Guilt Free Snacks
If you’re trying to lose weight, you know the hardest part is that time of day when you normally reach for a bag of chips, donut or candy bar. It can be the time between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner or about an hour or two after dinner. You don’t have to skip your favorite time to eat. In fact, it’s healthy if you choose guilt free snacks. These are snacks that are relatively low in calories, but super charged with nutrients.
Keep snacking simple.
You can create gourmet healthy snacks, but often the best tasting snacks are simple. Buy some tree nuts, seeds and dried fruit and package up individual serving bags of your home made trail mix. You can even add a couple of semi-sweet dark chocolate bits to each serving bag. It’s a healthy combination that will keep you full, plus provide benefits.
Prepare veggies and fruit the minute you get home from the store.
Whether you’ve purchased celery, red pepper, cantaloupe, grapes or any other fruit except apples or veggie you can snack on or dip, wash it and prepare it for eating. Section grapefruit and oranges and have them ready in a bowl to snack on when you need a bit to eat. Make a healthy dip from chickpeas or Greek yogurt for vegetables. You’ll find that if they’re ready to serve, you’ll make them your snack, rather than a higher empty calorie cookie or a bag of chips. As you come near the end of the week, if there’s fruit left, serve it for dessert and use the veggies left over for cooking.
Apples and cheese or peanut butter make a guilt free healthy snack.
Slicing up an apple and topping it with a bit of nut butter or cheese is an excellent snack. You can use any type of nut butter, but peanut butter, especially the chunky kind, has proven to be the most popular. Make sure you choose peanut butter that has just one ingredient—peanuts. There shouldn’t be any additives. You’ll have to stir it before you use it, as it separates, but it’s worth the effort. Eating a thin slice of cheese with a section of apple is also filling and delicious. Both options provide protein, fiber and healthy fat to keep you full longer.
- Combine a bit of honey with peanut butter and then add wheat germ until you can roll it in a ball. Coat the ball with wheat germ and have these ready for snacks in your refrigerator. You can also add freshly ground flaxseed, chia seeds, dried fruit or oats for more flavor.
- Plain Greek yogurt with chopped frozen black cherries and very coarsely chopped walnuts added make a delicious snack. Layer the ingredients in a small half pint mason jar with a lid and store in the refrigerator for snacking later.
- Make sweet potato chips in your oven and lightly salt them. They’re an excellent alternative for people who love the crunch and slight saltiness of potato chips.
- The simplest snack of all is popcorn. You can even make popcorn in the microwave without the cost and extra oil of prepackaged microwave popcorn. Put a fourth cup of popcorn kernels in a brown paper lunch bag, fold the top of the bag several times to seal and pop it the microwave for about two minutes.
For more information, contact us today at BioFit Performance
At BioFit Performance in Oviedo, FL, we believe you should thrive and you can do that by making changes and adopting a healthy lifestyle. The recent events and pandemic have shown us how important keeping fit and staying healthy can be. While there were exceptions, people were the fittest had the best chance of recovery, but getting and staying fit is more than just being able to fight a virus. It’s being able to live life to its fullest.
I’m always pleased when a new client comes into Biofit Performance in Oviedo, FL, especially when they tell us they are trying to find a way to keep moving, since they’re now staying home, either working from home or retired. While you don’t need a formal exercise program to keep moving, it helps get you into a routine and gets you out of the house. Too often people tell that after a few weeks of being home bound, they found that their desire to be active started to dwindle and inactivity is one of the causes of preventable deaths. Obesity is still number one, but that is also tied to being inactive.
If you’ve ever felt blah after a whole day at the computer, you’re not alone. Just sitting does nothing to improve your mood. It can cause stress that you don’t burn off by moving around and you never get that high that you get after a tough workout. Not only does exercise help improve your mood, working out can improve self-esteem. One study showed that people have an improved self-image as soon as they start a program of exercise, long before they see any changes in their body.
We provide all types of services at Biofit Performance to help our clients in Oviedo, FL, succeed at weight loss and a healthier lifestyle. We base our program on the four pillars of a healthy and one of those is eating healthy. In order to aid clients and make it simpler, we help educate every client on the basics of planning meals, including offering recipes and portion size. Why? Because meal planning is important if you want the most successful transition to healthy eating and getting fit. It answers the question, “What’s for supper,” with a healthy option that takes minutes to put on the table.
You might not realize it, but the simple act of drinking more water can help you lose weight. It’s something you can do that’s simple and is one more tool in your tool box to a healthier lifestyle. While it doesn’t replace healthy eating and exercise, anymore than getting adequate sleep would, it’s part of living a healthier lifestyle. Drinking adequate water is important to your overall health. Long term mild chronic dehydration can cause nausea, muscle cramps and headaches. The older you are, the worse the complications can be. It can cause UTIs and in seniors, may even mimic dementia.
Whether you want to get that lean, cut look or simply burn fat tissue and build muscle to get that svelte, healthy appearance, you need workouts to build muscle. It’s more than just strength training. While some strength training can build muscles and some muscle building exercises build strength, it’s all about which part of the muscle tissue is the focus. Strength focuses on the neuromuscular system and functionality. Muscle building focuses on making more new muscle fiber and increasing the fluid within the muscle cells to make them bigger.
BioFit Performance in Oviedo, FL, focuses on all aspects of fitness from private and group personal training to a great recovery system. We even offer online consultations for those who can’t make it into the gym. One question that’s asked often is whether kettlebells provide a good cardio workout. Most people already realize that kettlebells are good for building strength and the right workouts can improve flexibility.
There are plenty of articles written about the perfect workouts, ones that you can do in a few minutes and those that burn 1000 calories. Some of those articles are misinformation, while others provide good advice. Let’s focus on whether you can burn 1000 calories in one workout. It is possible, but not for everyone and a little bit fuzzier math than you might imagine. Your weight, build and intensity determines the number of calories you burn.
Is your goal to have great looking abs and be Oviedo, FL beach-ready? You can do it at home, without any equipment, just commitment and consistency. It starts with a healthy diet and if you’re overweight, losing those extra pounds. No matter how strong your abdominal muscles are, you won’t get “that look” if it’s hidden by a layer of fat. Most of these exercises use the plank position, a powerful ab strength builder.