Balance Between Healthy Food, Fitness and Wine
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Ingredients:
1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp. finely chopped basil (or mint, chives, or parsley)
1/4 tsp. sea salt (or pink Himalayan salt)
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 cup arugula
1/2 medium seedless watermelon, rind removed, cut into 2-inch triangles
3 medium heirloom tomatoes
1/2 cup yellow cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1/4 medium red onion, sliced thin
2 Tbsp. crumbled feta cheese (leave off for vegan)
Directions:
1. Combine oil, vinegar, basil, salt, and pepper in small bowl; whisk to blend. Set aside.
2. Arrange arugula, watermelon, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and onion on a large serving platter.
3. Drizzle evenly with dressing.
4. Top evenly with cheese if using.
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Changing to a plant-based diet can be a big change, especially if you’re used to eating plenty of meat, fish, dairy and eggs in your diet. This can make it super daunting to commit to this lifestyle. You can make it a whole lot easier by easing yourself into becoming a vegan or following a plant-based diet. This way, you’re gradually being more vegan with your eating and you can get used to it. If you try to go fully vegan straight away, it can be overwhelming.
Before we dive into how you can transition to a plant-based diet, let’s talk briefly about what kind of things you can eat when you do so. Vegans can be more likely to be deficient in certain nutrients and this is super common if you don’t replace animal products with vegan friendly alternatives. Calcium, iron, zinc, vitamin B12 and vitamin D are common examples. If you’re eating a whole food diet that’s rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds and fortified foods, it’s a lot less likely that you’ll be lacking in these nutrients.
When you wander around the grocery store, you’ll often see a ton of foods that are labeled as “vegan”. This won’t always be the case though and not all vegan foods will be labeled in this way. It’s super smart to have a good look at food labeling and judge the situation for yourself. Anything that contains eggs, milk, meat or fish is a no-go but animal products can be more of a grey area. A few to look out for include whey powder and casein. Both of these are dairy products.
A lot of people find it easier to become a vegetarian first, and drop meat and fish from their diet. This gets you into the habit of removing animal products, without ditching all of them in one go. You can do this in stages and start introducing meat-free and fish-free days into the average week. It can be super tempting to add more eggs and dairy to your diet to make up for the lack of meat. Try to keep your consumption of eggs and dairy the same as before and add more whole foods instead.
At the same time, you can also start adding in more foods that are naturally vegan. Look for ways to get more fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans, legumes, seeds, nuts and tofu into meals and snacks. This can be super helpful for replacing meat and fish in meals and can easily bulk out meals. Lots of meals can be made vegan just by swapping out certain ingredients.
When you start to feel more comfortable in eating less meat and fish and more whole foods, you can ease into the next step of your transition. It can be easier to focus on moving away from either eggs or dairy first, rather than ditching both at the same time. If you know that you’re going to really struggle with ditching one particular food, leave this “barrier” food until the end of your transition and start phasing it out gradually at that point. Cheese is a super common one here. This step can be the hardest and it may take months to make your way through this stage of becoming vegan.
It can be super challenging to give up certain food groups and it’s totally normal to get cravings for meat or dairy, for example. You may find that experimenting with vegan alternatives can curb the cravings, especially if you don’t dive into this straight away. When you first go vegan, the taste of vegan alternatives can be off-putting. This is super common as you’ve not long stopped eating the real thing and you’re subconsciously comparing them to each other. After a little while, you start to forget what “real” cheese or meat tastes like and vegan alternatives can be a lot more effective for tackling cravings.
Another option is to buy vegan dairy alternatives and eat them alongside your “barrier” food(s). The trick is to gradually decrease the amount of “barrier” food you’re eating while also increasing the vegan alternative. Eventually, you’ll only be eating the vegan alternative and your taste buds will have acclimatized. This can work great with cheese, for example. Start off with a ratio of 75% dairy cheese and 25% vegan cheese and work your way to only using vegan cheese.
Sometimes, giving up on a particular food turns out to be a deal breaker for going 100% vegan. If you really can’t live without something, it’s okay to be mostly vegan and still have that food. You’re still doing a whole heap of great work to reduce your consumption of animal products.
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Have you spent a lot of the beginning of 2020 wishing that you were happier with your life and less stressed? A lot of the time, we take our happiness cues from the outside, especially ones that other people can see. And if we don’t meet these standards or ideals, we can quickly feel that happiness is out of reach. Rather than putting your ideals of happiness onto other people or in material things, it’s super important to recognize that true happiness has to come from within you. Ready to start finding you happy in 2020? Here are some tips for being happier and less stressed in the year ahead.
Move away from negative thinking
If negative thinking is a problem for you, it’s definitely something you’ll want to change in 2020 to achieve your year of happy. Negative thinking can be a vicious cycle that leads to a lot of stress, anxiety and depression. Breaking this cycle is one of the best things you can do for finding a happy and stress free place.
Being in the present moment is super important for stopping negative thinking in its tracks. It helps to put some distance between yourself and the things that trigger your negative thoughts. It forces your mind to become aware of negative thoughts and take a step back from them so that they lose their power.
Reframing your thinking is also a good goal for promoting a happy, stress free life. Do you always tend to think negatively about situations? It can be a big challenge to flip this around and see the positive side of things instead. Start trying to put a positive slant on situations that would normally give you stress and bring your mood down. For 2020, aim to reframe your thinking at least once a day. Over time, you’ll train your mind to look for the positives and encourage different thought patterns.
Immerse yourself in authentic experiences
Linking your happiness to outside factors often fails to achieve the happiness you were hoping for. Instead of setting goals relating to money, status and other things that you think will make you more satisfied with your life, swap them for authentic experiences that make you feel genuinely happy. Focusing on things like your hobbies and friendships can help you to feel emotions such as joy, contentment and relaxation.
This has been backed up by a study carried out by a psychology professor at Cornell University. He set out to see whether spending money or having experiences ultimately made people happier. The end result? Experiences had the power to increase happiness, partly due to the fact that we tend to experience them with other people. This gives them more meaning and makes them more memorable.
Practice self-acceptance
In a 2014 study that looked at “happiness habits”, self-acceptance was one of the habits that was deemed most likely to lead to genuine happiness. We’re often a lot kinder to other people than we are to ourselves. If this is true for you, it’s time to change this.
Being kind to yourself is one of the best things you can do to make 2020 the year of happy but it can be difficult to achieve, especially if you’re used to being negative about yourself.
If you feel you’re not good enough, you’re more likely to look outside of yourself for happiness. If you’re setting intentions around happiness in the New Year, it’s hugely important to work on self-acceptance first and commit to self-love in 2020.
Show compassion and gratitude
As you may know, gratitude and random acts of kindness have both been shown to improve happiness and life satisfaction. One of the reasons for this is the fact that it helps you to feel better about yourself.
Being thankful can have a major impact on your wellbeing and studies have linked keeping a gratitude diary to optimism, improvements in mood and better physical health. Having a more positive outlook on life can help to reduce stress and cut back on negative thinking, which makes gratitude a much underrated way to feel happier about life.
A gratitude diary isn’t the only way to feel more thankful. A few ways that you can embrace gratitude include sending heartfelt and handwritten notes to people who have made a positive difference to your life, taking a walk in nature and feeling grateful for the natural world around you, and reflecting at mealtimes on the work involved in getting food onto your plate.
Research has repeatedly linked kindness to feeling happier. One theory for this involves the production and release of neurochemicals that create a “high” … not that dissimilar to a chemical “high”! It also encourages your brain to release oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone”.
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Winter Superfoods Bowls
Ingredients:
2 medium beets, peeled, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
4 tsp. olive oil, divided use
½ tsp. ground cumin, divided use
Sea salt (or Himalayan salt) and ground black pepper, divided use
2 cups Brussels sprouts, cut in half lengthwise
½ medium avocado, cut into chunks
¼ cup water
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
1 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp. raw honey (or maple syrup)
2 cups cooked bulgur, warm
2 cups chopped kale
1 (15-oz.) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained, rinsed
¼ cup sliced almonds, toasted
¼ cup sunflower seeds
Directions:
Variations: