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Solve your problems and face your stress
Stress can be easier to overcome as you realize what is stressful in your life. Are you doing too much at your job? Are you finding it hard to find work? Do you want to get your house cleaned up but your children won’t help?

The stress in your life can always be changed. The stress in your life doesn’t mean you are stuck in this rut. You can change your feelings of stress by leaving those problems behind and changing what you do and how you do it.

Keep yourself busy, fight off those urges to help everyone do every thing, and lessen the stress in your life.  Make sure if you do have quick foods around the house, they are pre-cut vegetables and salads, not cake and cookies and candy.

If you are trying to quit smoking, and fear the stress levels and weight gain, use carrot sticks and celery to keep your mouth busy.  Brush your teeth after every meal—the minty taste is nice but discourages noshing.

Try sugarless gum as well to keep your mouth busy. The act of chewing is also fairly relaxing for us, as it is with dogs.

I also use Australian chewing sticks to stop myself from eating when stressed. They come in regular tea tree oil flavor, or cinnamon. They are a birch bark toothpick infused with the natural oils, and you can use them to massage your gums like flossing, and to help get the food out from between your teeth after eating if you can’t brush or something gets stuck.

The strong flavor tends to remove good cravings and is quite relaxing, and keeps your mouth busy. They are great for preventing mindless eating.

Knowing your stress triggers and having strategies in place to help you cope, will help you avoid mindless eating, and unhealthy comfort eating.

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Have you ever had a big meeting coming up, grabbed something unhealthy to eat in order to try to get yourself through it?

Many people use readily available junk food to take their edge off their hunger, but also to try to lessen the feeling of stress we have to some degree every day.

Men, women and children alike are constantly eating unhealthy things as an unconscious method of relieving stress. If you are under a lot of pressure and you find that you are reaching for the goodies, the chips, or snack foods, you will gain weight soon enough if you haven’t already.

Your weight gain will only add to your stress, and will get even more stressed by the  medical problems associated with gaining weight.

Who is at risk for overeating due to stress related incidents?

One type of industry that is stress related is the truck driver. The truck driver is constantly on the go, on the road, fighting traffic and deadlines among other things. The truck driver who is under stress will eat to stay awake, and will eat to calm his or her nerves. They are also sitting all day and seldom have time for exercise.  Many truck drivers find they are quickly overweight and need to lessen the stress in their lives so they will eat less.

Depending on food for comfort is nothing new. New mothers, and those who care for children, often times find their selves under a lot of stress. If you are finding you grab a piece of food every time you feel stressed, your over eating is compensating and covering up how you really feel about a situation.

One thing is for sure, we all want to look our best now that the warmer weather is here, and we certainly don’t want to carry around more extra pounds than we have to, for it is a strain on the whole body.

If you don’t believe me, do the bag of flour experiment. Get a 5 pound bag of flour, put it in a plastic bag, and carry it with you EVERYWHERE for one day, the shower, the bathroom, work, dinner, exercising, in bed, walking, everwhere. You will soon get sick of it.

Now think of that 5 pounds as extra weight on your body that you are carrying everywhere. How much easier would your life be without it.

Now be honest. Are you actually carrying MORE than 5 pounds of extra weight on your body? HOW MANY bags of flour are you lugging around all day?

If you find that you are more than 20 pound overweight, you definitely need to think about healthy eating.

So here’s hoping you enjoy the articles in our upcoming Food for Life series.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss any articles in the Food for Life Series, why not take a moment to sign up now for our free Nutrition Goddess newsletter.  Every time we post a new article, it will be delivered straight to your inbox. It’s fast, FREE, and easy.

Here’s wishing you happy, healthy eating, from the Nutrition Goddess Team.

With the pace of medical research accelerating each year, and thus so much health information in the news, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to sort fact from fiction, and attempting to cram all of the To Dos into your busy day. Eat right exercise, drink enough water, get enough fiber, try to get enough sleep…

It sounds like that commercial with the woman jogging on the treadmill and eating a huge hunk of broccoli at the same time!

Yet because we ARE so busy and stressed in our daily lives, there has never been a time when keeping up with the latest health information is so important for your overall wellbeing.

The goal of this nutrition blog is to help you do just that, empowering you with the best advice on nutrition to help you stave off many health conditions that impact your life, but can be influenced by a good diet rich in nutrients and disease-fighting properties.

With the recent and sudden passing of Tim Russert and George Carlin from heart disease, we can see now more than ever that heart disease IS preventable.

If it runs in your family, you will want to take steps NOW, no matter what your age, to stave off heart disease and other family illnesses, before it it too late.

If you are already struggling with a medical condition, now might be the time to look at your lifestyle to determine whether or not you need to tune up your healthy eating regimen a bit more.

Now, what about that blender?  It’s a bit difficult to eat soup the traditional way while driving and if you are serving to your kids, the combination of a car and soup in a bowl is a disaster waiting to happen.  Here’s where the blender comes into the picture.

Pour some of the soup into the blender and blend until the pieces are small enough for you to swallow without choking. You can even puree the soup completely if you’d prefer. For a thicker texture, add a bit of cream, though watch the calories. Now, your soup is ready for distributing in your to-go cups.

The ideal cup would be a travel mug with a lid. These types of cups have a wide opening perfect for drinking soups from.

Another great thing about soup is you can make it in large quantities with very little effort, and some variation from one batch to the next. Make vegetable with pasta in one portion, with rice in the next.

Be sure to prepare enough soup for the entire week. You can take the soup with you while you’re out shopping, working in the garden, or to work.  A cup of soup is packed with healthy nutrients and it won’t mess up the car or cramp your busy lifestyle.  The next time you don’t have time to eat, reach for a cup of healthy homemade soup instead of pulling into that fast food drive thru. Your waistline and your family will thank you for it.

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First, choose your favorite soup. A popular choice of many is the famous chicken noodle soup. There’s nothing better when you are under the weather than the warm chicken broth soothing your throat. You might be tempted to go for the soups in a microwave container perfect for eating on the go, but again, in terms of expense and sodium, this is a bad choice. Instead, we are going to make our own soup for an even healthier choice.

The one thing that is best about homemade food is that you know what is and is not in it. Since we are concerned with health, preparing your own soup creations at home is the best way to go. No matter which type of soup you choose to make, be sure to use fresh ingredients. The other items you’ll need are plenty of food containers with tightly secure lids, a travel mug or two, and a blender.

Now it’s time to actually create your time saving soup. A good soup always starts with the stock. For chicken soup, make the broth by boiling the remains of the chicken you had for dinner. Add the herbs and seasonings of your choice and boil until the chicken bones come out clean. Any remaining meat will be included in the broth. Once the broth cools completely, scrape off any fat and discard, then ladle the soup into air-tight jars or containers for storing.

If you’re more of a beef and vegetable soup lover, you can use commercial canned broths or bouillon cubes for the base of your soup, though try to be extra vigilant about how much sodium is in them.

Season the stock really well  with pepper and other ingredients like a bay leaf, which you should remove proior to serving, and NEVER eat. Make your stock and simmer before adding any other ingredients.

Once the stock is ready, all that is left to do is toss in your favorite veggies and other ingredients, such as paste, beans or even couscous Again, wait until the soup is completely cooled before pouring into storage or serving containers.

In this day and age it can be hard to eat healthy. With your busy schedule, especially if you have children, many people find it easier to grab whatever is available and the quickest  way to assuage their hunger, and deal with the health consequences later.

With the following tips for soups on the go, you’ll learn how to make sure that the food you grab is healthy, and satsifying.

The problem with dealing with the consequences of unhealthy eating habits is that later is actually sooner than you might think. Later is right now. Sadly, we are a nation of obese adults and just as many, if not more, obese children. Our unhealthy eating choices have caught up with us. You might be asking yourself, “How can I eat healthy when I’m crunched for time all the time?”

One way is to make foods that can be taken with you on the go.  One of those foods is soup. Soup is tasty, filling, and good for you anytime, but especially on a cold fall or winter day. There are hot soups and ieven cold soups which are delicious and nutritious. Many soups are good eaten cold or lukewarm.

Soups are a great choice because have high water content, so it helps you get your recommended several glases of water a day, and low energy-dense, so fewer calories. Anyone who has seen the Progresso soup commercials knows that most of their soups are 100 calories or less in what is basically half the can, a good portion, though bad for you in terms of how much sodium you are packing in.

However, there are low sodium varieties, and some soups are better for you than others.  Try to avoid cream based soups as having more calories. Soups with a lot of pasta or beans in them can also add a lot of carbs to your diet, not a good thing if you are carb sensitive.

We also recommend snacking because the alternative might be worse-not snacking at all you actually make yourself too hungry. This leads to overeating at meal times. So does that attitude that you have to clean your plate, and that wasting food is a sin.

Getting too hungry means you will opt for dining out more often if you feel starved because you haven’t munched on a few healthy snacks throughout the day. It leaves you open to the dangers of supersized portions, and again, the attitude of not letting food go to waste if you have paid for it. If you must go to a restaurant, why not doggie bag half of it to save for later, when you know you are going to be hungry.

Starting a meal with low energy density rich foods like soups and salads, which are fillling, but not too caloric if they are not cream based, is another way to cut down on snacking on unhealthy choices.

Contrary to popular belief, snacking is good for you, but only if you make your treat choices healthy ones. Keeping good for you snacks on hand will make snacking healthy even easier. So, snack away, but make them good, low calorie, nutritious snacks in order to reap the most benefits.

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