THURSDAY: Healthy Issues

While heart disease is now the #1 killer of women (yet mostly preventable) it is also affecting our children at startling young ages.  But today I want to talk about women! 

As mothers, it is vital to keep ourselves healthy and do everything we can to first, be around for our kids, but also be a positive role model for good health, and have the energy to thrive and enjoy life with them. 

I feel so passionately about heart disease prevention.  Even through small changes we can live long, vibrant, healthy lives….. and look good doing it.

The American Heart Association has launched a program called GoRed BetterU to help women take action to protect their hearts.  It is a free, 12 week online makeover to live healthier lives.   There is a coaching tool below, that I will host on my new food journal blog (because it is too big for my sidebar). You can go to the coaching tool for quick tips, ideas, and daily reminders. 

To kick off this program, the American Heart Association wants to give one lucky reader a start up kit.  Take a look at the loot! Yoga mat, water bottle, gym bag, red dress pin, Craisins, and a grocery guide.

Pretty sweet, huh?  So, leave a comment (till Next Thursday June 25th), and I will choose a winner at random.  Then go sign up for your own free 12 week healthy makeover!!

Ever have a quiet minute in the day, so you pick up a book, only to fall asleep? Or you try to watch Oprah (tomorrow she has a lady showing how to save money on groceries btw) and then fall asleep on the couch, missing the whole hour. There is a way to get your groove back, and I promise it doesn’t include Diet Coke.  

Complex carbohydrates, like whole-grain bread, whole grain cereal,  brown rice, and whole wheat pasta  is our bodies preferred source of energy.  But we also need protein. It helps to control the release of that energy (including beans, eggs, nuts, and lean meats)  The nutrients involved in this process are:

• Vitamin B        you need 6 micrograms per day
• Iron                 need 18mg
• magnesium     need 400 mg
• zinc                 need 15 mg

Eating the wrong foods will have an opposite effect.  These are energy drainers!

• skipping breakfast
• eating foods high in saturated fat.  (espeically fast food)
• eating high sugar junk food!

So here is my fabulous, energy producing, non-draining, fast, easy, quick dinner!  Anyone who tells me they don’t have time to make dinner and that it’s faster to do the drive thu, I tell them about this meal:

• Whole Wheat Capanelli (much like angel hair in thickness, so it only takes 4 minutes to cook.. Got it on sale for $0.89/ lb
• Broccoli
• Chicken (optional). I make chicken ahead of time and portionn it out for the week.  This is a perfect dish to add it to.

I boil the broccoli and whole wheat pasta together in the same pot.  4 minutes is just enough to somewhat blanch the broccoli, leaving it a bit crispy, which we like.  Then when the pasta and the broccoli are both cooked, I drain it.  Put in about 1 TBLS of butter (you may want more according to taste). Then I sprinkle it with parmesan cheese.  I then must seperate the broccoli from the noodles for the kids.  But my husband and I eat it together.  On the table in 5 minutes!!!

So cut out the junk, get some complex carbohydrates and some lean protein and you’ll be sailing through the afternoon like a teenager on RedBull.