Water, Sodium and Aspirin

Since most of everybody will be enjoying some alcoholic beverages tonight. Here are some hints, how to avoid dehydration and other uncomfortable side effects (headache). For every glass of alcohol drink a half a glass of water. Before going to bed drink a whole cup of water (cold) and add some salt to it. (The athletes amongst you, may have some NUUN at home, which adds a good flavor to the salty solution) You can also take an Aspirin. Alcohol causes dehydration and with that a lot of minerals are washed out, therefore you need to replenish salt, the Aspirin will help with that. Please be careful if you had one or two too many, the salt water may cause some uncomfortable gagging!!

Happy New Year

Steffen

Antioxidants

Everyone may have heard that antioxidants are important in your diet, but what do they really do? I have found 2 good articles that give answers and suggest foods:

From Trifuel

Antioxdant food table

Back to Veggies

Since the Christmas and the days of heavy food are over, we should go back to eating veggies and normal or even high fiber diet. Eat the double amount of veggies for the next few days, save some on the meat.

1. Recipe: Farfalle with Vegetable Sauce

Cook time: 25-30 min

4-5 entree servings

Ingredients:

1 box of Barilla Farfalle

1 jar of traditional pasta sauce

1 onion

1 green bell pepper

½ pound of mushrooms

5 slices of Turkey Breast (optional)

Fancy Shredded Parmesan Cheese

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Black Pepper

Crushed Red Peppers

Directions

Bring a pot of water to boil and boil pasta as per directions on packaging.

Cut the onion (small pieces), bell pepper (1/2” squares), mushrooms (slices) as well as the turkey breast (1/2” squares). Heat 1 ½ tbs of Olive Oil in a frying/sauce pan (big enough for the pasta sauce and the vegetables). Add the Onions and Crushed Red Peppers, let simmer for 1-3 min until onions are caramelized. If you have chosen to include the turkey breast, add it to the mix and fry for another min or two. Otherwise add the bell pepper and let it cook for a min. Now add the pasta sauce and the mushrooms. The mushrooms have the shortest cooking time. Depending on your liking of the vegetables, cover the pan and let the sauce simmer. Add spices per your liking (salt, pepper, chili powder, paprika, Italian Medley....)

Serve sauce over pasta and sprinkle parmesan cheese over it!

Sunday Recipe

Starting today, we will be publishing a simple recipe every Sunday instead of the daily hint.

Merry Christmas – Coffee and Water

We would like to wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season. As the family gatherings continue, everybody should enjoy the wonderful dishes. If you are really concerned about your calorie intake, you shouldn’t be. Just drink plenty of water, sometimes maybe even before a meal. To help digesting all the wonderful foods, drink some coffee. It increases your metabolism.

Happy Holidays, your LoveToEatRight Team

Horsetail Grass

For over 1 ½ years I have been telling people about horsetail grass tea. From some I get: hmm this is interesting, from others just a funny laughter. You can read about the benefits and its effects online. This is in particular important for athletes who have difficulties with injuries. Dr. Feil, a German nutritionist (coaches many pro athletes from soccer teams to pro triathletes) talks about horsetail grass tea in many of his books. He also recommends additional intake of Magnesium, Potassium and Zinc. I will write a more detailed blog in the near future talking about the amounts and effects. You can by Horsetail Grass Tea from www.alvita.com, which is the most effective way of intake, online or at www.wholefoodsmarket.com.

Less Sodium

The most common form of sodium is salt. It is added to a lot of foods such as Peanut butter, Ketchup, canned soups, etc. Most of those foods contain a salt content that is much higher than the recommended daily intake. Please look out for that salt content on the foods you are consuming today!

On the road

A day on the road! What can you do when you spend a day traveling or working away from home? Eating out obviously makes it hard, it gets even more difficult when you are in an airport during lunch or dinner. In those cases, we recommend eating fruit, most places sell apples, oranges or bananas. Another good alternative to all the junk food on the road are Yogurt and Fruit Parfaits.

Grandmother's Advice

In most of the Northern hemisphere the colder time of the year has arrived. Many people struggle with colds and viruses. So did I, the lady at the Minute Clinic gave some helpful advice:

1.     Drink Lemon Honey Tea

2.     Gargle with warm Salt Water

Generally people trust in Echinacea and Vitamin C certainly helps, strengthening your immune system, which is key to getting through the winter!

Feedback

What have we learned? The blog has now lived for over two weeks. We would like to find out if there are any areas you would like us to focus on. We have so far talked about ways of reducing the calorie intake and of course some more specific things. Team “Love to eat right" would like to have some feedback. Please post some comments on what you would like us to focus on in the next few calorie rich weeks. It may take more than just crossing your legs and thinking that will make all meals calorie free!!!

FIM

FIM stands for fish instead of meat. Fish is a good source of protein and is generally less fatty then meat. There are however some fish that have a high fat content. Do some research!

Percentages

Today, look at all meals and snacks and try to determine the percentages of carbohydrates, vegetables and meat. Compare it to: Nutrition

NF

NF stands for non-fried. Today don’t eat any food that is fried. This would include, but is not limited to French Fries and anything battered.

Juices

Although juices are generally a good source of vitamins and are better than soda, they contain a decent amount of calories. Please look at the packaging of the orange juice of your choice. One of the things that you can do is to either not drink juice today, or try to mix it with 50% of water. This is also what you find in the grocery store under light juice, the companies simply add 50% water and therefore reduce the calories by 50%.

Half

Today only prepare or eat half a size dinner portion. Most people eat a too big a portion for dinner. Especially when eating out.

Sleep

Go to bed early, to be well rested for the start of the new week. A decent amount of sleep is necessary to maintain a normal metabolism. There are studies that show that your metabolism is negatively affected if you don’t get enough sleep on a regularly.

Early Dinner

Today, try not to eat dinner any later than 7.00 PM. Everybody’s metabolism slows down at the end of the day and the calorie absorption increases the later it gets in the evening.

Sweets

In one day, your calorie intake can be increased by more than 50% by eating a snack here and there. Today, do not eat any sweets or candy. In case you get hungry, take an apple to work, or even better a bell pepper or celery.

Salad Dressing

Salad Dressing 

Even eating salad, often a lot of bad ingredients make it on your plate. Croutons, salad dressings etc can contain a high percentage of bad fat, which is high in calories and difficult to digest. When at home, look at the % of fat in one serving of Ranch or Thousand Island salad dressing. Vinegar based salad dressings such as Balsamic Vinaigrette, usually contains Olive Oil, which is a source of “good” fat. Nutritional Facts

Hot beverages

If you drink any hot beverages such as coffee or tea, only use half the sugar you normally do. You will see that the drink almost tastes the same. This can also be applied to any coffee drink that you usually have with flavors such as caramel, vanilla etc. The flavors that are added to your coffee consist mostly of sugar. Sugar is high in calories.

No Meat

Meat

Choose a lunch meal that doesn’t contain any meat. Not only will you eat a smaller lunch, but most likely the meat that you would have been eating would have been cooked in grease.

Water

Water

Drink a big glass of water before you eat lunch. The water will take up space in your stomach and will sooner send a signal to your brain that you are full. Also think about how much water you drinking per day. Probably not enough!!!

Sunday walk

Sunday is hopefully one of the days in the week were you can enjoy your spare time and spend time with family and friends. Today’s advice is to go for an hour walk after you eat lunch. This can be around your neighborhood, your favorite park, at the beach, up a mountain or wherever you are. Hopefully the weather is in your favor!

Cheese

Cheese

Today our advice is to not eat any cheese. Cheese is one of the fattier foods you can eat and has therefore a lot of calories, which also makes it relatively complex for our digestive system. Cheeses can have fat percentage values that reach up to 60%. The fat (saturated fat) content is typically measured in the context of the food being dry, which means that the water content is not taken in consideration.

Day after Thanksgiving

Today is a good day to eat a light diet. You hopefully enjoyed a wonderful meal with family including your favorite deserts yesterday. The number one thing that we think is important is that you are not giving yourself a guilt trip for doing so. Our mind plays too many games with us!! We will follow up with mind games in another blog. Today, you may want to consider a light breakfast, maybe just some fruit, which is high in acids such as oranges or pineapple.

The 1st blog from “Love to eat right”

Today is the first time that we are publishing a blog. This is the start of daily blog, which will contain information about nutrition, dieting, eating habits, foods, fruit, vegetables, carbs (carbohydrates), meat, water, alcohol, sweats, sugars, coffee, tea, caffeine, soda, juices and anything else that brings joy to your taste buds or satisfies cravings :-).

The idea behind this daily blog is to provide information and instructions for every day. It will be hints that assemble the ideas of changing your eating habits in the long term. Compared to a diet, which restricts your food choices or calorie intake, we will provide little things that will make you think about what you consume and how that can positively or negatively affect you well being.

Ultimately eating should be fun and therefore everybody needs to define for themselves what is best for them. One of the things that everybody needs to be aware of is that fact that our bodies adjust to how we eat and as a result of that will have cravings. I can attest that myself, I used to eat meat, almost every day. Due to sports and other reasons, I decided to eat less meat and more vegetables. After a while I went back and ate more meat again, I started craving vegetables relatively shortly.