Nutritious choices made simple®
Amanda is originally from Peaks Island, Maine and currently works at Hall Web Services managing their inbound marketing team. She is a self proclaimed workaholic who tries to maintain a busy lifestyle. She is an amateur yogi and runner. Amanda contributes regularly to the Guiding Stars Blog.
I don’t know what was wrong with me as a kid, but it wasn’t until my adult life that I began my love affair with sweet potatoes. They are so delicious and… sweet AND even pretty good for you. Sweet potatoes (or yams depending on where you are from) “are rich in complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, beta carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin B6”- according to Wikipedia. You can also find them just about all year round.
Nothing beats a delicious, fresh ear of corn as a side to your meal. It is one of the easiest and quickest vegetables to prepare. The fresher the corn, the better, actually: the sugars from the corn quickly develop into starches as soon as the ear is harvested. If possible, you want to get your corn the day it is picked or as soon after as you can.
Recently I have had the pleasure of two speaking opportunities with Clara from the Good Shepherd Food Bank. While the folks at Good Shepherd always do a nice job, I was especially excited to see one of their latest initiatives – a Virtual Holiday Food Drive.
Recently I have started bumping up my iPhone apps to not only help me with my work and social life but to boost my healthy lifestyle choices as well. Here are four iPhone apps that I have found to help me stay on the healthy track!
We all know it can happen. No matter how much you prepare your schedule and your meals, sometimes life can fight back. You find yourself overtired and overworked; you get home late and haven’t eaten dinner yet. This is in no way ideal, but it happens. What do you do?
Eating late at night is not good for you. Your body doesn’t have time to burn off the calories before you go to bed and your body will be digesting when it should be resting. Late night eating can be detrimental to a healthy eating routine.
Many of us are trying to eat and be healthier. Have you stopped to consider all the little things you do and have in your house that are helping you achieve those goals?
I am a board member for a nonprofit in my community. At a recent meeting planning our upcoming fund-raising event, someone asked the Logistics Coordinator what her duties were for the event. She said ‘I do all the things no one else wants to do’. I stopped her in her tracks and said she does all the things that hold the whole event together. It got me thinking about all the little things we do or have that hold the rest of our lives together.
Here’s my list of 5 tools I use in my house to help me eat better.
I have lived most of my life in New England. I love all four seasons but I have to admit, winter is tough sometimes. The days are shorter and much colder. I crave hearty meals and warm coffee drinks. I am restless, while at the same time I have less energy.
This winter, armed with some advice from my friends and my favorite healthy living bloggers, I am going to focus on one trouble spot in my day – the mid-afternoon work snack. Right around 3pm I hit my afternoon slump and I seem to crave a gingerbread latte and some sort of huge pastry with lots or frosting or crumble on top. I did a little research and talked to my friends to get some ideas for how to combat that 3pm urge.
So here are some healthy snacks that are known for being tasty and for giving you a much needed energy boost…
It is back to school time for just about everyone now, which also has me thinking about all my first days of school and how we ate in school. I was a public school kid. Some kids had bag lunches they brought from home but most kids were ‘hot lunch kids’ and we ate what the school made us for lunch each day.
Some days were obviously better than others. I think in just about every school’s pizza day was the favorite. Much of the food was lacking taste and some was even unidentifiable (like a block of ‘cheese’ that we cleverly found could also be used as a pencil eraser – more functional than tasty).
Here is a list of some old cafeteria staples that with a little grown up TLC can be updated to fit back into your grown up diet and provide lots of nourishment and maybe some fond memories…