This breakfast is quick, nutritious and tasty with enough protein to carry you until lunch. Toast one slice of Nature’s Pride All Natural Double Fiber Whole Wheat bread, top it with a tablespoon of Jif Reduced Fat Peanut Butter and one half of a sliced banana. There you have a great breakfast with 245 calories, 7 grams of fat (2.5 saturated), 8.6 grams of protein, and 7.5 grams of fiber.
This may be the most signifcant guiltless invention for ice cream lovers since the sugar free popsicle. Klondike has a line of 100 calorie ice cream novelties that are pretty terrific. The fudge bars, ice cream sandwiches and ice cream bars in chocolate and vanilla, are tasty small portions that you can enjoy when you get the ‘ice cream jag” that won’t go away. They all contain only 100 calories and between 1.5 and 6 grams of fat. They are in the freezer section of the grocery story next to their higher calorie brother and sister treats. So indulge yourself this weekend with something that won’t make you sorry Monday morning.
I really like my sandwiches, tuna salad, turkey breast, low fat ham………….BUT I do crave the mayo on them. And unfortunately, real mayo has about 100 calories and 10 grams of fat per serving. The healthiest alternative is to use mustard instead. A serving of yellow or dijon mustard has fewer than 10 calories and virtually no fat. But for me, there are some sandwiches, like tuna salad, that just have to have the mayo. Continue reading »
You CAN eat a healthy meal at a fast food restaurant. You just have to know how to do it. McDonald’s Egg McMuffin can be a great nutritious breakfast. Just order it WITHOUT the cheese and you get a sandwich with 250 calories, 9 grams of fat (2.5 saturated), and 15 grams of protein. If you really have to have the cheese it adds 50 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat, along with some addtional protein. BUT you have to promise to skip the hashbrowns!
My father-in-law is 99 years old, which actually isn’t that old when you consider that he wasn’t even born yet when the Cubs last won a World Series. But you can imagine his reaction when he found out that the tag line to my blog was, “Because you only have 100 years to live”. For most of us, a century of a healthy and vigorous life would be a terrific accomplishment. This video is one of my inspirations for this blog. I told my wife that I will update the tag line when I reach 99…
Princeton University studies have shown that mice fed a high sugar diet undergo a physiological and psychological addiction similar to cocaine addiction. Americans consume on average 150 pounds of sugar a year, fueled by the hidden sugars in most processed foods that we eat, in the form of high fructose corn syrup. It’s not just the obvious sweets like pastries and those in the picture that cause the problem. The majority of processed foods that we purchase containe high fructose corn syrup. This addiction has led to our nationwide epidemic of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. I am a recovering “sugar addict”. Continue reading »
Some of you like to drink your breakfast (no, I don’t mean THAT way). This is my favorite liquid breakfast, 
full of protein, low in fat, high in fiber and really tasty. This is the ultimate breakfast smoothie. If you like it a little sweeter, just add a teaspoon of honey. With 250 calories, 1.75 grams of unsaturated fat, 7.4 grams of protein and 8.9 grams of fiber, I much prefer this natural tasting smoothie than the ones containing protein supplements.
Metamucil is not just for grandpa anymore! Many of us have become wise to the health benefits of fiber in our diet but it’s difficult to eat enough raw fruits and vegetables to get our daily quota. Metamucil, the laxative of choice of our grandparents, has come up with a product that is great for our hectic lifestyle. If you’re looking for an easy way to add fiber to your diet, without changing the taste of many of your favorite beverages and foods, try Metamucil Clear & Natural.
When I first saw Nature”s Pride, All Natural, 100% Whole Wheat Bread with Double Fiber in the grocery store, I had no idea that it was from the same people who addicted us to high fructose corn syrup and white flour with the infamous and iconic “Wonder Bread”. I am always suspicious when I see a high fiber product because I am not a fan of the bowl full of twigs that Kashi puts together and calls breakfast cereals. However, this is a great, hearty, multi-grain bread. Continue reading »
I am very fond of eggs. So you will find my breakfast recipe posts to have an egg bias. But I really like this recipe for eggs with spinach and feta. It is healthy and tastes really good. Add a piece of your favorite whole wheat toast, and you have a really healthy, hearty breakfast. Calories, 190, 10 grams fat (4 Sat), 14.4 grams protein (nutritional info without toast).
Ingredients
2 whole eggs
1/4 cup raw spinach, coarsely chopped
1 oz low fat feta cheese
Preparation
Spray frying pan with non-stick spray
Scramble eggs with spinach and one half of feta cheese
Remove pan from burner and sprinkle remaining cheese over mixture
Enjoy!
If you are traveling or otherwise away from home, you can still get a really good workout without going outside and with no equipment. You can even add this workout to your evening tv viewing. Just do an “aerobic pushup”. An aerobic pushup is a regular military pushup with the addition of the side plank. With this exercise you can get your heart rate up to your target aerobic rate and keep it there for as many reps as you can do. Pushups are a great total body exercise, in fact a recent survey of personal trainers identified pushups as the one exercise most would do if they could only do one exercise. Watch the video and then try it!
Ok. I am not a big fan of oatmeal. I AM a big fan of the health benefits of oatmeal. So I was quite happy when I found out that Quaker makes a cold cereal called Quaker Oatmeal Squares. It comes in three flavors: Brown Sugar, Golden Maple and Cinnamon (I prefer the brown sugar). It has a really great crunch and not too sweet taste, is very hearty, and I much prefer it to oatmeal. A one cup serving with one-half cup of skim milk comes in at 250 calories, with 2.5 grams of fat (only .5 grams saturated), 5 grams of fiber, 6 grams of protein, and NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP (the sweetness comes from brown sugar and molasses). Add 1/2 cup of strawberries or blueberries, and you have one great, hearty, healthy breakfast, a quick and easy alternative to oatmeal.
The French paradox is the observation over the centuries that even though the French consume a diet high in saturated fats, are crazy smokers, and Parisians are not known for their physical activity outside of the bedroom, they have a much lower incidence of coronary artery disease than Americans. The most recent explanation for this phenomenon is their consumption of red wine (although I don’t think we should discount the relationship of their bedroom activities to longevity ). Recently Dr. Oz, Oprah’s health guru, endorsed the dietary supplement resveratrol, the ingredient in red wine that is believed to be the source of these health benefits. High doses of resveratrol have been linked to longevity and cancer prevention in species other than humans. Continue reading »
I admit it. I am kind of a McDonald’s addict. And when McDonald’s introduced their Sausage Breakfast Burrito, I found it irresistable. But with almost half of its 300 calories from fat (16 grams of fat), it is not my idea of a healthy breakfast. With a little experimenting, I found that I could make a “Healthy Breakfast Burrito” with all of the taste and only 235 calories and 9 grams of fat. I had one for breakfast this morning, and so should you. By the way, it only takes about 5 minutes to make. Continue reading »
I used to try to cheat breakfast. Fueled by plenty of caffeine I would try to make it to lunch. The theory was that if I was trying to lose weight, if I could just make it to lunch, I would have saved all the calories for future use. The reality was that my low blood sugar would cause a throbbing headache, which would lower my productivity and my grouchiness would threaten everyone who came into contact with me until lunchtime. Continue reading »
Baseball.
It’s as simple as that. We now have a consensus that the home run records of Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were fueled by steroids, the ultimate nutritional supplement. We also know that marginal major league baseball players and 45 year old pitchers have been catapulted to MVP performance levels by steroids.
I am not suggesting that steroids are a good thing, only that they demonstrate that we know for sure that certain nutritional supplements do have a dramatic effect on your body’s performance AND your health. Most of us want to take advantage of the health benefits that nutritional supplements can provide. The biggest concern is the unregulated nature of the supplement market. There is no guarantee that what the label says about those pills is actually what’s inside those pills. Nor are there guarantees about ingredients or impurities not listed on the label. We don’t know for sure that they are effective or that the negative effects don’t outweigh the positive. There are hundreds of unregulated supplements advertised on the internet and I am sure that most of them are either useless or harmful. Continue reading »
Two years ago my sedentary lifestyle and poor diet left me unable to effectively fight the everyday battles that life brings. It had sapped my physical energy levels, drained my intellectual energy levels and affected my personal relationships. I felt that if I had totally lost control of everything in my life, and didn’t know how to regain it. Many of the self-help books and tips that I read told me that control over your life is an illusion anyway so you have to learn to accept this reality. But for a control freak, that is not an acceptable answer. I know that I can’t control how the economy is affecting my life, and I can’t control the choices that other people make that affect me. But as I thought about it, I came to realize that there are a few things in my life that I can control. I CAN control the choices I make each day of what to put into my mouth, and the choices I make about my daily activities, and the choices I make about what I am thinking. And these choices have a major impact on the quality of my life, in spite of the fact that the rest of the universe seems indifferent to my existence. So I chose to end my crying jag and begin something more productive: a HealthJag. Continue reading »