Category: Featured

Featured, Meal Preps & Recipes

9 Healthiest Types Of Cheese To Feast On!

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Say cheese! There are several foods you can make with milk but nothing is more loved and enjoyed than good cheese derived from it. Adding generous quantities of it to your diet will make your meals delicious and health-friendly.

How is Cheese Made?

Cheese is a dairy product made from milk by the coagulation of the milk protein “casein” and is available in a wide range of textures, flavors, and forms. It is mainly made up of proteins and fat derived from milk usually taken from buffalo, cows, sheep, or goats. The milk is first acidified and then enzymes of rennet or bacterial enzymes are added which causes the casein to coagulate. The solids [curd] are removed from the liquid [whey] and pressed into their final form.

Available in a Wide Range

Some of the healthiest cheeses that you can make from natural milk include mozzarella, blue cheese, feta, cottage cheese, ricotta, parmesan, Swiss cheese, cheddar, and goat cheese. You can use these cheeses to make a variety of dishes such as cheesecakes, pizzas, salads, tarts, pasta, fondue, soufflés, cheese balls, sandwiches, macaroni, biscuits, and cutlets.

Health benefits of cheese include –

  1. Healthy Heart – It is loaded with phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium which keep your cardiovascular system in a good state. It also helps heart function.
  2. Prevents Osteoporosis – It contains calcium, protein, minerals, and vitamins that even cure osteoporosis especially in women after menopause.
  3. Maintains Optimum Weight – It is a good source of natural fats that help control your body weight. It stabilizes your metabolism and its nutrients build muscles and bones.
  4. Prevents Cancer – It is rich in “sphingolipids” and “linoleic acid” which have antioxidant properties and help prevent cancer. Research in this field confirms this benefit of consuming cheese regularly.
  5. Prevents Tooth Decay – It contains both calcium and phosphorus which are vital for healthy teeth. Other minerals in cheese also help to maintain the strength and integrity of your teeth well into old age.
  6. Improves Brain Function – It is rich in omega-3 and fatty acids which promotes healthy brain activity and keeps your brain in a healthy state. Eating cheese is a no-brainer!
  7. Boosts Immunity – The good bacteria in cheese improves gut health which strengthens your body’s capacity to fight infections.
  8. Lowers Blood Pressure – Eating ample quantities of cheese lowers your blood pressure despite the presence of fats and sodium.
  9. Improves Cell Health – It contains protein which is the primary requirement for your body cells for building and repair. Your need for protein depends on your age, size, and physical and mental activity levels.

Say Yes to Cheese Today!

Eating all this cheese may sound cheesy to you but it will do your health of a world of good! On top of it, cheese is tasty and goes along well with a variety of dishes. Start eating cheese from today and enjoy its multiple health benefits immediately.

Featured, Meal Preps & Recipes

Vegan Foods Are The New Choice Of Conscientious People

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Despite what you may have heard vegan food is not just for the uber-rich. It is really for the enlightened and evolved individual and you don’t have to spend a ton of money or look high and low for obtaining healthy vegan food. You can find relatively low-priced high-quality vegan foods near where you live quite easily.

What is “Vegan” Food?

Vegan food is pure vegetarian food that does not include meat and even dairy, eggs, or any other food of animal origin. Individuals who consume only vegan food are called vegans. The term “vegan” was coined in 1944 in England by a small group of vegetarians who formed a splinter group by breaking away from the Leicester Vegetarian Society and became the Vegan Society. The term vegan was formed by combining the first and last few alphabets of the word vegetarian!

In the last few years veganism has been rising in popularity and today a lot of people who believe in leading an ethical and healthy life by not exploiting animals are proud to call themselves vegans.

Vegan foods include such easily available and low priced foods such as chickpeas, oranges, oats, broccoli, black beans, bananas, brown rice, spinach, lentils, sweet potatoes, whole grain pasta, and cucumber. All these foods are appetizing, healthy, and not derived from any living or dead animal so you can consume them without any doubts. All these foods are plant-based and are nutritious, tasty, healthy, and very beneficial for your body.

All these foods meet all the requirements of what vegan food should be –

Ethical – None of them were obtained by killing or hurting any living creatures. True vegans are opposed to the unethical and cruel treatment of animals for obtaining anything that humans desire whether food or skin.

Healthy – All these vegan foods reduce the risk of you contracting diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart problems, cancer, and death at an early age. They also reduce the risk of you suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

You can also avoid the harmful side effects of the hormones and antibiotics that are being increasingly used in animal agriculture. Vegan foods also help you in weight control and deliberate weight loss.

Environment Friendly –Vegans choose these foods because of the heavy negative impact that animal agriculture has on the fragile environment. Research has proved that food derived from animals need more resources and cause greater greenhouse gas emissions than any plant-based vegan food.

They also use up much more water than vegan food. Animal agriculture is rapidly destroying the forests and meadows and leading to the rapid extinction of rare and common animal species.

Be the Change!

In today’s brave new world the focus is on consuming foods that reflect your values and beliefs. Vegan food is your affirmation of a healthy and meaningful mindset and lifestyle. Stick to your guns and the world will change!

Featured, Meal Preps & Recipes

Top-up Your Meal With 9 Healthy Salad Toppings

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Adding a healthy salad to your regular meal or a special diet increases the yum factor by many a mile! Few things look so good and taste so delicious along with your meal than a mouth-watering salad. While you can add any food to a salad some toppings are more nutritious than others. We mean toppings like nuts & seeds, fresh fruits, roasted vegetables, fresh herbs, avocados, olives, hard-boiled eggs, soft cheeses, and pomegranate arils. These toppings sound so lip-smacking; imagine how much value they will add to your meals!

An Abundance of Choices

Nuts & seeds namely walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, pistachios, chia seeds, and peanuts are high in nutrients and contain several vitamins and minerals, fiber, and proteins which are very healthy for you.

Adding fresh fruits to your salad like cherries, berries, oranges, and apples make the salad divine and reduce the risk to your heart health by almost 10%. Roasted vegetables are another kind of toppings that you can add to your salad. They add different textures and flavors to your salad and make digestion easy and contain several nutrients. Roast them in olive oil to bring out their taste.

Try adding fresh herbs to your salad. Your nearby grocer always stocks fresh herbs like parsley, basil, rosemary, cilantro, sage, and mint which you can pick-up anytime. They add flavor and also contain nutrients that fight diseases like cancer and also inflammation.

Avocados go well with your salad as they are packed with nutrients like fiber, monounsaturated fat, folate, potassium, and vitamin C and K which improve your heart health and promote healthy aging.

Say hi to olives as they are packed with healthy fats like monounsaturated fat which reduces the risk of heart disease and also lower cholesterol levels. Just make sure that you don’t add too much salt as olives are cured in brine.

Hard-boiled eggs are also good news for you as they contain protein, minerals, and over 15 vitamins which help your body function and make you feel full. They are also low in calories.

Say cheese! We mean soft cheeses like feta, mozzarella, goat, ricotta, burrata, and bleu that give a creamy flavor to your salad. They are rich sources of protein, calcium, and several other macronutrients that are very good for you.

Use the wonder fruit pomegranate for your salad toppings. Sprinkle the pomegranate arils over your salad as they are rich in compounds like anthocyanins that possess antioxidant capabilities.

Make Everyone Go Wow!

All these are healthy foods that you can add to your salad as toppings and delight your family and friends. Just when they think the best is over surprise them with your mouth-watering salad!

Featured, Fitness, Today

Water in Body

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It is very common to hear that water is essential for your body –but why? Water is known to make up around 70 percent of your body while being involved in a wide range of bodily functions, including:

  • Pushing out waste materials from the body
  • Helping with the brain function
  • Regulating body temperature

It is recommended to drink at least 3 liters of water on a daily basis to make up for the requirement of 24 percent of water in bones, 90 percent in lungs, 75 percent in muscles, and 75 percent in the brain.

Some of the top reasons to include abundant water intake in your daily habits are:

Converting Food Into Energy:

Do you feel the lack of energy on a daily basis? The chances are that you are not consuming enough water as your body requires. Experts believe that when you tend to drink water before, during, and even after your meals, it helps in breaking down your food easily and converting the same into relevant energy.

Improved Nutrient Absorption:

In addition to maximizing food breakdown, water also helps with improved nutrient absorption –including vitamins, minerals, other vital nutrients from the food that you intake. Then, these vital components to the remaining body for utilization.

Regulating Body Temperature:

Staying hydrated remains crucial to regulating your body temperature. The body tends to lose water with the help of sweat in hot environments and during physical activity. If you tend to sweat more, then you should drink more water to avoid dehydration.

Maximizing Physical Performance:

When you are carrying out some intense physical activity, drinking lots of water is essential for your body. It is believed that athletes tend to lose around 6 to 10 percent of the total body weight during some sort of physical activity. Hydration is also known to affect overall power, endurance, and energy levels. You are more prone to dehydration if you engage yourself in high-intensity sports or endurance training.

Preventing Constipation:

When you wish to prevent constipation, eating fiber is not the ultimate solution. Therefore, it is important to increase your water intake such that your bowel movements have ample water. If you are not consuming ample water, fiber, and magnesium, then you are most likely to experience constipation.

Losing Weight:

Studies have revealed that loss of weight and body fat is linked with drinking water in obese people. Drinking water during exercising and dieting might help in losing extra pounds.

Drink ample water to stay fit and healthy throughout. Water, being important for every part of your body, can help in improving your overall health & well-being.

Featured, Meal Preps & Recipes

Say Hi To 9 Keto-Friendly Snacks

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It’s great news that you are on a keto diet meaning you have said yes to low-carbs, high-fat diet but you have to do something for the time in-between your meals when you feel the need to munch on some tasty snacks. You have to ensure that they do not have a negative effect on your regular keto diet objectives. What you need are some keto-friendly snacks that you can merrily keep eating without upsetting the regular keto diet.

You Can Choose

Though there are a variety of snack foods that you can choose from you must select keto-friendly snacks that supplement your keto diet. Some excellent keto-friendly snacks are eggs, biltong, pecans, macadamias, Brazil nuts, avocado, canned fish, deli meats, and olives. What is common to all these snacks is that they are all low-carb foods and ideal to munch on to fulfill that between-meal hunger.

Hard-boiled eggs have 0% carb and go smoothly with your keto diet. Be adventurous and eat them with cream cheese, mayo, butter, or a keto drip. Those of you like non-vegetarian food can go for some spicy biltong. Biltong is a low carb, high protein snack made from dried meat, vinegar, salt, and spices. It is very yum and has enticing flavors. Nuts are very good to satisfy those between-meals hunger pangs like pecans, macadamias, and Brazil nuts. They have very low carb content so you can keep popping them into your mouth and enjoy. Do avoid cashews.

You won’t go wrong snacking on avocados as they contain low carb while having a high amount of heart-healthy fats as well as fiber. Needless to say, you should include them in your chosen snacks plan. Canned fish like shellfish and salmon are practically carb-free while containing high amounts of potassium, selenium, and vitamin B which your body regularly needs.

You can have deli meat for satisfying those between-meals hunger pangs as they are low on carbs and have high amounts of protein. This protein prevents your body from losing muscle while burning fats. Try them with cheese. Be sure to buy your deli meat from a reputable and high-quality meat seller. Olives are something you should seriously consider while selecting keto-friendly snacks. Not only are they low on carbs they contain rich amounts of vitamin E and antioxidants which are very beneficial for your heart. They even protect you from some types of cancers and fight against osteoporosis as well.

Surprise Everybody!

You will be adding value to your keto diet by including these 9 keto-friendly snacks to your selection. Keep munching on them in reasonable quantities and you are sure to get into great shape and surprise everybody as they look at a new trim you!

Featured, Fitness

Do Vegans Miss Out on Calcium?

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Adapting any change is difficult. If the change involves making choices that will have a daily impact, it is even tougher. Dietary change is one such change. Let’s face it, changing one’s dietary preferences does count as a pivotal change.

Deciding to go Vegan is one such change. The reasons could be varying depending on your lifestyle, background, medical condition, or even social and environmental awareness towards animals and their feelings.

If you are thinking about switching to Veganism, here are some of the things that you should know.

  1. Suddenly, a significant number of items from the supermarket will become out of bounds.
  2. You will need to avoid going into the dairy section and the frozen meat aisle when you go shopping.
  3. Not everyone will understand your choice of switching.
  4. You will get various suggestions ranging from this is worthless and you are doing more harm to the environment than good, to something like simply stop eating twice daily.

Remember, each suggestion comes from that person’s point of view and may or may not be applicable to your case.

What you probably need to know for sure and what people may not always be fully qualified to give you the right advice about is; what are the alternative foods to make sure you get the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that you would have got, had you been consuming animal products such as milk, cheese, yogurt, meat, and the likes.

For this, you need to rely on a few authentic sources. You can of course rely on your doctor and get a diet plan chalked out, or you can get tips and advice from people who have been there and done that. They were able to successfully make the switch and got amazing results. My Super Body Transformation is my journey from fat to fit. Like a good human being that I am, I decided to share what I learned. If I can make a difference in the life of 1% of the people reading this, it is totally worth it.

Here is a very important tip. Going Vegan means cutting out all dairy products from your diet including milk, cheese, and all other related products. Milk as we all know is a great source of calcium, which in turn is the main ingredient that keeps our bones healthy and our body fit and strong. So if you are going to zip milk completely, how do you make sure you get the daily supply that your body needs?

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The table below should help

Foods rich in Calcium The dose of Calcium per 100gm serving
Almonds 265 mg
Collard Greens 232 mg
Kale 150 mg
Kidney Beans 143 mg
Spinach 130 mg
Chickpeas 105 mg
Walnut 98 mg
Peanuts 92 mg
Dates 39 mg
Featured, Today

Get Over Your Hangover!!

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Wouldn’t it be great if you had a magic pill to prevent your inevitable hangover the next morning after a round of drinks in the evening or night? Even if you haven’t thought about it don’t worry. Mother Nature has! You will be surprised to know that there are a variety of foods that you can get easily which will prevent your hangover from ruining your Saturday and Sunday. You can choose according to your taste from a bunch of fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, and eggs and drink to your merriment secure in the knowledge that you know how to prevent a hangover the next morning.

If you are a vegetarian you can create a food plan that will include the following items like all types of nuts [strictly the eating kind], mangoes, watermelons, bananas, blueberries, and coconuts. If you are a non-vegetarian then you can choose from a range of meats, shellfish, salmon, and eggs. Moreover, there is another lip-smacking item that everybody can consume without any second thoughts – Dark chocolate! You get a hangover because alcohol is a diuretic which makes a person urinate more which leads to lightheadedness and thirst which leads to dehydration. Alcohol can trigger an inflammatory response from your immune system which can and does affect your appetite, memory, and concentration. Alcohol consumption also causes stomach irritation and results in a drop in blood sugar which leads to moodiness, tiredness, and general weakness. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it?

Just Beat It!

There is a way to beat all this and it’s easy enough for you to do it. Eating these foods is your weapon against a hangover and allows you to enjoy your favorite drinks without worrying against any side effects. Eggs contain nutrients and simple proteins that are gently smooth on your stomach and prevent nausea and digestive upset. Bananas contain potassium which will replenish your body’s potassium levels while their fiber and sugar promote digestion. Mangoes, watermelons, and blueberries contain high levels of nutrients, antioxidants, and electrolytes which are essential for your body especially after a night of heavy drinks. 

Meats have high levels of proteins that break down into amino acids which are essential as alcohol consumption is known to result in amino acid deficiencies. Salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids which are known to decrease inflammation in your body which can be caused by drinking alcohol. Then you always have the old reliable – good old drinking water. That’s right! You must drink healthy amounts of water so that the water you lost due to urination can be replenished immediately. You also drink coconut water as they contain lots of electrolytes that are needed by your body after a good round of drinking.

Have a Good Time

So you don’t have to worry the next time you crack open a new bottle of alcohol to party with your friends or just having a drink quietly all by yourself. These foods will work for you and prevent a hangover the next morning. So go ahead and enjoy your weekend with your favorite drinks. Mother Nature’s bounty is with you!

Featured, Meal Preps & Recipes

Fresh Spinach Health Soup

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Fresh Spinach Health Soup

This soup makes a very healthy dinner option. This Spinach soup is loaded with vitamins and minerals, such as potassium, magnesium, and vitamins B6, B9 and E. You should have a bowl of this soup 3 hours prior to bedtime for maximum weight loss impact. 

  • 1 liter Vegetable Broth
  • 4 cups Fresh Spinach Leaves (Chopped)
  • 1 unit Red Onion (Finely Chopped)
  • 2 units Tomatoes (Cubed)
  • 1 tsp Ginger Paste
  • 1 tsp Garlic Paste
  • 1/2 tsp Oregano Seasoning
  • 1/2 tsp Paprika
  • 6 sprays Olive Oil Spray
  • 1/2 tsp Salt (As per taste)
  • 1/2 tsp Pepper (As per taste)

  1. Keep a big soup pot on medium heat. Spray Olive Oil Spray. Add in Ginger Paste, Garlic Paste, and Onions.  

  2. Once Onions turn Golden Brown, add in the tomatoes. As the tomatoes start cooking, add in the spinach. 

  3. Once spinach is cooked, add the vegetable broth. Add Oregano and Paprika. Finally add Salt and Pepper. 

  4. Once the soup is cooked, let it cool down. Blender it with a hand blender. You can garnish it with sauteed mushrooms and cilantro (optional). 

Featured, Today

Pleasant Surprises

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Saturday is a day, full of errands. I wake up early as usual.  Once we finish breakfast, my son accompanies me on my errands. We first get a car wash, which my son loves. Then we go across the plaza and drop off and pick up my laundry. Next stop is usually the grocery store. We normally go to the same neighborhood grocery store. We know all the aisles, so the entire grocery shopping becomes faster and easier. This grocery store also carries a lot of the grocery that I use these days for my healthy food cooking, so works out well.

My son also knows some of the aisles, so whether its to pick up his Oreo Cookies or Cheese Strings, he knows where they are kept.

As usual, yesterday being a Saturday, we both stepped out. We made it to the grocery store. I opened my grocery list app and started shopping and putting things in the cart.  My son picked up some of his things and started walking towards the check out line. The store was rather busy, so we were in the line for about 10 minutes. We came close to the checkout, and my son saw Kinder Eggs. He picked one up and that’s when our turn to check out came. We kept all our groceries on the checkout belt. That’s when it happened. The check out cashier was a familiar face. We had never talked to each other but always shared our HI’s and byes. I had not seen her for a while, so it was a pleasant surprise to see her as well.

She looked at me and said- ‘Boy, have you lost weight? You look great.’  I said thank you. Then I told her that I had not seen her in the store for a few months. She told me that she was away on maternity leave and had joined back just a few days ago. I then told her that I started my weight loss process about a year ago, right about when she left and now that she is back, she gets to see my transformation. I did not expect for a bit, that my local grocery store cashier, whose name I did not even know, will see the weight loss and mention it to me. She asked me for weight loss advice. She wanted to lose all the baby fat she gained over her maternity period. I gave her some tips and told her we will keep chatting every week and check on each other’s progress.

We finished our checkout and started walking back to the car. My son asked me if the cashier knew us. I told him no, she does not know us but now she does. I had a smile on my face, that a stranger, recognized my weight loss. What a great feeling it was. I am looking forward to meeting her again next Saturday.