12 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget

Eating healthy on a budget doesn’t have to be difficult. As a matter of fact, staying healthy  on   a budget can be fun and rewarding.

Just use the 12 tips below to keep both your finances and your eating healthy on a budget.

Here are your cheaper by the dozen tips for healthy eating on a budget:

1. Plan your menu ahead. Impulsive buying and eating can cost extra money, calories and your health. Make a weekly menu and shopping list that includes good seasonal and shopping deals. And never ever shop on an empty stomach!
2. Buy unprocessed foods. Most processed packaged foods are higher in fat and sodium and cost more than whole foods. So shop mainly on the outer perimeter of the store and spend the bulk of your money on fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry, low-fat dairy and whole grains.

3. Compare frozen prices. Frozen produce is often less expensive than fresh. Plus it’s picked at the height of ripeness, flash frozen to retain nutrition and flavor and can stay frozen until ready to use.

4. Be selective with protein. The costliest part of your food budget tends to be protein. Since beans and whole grains, like brown rice, combine to make balanced, less expensive protein, use them in dishes to fill in the cracks when you can cut down on costly animal protein.   Read more…

A small change in salt intake can have a huge impact on your health. We want you to cut back on salt but not your exercise!

You may only need to cut a mere half a teaspoon of salt from your diet to see a benefit to your heart and brain. In a dramatic new study, researchers estimate that cutting out just three grams of salt a day (about half a teaspoon) could prevent up to 99,000 heart attacks and 66,000 strokes a year.
Read more…

**How Your Spice Cabinet Can Boost Your Metabolism**

This is  a great article from Mike Geary.

I’ve written before about the power of certain herbs and spices in terms of antioxidant capacity and other health benefits. If you remember, I wrote a couple months ago about the super-food status of cinnamon and how powerful a health food (or rather spice) that it can be.

The next super-spice — Chili!

I was just reading about a recent Australian study that documented how you can burn more calories, increase your metabolism slightly, and help control your blood sugar and insulin levels by including chili peppers and chili spice (or cayenne) in your foods.

Keep in mind, this may be a minor “detail”, but when you add up a lot of these types of “details”, you can make significant changes to your body over time.

As you’ve probably heard in the past, the active ingredient in chili pepper (capsaicin) can cause slight increases in your metabolic rate and calorie burning from a meal. This has been reported many times in both animal and human studies.

However, in this Australian study, Madeleine J. Ball, MD, one of the researchers from the study, sought to find out how chili pepper affected blood sugar and insulin response after a meal.

As you know, chronically high insulin levels in your body can not only cause deposition of excess body fat, but also can lead to diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

The study was split into groups of subjects that ate meals without chili spice, and other groups of subjects that ate meals with chili pepper.

As it turned out, the chili pepper eating groups had lower insulin levels and more stable blood sugar after the meals than the groups that ate the same food without chile.  According to Dr. Ball, “the chili is probably having some effect on the ability of the body to clear — or remove — insulin from the bloodstream”.

Aside from the temporary calorie burning boost and insulin controlling response, apparently chili pepper also has significant antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties…

So if you can handle a bit of spicyness, go ahead and enjoy adding some extra cayenne or chili pepper to your pot of meat & bean chili, your morning eggs, meat dishes, and other meals, knowing it’s possibly giving you a slight edge in the fat burning department.
 

Enjoy! 

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

Studies show that people who take regular vacations are less likely to have heart attacks and report lower levels of stress and depression.

Over the course of a day your skin will eliminate more than one pound of waste through your sweat glands.Â
To keep your skin looking smooth and fresh and improve your skin circulation, do dry skin brushing with a natural fiber brush for 5-10 minutes daily before you shower.

Choosing the right sweetener could help control your blood fats, your risk of gout, and your pants size.
The swap you should make? Kick fructose-sweetened prepackaged beverages and foods out of your diet. And when you need a little something sweet, try a smidge of stevia in your bowl or glass instead.
Fructose: The Full Story
Most sodas — as well as bunches of other prepackaged foods — are sweetened with a form of fructose called high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It’s so ubiquitous in prepackaged foods that roughly 10 to 12 percent of people’s daily calories come from this added fructose. But, unfortunately, a growing body of research is showing a relationship between excess fructose in the diet and a host of health ills, from gout and high triglycerides to increased appetite and weight gain.

So the next time you crave a sweetened ice tea or the like, see if a little stevia might fit the bill instead. Or you could try a touch of agave nectar. Stevia is made from the stevia plant, and agave is made from cactus. Both have a calorie count that is similar to sugar, but because they are loads sweeter, you need only a fraction. Like any no- or low-calorie sweetener, stevia and agave aren’t perfect. But consuming them instead of fructose is a step in the right direction

You could lower your risk of diabetes by 16 percent with this starch substitution: brown rice instead of white.
Research shows that people who consume lots of white rice each week may up their diabetes risk, while people who regularly eat brown rice lower theirs.
One Big Bowl
In a study, the people who consumed five or more servings of white rice per week had a 17 percent higher risk of diabetes compared with the people who consumed less than a serving of the white stuff each month. And people who noshed on brown rice at least twice a week  Read more…