nutritionbitsandbobs

Here’s one for ya!  

The Volumetrics diet is described as an “approach to eating“.  The diet, promoted by Penn State University nutrition professor, Barbara Rolls, teaches you to decipher a food’s energy density, cut the energy density of your meals and make choices that fight hunger.

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Or, you could just count your macros.  

Tell me, do you know how to do that and do you even know what your macros are that need to be counted?

Good, but ugly.  Definitely not helpful.

Let’s get real.

Here are a few practical resolutions:

Buy the leanest meats you can find. 

Cook slow and low.  Add lots of fresh or dried herbs, fat-free broth and pound your lean chicken breast for the most tender result.

Buy reduced-fat cheese, sour cream, cream cheese and low-fat or fat-free yogurt.

Combined with flavorful foods such as casseroles, marinara sauce or fresh fruits, you                             won’t notice a difference.  I promise!

Packaged cookies, potato chips, candy and soda should be a special treat.

You know as well as I do that if it’s in your pantry,  it will stare at you with invisible eyes that penetrate every wall in your house until you eat it.  Just. Don’t. Buy. It.  If it isn’t available, you will not eat it and guess what?  Your kids do not need it either!  Atherosclerosis (plaque build-up in the arteries from high-fat diets) begins during childhood.

Honestly, our kids are living in a food carnival.  Food cues, advertising, and packaging focused on youth culture are everywhere you turn.  Over the past several years a new genre of marketing firms has developed.  Social anthropologists and psychologists are hired to research the social behaviors of our children, using a method called ethnography.  Brands are marketed based on that research to create an emotional desire for products that are commonly unhealthy.  Fruit leathers made with one drop of real juice, yogurt with more sugar per ounce than soda and loads of artificial flavors and colors.  We’re all buying in because we want our kids to be happy and not feel like cafeteria outcasts when lunch box contents are compared.  This is bad!

Not a Cook?

There are an abundance of meal delivery kits available to us today.  Let someone else do the thinking, shopping and most preparation for you.  It may be more expensive than a frozen pizza, but it’s healthy, easy and I don’t know about you, but for me, time is money!  Multiple grocery stores are hopping on the meal kit band wagon.  Fresh Market, Publix, Costco, Albertson’s, Safeway, Giant Foods, Stop & Shop Stores, Kroger and even Walmart have announced a plan to roll out meal kits.

Focus on Healthy Fats

Include salmon, albacore tuna, herring, mackerel or any other fish in your diet.  Eat more avocados, nuts, and peanut butter.  Add flaxseed to hot cereal, mashed potatoes, and smoothies.  If you know your calorie needs, multiply your calorie needs by .3 then divide that number by 9.  That’s how many grams of fat or less you should be getting daily.  If you don’t know your calorie needs, use this as an estimated guide:

If you are female and your height is 5’0″, you should eat around 1200 calories a day.

If you are female and your height is 5’5″, you should eat around 1500 calories day.

If you are female and your height is 5’8″, you should eat around 1600 calories a day.

Add more if you exercise.  To know exactly how much, plug your height and current weight into an exercise app and log or track your exercise.

If you are male and your height is 5’5″, you should eat around 1700 calories a day.

If you are male and your height is 5’10”, you should eat around 2100 calories a day.

If you are male and your height is 6’0″, you should consume around 2300 calories a day.

If you are male and your height is 6’2″, you should consume around 2400 calories a day.

Add more if you exercise.  To know exactly how much, plug your height and current weight into an exercise app and log or track your exercise.

Exercise

Want to look better?  Exercise.

Want to feel physically better?  Exercise.

Want to be more emotionally stable and happier?  Exercise.

Want to sleep better at night?  Exercise.

Need more energy?  Exercise.

Restless legs?  Exercise.

Sex life blah?  Exercise.

Need more me time?  Exercise.

Diabetes?  Exercise.

Heart disease?  Exercise.

Isn’t it funny?  We all want an easy fix.  Exercise may be physically challenging but, it’s just about a one-stop-shop for your health!  I look forward to spending time listening to my favorite podcasts, catching up on the news and simply spending time with my own thoughts and I don’t mean reviewing my grocery and to-do list.

Limit high-fat processed meats

Bacon, sausage, hot dogs.  Save them for the fair or an occassional camp-out.  They taste good, but they are loaded with saturated fat, sodium and nitrates.  U-G-L-Y,  They ain’t got no alibi, they ugly.

As with all my tips, I could go on and on.  I will stop here.  I truly hope that you read something here that gave you an “ah ha” moment.  I don’t always make the best choices, but I want to be here for my kids when they go to college, feel scared and want to talk to their Mama.  I want to meet my boy’s bride and my girl’s husband.  I want to share what I’ve learned in my life to help guide my children along their journey in life and I want to love on my grandchildren one day.  In order to live as long as I want, I need to take care of myself.  My best may not always be perfect, but I need to know I tried.

Comments and sharing are more than welcome!

 

 

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