How do I eat healthy??

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  • joneswife09
    joneswife09 Posts: 207 Member
    I found an extremely easy Tuna Burger recipe! I'm so excited to try it sometime this week! Way easy and I love Tuna so we'll see how it goes.
  • MysterriGal
    MysterriGal Posts: 52 Member
    I was raised much like yourself, our version of healthy was a salad with half a bottle of dressing on it, half the salad consisting of cheese. Its a hard mind set to get out of for sure. I've gone from liking nothing healthy to loving alot of it.
    As someone else said, I'm starting to realise that healthy means real food. When I shop, I make myself read all the labels, and anything sounding like a chemical at all= bad for you, and the best way of all is in its original form. The more natural the product, the less sodium, and then at least the fats your getting are good ones.

    Grains are great in the morning, try to keep them unprocessed(ie whole wheat toast, bagels, wraps, whole grain cereals-Kashi is great). Egg whites are great for morning protein, and you can easily add things to them. Do you like salsa?? If you can get a low sodium salsa, a little goes a long way (On pretty much anything IMO) and can hide alot of veggie tastes you don't like. Egg white wraps or quesadillas are great, I use a little spinach, table spoon of cheese, and peppers. Side of some kind of fruit

    At lunch time soup is good, Find a recipe involving the veggies you like and make a batch and freeze it. In soups you can easily hide the veggies you don't like. Grilled chicken (Just measure it, I keep mine to 2 oz usually) on a wrap or whole wheat bread with whatever you'd put in the salads you said you love. A salad itsself. For work, its a good idea after you shop, cut up a bunch of stuff in bulk and have it ready to throw together. (Thats what I do when I'm actually organized) Throw in some protein like turkey bacon, or nuts (I like slivered almonds in my salads, I find about a tbsp enough) And try fruit and berries on your salads. Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, apples, grapes. All great in salads.

    Dinner Again grilled chicken is great. Being creative is key with that not getting boring. I don't really like apricots, peas, or dijon mustard, but I tried a recipe (From kraft.ca)that consisted mostly of those things and it was one of the best chicken recipes I've ever had. Brown rice with some sauteed veggies is a great side. With rice, even a tea spoon of a sauce can make a difference.
    Substituting and adding things into your regular food is always great too. For example if you like alfredo, or a similar pasta sauce, substitute your regular ingrediants for low fat, low sodium varieties, use whole wheat pasta, and throw in some spinach and broccoli (both well hidden by the heavy sauce). Or cut veggies up really small and add into other kinds of sauces. And that way a serving of those things should be less sodium and fat, not to mention more vitamins, because the bad things don't make up the bulk of ingrediants anymore.

    Something to research too is ways to hide food. Theres lots of different ways of hiding healthy food from kids, for example. Tricky ways moms get their kids veggies. Sure your not a kid, but what they DON'T say is that the moms are often almost as bad or worse than the kids. And if it can trick a kid completely, you just might be able to trick your tongue??? I just googled "hidden vegetable recipes" and got a whole bunch of sites with lots of hints. Not 100% healthy all the time, but it can really help introduce new foods, especially if you slowly increase the amount you use each time. Its a slow journey!
    Sorry for the long post, but I hope some of my "reformed picky eater" babbling helped!
  • selbyhutch
    selbyhutch Posts: 531 Member
    You have a ton of good information here from everyone. My advice, like others is to eat clean and stay away from processed foods. Don't be afraid to try new things. Get in the kitchen & start cooking too! There are a lot of healthy cookbooks out there... I'm a fan of South Beach & have them all. I don't follow the diet, but like the stage 2 & 3 recipes. Keep watching the message board here for recipes too.

    Good luck.
  • selbyhutch
    selbyhutch Posts: 531 Member
    Oh & I forgot to add - if you love cheese try the Laughing Cow wedges!
  • LaTerri
    LaTerri Posts: 42
    You can try ground turkey instead of hamburger. What about flank steak, that is sort of like chicken breast for consistency and more juicy.

    I agree with eating real food and staying away from packaged junk.

    My first suggestion would be to try sauces. You can hide a lot of stuff that is good for you in them, and you make them at home, so you control the salt that goes in, etc... here are the recipes:

    You can make these and then freeze them in 3/4 portions and put them on top of your chicken, make a turkey chili with rice, add to pasta and ground meat for pasta night, etc... You can use these sauces to make just about anything taste good and you are not eating pre-packaged garbage...

    Tomato Sauce

    Get the large soup pot from your cooking set. Put that on the stove and add over med heat:

    1. 2-3 tablespoons of Olive Oil
    2. 6-8 cloves of garlic from the garlic press
    3. a Large Onion sliced
    4. two leaks sliced
    5. 2 Large bell peppers chopped, not too small, you are going to liquify in the end anyway, don't waste your time, 1" squares
    let that cook until the onions are soft
    in the mean time, open 3 cans of stewed tomatoes, flavor italian, into your blender, if you have a large one, all three will fit with room to spare at the top, stuff the rest of the space with baby spinach from a bag. This is about 1-2 cups. Blend that together until the tomatoes and spinach are all chopped up into small tiny pieces, like a soup.
    6. add that to the pot and some water to thin it out to soup consistency
    7. while that is heating up, chop up 3 med or 2 large or 4 small or 8 baby zuchinnis, again not too small and not too big, remember, just pick one size to chop, not all that I listed.
    8. cook on med/high heat until the zuchinnis are soft.
    9. If you have a hand blender, break that out and liquify the sauce in the pot until you get the consistency you like. If you can't stand the sight of any veggies at all, you know what to do... if you are ok with a little chunkiness, don't mix for as long... just do it unitl you get the consistency you like. If it is too thick, add water to thin it out.
    10. Let cool on stove for a few hours and then divide into ziplock sandwich bags 3/4 cup portions and freeze

    This sauce is great with rice and ground turkey. Foster farms Lean is the best one in my opinion. You can also put this over fish [I know you said NO to fish] or that baked chicken. You can put this over the chicken before you bake it, just remember to put foil over it so that the sauce does not evaporate. Don't add any seasoning to the chicken, just the sauce and you are done.

    You can use chicken broth in the sauce, but it will make the salt level go up.

    Ii put in all the ingredients in to MFP and here is what I got for the nutritional content... I did not add olive oil to mine, so the fat would be higher if you add olive oil.

    Generic - Zuchinni, Tomato, Spinach Sauce, 3/4 Cup cooked 99 calories 4 protein 19carbs 1fat 545sodium 12sugar

    Cheese sauce

    I know this got your attention... :) I make this for my 2yr old and she eats it right up. Actually, these recipes are variations of baby food I used to make for her. I realized I could make them for my diet and BAM... I don't actually eat this sauce, so I don't know the calories for it, but I imagine it is less than regular cheese sauces and you get veggies...

    1. cut up a large butternut squash into 1" cubes
    2. boil it in that same soup pot from your cooking set
    3. when the squash is soft, drain and save the water
    4. put squash back in pan, use that hand mixer to mash it up
    5. add cooking water back in to get a thick soup consistency or chicken broth [salt?]
    6. add 1/2 cup of non fat milk
    7 add 3-4 cups of low fat cheddar cheese

    Add the water/broth, milk and cheese little by little until you get the consistency / flavor you like. This sauce is great over brocolli, ground turkey and brocolli and pasta, like a macaroni helper type of thing. You can also just eat it with pasta. To get more veggies in, you can just cut off the little tips of the brocolli, I mean just the little dots in the beginning until you get used to the flavor...then make the pieces bigger and bigger...

    You can package this sauce up the same as you do for the tomatoe one in baggies in the freezer... Each bag has already been measured, so you know exactly how much salt, etc... it has, so just log it as one of your foods...

    I hope this helps...
  • smuehlbauer
    smuehlbauer Posts: 1,041 Member
    Shop on the outside! The out side of the grocery store. The produce department, the meat department, the dair department. I try to avoid processed food at all cost. Yes, that means that you have to cook. But you would be amazed what happens with your sodium level when you do cook. You control it!

    Buy some cook books. There are some Weight Watcher cook books that have simple and good meals in it! And try new things! You've taken the steps to be here - go all out! Step outside of your comfort zone.
  • sorellabella
    sorellabella Posts: 133 Member
    Shop on the outside! The out side of the grocery store. The produce department, the meat department, the dair department. I try to avoid processed food at all cost. Yes, that means that you have to cook. But you would be amazed what happens with your sodium level when you do cook. You control it!

    Buy some cook books. There are some Weight Watcher cook books that have simple and good meals in it! And try new things! You've taken the steps to be here - go all out! Step outside of your comfort zone.

    I agree with this completely especially with the weight watchers cookbooks. You can also find great recipes on the site below:

    http://www.laaloosh.com/ct/health-and-food/food-recipes/
  • NaturalMom
    NaturalMom Posts: 85
    People here all have a different idea of what "healthy" is. I would recommend that you check out a variety "diets" and begin by getting informed on what their version of "healthy" is and then decide from there what is right for you. To me, healthy is organic, whole foods - locally raised and sustainably harvested. But I came to that conclusion after a lot of research and it isn't easy to stick with, especially if you were raised in the McDonald's generation. I learned a lot from reading Dr. Oz's books, The Beck Diet Solution, Nourishing Traditions and, ultimately, by talking to a dietician. I have tried SlimFast, NutriSystem, Weight Watchers, South Beach and a doctor-monitored weight loss program. All of them taught me a little something but ultimately my health ideas are a sum of everything I learned about myself along the way. You'll get there. As long as you are trying, you are doing the right thing. :) Best of luck!!!
  • selbyhutch
    selbyhutch Posts: 531 Member
    Shop on the outside! The out side of the grocery store. The produce department, the meat department, the dair department. I try to avoid processed food at all cost. Yes, that means that you have to cook. But you would be amazed what happens with your sodium level when you do cook. You control it!

    Shop on the outside! I love it.
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