the new Planter's Heart Healthy mix:

Canned nut mixes are convenient and tasty, but you can save yourself money, salt, and often calories and fat grams by buying plain unsalted walnuts, almonds, pecans, and even peanuts in bags in the grocery store produce or baking sections.

An average serving of nuts  (1/4 cup roasted almonds, for example) contains: 6.7 grams carbohydrate, 4 grams fiber, 205 calories, 9.5 grams protein, 18 grams fat, 1.4 grams saturated fat. And that's the one thing we have to pay attention to: serving size: a palm-full is not very much, so eat them slowly. The fat and fiber will fill you up faster than you think, but still remember you are just having a snack, not  a meal!

WebMD includes other low-calorie, celery-free snacks in their List of Top Ten Low-Carb Snacks.

 

An added benefit to making a small quantity of nuts part of your daily food intake can be improved cholesterol levels, making nuts a key to a heart-healthy diet, according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study revealed that people they followed who consumed 2.4 ounces of nuts per day had better cholesterol levels than people who consumed the same amount of saturated fat, but no nuts. Read more here to learn about these heart-friendly benefits!

Eat This, Not That!

A diet only works when you have control over what, where, and when you are eating, and we don't always have that control. Because it's a fact of life that most of us don't prepare every meal from scratch - at home- with fresh, natural ingredients- we need all the help we can get in making the best choices when eating out or buying packaged foods at the grocery store.

Having access to nutritional labels is one of the ways we've talked about to compare the calories, carbohydrate and fat content of meals that are pre-packaged or sold to us at chain restaurants. But I want to share with you a great little book that is just packed with this information - in other words, the authors have already done the research for you!

Eat This, Not That is written by David Zinczenko with the editor-in-chief of Men's Health Magazine.  It's not a traditional "read-only" diet book; it's really a guidebook to take along to grocery stores and restaurants as a tool to help you make the absolute healthiest choices you can when you are in a place where you can't control the ingredients of your meal.

Different sections highlight common, brand-name foods and meals with the EAT THIS recommendations on one page and the NOT THAT options on the facing page. It's fascinating, entertaining and educational!

By following the recommendations in the book, you can save hundreds of calories and dozens of fat grams at every meal - without doing the math yourself!  For example, I found out why Chick-Fil-A is actually the healthiest fast food place to get a grilled chicken sandwich; that Triscuit reduced-fat crackers are a better choice than Wheat Thins even though both list "whole wheat" as the main ingredient, and how to save 540 calories at Thanksgiving dinner (have mashed potatoes instead of sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole instead of stuffing, and pumpkin pie instead of pecan pie).

Eat This,Not That has been such a success that there is also a version just for the supermarket shopping and one devoted to kids' meals!  I found my copy at Wal-Mart, but I have seen it in Krogers, Sam's Club, Amazon.com and stand-alone bookstores too - highly recommended!



Lighter in 100 Days?

The 100 days of Summer 2010 have come to an end - which means it's been 100 days since I started making blog posts about ways to change your eating plans in order to lose weight and live lighter.

I've heard from many of you who have let me know that you have indeed lost weight and become more active. That is real encouragement! I am really proud of you who have altered your buying, cooking and fast food habits - it is not easy! And I have not run out of topics and ideas to help you on your Lighten Up journey.

So - you may have already noticed - we have changed the title of the blog from "Lighten Up in 100 Days" ,which was designed to complement our 100 Miles in 100 Days activity program, to "Lighten Up DHS" and from now on the blog will be updated every Wednesday.

If you are a new reader, you can scan through the archived posts to find some helpful guidance; if you are a regular reader or would like to be, you might like to know that you can sign up as a "follower" with your yahoo or gmail email address - and receive the blogpost notice in your in-box each week.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned! Next week's post is titled:
Eat This, Not That!

Is Your Salad Sabotaging You?

Maybe it's not your salad that is sabotaging your careful weight management plan, but what you are putting on your salad as "dressing"!

If you are building a salad of lettuce and greens only, your plate or bowlful will only account for about 50 - 70 calories. Leafy greens are mostly water. Aside for the vitamins we get - especially from the dark leafy greens like spinach - a plateful of salad greens keeps us busy chewing and eating for quite awhile -- without a high calorie gain. That's one of our goals ( remember the blog on "Volumetrics"?) in eating to lose.

Once we have our base of greens, what we add to it begins to make a difference, but as long as we add lots of colorful vegetables - green peppers, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, onions, mushrooms- we are still adding vitamins, minerals and fiber, rather than a lot of calories.

When we get to the top of the salad, however, we can sometimes add enough calories to equal what we would have had if we had gone to McDonald's and ordered a Big Mac.

How can that be?

Well, a basic garden salad of about 2 cups of vegetables alone and one ounce of a "lite" dressing has about 145 calories.

If we start with the same basic salad and add fattening toppings often found on the salad bar, here's what happens:

Adding 1/2 cup cheddar cheese adds 100 more calories and 10 grams of fat
Adding 1/4 cup bacon bits adds 100 calories and 5 grams of fat
Adding 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds adds 100 calories and 9 grams of fat
Adding  a handful of croutons adds 100 calories and 4 grams of fat.

But the worst offender is what has practically become a separate food group unto itself, the salad dressing - and  specifically Ranch Dressing. Why? Because it is by far the most popular salad dressing on the market. America just loves it. In fact, it isn't even limit to dressing salads anymore. Many of us use it as a dip for chicken and french fries and maybe worst of all, we use it as a lure to get our kids to eat vegetables. Our grocery stores even package it right into the veggie trays they sell.

Now the first basic salad I described had 1 ounce - about 2 tablespoons - of "lite" ranch dressing on it - for an additional 70 calories.

But most people don't like "lite" Ranch, so they choose full-fat ranch which weighs in at 70 calories per tablespoon - making the serving size 140 calories...and 14 grams of fat.

And most people use 4 - 8 tablespoons of ranch dressing on their 50 calorie salad, which means the dressing alone adds from 280 to 560 calories.

Now you can see how the "fully-dressed" salad can be as deadly to your diet as a Big Mac and fries.

What to do?

Best bet is to find a fat-free, low-calorie salad dressing that you like and stick to the recommended 2 tablespoons. Opt for lots of veggies and very little or no added high-calorie toppings. But what if you absolutely, positively have to have the original, full-fat ranch dressing? Two tips: get the small serving in a cup on the side and dip your greens into it...you will see you need far less than you think.  A second option that I use myself is: put a very small amount ( about 1 tablespoon - on your basic salad and top (thin) with vinegar....you will be surprised how good your salad will taste and how much healthier you will be!