Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

I remember when I first started to lose weight. I was very careful about what foods to eat. I'm not saying that I'm not careful now, but I do allow myself a day to cheat on my "diet" every now and then. If you don't cheat on your diet once in a while, I think you will be more likely to go back into your old habits. I say the word diet but I still am not comfortable calling the way I eat a diet... I eat healthier foods dailly but it's more of a lifestyle change than a diet.

I was recently on vacation. It's hard to find healthy foods away from home. I did bring a lot of walnuts, almonds, protein bars and fruit, but still, I did not eat totally healthy. I did allow myself dessert one day last week as I had a piece of chocolate cream pie. It was a lighter version with low fat whipped cream. Surprisingly, it was enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. This coming from someone that used to eat a half a gallon of ice cream a day!

Soda is one of most wasted calories you can have. Americans get far too many calories as it is, but drinking soda only adds unnecessary calories that you don't need.

Think about it, why have a 300 calorie soda when you can have a flavored water and save yourself some calories. Of couse diet soda is better than regular, but still soda is not good for you. Research shows that diet soda drinkers waistline grew 70 percent more than non soda drinkers. If you're trying to lose weight, why risk it by drinking soda?

Did you ever notice with diet or health-related talk, there is often conflicting information out there. One source says don't eat red meat, another source says red meat is fine. One source will say coffee is okay, but then you hear reports that maybe it's not so good. The question of how much protein often has different answers, depending on who you ask.

Dr. Fuhrman said in his book The End of Diabetes, that Americans get too much protein in their diets. Then I read somewhere else that to increase muscle mass, I need the amount of protein in grams equal to my body weight. Another source says men should get 56 grams of protein. What am I supposed to believe?

I got tired of writing separate articles for each superfood individually. I thought I would recap and give you the rest of my list.

Here are the 10 foods you should add to your checklist to eat:

This is a special blog entry. One year ago, I started my first Wellness Challenge at the local YMCA. Part of the requirements for the challenge were to walk 70,000 steps each week. Thus began the journey of all the stepping... and walking away all those extra pounds!

The pedometer you see pictured here is actually the second one since the challenge. The first pedometer broke a few months ago. I purchased the same kind and I highly recommend this pedometer. It's by Sportline and sells for about $20. You just can't kill it, as it's been dropped, stomped on, etc. I'm amazed how it keeps going!