• Glenny's Home
• Topics
  • What's New
  • What's Hot
  • Diet Q&A's
  • Healthy Recipes
  • Diet Cartoons
  • Diet Videos
  • Glenny's Reviews
  • Health News
• Submit a Post
• Hot Posts
• Shop for Healthy Snacks

RSS

Look More Toned…by TONIGHT!!!

Once again, Women’s Health comes to the rescue with toning moves that will make your muscles and shape appear more toned and strong…by this evening. Give it a shot!

How it works: Normally, when you’re lifting weights, your muscles contract and apply pressure to the blood vessels running through them. This impedes the normal flow of blood and oxygen (that’s why weight training is called an anaerobic exercise). When you’re done, the pressure subsides and backed-up blood and oxygen floods in, temporarily expanding your muscles. That increase in bloodflow is what can give you a post-workout pump.

To get the maximum amount of volume, just tweak your current workout a bit: Lower the weight and increase the number of repetitions you perform. A study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise concluded that the time between the end of your workout and the return of blood to your muscles is 44 percent longer when you perform 15 repetitions at 60 percent of your maximum compared with 4 repetitions at 90 percent. And the longer it takes for the blood to fill your muscles, the longer your post-exercise look will last.

Here’s a part-by-part workout for a maximum arms or abs pump in minimum time.

Chest
Perform as many pushups as you can in 1 minute. Without resting, move into a modified pushup position, your knees on the floor. Perform as many modified pushups as you can in 1 minute. Then, raise yourself back up into pushup position (knees off the floor now) and lower your chest until it’s about 2 inches off the floor. Hold that position for 20 seconds—or as long as you can. Rest for 30 to 45 seconds and repeat the sequence for a total of 3 sets.

Arms
Do these two exercises in row. Repeat the sequence three times.

• Bench dips: Place your hands behind you on the edge of a bench and your feet on another bench a few feet in front of you. Ask someone to place a few small weight plates on your lap. Lower your body toward the floor until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Keep your torso straight. Pause, then press back to the starting position. As you fatigue, ask your spotter to remove one weight plate at a time and continue until you can’t do any more dips with only your body weight. Then, place your feet flat on the floor with your knees bent as if you were seated in an invisible chair; lower your body as before, completing as many repetitions as you can.

• Preacher curls: Holding a curl bar (a short barbell with curves in it for your hands), sit at a preacher curl stand. Lower the weight so your arms are straight, then curl it up so your hands are pointed toward the ceiling. Start with a weight that’s about 80 percent of your maximum and do as many repetitions as you can. Remove 10 to 15 percent of the weight and start curling again without rest. Continue removing weight and curling to failure until you can no longer curl the bar by itself.

Abs
To pump your abs, start your abs workout and target your obliques. By tiring out your obliques first, you’ll take them out of the equation when you work your eight-pack rectus abdominis muscle, making your standard ab workout even more effective.

Recipe of the Week: Warm & Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa

Quinoa for breakfast? Hey, why not…it’s a great source of protein, and Heidi has, as usual, put her culinary genius to excellent work in this wonderful recipe from her blog, 101cookbooks.com. Thanks Heidi!

Warm & Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa Recipe

I used a red quinoa here, but you can use whatever kind you like, white/buff colored seems to be the most common. Also, a few notes and tips from the book: low-fat soy milk may replace the low fat milk, blueberries may replace the blackberries, dark honey may replace the agave nectar, and walnuts may replace the pecans.

1 cup organic 1% low fat milk
1 cup water
1 cup organic quinoa, (hs note: rinse quinoa)
2 cups fresh blackberries, organic preferred
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted*
4 teaspoons organic agave nectar, such as Madhava brand

Combine milk, water and quinoa in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer 15 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Turn off heat; let stand covered 5 minutes. Stir in blackberries and cinnamon; transfer to four bowls and top with pecans. Drizzle 1 teaspoon agave nectar over each serving.

Serves 4.

*While the quinoa cooks, roast the pecans in a 350F degree toaster oven for 5 to 6 minutes or in a dry skillet over medium heat for about 3 minutes.

My Favorite Snacks

Today is my birthday, so I get to be selfish for a bit here and share some of my all-time favorite, totally healthy and totally unhealthy, snacks-for-all-occasions. Some of them may come with stories too…

• “Camp snack”: I started eating this while camping in Northern California on a beach where the wind was so strong I couldn’t get a fire going to cook anything. Camp snack is pepper jack cheese, corn chips, and Cholula hot sauce. Place a cube of cheese on a chip and top with a drop or two of hot sauce. Eat & repeat.
• Cucumber salad: This simple combo of cucumber pieces, red onion pieces, a little olive oil & rice wine vinegar is an awesome snack on a hot day, or with a spicy meal.
• String cheese, and I still eat it like kids do, tearing it lengthwise into stringy strips.
• Chocolate almond milk. This is my postrun reward/recovery drink.
• Dreyer’s  FrozenFruit Bars (NOT the no sugar added kind). At 45 calories each, I can go through a box in a day. We buy boxes in bulk.
• Glenny’s Fruit & Nut Bars. Can’t get enough of them when I’m out climbing. Great source of energy and tastes a whole lot better than soy protein isolate, which is pretty much what every other “energy bar” out there is based on.
• Similarly, mixed nuts, sunflower seeds, and dried cranberries. This mix is always in my climbing bag, my messenger bag, my locker at work, my kitchen cabinet.
• Hummus and pita chips. I make the pita chips myself with whole wheat pitas that I slice into 6 triangles each and broil on both sides until toasty. Also any raw veggies and hummus.
• Edamame with sea salt. Mmmm…

Happy snacking!

Unusual Healthy Summer Snacks

Chirimen-Jakko...mmm!

While surfing the myriad boards, forums, blogs and other sources around the web devited to snacking, I came across some rather interesting ideas. Check ‘em out!

• frozen peas, grapes (dry well and put in container) , cherry tomatoes, melon, berries,
• cold curried chickpeas
• edamame with a little salt
• cut up raw fennel, it’s crunchy and tastes like licorice
• homemade frozen yogurt pops (freeze regular yogurt in molds)
• plantain chips (fried in healthy oil, like olive oil)
• little dried anchovies, called chirimen-jakko in japanese. Sometimes they come in little packets mixed with almonds.
• peanut butter balls (peanut butter, honey, wheat germ, oats, powdered milk) frozen
• cottage cheese with potato chips
• steamed rice, toasted/oiled/salted nori, and kimchi
• pickled pigs feet
• apples & mayo

Have any strange snack foods to share? We’d love to hear from you…

Happy Monday!

Start the week off right with a bit of humor thanks to photobucket.com:

Food Trends 2010: Looking Forward

Yesterday I reposted respected nutritionist and writer Janet Helm’s food trend predictions for 2010. These kinds of predictions always amaze me: sometimes because of their accuracy, sometimes because of how they miss the mark. I could never forecast trends, in part because I’m usually more interested in seeing how they pan out. So today, that’s what I’m doing. Here’s Helm’s list of food trends…this time with my commentary on how accurate she is.

• Food cocooning — Certainly this one is true, as we as a society have less disposable income. Janet’s synopsis of this puts a more positive, feel-good spin on the concept—it even sounds cute, “food cocooning”—but the reality is, eating in is a lot cheaper than going out.
• Simplicity — True to some degree, though the restaurants that serve menus with an average of 54 ingredients per dish have & will continue to do so.
• Customization – See, this, to me, is the exact opposite of “simplicity”. I would also argue that it’s not true. There’s certainly been diversification, as market capitalism demands to keep the economy—even a weak one—going, but not really so much customization. Also, this is overgeneralized. There’s some more customization in the energy-foods markets (more products geared towards women, etc.), and there’s always customization in the homes of picky, stubborn eaters, but just “customization” for “individual’s personal needs”? Not really a thriving trend.
• Industrialized food backlash — Not really happening. Yes, there’s some activism out there, but as a society we tend to take a rather laissez-faire approach to our fare. Yeah, we know, that steak comes from some slaughterhouse where cattle are pumped full of drugs and kept in squalid conditions, and that’s terrible, but hey, they were 2-for-1 at the food mart. Economics, once again, trumps moralism.
• Global comfort food – Um, when did this trend ever go out?
• Local — She mentions “global mega brands” which to me is the opposite of local, but otherwise hits the nail on the head. Local is huge, burgeoning, and not showing any signs of decreasing in popularity.
• Digital dining — Absolutely true, though many smaller, ethnic, local restaurants seem somewhat reluctant to get on board with this one, probably due to lack of funds for investment.
• Street food — Haven’t seen an upswing in this, but street food never really goes out of popularity. Again, not really a notable “trend” for 2010.
• Need for treats — We certainly need treats; they’re inexpensive, immediate rewards. Again, though, this isn’t anything new or trendy. Need for treats will always be around.
• Planet-conscious eating — Absolutely true. Larger supermarket chains in particular are all remodeling their stores to include organic-product sections, grass-fed beef, sustainably-harvested produce, etc.
• National health — Janet gets a gold star for this one, but with Michelle Obama spearheading the national health movement, it was a given.
• Changing restaurants — Agreed: restaurants will be more accessible, less pricey, and offer more deals to weather the slumped economy.
• Frozen food — Most especially, emphasis on “fresh frozen” and how frozen fruits and veggies can actually be more nutritionally sound than fresh ones.

What I think she left off the list:

• Salt as enemy #1. The wars on HFCS and trans fats continue, but now salt is public health’s greatest threat, largely due to its being added to almost everything.
• Fresh foods instead of preservative-laced convenience foods.
• Veggies and grains have gained huge prominence in dietary awareness, especially fresh vegetables and whole grains.
• Healthy snacking continues to grow in popularity and importance to diet. 3 squares a day just isn’t cutting it, and people are realizing this more and more.
• Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate all the time. BPA-free Nalgenes, Klean Kanteens, and other reusable water containers flying off the shelves and being toted by consumers in record rates shows that we’re a country obsessed with making sure we’re never thirsty.
• Sustainability Compostables, reusables, post-consumer recycled packaging and other sustainable packaging products are becoming more and more widely used. At Whole Foods, receipts don’t print automatically anymore: your checker will ask you if you want yours and, since most people don’t, have cut down on massive paper waste & recycling costs in doing so. Sunflower Markets prints their receipts on the front and back to use less paper per receipt. And so many people are using reusable cloth grocery bags now that the LA Times ran an article recently exhorting eco-savvy shoppers to wash their bags, citing a randomly-conducted study that showed a whopping 83 of 84 bags tested were contaminated with bacteria.

There you have it. What are your thoughts?

Food Trends 2010: A Look Back

From registered dietician and blogger Janet Helm, predictions for this year’s biggest food trends. Now that we’re seven months in, how many of these do you see really happening? Any ideas for others that should be on the list?

• Food cocooning — A return to the comforts of home, resurgence of family dinner and dinner parties
• Simplicity — Few ingredients, simple preparations for brands and restaurants
• Customization – Products and services personalized to fit an individual’s needs
• Industrialized food backlash — Growing voice of consumers, cynicism against industry
• Global comfort food – Including baked comfort
• Local — Will gain even more prominence, including farmers’ markets and global mega brands
• Digital dining — Increase of food-based phone apps. social networking, food by mail, online reservations
• Street food — Dining trucks, street vendors, informal and authentic ethnic food, part of anti-restaurant movement
• Need for treats — Feel good, trade up,  growth of mini desserts
• Planet-conscious eating — More mainstreaming of green, sustainable, fair trade, ethical eating
• National health — Increase in programs, initiatives, products and even legislation to improve our health, especially diabetes and heart disease
• Changing restaurants — Will continue to evolve with initiatives such as no reservations, happy hours, value pricing and a move toward more local ingredients
• Frozen food — New positioning, shaking the “cheap and cheerful” image of the past, evolving toward freshness locked in, extension of the pantry and total convenience

Check back tomorrow for my thoughts on just how many of these “trends” have some to fruition…and what’s been left off the list.

Banish Summer Stress!

From the lovely folks at Women’s Health, 8 Ways to De-Stress This Summer. Quick synopses below; click here to get to the full article.

1. Unplug Yourself from the Office

2. Create a Chill-Out Routine

3. Take It Outside

4. Find a Balance Between Rest and Activity

5. Plan Long Weekends

6. Become an Escape Artist

7. Get a Hobby

8. Stop Tension In Its Tracks

Recipe of the Week: Herb-Roasted Salmon, Potatoes, Carrots, and Sugar Snap Peas

Here’s what Bon Appetit has to say about this recipe:

In the past, the only fish many home cooks could get was nondescript frozen, breaded white fish that was pretty bland. Today, even landlocked cities have seafood counters swimming with delicious (and colorful) options. One of our favorites is beautifully pink wild salmon. It looks great, tastes wonderful, and is packed with good-for-you omega-3 fatty acids. Plus, wild salmon (ideally from Alaska) is better for the environment than farmed salmon. Round out the meal with a side of your favorite mix of seasonal vegetables (preferably from your local farmers’ market) and—if you’re craving yet more color—lemon wedges.

Here’s what I have to say about this recipe:

Do all your prep beforehand. If you hate or don’t particularly find yourself fond of a minor spice ingredient, use less of or don’t use it, i.e. I used half the amount of mint because I’m just not that big a fan of mint in yogurt sauce (and this after spending weeks in Greece!). If you don’t like yogurt or tahini or carrots on the other hand, this recipe may not be for you…although I have done a “quick” version using only the fish and potatoes, a little garlic & green onions tossed into some sour cream, and a big green salad on the side, in the interests of time (check out my Favorite Salad For Two if you’re going to go this route…it’s delish!)

Get everything as ready as it can be before it needs to be mixed, whisked, sprinkled, diced, de-stringed, etc. Read the recipe the whole way through and do whatever you can in advance. If you do, this recipe is a snap, if a lengthy snap, to put together, and absolutely the most delicious fish dinner—and I grew up, in part, in Florida—I’ve ever had.

Herb-Roasted Salmon, Potatoes, Carrots, and Sugar Snap Peas

Ingredients

• 2 green onions, chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus additional for brushing
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed, divided
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel, divided
• 4 6-ounce salmon fillets (preferably wild)
• 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
• 1 tablespoon tahini (sesame seed paste)*
• 12 ounces fingerling potatoes, scrubbed, halved lengthwise
• 1 bunch baby carrots, trimmed
• 8 ounces sugar snap peas, strings removed
• Lemon wedges

* Available at some supermarkets, natural foods stores, and Middle Eastern markets.

Preparation

• Toss green onions, dill, cilantro, and mint in small bowl. Set herb mixture aside. Toast coriander seeds in small dry skillet over medium heat until slightly darker in color and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Cool. Crush in mortar with pestle, or place in plastic bag and coarsely crush with mallet or rolling pin.
• Whisk 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 garlic clove, 1/2 teaspoon lemon peel, and half of crushed coriander in 11x7x2-inch glass baking dish. Sprinkle salmon with salt and pepper; add to baking dish and turn to coat. Let salmon marinate at least 15 minutes and up to 30 minutes.
• Mix yogurt, tahini, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 garlic clove, and 1/2 teaspoon lemon peel in small bowl. Stir in half of herb mixture.
• Position 1 rack in top third and 1 rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 400°F. Brush 2 large rimmed baking sheets with oil. Toss potatoes, carrots, remaining coriander, and 2 tablespoons oil in large bowl. Spread potato mixture on 1 baking sheet; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast on top oven rack until almost tender, about 18 minutes.
• Meanwhile, arrange salmon on second oiled sheet. Toss snap peas with remaining marinade in dish; stir into potato mixture.
• Transfer sheet with potato mixture to lower oven rack. Place sheet with salmon on upper oven rack. Roast salmon until just opaque in center and vegetables until tender, about 8 minutes.
• Transfer salmon to platter. Mix remaining herb mixture into vegetables; spoon vegetables around salmon. Garnish with lemon wedges; serve with yogurt sauce.

This may well be my all-time favorite fish recipe. Enjoy!

Trick Your Body!

OK, generally speaking, I’m not into tricking your body. I’m into being honest with your body: about what it needs, about what it wants, and about how to draw the line between the two. Sometimes, however, we all need a little trickery. And this is where one of my fave publications once again comes to the rescue: Women’s Health on healthy ways to trick your body into thinking it’s full (click here for the full article).

The short version:

• Rise and Shine With Protein: A Purdue University study found that eating lean protein (such as Canadian bacon, egg whites, or low-fat yogurt) at breakfast keeps you satisfied longer than if you were to consume it at other times of the day.
• Chow On Potatoes (Really!): The no-carb craze made spuds out to be dietary villains, but these starches actually have appetite-slaying superpowers.
• Embrace A Little Fat: Oleic acid, an unsaturated fat found in olive oil, nuts, and avocados, helps quash hunger, according to a study in the journal Cell Metabolism.
• Get Sweaty: A study published in the American Journal of Physiology found that 60 minutes of high-intensity cardio can reduce appetite for up to two hours afterward.
• Gobble Up Grapefruit: In a study at the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego, people who ate half a grapefruit with each meal lost an average of 3.6 pounds in three months.
• Chew On This: A University of Rhode Island study found that people who chewed gum for one hour in the morning consumed 67 fewer calories at lunch and didn’t compensate by eating more later in the day.
• Take A Whiff: One study found that people who inhaled a peppermint scent every two hours ate 2,700 fewer calories per week than they normally did—that’s nearly a one-pound loss!

Enjoy your trickery…and weight loss the healthy, simple way!

Next Page »

Featured Video

  Trim and Tone Your Abs Video
(Click Image to Watch Video)



»Click Here to Watch


---

• Recent Posts

  • Yummy
  • January 2012 Sweepstakes: Enter for a chance to win $100 of Glenny’s snacks!
  • Small Steps to a Healthier New You!
  • WIN $100 of FREE Glenny’s Snacks (November Sweepstakes)
  • “I just wanted to say THANK YOU”
  • “I am nuts about it”
  • “I just want to say how good your cranberry and almonds bar is”
  • “Thank you so much for making such yummy, healthy treats”
  • I can say is wow……
  • Thank you! Thank you!