Legally Healthy

 Water, water everywhere.

Sometimes, actually often, my water glass seems like it’s mocking me.  It sits on my desk or on the kitchen counter just waiting for me to fill it and then empty it, only to start the process all over again a short while later.  Truthfully, it’s more like a few hours later for me.  When I pass by the glass without picking it up, I feel a tiny twinge of guilt.  Same goes for when I trade the room temperature contents for a fresh pour.

I know that I’m supposed to be drinking more water throughout the day than feels natural to me.  I also know that I’m supposed to drink before I feel thirsty.  I’ve been told many times that feeling thirsty means that I am already dehydrated.  Yeah.  I get it.  Still, I seem to border on dehydrated most of the time.

I mean, how many times can I really refill that thing and drink the water, glassful after glassful?  Hour after hour.  Day in and day out.  For the rest of my time on this planet.  Drink more water.

Do you have a similar relationship with the clear stuff? 

If you’re like me, you add lemon slices, cucumber slices or maybe mint to your glass to change the flavor once in a while.  Heck, we’ve even told you to do that in another post –  http://www.legallyhealthy.com/liquidated-damages/.  But there’s another way to get your water.  Eat it.

Yes, I said eat your water.

Fruits and vegetables are made up mostly of water, so they’re an excellent way to stay hydrated without always downing glass after glass from the cooler, bottle or tap.  There are so many to choose from, you’ll never get bored.  Maybe that’s why Mother Nature grows different foods each season.  As a bonus, you’re getting vitamins along with hydration.  When you’re feeling thirsty, chew up!

Foods that have a lot of water in them tend to look and to be larger, so when you eat them, you feel like you’re eating more food.  This creates a feeling of satiety, and it also keeps your mouth busy.  When there is water in your food, the foods stay longer in your belly, so you feel fuller longer.  You don’t get the same effect from drinking a glass of water with the foods that you eat.  For example, when you add water to vegetables to make a soup, you feel more full after eating the soup than if you had eaten the vegetables and drank a glass of water. When water is bound to food, absorption of the water from your stomach into your body is slowed, and you stay full.

If you’re wondering which fruits and vegetables contain the most water, here’s a short list of some great options.  Cucumbers, lettuce, watermelon, grapefruit, tomatoes, pineapple, strawberries, peaches, celery, cantaloupe and broccoli are all high in water content.  But, don’t stop there. Eat a wide variety of fruits and veggies so you benefit from all of the other good-for-you nutrients that these foods provide.  The more you eat, the less often you have to pick up the glass.

Go on.  Eat your water!

What are your favorite ways to hydrate in the heat?  Leave a Comment below.

You want to make healthy choices.  You don’t always have time to cook.  So, when possible, you choose the low fat or fat free varieties of your favorite packaged foods.  Less fat must be healthier, right?

That’s not necessarily true.  Often low fat or no fat is code for high salt or high sugar.  The simple truth is that fat makes food taste good.  When the fat is left out of processed foods, the taste takes a nosedive.  To make the foods taste good again, the manufacturers add sugar and salt.  If you’re thinking that fat is the enemy, think again. 

Fat is not the enemy.  In fact, your body uses fat to provide energy, cushion your organs and absorb necessary vitamins from the foods you eat.

The problem begins with processed foods that claim to be healthier for you because they have less fat than their full fat counterparts.  Have you inspected the package labels on some of these foods?  Often, the low fat varieties have more calories and sodium than their full fat versions because the fats are replaced with sugars and salt.  Another issue with eating low fat foods is that you tend to eat more of them since they seem to be healthier.

That feels like a nasty trick.  Could you really be eating more calories in these foods that are specifically labeled to seem like healthy choices?

While we’re talking about sugar, when fats are replaced with sugar or artificial sweeteners, your mouth gets used to those flavors which tend to be much sweeter than foods found in nature.  For example, when you choose yogurt with fruit on the bottom, the syrupy sweetness of that fruit is several times sweeter than adding the actual fruit to plain yogurt.  Your taste buds are trained to crave sweeter foods so that real fruit and other naturally sweet foods no longer seem sweet enough. 

Another issue is that sugar provides little nutritional value.  Yes, it’s used by your body for energy, but when you overeat, your body stores the excess sugars as fat in exactly the places where you don’t want it – hips, thighs and belly.  When sugars are used to replace the flavors lost by removing fat from processed foods, your caloric intake can skyrocket and lead to excess weight and often to other health concerns, including diabetes.

And then there’s the salt.  Eating foods high in salt is linked to high blood pressure.  Having high blood pressure often leads to heart attacks and strokes.  In the quest for making healthier choices by picking up the low fat options, you’re causing hidden harms to your body that can lead to lasting troubles.

We’re all for eating foods that are naturally low in fat or fat free such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains.  There’s a lot of research explaining why lean cuts of meats are better for you than cuts containing higher fat quantities.  That doesn’t mean that you should cut out all fats.  Eggs, dairy, fatty fish, avocados and nuts contain healthy fats which make them great choices to include in your diet.

Try to choose mainly foods that are naturally low in fat or that contain healthy fats, and when it’s time for a treat, enjoy a serving of the full fat version.

What do you snack on?  Tell us in the comments section!  

  It’s early July, and the outdoor tables are piled high with ears of corn.  Sweet corn is one of the great pleasures of this season.  There are many varieties of sweet corn, but whatever’s local is best.  Head over to a farmers market to get the freshest corn around.

When we were kids, my brother and I were often sent outside to the porch in the summer with a trash can to shuck ears of corn for dinner.  Most of the husks landed in the garbage, but there was always a bunch of fly-away silk that remained behind.  That was our gift to the neighborhood.

Think that corn is just filled with carbs and calories?  Think again.  Sweet corn contains vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that are important for good health. Vitamins A and C help fight age-related diseases.  Thiamin and folate, B Vitamins found in corn, help develop healthy muscles and red blood cells.  Corn also contains magnesium, potassium and phosphorus along with trace amounts of other minerals including iron, calcium, copper and zinc.

Now that you know why you should include corn in your diet, here are a few ideas for how to buy it and eat it.

Look for corn with lots of golden silk sticking out of the top. You want to look for green husks.  Leave the brown ones behind for someone else. They’ve been sitting in the sun for too long.  The ears should feel firm in your hand.

Fresh corn tastes best soon after it’s picked.  When fresh corn stays around too long in your fridge or laying in the sun at roadside stands, the sugars turn to starch.  So buy it fresh and eat it fresh.  You’ll be glad you did.

Corn is simple to cook.  You can boil it in a pot of water on the stove, you can steam it or you can grill it to list a few options.  After that, it’s up to your imagination.  Eat it straight from the cob with butter and salt or your favorite seasonings.  Toss some kernals onto green salads, mix corn into grain or bean salads, make corn chowder or add it to your favorite tex-mex recipes.  Add corn to salsas or guacamole, make corn cakes or add it to crab cakes, and then invent some recipes of your own.

Want corn to last longer than the summer?  You can remove raw kernals from fresh corn with a sharp knife, and keep that in your freezer to use in winter recipes such as soups and stews.  Just stand the ear on its end and use a sharp knife to cut down toward the cutting board.

Do you love sweet corn?    Let us know how you eat it!

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Have trouble with less than healthy sweets?  You don’t want to miss the Sweet Revenge Sugar Cleanse starting on July 16^th.  Sign up here!  

When you think about air pollution, you may think of cars, planes and factories.  Smokestacks, smog and holes in the ozone layer probably make you think about dirty air. You hear all too often about the polluted outdoor air.  But, what about your indoor environment?   Should you also be concerned with the air that fills your lungs every day in your office?  Furniture, carpets and wall paints are filled with chemicals that can harm you.  Sure, the stains won’t stick and the floor may be fire retardant, but is that air safe for you to breathe?  Adding to the mess, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags and pizza boxes also contain harmful chemicals.

Many offices have recycled air and windows that don’t open. Is that the case for you? You probably have little or no control over what goes in your office, so what can you do to protect yourself from the office air?

Make plants your best friends. Decorate your office with a few.  You’ll be doing yourself and your office mates a favor.  Plants will help to improve the air quality in the place where you spend so many hours, day after day.    Plants are effective at reducing the chemicals that the furniture and the carpets give off.  They also reduce pollutants like ozone that are emitted by office equipment.

There are many varieties of plants that thrive indoors and in low light that are very effective in improving air quality. So, which plants should you choose?

English ivy cleans the air by absorbing airborne pollutants that computers and other office machines throw off into the air.  These pollutants can cause headaches and nausea.  Golden pothose is a vine that reduces indoor ozone like that from printers and copiers.  Even low levels of ozone can cause chest pain and throat irritation.  Areca palms can grow to be 6 feet tall which makes them great at cleaning the air.

Now that you’ve cleaned your air with plants, here are a few more to improve your mood.  Peppermint smells great, and it can increase your alertness, improve your memory and decrease your appetite.  Lemon balm stimulates your brain and improves your mood.

Since you spend most of your days cooped up in your office, why not bring some greenery to your scenery and also boost the quality of the air that you’re breathing?

Do you have plants in your office?  Tell us about them in the comments below.

Diet soda has less calories than regular soda.  Therefore, it must be better for you.  This is a myth that I am here to dispel.

Too many folks believe that drinking diet soda gives them a free pass to have a treat somewhere else in their day.  Many people use this theory to add some fries or a dessert to their meal.  If you save calories on the soda, it makes sense that you can eat more food, right?  Wrong.  There is no free pass.  Diet soda is making you fat.

Another popular theory is that diet soda is actually a diet tool.  It says so right in the name. With that in mind, most people who drink diet soda should be thin, but that’s not typically what you see.  Rather, it tends to be the opposite.

I don’t know who came up with the idea of saving calories by drinking diet soda, but I often wonder what they’re being “saved” from.  Is it versus regular soda?  A better comparison would be versus water or tea which both have zero calories.  So then, I ask you, what have you saved if you chose a diet drink rather than water?

Regular soda is adding something extra when we consider calories and sugar, but diet soda isn’t less.  Nothing was removed from your meal when you chose the diet soda.  Calories weren’t erased.  Sugar didn’t disappear.  These things weren’t there to start with.  When we start with water, everything else is extra.  

A better question would be to ask what you have gained by choosing a diet soda.   It’s true that choosing a diet soda doesn’t add sugar or calories to your daily tally.  Instead, it adds chemicals, and these chemicals are wreaking havoc inside your body.

Here’s what’s going on. When you feel hungry or you want something sweet, and you reach for a soda with sugar in it, your body gets satisfied.  Sugar is a food that your body knows how to use.  Note: This is not permission to drink soda.  Stick with me.  When you reach for a diet soda, your body tastes the sweet flavor from the chemicals in the soda, but it doesn’t get any carbohydrates from sugar.  Your body doesn’t get anything of value.  

Instead, your body keeps waiting for something that it can use.  What happens next?  You probably reach for a snack to satisfy your sweet tooth.  Since the chemicals in diet soda are so much sweeter than real sugar, and your body is waiting for something to satisfy its expectations for foods that deliver carbohydrates or sugar, you may find yourself eating more than you would have if you’d never had the diet soda.  You may not even have been hungry prior to drinking the soda.

Test this idea by noticing how you feel after your next diet soda.  Does it satiate you or do you soon reach for food?  If you only drink diet soda with meals, try this experiment between meals.  Does it quench your thirst or does it leave you wanting something more?  Do you feel hungrier after drinking the diet soda?

What should you do if you want something to drink but plain water just won’t do?   Make this fizzy and bubbly drink to replace your diet soda.  Squeeze a half of a lemon into seltzer water, and make your own flavored thirst quencher.  Zero calories, zero chemicals.  Your body will thank you.

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Are you ready to kick the sugar habit?  Sign up for the Sweet Revenge Sugar Cleanse.  You deserve this!  

You rush home from the office, and you’re hungry. While takeout is tempting, having some things on hand to make a fast, delicious meal may be just the quick fix you need. One of our favorite things to have on hand is pesto, a mixed paste made from fresh herbs (usually, basil), nuts (usually, walnuts or pinenuts), garlic, extra virgin olive oil and parmesan cheese.

Pesto is easy to make but even easier to buy. It’s also a sneaky way to get your family to eat their greens.

There are many varieties of pesto (basil, cilantro, sundried tomato, olive), all delicious, in the refrigerator case of most natural food stores and supermarkets. Some flavors of pesto are available in jars that you can store in your pantry (refrigerate after opening). Also look at your Farmers’ Market for fresh, homemade pesto varieties.

Pesto can be eaten right from the fridge or heated. Fresh pesto can also be frozen and then just spoon out what you need and keep it frozen for a longer shelf life. Portion your pesto ahead of time for easier use by freezing it in ice cube trays.  When you’re ready to use it, just pop a cube or two into your dish, heat and eat.

Here are 6 easy ways to use pesto:

1. Thinned out with olive oil and vinegar or lemon for a delicious salad dressing.
2. Tossed with veggies such as asparagus or broccoli.
3. Mixed into pasta, rice, quinoa, chickpeas or couscous for a quick meal or side dish.
4. As a topper for grilled or rotisserie chicken, fish or shellfish.
5. As a dip for cherry tomatoes or other raw veggies.
6. Drizzled over fresh mozzarella and roasted peppers.

How do you eat pesto?  Let us know in the comments section.

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