Trudy’s Tips For Wellness & To Avoid Stress-Related Eating
How you buy, prepare and eat foods can affect your wellness goals. Here are Trudy’s tips to help the time poor and health conscious (yes … eliminate your excuses).
TRUDY’s TIPS for wellness and to avoid stress-related eating.
Avoid emotional eating
Many people respond to stress by craving (and indulging in) fatty, carby comfort food, you’re not alone but you do need to think about an alternative. Try taking a walk around the block or taking a couple of deep breaths and not using food as the stress reliever. Try some sugar free gum to freshen the mouth. If you want something sugary go for some strawberries or similar fruit that wont cause huge blood sugar spikes or added deposits on your belly!
Crunch Time: Munch an apple, celery, broccoli or carrots with hummus. Crunching these foods will help provide a nice stress reliever out without packing on the pounds- do something for yourself rather than letting stress get the better of you. Have these handy at your desk or office refrigerator. (ditch the Peanut butter with apple)
Plan ahead
This may seem obvious, but planning a week’s menu can make that week run much more smoothly. Sit down on one day and pick 4 good nutritious stock standard meals to make throughout the week, go shopping and just have those ingredients on hand. Always cook with leftovers in mind so that you can have leftovers for lunch the next day. If you don’t have junk food in the house you won’t eat it!! Don’t buy it!! This will also save on the grocery bill. Junk food is expensive. Real food is cheaper in more ways than one and will keep you out of that ugly hospital gown down the path.
Have a back up
Maybe it’s traffic or a late night meeting; whatever the reason, sometimes life gets in the way. If you find you’ve run out of time for the meal you intended to cook, it pays to have an emergency recipe ready to go. Eg ground turkey/lean beef or chicken tacos or all you need is meat, lettuce, salsa and taco seasoning (sometimes I throw in some tomato paste & Garlic for taste)
Stock time: Get in the habit of keeping key staples on hand so you’ve got at least one or two meals that can easily be prepared – instead of calling the pizza guy.
There are lots of options for veggies. Check your local grocer for “PRE CUT” carrots, broccoli, medleys, pumpkin, sweet potato etc for a quick meal. Also don’t ignore the frozen food section. Always have frozen peas and corn – they go with everything and can be put in the microwave for a few minutes if need be. You can get such a variety of mixed frozen veggies these days, Chinese, edema me, you name it, all go well with a protein serving (lean beef, chicken or turkey).
Of course always have lettuce, grape/cherry tomatoes and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar handy – this makes for a killer salad to go with anything (prep time under 2 mins – straight from container to plate!!
Adding the obvious one … don’t shop whilst you are hungry or have the munchies! Big no no! Go have a decent meal before you hit the supermarket.
Cook For leftovers
If you are having a great day and are doing a cook up for that night, make extra and either freeze it for another night (when you are totally time poor) OR have it for leftovers the next day. Keep it away from those other household members who may be tempted by a midnight snack
