Spinach Strawberry Salad

Ingredients

1/4 red onion, thinly sliced

• 2 (6-oz.) bags baby spinach
• 1 (16-oz.) container strawberries, quartered
• 1 (4-oz.) package crumbled blue cheese
• 1/2 cup sliced toasted almonds
• Bottled red wine vinaigrette
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation

1. 1. Toss together red onion and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl. Drizzle with red wine vinaigrette; sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Note:

For a tasty flavor combination, replace the almonds, blue cheese, and red wine vinaigrette with pecans, goat cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette.

Bridget Drennen, Atlanta, Georgia, Southern Living
APRIL 2006

Cabbage with Mango Slaw Vinaigrette

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup chopped mango
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 5 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
• 1/2 cup diced mango
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
• 3 tablespoons chopped toasted cashews

1. Preparation
2. 1. Combine chopped mango, canola oil, lime juice, and salt in a mini food processor; process until smooth. Place cabbage, diced mango, and green onions in a large bowl, tossing to combine. Drizzle cabbage mixture with pureed mango mixture; toss to coat. Sprinkle with cashews.

Carolyn Tesini, Cooking Light 
JANUARY 2014

Healthy Habits Challenge!

You and all your friends are invited to a FREE Healthy Habits 7-Day Challenge starting Monday, August 11, 2014! The object of this healthy challenge is to implement healthy habits, get in a little exercise and have fun doing it! Anyone and everyone is invited. We'll meet in a private group here on Facebook. The challenge will be filled with supportive people who want to be healthy, vibrant people.

The foundation of my nutrition coaching program is to work with people one-on-one to develop healthy habits that will last a lifetime. My belief is that, for some people, it can be very overwhelming to try to fix everything at once. For those folks, I highly recommend working with me one-on-one. However, for some people it can be good to take a bit more of a running start. For those people I have developed this Healthy Habits 7-Day Challenge. But, anyone is welcome - those who like to start at a crawl or those who like to hit the ground running (or anyone in between). If you're considering nutrition coaching this FREE challenge will give you an overview of my program.

Each day I will introduce the Healthy Habit of the Day that you'll be working on. Also, we will have an exercise challenge (it won't be too hard, I promise!). And there will be encouraging words throughout the day. I’ll be there to support you all the way – as will your fellow challengers!
Click the link below to join the group!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/aug2014healthyhabits/

Can't wait to have you part of the group!! It's going to be FUN!

Day 4: Consistency & the Environments We Choose

Over the past few days we’ve been discussing the importance of consistency when it comes to meeting our health goals (or any goal). On day two we talked about input/output – what we choose to feed our brains and how it can either help or harm our efforts. Yesterday, we discussed our associations – the people we spend time with. Do we spend time with people who are on a similar journey toward health (or are already healthy) or do we hang out with people who continually drag us into an unhealthy place? Today we discuss environment.

Darren Hardy says, in “The Compound Effect”, “The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself. Sometimes you have to get out of that environment to see that dream fulfilled.” This may be where you live, the restaurants you frequent, or even the gym you attend.

That last one might shock you but let’s consider the gym for a moment. Is your gym one in which people go primarily to socialize or is it one in which people go to exercise? I’ve been in both. There is nothing wrong with socializing or making friends at the gym. Hey, I’m glad you’re going to a gym – but make sure it’s one that meets your goals. And make sure it’s an environment where you are comfortable. Sometimes this isn’t the $10/month gym – it’s the $49/month gym.

What about your house? Is this a place you can succeed with your goals? Or is it filled with junk food? Or your office desk, do you have a candy bowl on your desk? If you have the candy bowl and you’re constantly taking a little bit every day – get rid of the candy bowl. Another environment which often derails us is the restaurants we visit. If you’re always choosing the place with great BBQ and those delicious little rolls over the place that has amazing, healthy salads, you’re going to the wrong place.

So choose your environments carefully. Make the places you hang out most work for you. If where you spend your time is causing you to not meet your goals and keep you in that unhealthy, overweight, sick and tired place it’s time to change.

So today, think about the places you find yourself in. Do they help you get healthier, thinner, more vibrant or do they keep you unhealthy!

Here’s to a day filled with healthy choices!

Day 3: Consistency and the influences that drag us down…

This week we have been discussing the importance of consistency and the impact it has on meeting our weight loss goals (or any life goal). Yesterday, we discussed input/output influences and how what we allow our brains to absorb can greatly impact the choices we make. Today, we’re going to talk about what might be a tough one….who we spend our time with.

In the “The Compound Effect,” by Darren Hardy, which was the springboard for this discussion, he asks the question, “Who’s Influencing You?” His mentor, Jim Rohn, a successful “business philosopher”, teaches that we are “the combined average of the five people we hang around most.” So ask yourself a few questions: Do the people I hang out with the most embody the type of person I want to be?; Do they take care of themselves the way I should take care of myself? Do they eat the way I should be eating? Do they care about their health?

If you have truly decided to lose weight and be a healthier person and you answered no to more than one of those questions…perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate who you spend the most of your time with. I’m not suggesting you dump your friends. But I am suggesting that if you truly want to be successful with your health goals it might be necessary to choose to spend less time with them. It’s like this – if you’ve decided to drink less how easy is that going to be if you’re going out with your “party friends” every weekend (and maybe even during the week)? Or maybe you’re trying to quit smoking? Are you going to be successful if you hang out with smokers? Probably not. Their influence is going to drag you down. You’ll end up deciding to have just that one drink or that you will just not smoke and next thing you know you’ve had three. It’s the same way with any other unhealthy habits. Unhealthy people don’t influence you to be healthy – they influence you to be unhealthy.

To wrap it up – if you want to be healthy and lose weight you have to hang out people who support you and live out the healthy lifestyle that you need to be successful.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss one more influence that can either help or hinder us: environment.

Have a great day!

Day 2: Consistency: Input/Output, what we put in matters!

As I wrote yesterday, I’ve been reading a great book by Darren Hardy titled, “The Compound Effect.” Consistency is imperative to our success in becoming the healthier, more vibrant people we wish to be. We cannot go infits and spurts and find the success we want. Today, I am going to begin a discussion on the influences/choices we make that work against our meeting the goals we have laid out for ourselves.

Input/output has a huge influence on us in so many ways. I’m betting that your first reaction to reading that is “She’s going to talk about what I eat.” Believe it or not, I’m not going to discuss food in this article at all. I’m going to discuss what you put in your mind. Our mind is one of the most powerful tools we have to either reaching our goals or falling short. Not just when it comes to weight loss but with ANY goal. How we spend our time feeding our minds can have a huge impact and we need to spend our time wisely.

Celebrity magazines can be one of the worst influencers out there. Yes, they can be fun, mindless reading. The bodies in those magazines are unrealistic, photo shopped, often times unhealthy bodies. When we spend time looking at them our brain adopts a warped pattern of thinking that they are normal, average people. The message isn’t in there at a conscious level – it’s completely unconscious. Our unconscious mind is as big an enemy as our conscious minds. Spend time reading magazines that benefit you in a positive way.

Every year the average American spends over 4 hours watching television. How many of you sit and mindlessly eat in front of the television? Now think about how many commercials you watch that are food or restaurant commercials? Don’t you think they influence your choice to get up and grab some food? Even if you don’t like whatever has been peddled to you during the commercial the “food center” of your brain is flicked on. Solve this by only watching television shows that have been recorded and then blaze through those commercials not allowing them to influence your mind and cause you to mindlessly eat. Bonus tip: if you still find yourself heading for the fridge, try doing a simple exercise like plank or squats during the commercial. Keep your body busy and out of the kitchen.

What we feed our brains is so important. Don’t spend time feeding your brain in ways that just harm your efforts to a healthier life. Tomorrow I will discuss what can be one of the biggest influencer towards meeting or not meeting our goals in life – who we spend our time with. Until then, put down the magazines and limit the television commercials that negatively influence you and derail you from meeting your goals.

Consistency: The Key to Success

I’ve been reading a book, “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy, and it has had a tremendous impact on my life. It has inspired me to write a 5-day piece on consistency and dealing with those things that influence you away from your weight loss goals.

Read on….

Weight loss often comes the same way water comes from an old fashion hand-pumped water well. It takes a bit of work to get the water really flowing. We stand there and pump and pump and pump and from the surface it looks like nothing is happening. No water. But something IS happening down below the surface that we cannot see. Pressure is building and we just need to have patience; keep pumping and the water will come.

Same thing goes for our weight loss efforts. Often times we improve our diets, start getting in a little exercise and on the surface, very little happens or, worse yet, nothing happens. The scale doesn’t budge much (or at all), the clothes don’t fit any loser, and we really don’t feel any better. This is where consistency comes in, we need to keep priming the pump – because improving our health and losing weight takes time, patience and consistency. It takes slow, steady, consistent work. We need to keep at it – keep doing those new healthy habits even when those results slow (or stop!) because underneath the surface big things are happening. We just need to trust and keep going. Consistency is the key. I know I sound like a broken record, don’t I?! But I want to really get that point across. Consistency is the key. We just can’t go in fits and starts and expect to see the results we’re hoping for.

Consistency, or “Sticktuitiveness” will get you where you want to be. You just have to trust your efforts are building toward a great pay off.

Tune in tomorrow for the first tip on dealing with the influences/choices that derail us from being consistent.

See you then!

Feel free to tag a friend(s) who you think might benefit from this series in the comments below!