Food Browser to find how many calories are in your food!!!

I found this handy calorie browser for food that tell you the nutritional value, recipes containing that item, and the pros and cons to that particular food!!!Over 10,000 different foods! 

Enjoy!!!

Food Browser

Low in Fat, High in Salt and Sugar?

Low in Fat, High in Salt and Sugar?

by Kristen Mucci-Mosier

Original Article from www.healthywomen.org

Are foods labeled "low-fat" really that good for you? When they come in the form of fruits and veggies, I say Mangia! But, it might be wise to take a closer look at the prepackaged items in your shopping cart. A recent report from Consumer Reports found that lower-fat foods can have pretty steep levels of sodium, including unlikely items such as Kellogg's Raisin Bran (350 mg a cup), Friendship 1% low-fat cottage cheese (360 mg), Twizzlers Black Licorice Twists (four have 200 mg), Aunt Jemima Original Pancake and Waffle Mix (200 mg a pancake), Heart Healthy V8 vegetable juice (480 mg) and even the Caesar salad from McDonald's has 890 mg of sodium.
The high salt content is there mostly to compensate for taste, but simultaneously, it increases our risk for complications from high blood pressure like heart attack, kidney disease and stroke, as well as risk of asthma, kidney stones, osteoporosis and stomach cancer.

Similar to salt, sugar is often loaded into low-fat items to enhance taste. Not to mention, corn is subsidized by the government so high fructose corn syrup, the synthetic sweetener in most boxed foods, is super cheap to come by, making it an alluring ingredient for big companies.

A recent article in Men's Health magazine sited items that top the charts when it comes to sugar content. On the list was Quaker Natural Granola: Oats, Honey & Raisins. Sounds healthy right? One cup has 30 grams of sugar. Yikes! Not good, considering processed sugar, or refined carbohydrates, can cause spikes in blood sugar levels, telling your body to store fat and increasing your risk of type 2 diabetes.

So, check your food labels. But beware, sugar can fall under many names, including corn sweetener, corn syrup or corn syrup solids, dehydrated cane juice, high-fructose corn syrup, dextrin, maltodextrin, dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, and most other ingredients ending in "ose," among others.

What can you do?
When it comes to salt, The Consumer Reports article offers some good advice: Shop for condiments with no salt added; eat at home more and cook with less salt; eat one serving (instead of the whole can of soup); avoid sodium heavyweights, like soy sauce, chicken bouillion and cured meats (like bacon, ham and hot dogs) and check your medicine (some drugs can contain sodium). See our article on shaking the salt habit for more easy ideas.

As for sugar? Try to buy cereals with less that 10 grams of sugar; use spices like cinnamon and nutmeg to add flavor to plain foods like oatmeal; give bland cereals a pick-me-up by throwing in some fresh berries; replace highly processed and refined sugars like corn syrup with more natural alternatives like honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup or agave nectar. These items have more nutrients and therefore take longer to digest than their processed counterparts, keeping you fuller longer and helping to avoid dangerous spikes in blood sugar. Learn more about choosing the right carbs.

So, next time your in the grocery store, double check the label before tossing it into the cart; looks can be deceiving.

Woman Make Life Size Barbie

Wow... makes you realize how unrealistic Barbie is... questioning role model indeed!  

LIVING BARBIE

Are you working out the wrong way?

I thought this was interesting.  I had always been told cardio first then weights... let me know what you think!  Chime in your opinions! 

Article found on the "PostGame" website Written by: Kaitlin Sandeno  The Post Game

Having been an athlete for most of my life, I figured I knew my way around the gym. On a typical day, I'd hit the treadmill or elliptical machine for 30 minutes, then move to the weight machines. And that's what I started to do when I recently joined a gym. Then I got my assessment -- you know, the review of your habits a lot of gyms do. And the review told me I was doing something wrong.

Hit the weights hard, the assessment said. Then go to cardio. 

What?

"The body needs to burn through its sugar source first before it taps into the fat," says Iman Nikzad, who runs the fitness program at my LA Fitness near Irvine, Ca. "You burn the sugar while doing the weights then burn the fat while doing the cardio."

I did some more research and, turns out, he's right and I was wrong. The optimal workout is a 10-minute warm-up on a low-impact cardio machine followed by 30 minutes of weights and then 30 minutes of intense cardio.

Yes, really.

"Efficiency is the key when structuring any workout, so long-duration cardio should not be done in the beginning of the session," says certified strength and conditioning specialist Jim Smith. "The most intensive training should be done first in the workout, when you are at your best."

By starting with weights, you alert your muscles to trigger the proteins that churn through calories while you train. So even though you're probably spent after 30 minutes of weights, your body is ready to eat fat faster than it would if you started by "telling" the body to attack sugar.

A lot of people get this wrong, thinking weight training diminishes the effect of the cardio work. It's the opposite. Just remember the phrase: "Muscle eats the fat." If you want to lose the flab -- and who doesn't? -- you want your muscles as active as possible. That means starting with weights. 

And if you only have 30 minutes total, go for weights instead of cardio. That sounds counterintuitive, since we feel sweating is "proof" we're losing fat. But you will lose a lot more fat by pushing and pulling weights and then going on a brisk walk in your neighborhood (or even at the mall). The guy or gal who is dripping buckets on the Stairmaster is getting a good workout, but you're likely getting a better one by getting sore and not getting soaked.

Nick Bromberg contributed to this story.

Eat to the Beat... The Parents Guide UK article

This is a good article courtesy of my friend Julian Graham.  He wrote this a few years back for a UK magazine "The Parents Guide".  I thought it had some useful information about portion control and the food groups.  Check it out and let me know what you think! Thanks Julian!!!  

Eat to the Beat

Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

This book was recommended to me by a few good friends.  I think its worth a look if you are spiritually in tuned or desire to be as such.  Information and reviews are from  Amazon.com

Product Description

No matter how sophisticated or wealthy or broke or enlightened you are, how you eat tells all. 

 

If you suffer about your relationship with food -- you eat too much or too little, think about what you will eat constantly or try not to think about it at all -- you can be free. Just look down at your plate. The answers are there. Don't run. Look. Because when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we contact the part of ourselves that is fresh and alive. We touch the life we truly want and evoke divinity itself.

Since adolescence, Geneen Roth has gained and lost more than a thousand pounds. She has been dangerously overweight and dangerously underweight. She has been plagued by feelings of shame and self-hatred and she has felt euphoric after losing a quick few pounds on a fad diet. Then one day, on the verge of suicide, she did something radical: She dropped the struggle, ended the war, stopped trying to fix, deprive and shame herself. She began trusting her body and questioning her beliefs.

It worked. And losing weight was only the beginning.

She wrote about her discoveries in When Food Is Love, her first New York Times bestseller. She gave huge numbers of women their first insights into compulsive eating and she changed huge numbers of lives for the better.

Now, after more than three decades of studying, teaching and writing about what drives our compul-sions with food, Geneen adds a profound new dimension to her work in Women, Food and God. She begins with her most basic concept: The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning, transformation and, yes, even God. But it doesn't stop there. Geneen shows how going beyond both the food and feelings takes you deeper into realms of spirit and soul to the bright center of your own life.

With penetrating insight and irreverent humor, Roth traces food compulsions from subtle beginnings to unexpected ends. She teaches personal examination, showing readers how to use their relationship with food to discover the fulfillment they long for.

Your relationship with food, no matter how conflicted, is the doorway to freedom, says Roth. What you most want to get rid of is itself the doorway to what you want most: the demystification of weight loss and the luminous presence that so many of us call "God."

Packed with revelations on every page, this book is a knock-your-socks-off ride to a deeply fulfilling relationship with food, your body...and almost everything else. Women, Food and God is, quite simply, a guide for life.

 

Review

"Geneen Roth has written an extraordinary book - at once beautiful, moving, funny and searing. Most important, she gives us a practical way to use our bodies - along with some of the most difficult parts of our emotional lives - as gracious and transformative portals to our soul." --Rick Foster, co-author of Happiness & Wealth and How We Choose to Be Happy

"Women Food and God is daring, dazzling, funny, comforting, wise and profoundly spiritual. It maps the journey from the darkness of obsession to the pure sense of being in prose so insightful and astonishing it left me breathless. Geneen Roth is an international treasure, and her new book is a gift to us all."

-- Gay Hendricks, Ph.D. author of Five Wishes and Conscious Loving

"Geneen Roth does it again! Women Food and God is absolutely mesmerizing. And loaded with insights which can change your life."

--Chistiane Northrup, MD, ob/gyn physician and author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause

“This is a hugely important work, a life-changer, one that will free untold women from the tyranny of fear and hopelessness around their bodied. Beautifully written, a joy to read, rich in both revelation and great humor.”

--Anne Lamott, author of Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

***Also, please check out my dear friend Marian's site where she also read this book and gives some thoughts and advice and perspectives***

Ending my battle with food 

Eating for the Body 

FORBES: Are we too hard on skinny women?

This is an article published on FORBES.com.  This is no way reflects mine or my readers personal opinion. 

Click the link below!

Are we too hard on skinny women?