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5 Simple, Successful Steps to Healthy Eating

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Change Your Mindset! A Focus on Healthy Eating for 2012

Making New Year's resolutions this year to eat healthier, wholesome food? New Year's Resolutions can be discouraging when you realize it is only February and you have already failed. So this New Year's don't set yourself up for failure. Forget the "diet" and rather keep this in mind while planning your New Year's Resolutions. An old proverb states "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This makes it clear why so many fail in their endeavors to cut calories. Rather focus on eating healthy. I found that when I focused on adding new good foods to my family, we eventually moved towards these things naturally, and had less "room" for the junk. I have learned that we are all creatures of habit, and therefore drastic change usually does not sit well with us, because we become overwhelmed and irritable with it. But if we slowly introduce new healthy foods into our lives, we will begin to weed out some of the bad ones with little loss. And what a better time to start with a different focus than New Years. With our family, we started by adding new super foods one at a time, and are now enjoying many new benefits. All five are now "norms" in our daily diet.

My Top Five Wholesome Foods

In no particular order

New Year's Resolutions

Healthy food or something entirely different?

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Hemp Hearts

#1 Hemp Hearts- I first started eating Hemp Hearts many years ago by adding them to my granola in the morning. They had a nutty pleasant taste which I really enjoyed. However, my kids and hubby weren't nearly as excited about the taste so I tried something different and started putting them in their smoothies, and that worked well. The biggest benefit that I found for myself was that I felt full for the whole morning and could get away with a lighter lunch.

Since that time I have created my own granola recipe, which includes the hemp hearts baked right in. We also eat hemp bread (we have local companies in town that make it) hemp in oatmeal, hemp stirred in yoghurt and blueberries, and hemp in our waffles.

Hemp Hearts on Amazon

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Why Bother with Hemp Hearts?

Benefits

There are many more detailed descriptions to the health benefits of eating hemp hearts, but if you don't have time or the interest to read all the details, here is the simplified form.
  • 1Control your calories - because your not as hungry! Very high in protein
  • 2Reduces Inflammation and improves circulation according to clinical studies - these are factors of primary importance in the cure and prevention of many diseases.
  • 3Improved Digestion and healthy bowels.
  • 4Improves Cholesterol levels - containing the perfect ratio of the polyunsaturated essential fatty acids, and Omega 3 and 6.
  • 5Stacked With Nutrients including: chlorophyll, vitamin E, B vitamins, folic acid, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and calcium.

Coconut Oil

The health benefits of coconut oil include hair care, skin care, stress relief, maintaining cholesterol levels, increased immunity, proper digestion and metabolism, relief from kidney problems, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, HIV and cancer, dental care, and bone strength. Need I say more?

We have found many ways to incorporate coconut oil into our diets. The biggest one is through the granola recipe that I created, which also includes hemp heart, kefir and honey (4 of my 5!). I also use it frying and I understand it can be used a lot in baking to replace other oils, but I have not experimented as I don't really bake :) The more I read about coconut oil, the more convinced that I have become though of its goodness, and plan to find more ways to incorporate it into our daily diets. I have tried it in our smoothies, but found that it was a bit clumpy, so may have to bring it to a warm temperature to melt it first (as coconut oil is a solid, like butter, at room temperature.

We also use coconut oil on our lips and on our skin. When my skin is really dry I use it straight and it is amazing! It is also awesome to use for massage ( my sister-in-law is a masseuse and uses it for all of her massages) as it works and smells fantastic!

Books on Coconut Oil

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Honey

Surprisingly a lot of health benefits!

We use a lot of honey in our family! We don't even have white sugar on our pantry shelves because we have found a way to substitute either honey or maple syrup into all of our recipes. We all know how bad sugar is, but it is so difficult to go without sweets when our tongues have been trained to crave sweets. There are many sugar substitutes, but they varying reports when it comes to health, so I like to stick with natural things when in doubt. Honey not only replaces sugar, but adds many health benefits to our lives. As soon as anyone in our family has a hint of a sore throat, we make ourselves a honey and apple cider vinegar tea. In fact, we love it so much that it has become a staple drink in winter for us.

It is extremely important to find raw honey (non pasteurized). Because we use so much of it we buy it in large quantities for baking purposes, but we also buy honey from local farmers, as there are so many interesting flavors, dependent on the type of flower the bees were using.

Apple Cider Vinegar

Miracle food

There are few foods that have the extensive list of health benefits that apple cider vinegar. We use Bragg's because it contains the "mother", which is "the dark, cloudy substance in the ACV formed from naturally occurring pectin and apple residues - it appears as molecules of protein connected in strand-like chains. The presence of the mother shows that the best part of the apple has not been destroyed." (from the Bragg's website)

The health benefits are too long to list here, so rather I will link out to some sites and rather talk about how we get it into our diet. Besides the tea that we mentioned above in the honey section, we use it for salad dressing and I love it on chickpeas with olive oil. We find that we have had way less colds and sore throats since starting this with our kids.

Kefir

Our newest addition

We have only been using kefir for a short while, as it was one that i had in the back of my mind for a long time, before starting to use. I thought it was going to be really difficult to get into my kids and thought it would be a lot of work to make. I know that you can buy it, but if you purchase, it is pasteurized, which means that a lot of the good bacteria (the reason to be eating kefir) is killed in the heating process.

I received a kefir grain (we call it our baby) from my mother-in-law and it is so easy to make from there. Everyday, I pour a cup of milk on my baby and put a lid on the jar. It sits for approximately 24 hours and then is complete. It is thick (almost like yoghurt) and has a wonderful smell, somewhere between fresh baking bread and beer! I scoop the kefir grain out and put the kefir into the fridge and then start over. So easy! I can't make enough as my kids love their kefir smoothies. We throw it in the blender (our brilliant vitamix) with a banana and some berries, along with our hemp hearts and VOILA! Delicious easy breakfast or after school snack.

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Granola Recipe

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What's your motivation for eating healthy?

Improve health? More energy? Get in shape?

Improve health? More energy? Get in shape?

  • getmoreinfo Feb 5, 2012 @ 1:10 am | delete
    I like the energy I get from eating more fruits and vegetables, the summer months I usually try to prepare lots of salads.
  • TripleTK Feb 6, 2012 @ 10:43 pm | delete
    Mmmm! I love summer for fresh fruits and veggies. We have a great farmer's market in my town and I try to go every Saturday. My town is also famous for its blueberries, strawberries and raspberries!
  • 10thingz Jan 23, 2012 @ 2:08 pm | delete
    Good to learn about hemp hearts, which are gluten-free. Thanks for the great info.
  • CarlittoDunaway Jan 18, 2012 @ 5:07 am | delete
    My resulution for 2012 is to eat less white bread.
  • KimGiancaterino Jan 15, 2012 @ 1:29 pm | delete
    I'm glad to see coconut oil on your list. I buy it by the gallon. Trader Joes' just started carrying it in small jars, and it's organic, unlike most of the others on store shelves. "The Coconut Oil Miracle" is one of my favorite health books. Wonderful lens!
  • TripleTK Feb 6, 2012 @ 10:45 pm | delete
    I live in Canada and it is quite expensive here and I just found that I can order it online from Rose Mountain Herbs by the Gallon. How much is it at Trader Joes?
  • pattywatty8 Jan 14, 2012 @ 8:54 am | delete
    I have always loved keifer, honey and apple cider vinegar, but I had no idea waht help hearts were or that coconut oil is good for you.
    Thanks for the info.
  • gonzalezdenise Jan 13, 2012 @ 3:37 pm | delete
    Yes, I use the top five items. I love honey. Great lens.
  • Bella21 Jan 12, 2012 @ 8:19 pm | delete
    Wow! I love reading lens that I can learn from and I learned a lot here! Eating healthier happens to be one of my resolutions. Thanks!
  • marymc Jan 11, 2012 @ 10:00 am | delete
    Welcome, great lens. I've been squidoo-ing about health food for awhile and am an avid user of Bragg Vinegar. I'm also a firm believer in healing herbs and spices. I'm looking forward to reading more of your lenses.
  • Auntiekatkat Jan 11, 2012 @ 9:28 am | delete
    Did you know that if you put an egg in a glass of cider vinegar with honey it will dissolve the shell in a week, and it does the same for arthritic crystals in the body. If you take it three times a day you have a natural arthritis cure. I know I have tried it
  • TripleTK Feb 6, 2012 @ 10:49 pm | delete
    Very interesting. I haven't heard of that benefit before. Do you have a link to more info on that?
  • paullenton Jan 9, 2012 @ 1:05 pm | delete
    Very good! I loved it and am recommending it on my related lenses!
  • sukkran Jan 3, 2012 @ 10:27 am | delete
    we are using coconut oil in our daily recipes. thanks for the info.
  • daftrude Jan 2, 2012 @ 2:05 pm | delete
    What a great resolution, thank you for sharing your tips!
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TripleTK

Lover of my husband, my children, nature, adventure, fine food, and Jesus.

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