Tag Archives: healthy meals

Save Yourself a Trip (or Five) by Planning Your Meals in Advance

We all know the feeling: the rushed, slightly panicked sensation when standing in the middle of the grocery aisle after work trying to find something healthy for dinner. Why not relieve some of that stress?

grocery list

Our friends over at Shape Magazine have a great meal plan full of delicious-sounding recipes like Roman-Style Roast Chicken or Herbed Rice that can be made with simple fridge and pantry staples. The best part is, everything can be purchased ahead of time, so you just have to make one trip the grocery store a week. All it takes is a little planning ahead and you can avoid a “what am I having for dinner” moment or an emergency fast food run.

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Embrace Balance to Avoid Fearing Holiday Meals

Anda T. writes about her weight loss struggles, victories and every day life at www.leavingfatville.com. She also runs www.greatclothingexchange.com in her spare time when not chasing a toddler, cooking, cleaning, working and trying to take over the world.

Holidays mean a time for family to get together, share good food and maybe some wine and enjoy each other’s company. Sounds like a great time, right? It wasn’t until I started my weight loss journey back in 2024 that I realized how the holidays could make or break my diet. Suddenly, November and December struck fear into my heart. How would I get through all the food? How was I going to track the calories? How was I not going to be starving all the time?

The first year, I got ambitious. I decided I’d cook everything. No one had to bring a dish, desserts were Cooking Light approved, and sides never saw one ounce of canned soup. The menu was amazing and diverse and people never missed the favorites. Me, though? I missed everything because I was in the kitchen. There was no visiting, and no chatting over some wine or an appetizer before lunch/dinner. I was dashing around the kitchen like a madwoman. I did it not once, but twice. By New Year’s Eve, I was exhausted. My holiday vacation wasn’t a vacation at all. I’d stressed out so much the entire time about food that I completely forgot to have fun. Sure, I stayed on track, but I missed so much of the festivities, I still felt like I’d been cheated.

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Survey Explains Why Restaurants Won’t Cut Calories

Due to our busy, hectic schedules, more of us are eating out these days, and we all know how hard it can be to eat healthy at a restaurant. From growing portion sizes to sneaky ways that restaurants add extra butter, other high-calorie foods and salt to meals, eating healthy can be tough! But a new study from Penn State researchers reports that most restaurant chefs could easily slash 10 percent of calories in their dishes without customers even noticing. It may not seem like a lot, but even cutting 100 calories out of American’s diet a day can have huge health and weight-loss benefits, the researchers say.

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Four Ways to Use Leftover Chicken

Chicken is often considered a low-fat, low-cholesterol alternative to beef or red meat, but some cuts of chicken actually have as much, if not more fat. If you’re trying to cut back on fat and calories, skinless white-meat poultry offers a great low-fat protein option. If you’re also on a budget, roasted chicken is a simple, economical and time-efficient meal ingredient, especially for a family.

If you’re cooking for one or two, a roasted chicken can sometimes produce more meat than you can finish in one meal. Roasted chicken is versatile and you can easily turn one bird into multiple healthy meals. (more…)

The War on Childhood Obesity – Shaq’s Family Challenge

Shaq’s Big Family Challenge is a weight loss program designed specifically to fight childhood obesity. This program is the perfect plan to help entire families work together to make healthier choices, lose weight, and have fun while doing it! As you have seen on the TV Show Shaq’s Big Challenge, Shaq took six obese kids and helped them turn their lives around. Now, using Shaq’s online diet plan, you can put his secrets to work for your family.

Shaq’s Big Family Challenge combines fun workouts, sensible diets, and delicious alternatives to junk food to help families learn to live healthier lives. On the website, Shaq’s daily drill provide exercises plus the science behind them so kids know why they are working out. You can also access the guidelines for the President’s Physical Fitness Test, so you can see where you stack up compared to families across the country.

Shaq also provides healthy eating guidelines for every situation in Shaq’s Snack Attack. From picking healthy options in the school cafeteria, to navigating vending machines full of sugar, to ordering more sensible meals from fast food restraints, Shaq has guidelines for it all. This weight-loss program is different in that it doesn’t pretend that you have time to cook healthy meals from scratch every day. Families today are busy with everyone on different schedules and with different tastes. Sometimes eating fast food is unavoidable, getting kids off the couch and into the gym can be almost impossible, and having kids buy lunch as school is a real time-saver. This diet takes all of that into consideration. Shaq’s Big Family Challenge offers real families real solutions for achieving healthier lifestyles while still having fun.

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