Making the Healthy Switch to Olive Oil

Have you ever found yourself eating too much of something like cake and then when the scale shows those extra pounds declaring to yourself that you are never going to eat cake again.  No matter how much you really want to give up eating cake most people that make declarations like that never make it very far.  One of the reasons why you fail when you say that you'll never to do something again is because it is too extreme of a jump.  Because there is no instant gratification for giving it up, you don't all of a sudden lose all of the weight you gained by quitting eating cake.  So in a society driven by instant gratification it is too big of a temptation to get frustrated and give up and continue with our bad habits.  I have been guilty of being a yo-yo dieter for so much of my adult life often going to extreme measures of preventing myself from eating my favorite foods will forcing myself to eat terrible things like those awful prepackaged meals from NutriSystem.  But nothing ever worked because I couldn't stick to it.  But a year and a half ago my husband and I talked about how we needed to make some real changes to our diet and lifestyle other wise, so we decided to make some smaller more realistic goals.  Small things like, I started buying brown rice and whole wheat pasta.  We stopped keeping the house stocked with chips and instead got granola bars and trail mix.  We didn't make all of the changes at once but over time we added and took away more things, and over time we turned our changes  into habits.  We don't even think about the changes any more they are so apart of our life that it feels normal.

Another of the small changes was I switched to Olive Oil, like Olivari Olive Oil, for almost all of my cooking, from everything from baking to frying.  Some people feel that the taste of olive oil isn't good for certain foods but what I found was that I am so use to it that I don't notice it.  Olive oil has the lowest amount of saturated fat and contains more monosaturated fat a healthier type of fat that can lower your risk of heart disease by reducing the total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in your blood, it is considered the healthiest oil to cook with. Substituting olive oil was a small change but one that has reduced the calorie count and fat count of every dish I make.  Just another of the small changes that made a big difference in mine and my husband's life.

If you want more information about the benefits of olive oil and other facts you can check out this article. 

Honey Sesame Tofu

If you have been following this blog for a while you might be asking yourself, "What is with all of the tofu?"  No I am not a vegetarian as many of the meat articles I write will show.  You see tofu has gotten a bad image among most meat eaters, myself included until a few years ago.  I remember as a child, walking through the markets in China smelling the stench of the fresh tofu being sold.  The smell of it, the texture, nothing about it screamed it should be eaten by me.  But a few years ago when we first discussed getting healthier, as well as trying to cut down our food budget, my husband encouraged me to give tofu a chance.  My husband is one of those people that will always try something at least once, he is by far a much braver foodie that I am and I am grateful for that because he pushes me to experiment.  Not only was tofu a healthy, low fat form of protein but seeing as how we live near several Asian grocery stores it was also incredibly cheap.

Now I could never completely give up my love for meat but I knew that if I limited my intake, especially of red meat, and increased my protein from things like beans and tofu that I would start to see a change in my health, and boy did I ever.  The great thing is that over time our choices turned into habits we don't even really think about eating healthier any more, we just do. And these good habits I might add have come in handy for me now that I am 18 weeks pregnant.  My doctor has been amazed at how healthy my pregnancy has been, and with me only gaining 2 pounds so far she has predicted that if I continue this path during my pregnancy that I will lose all of the baby fat very soon after I give birth.  For me, someone who has always struggled in my adult years to get my weight under control, this has been such wonderful news.  Not only am I healthier but so is my baby.

I share this because I believe that if you can make a few small changes to your diet, that over time you would see life changing results that are permanent.  Because it isn't about going on a diet and depriving yourself all at one of your favorite things.  It is about the small changes that you make over time to develop healthy habits that you will carry with you throughout your life.  We allow ourselves to have a nice steak every once in a while and definitely give ourselves treats.  But what we have learned is how to eat healthier on a daily basis, it is so routine that we don't even thing about it any more. 

Crockpot Chicken, Artichoke and Spinach that won't kill the waistline

In response to my first request from my reader Kate Jones, I challenged myself to come up with a new crockpot recipe that was healthy and cheap.  And while this one might tote the line slightly on the healthy part I am so excited to share it with you.   This truly is one of those dishes that will have people going back for more.

When Kate gave me my new challenge my first thought was to look in my pantry and freezer and see what I had on hand, to give me some inspiration.  I saw that I had some chicken and some frozen spinach in my freezer and it got me thinking about one of my favorite appetizers 'Spinach and Artichoke dip'.  So I thought 'what if I could create a version of that dip that was slightly healthier and also make it a meal instead of just a dip'.

So I set off exploring the web for inspiration.  There were a few people that had similar ideas but either the ingredients they used were too fattening or it required more work then I wanted to put into a crockpot recipe so I decided to do what every good cook does, experiment. Not all experiments work well, you can ask my husband about that one.  I have had some dishes that had us going out for a takeaway instead. But you never know until you try. So I bought a few ingredients that I thought would be nice in the dish and threw everything in and waited to discover what I had created and whether or not it would be a disaster or something worth writing about. 

I can truthfully say not only was it a success but it was one of the simplest crockpot dishes I have made in a very long time.