My New Year’s Resolution is to start writing titles that sound like Dr. Seuss books.

Haha not really.

I know there will be approximately 70,000 blog posts or articles about making New Year’s resolutions and why you should or shouldn’t, etc. I’m not here to convince you about whether you should make a resolution or not.

What I do know is that the beginning of a new year causes lots of people to think about goals and aspirations. And a lot of those goals will be related to nutrition, so I’m here to tell you what I know about nutrition goals.

Nutrition goals are hard.

Changing anything is hard. If you’re trying to start doing something that you’re not used to doing, it’s going to be hard. If you’re trying to stop doing something you’re used to doing, it’s going to be hard. It’s just the nature of making changes.

There are surely psychological and behavioral studies that will explain the how and why it’s hard, but look – you probably know that from experience. I know it from my own experience and from the experience of working with probably thousands of people trying to make nutrition changes.

So here’s two things I want you to remember:

Start small

Choose 1 or 2 small things that you are confident you can do. And by confident I mean, you are like 95% sure that you will do it. (I know I said not 2 in the title, but it just rhymed, just don’t choose too many) Something that even seems a little bit too easy is fine, especially if you are just starting this change.

If you have a big goal like “eat healthier” or “lower my cholesterol” or “cook at home more” or “run a 5k” – that’s good! You set those big goals as your end game and use them to decide what your small goals are.

Choose small goals that will move you toward your big goal.

For example:

Eat healthier -> eat a fruit with breakfast every day
Lower my cholesterol -> find a whole grain bread you like to eat instead of white bread
Cook at home more -> Find two recipes that you can make easily and wouldn’t mind eating once a week (or talk to someone about planning meals for you so you don’t even have to think about it)
Run a 5k -> Commit to walking 10 minutes 3 days per week

Making these small goals gives you a hit of accomplishment along the way, before you make it to that long term goal. Kind of like a save point in a video game. This gives you more confidence and motivation to make new goals (a cycle of accomplishment) instead of making large unrealistic goals and feeling bad when you don’t reach them (a cycle of defeat)

There are lots more people who have written more about starting small/achievable goals; I really like how the Lazy Genius explains it here

Give yourself credit

Remember what I said just a few paragraphs ago? Making changes is hard. So give yourself credit when you’ve made a change, even if it’s a small one!

Did you hear that?

Give yourself credit for making even a small change!

If you eat a fruit with breakfast most days when you didn’t before, or you now cook two meals at home per week instead of one – good for you! You made a change! You are progressing in the direction you want to go.

If you’ve made progress – you eat more veggies, you drink less soda, you walk more often than you used to – give yourself a sticker*, or a pat on the back, or a little dance in your kitchen, whatever helps you celebrate

*The stickers thing is working for me right now. It gives me a small bit of childlike delight when I can mark that I exercised or completed a blog post with a pretty sticker hehehe

Then take that celebration energy and decide the next change you want to make!

Sometimes knowing what small steps to start with can be difficult – this is where a professional can be helpful. A good dietitian (or other professional if your goal isn’t nutrition related), can help you figure out the first steps to take to reach your big goal.

If your goals are related to meal planning, prep, or cooking, I can help with that! I’d be happy to help you get those wins – click here if that sparks your interest

If you are looking for nutrition help and advice in general (not related to meal planning, etc.), you can find a dietitian near you here

This post is intended to be informational only and is not medical or nutritional advice. If you have questions about your unique needs, ask about a custom meal plan or speak with a registered dietitian-nutritionist near you.

December 24, 2020December 17, 2020

Merry Christmas!

Donut with red, white, and green sprinkles on a paper napkin — Here’s a picture of a festive donut for you 🙂

Hope you get to enjoy some festive and special foods today and tomorrow! (Or some tasty foods regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas)

Also on my heart this year are those who don’t have access to enough healthy and nourishing foods. Recently, I have been learning more about how complicated and widespread this problem is as well as how much it can impact people’s health. I’m also seeing it firsthand in my work. While there is a lot of big work to be done and nothing will be solved tomorrow, these are some organizations that are working hard to get more good food to more people who need it.

No Kid Hungry – they work in different channels, including school meals, nutrition education, and public policy to make sure kids get fed. (It’s a sister organization to Cooking Matters which provides free culinary and nutrition education to families to get the most out of their food budget. I have volunteered with them before and they are awesome, but in the current season limited in their ability to do cooking classes right now due to safety and health guidelines.)

Feeding America – a country-wide network of food banks and food panties, that are also working to make sure more people have the skills to remain food secure or click here to find a local food bank near you.

Project Angel Heart or God’s Love We Deliver – both are organizations that provide free, medically-tailored meals to those who have life-changing diseases and can’t afford or have trouble preparing the type of foods they need. The meals they provide greatly improve the health of the recipients – if you like to see measurable results, both of these organizations have encouraging statistics about their work you can read on their website!

Samaritan’s Purse – provides international disaster relief, some of which includes providing food in various forms – supplies for refugees, hot meals to children, or farming or business assistance so poor families can more effectively provide for themselves and escape the cycle of poverty

These are just a few of the organizations working in this area. If you know of another one, feel free to share in the comments! If this is a cause that touches your heart, please consider donating your time, skills, or money.

If you need help with having enough food for yourself or your family, this page has a lot of great resources, and in the U.S., you can always call 2-1-1 to speak with someone who can help connect you with local community services!

December 18, 2020December 18, 2020

Festive and easy fruit for Christmas breakfast:

Chunky applesauce.

jump to recipe

My grandma always made this type of applesauce for Christmas breakfast. We’d have it alongside buttery biscuits, cranberry orange bread, eggs, and bacon for everyone else (not a fan, personally). It’s so chunky, cinnamonny, and sweet, it’s basically apple pie filling.

She would always make a big pot, so there would be leftovers for future breakfasts and lunches too.

Hey, if you like to do a ham or roast for Christmas dinner, this would be a great side for that too. I had it with some roast beef for lunch today!

This recipe is made even easier because you don’t even peel the apples. My grandpa maintains that this is the only real kind of applesauce, any other kind is “babyfood”.

Certainly if you want to peel your apples you can, but leaving them on is less work and nearly twice the fiber!

Here’s the rough recipe for chunky apple sauce:

(credit to this recipe for sugar ratio suggestions)

Wash the apples
Core and chop into bite-size-ish pieces and put them in a big pot
Add sugar, (1 – 1.5 Tbsp per apple) and cinnamon (1/2 tsp per apple) and stir until all the apples are cooked
Cover and cook on medium-low heat, stirring every 10 minutes until the apples are the tenderness you like (about 30-40 minutes)
Serve warm or let cool and store in the fridge for later. It’s good reheated or cold!

Cut off 1 side
Cut off the other side
Cut off the little ends that remain
Slice each section first one way, then the other to get cube-ish shapes (forgot to photograph the other direction of slicing)
Put in a bowl (or just directly in the pot – I wanted to make sure my estimated measurements were correct)
Mix with sugar and cinnamon
After cooking 30 minutes (it looks burnt, but that’s just all the cinnamon)

Enjoy!

You can certainly modify this to use different sweeteners, spices or quantities. If you do, feel free to share how it turned out in the comments!

December 11, 2020December 11, 2020

Good nutrition news: coffee

white ceramic mug with coffee — Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

Good news about coffee everyone.

Coffee has no sugar, fat, calories, carbohydrates, sodium, gluten or dairy

All that stuff everyone is worried about these days? Coffee doesn’t have it. No need to worry.

(Coffee has a tiny amount of calories and sodium but one 8-oz cup of black coffee will have at the most 5 calories and 5mg sodium which is honestly not even worth counting)

Coffee contains antioxidants

Why are antioxidants good? All the time, molecules in our cells are becoming damaged through oxidation from our own metabolic processes, radiation, the sun, various chemicals. This damage (when it is accumulated) can lead to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, aging, etc. Antioxidants protect against this damage.

(This study here provides lots of information about the types, amounts, and possible actions of various antioxidants in coffee).

Coffee has been studied a lot and the consensus is it’s mostly fine and might actually be good.

There are some studies showing that people who drink coffee have certain diseases more often, but there are way more studies showing that people who drink coffee have no more risk of disease than people who don’t drink coffee, and some studies that show that people who drink coffee have a lower chance of getting certain diseases (like type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease)

It’s important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. These studies were done in people who all had different lifestyles, family histories, diets, smoking and exercise habits, etc., so while researchers try to make sure they are only looking at the effect of coffee, they can’t say for sure that coffee was the thing making the difference in who got diseases and who didn’t.

This review does a great job of summarizing research on coffee intake

Depending on how you take your coffee, it might enhance your nutrition

If you add milk (or a fortified alternative milk) to your coffee, you will get some calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin A! And depending on what type of milk it is, some protein, fat, and carbs – not enough for a meal of course, but maybe enough for a snack.

This of course can be a double-edged sword. If your preferred regular coffee format includes a lot of sugar and high fat ingredients, the benefits of drinking a lot of coffee might be outweighed by the drawbacks of drinking a lot of sugar and fat. Not that you shouldn’t enjoy cream, sugar, or flavored syrup in your coffee, just take the nutrition they provide into account.

Some nuance about coffee

Like anything, too much coffee can be harmful, and just drinking a ton of coffee will not magically make you super healthy. There are some people who should be cautious with coffee (e.g. pregnant women) and I mean, definitely don’t drink it if it makes you feel bad or interferes with your sleep or makes you anxious.

Many of the harmful effects were associated with more extreme amounts of coffee. Coffee made as espresso, French press, or boiled can slightly raise cholesterol when drunk in large amounts.

brewing coffee and a bowl of granola — This is how I take my coffee and it makes my mornings.

The bottom line: coffee, in moderation, is pretty harmless and might have benefits.

If you don’t like coffee, don’t feel like you need to start drinking it for the health benefits.

If you do like coffee, enjoy it and feel good about it!

December 3, 2020December 3, 2020

100 ways to get kids involved in the kitchen

Organized by skills required

No reading, coordination, sharp safety or heat safety skills required

(reasonable adult supervision still required)

Wash hands before cooking
Count out produce into a bag at the store
Help find items at the grocery store
Pick out a vegetable or fruit to buy and try
Name different foods/ingredients as you cook
Taste, smell, or touch ingredients (safely of course; avoid handling raw meat, poultry, fish, eggs, or foods with these as ingredients)
Taste a dressing/sauce to see if it needs more salt/sugar/pepper/garlic/etc.
Describe different ingredients: appearance, texture, smell, taste, category (vegetable, fruit, meat, grain, protein, canned, frozen, etc.)
Choose dressing or toppings for a salad
Find an appropriately sized container for leftovers
Count out ingredients
Play with non-breakable bowls and spoons

When I was a toddler, my mom had one low cabinet that had the metal mixing bowls and pots that I was allowed to play with and I totally thought a two piece bundt/angel food cake pan (like this one) would make a great snowman costume if I put the pointy part on my head like a top hat and wore the round part around my neck as a…scarf? I’m not sure what I was thinking. But I definitely got stuck in the round part and panicked and my mom had to help me get out and it’s one of my earliest memories

Suggest a meal or side dish
Choose a meal or side dish
Look through a cookbook or cooking magazine together and choose some recipes to try
Choose a recipe from a cooking show to try (even if it is just used as an inspiration)
Follow a video tutorial together

Some limited physical coordination required

Many of these tasks can be done by very small toddlers who have an adult helper. Very small kids probably won’t be able to complete the task by themselves, but they will be able to participate, which is the important part. Check out the ADORABLE Chef Kobe here for some visual proof that toddlers can do these types of tasks

many many more cooking videos on their instagram @kobe_yn

Sprinkle toppings on a salad
Sprinkle cheese or breadcrumb topping
Rinse lettuce leaves
Add pre-measured ingredients to a mixture
Mix spice mixtures/sauces/batters
Mix meatballs
Put ingredients in a pot to cook
Collect bowls/measuring cups/measuring spoons
Move dirty dishes from the table to the counter or dishwasher
Get out toppings/condiments and put them on the table
Scramble eggs
Mash potatoes, bananas, or squash
Scrub potatoes
Shake a jar or container of dressing or seasonings to mix it (just make sure it is fully closed!)
Shake a jar of overnight oats or chia seed pudding to combine (Add recipes here)
Rinse or scrub veggies, fruits, or herbs
Put ingredients into a slow cooker
Throw skins/peels/package wrappers in a garbage bowl, trash, or compost bin
Carry dirty dishes to the counter/sink/dishwasher
Wipe off a table or a counter
Toss veggies in oil and seasonings by shaking them in a closed container
Cut out dough with cookie cutters
Decorate cookies with sprinkles/frosting
Top pizzas with cheese and toppings

Somewhat higher coordination or level of strength required

Will still require an adult supervisor and possibly an adult helper

Help put away groceries
Find and collect ingredients as you read them from the recipe
Measure ingredients
Put away ingredients as they are used
Remove husk and silk from corn on the cob
Pull garlic cloves from a head of garlic
Peel garlic cloves that have been smashed
Use a garlic press to press garlic
Use a measuring cup or pitcher to add water to a pot
Press buttons on a mixer, blender, or food processor
Knead dough
Crush nuts or bread crumbs in a plastic bag with a rolling pin, pot, fists, or Hulk hands if you want to make it extra fun
Put plates, cups, silverware, and/or napkins on the table
Peel an orange or banana
Section oranges
Snap asparagus
Use a lettuce spinner to dry lettuce
Dry lettuce by spinning it in a towel or mesh bag
Tear up lettuce leaves
Toss a salad
Toss veggies in oil and seasonings for roasting using a bowl and spoon/fork
Use a cookie scoop to portion out cookies/biscuits/meatballs
Shape meatballs, rolls or other doughs
Turn on slow cooker
Peel an onion that has been cut in halves or quarters
Put spreads on bread or toast
Put dirty dishes in the dishwasher or sink or on the counter

Reading skills required

Preheat the oven
Read recipe out loud
Read the ingredients list out loud
Find a recipe
Write ingredients on a grocery list
Search for and add foods to an online grocery order
Read the grocery list and cross items off the list as they are bought
Follow directions to prepare microwave food
Write and decorate a menu (although, they can just decorate a menu and “write” if they don’t actually know how to write. No one actually needs to read it 😊)
Find a recipe that they want to try in a cookbook
Search for and find a recipe to make online
Follow a simple recipe

Sharp safety skills required

Use your best judgment as a parent

Grate garlic
Use scissors to cut fresh herbs
Use scissors to cut pizza or quesadilla that has cooled
Use an egg slicer
Use a cheese slicer
Use an egg slicer to cut strawberries
Wash and cut grape bunches with scissors
Put vegetables/meat on skewers
Add ingredients to a food processor or blender
Press the buttons on a food processor or blender

Kids can start to learn knife skills earlier than you might think! Here are two really great resources on how to start helping kids use knives safely and in an age-appropriate way (superhealthykids.com and happykidskitchen.com/) Might as well start teaching them safe skills early! (Besides, the earlier they learn, the earlier they can help!)

Chop lettuce with a lettuce knife
Chop soft vegetables or fruits (banana, cucumber, zucchini)
Chop dough (to section for rolls)
Chop or slice vegetables

Heat safety required

Steam frozen veggies in the microwave and then season
Make toast
Make a microwaveable food
Stir a pot or pan
Add ingredients to a pot or pan on the stove
Follow a simple recipe that involves using the oven or stove

Please note that these are ideas meant to empower you to involve your kids in the cooking process. You are the one who best knows your child’s abilities. Use your best judgement to choose activities that will be appropriate for your child. Please make sure you supervise your children during these activities, especially those that involve heat or sharp blades!

Would you like a neat downloadable and printable PDF of this list? Here you go!

Interested in a meal plan just for your family that includes built-in instructions for involving your kids? Learn more at www.nutritionforrealhumans.com/learning/

Month: December 2020

New year, new you? Try one small habit, not two