Tag Archives: calorie count

4 Steps to Beating the Holiday Hangover

By Rachel Berman RD, Director of Nutrition at CalorieCount.com

You may have spent the past couple of months gorging on holiday treats, avoiding the gym, and making promises that you’ll get back on track come January. Have you starting living your healthy lifestyle yet or are you still overcoming a holiday hangover? Either way, here are tips to help you recover from your holiday indulgences and make healthy changes all year long.

1) Avoid fads

At the beginning of each New Year, we are bombarded with the marketing of diet and exercise products and services. Don’t be fooled by lofty promises of ‘easy & fast weight loss.’ Restrictive fad diets, and extreme exercise might result in weight loss but it will not get you very far. Research shows that extreme programs are unrealistic to maintain for the long term and once you go off of it, you are likely to gain back all the weight you lost, plus more. When we make small, manageable changes to our everyday routines, we are more likely to have long term health success. What healthy changes are realistic for you? If you can incorporate one of these changes at a time, and be patient with reaching your goals, come March, you will still be on the path to a healthy lifestyle. Having support from your loved ones or a community can help make those changes stick!

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Posted on January 8, 2024 by Calorie_Count

Stay on Track Despite Holiday Traveling Pitfalls

By Rachel Berman RD, Director of Nutrition at CalorieCount.com

Over the river and through the woods or wherever else you plan to go this year, traveling for the holidays can throw a wrench into your healthy lifestyle efforts. From impulse snack buys to big sit-down dinners, it is true many Americans gain about a pound each holiday season that sticks and accumulates over the years. Despite hectic holiday travel, you can avoid that pound or more by following a few easy steps.

Plan Ahead

Packing healthy snacks is always a smart decision when you are on the go. If there is a chance you may get stuck in an airport or in traffic, plan ahead to stave off your hunger with an easy-to-pack snack like trail mix, a protein bar, fresh fruit, a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, or any other non-perishable snack. With nutritious, tasty options at your fingertips, you will not be as tempted by less-than-ideal snacks for sale and will be less likely to show up at your destination ravenous, ready to overeat. In addition, waiting many hours between meals can contribute to a slower metabolism. So if you think you should skip the snack and save the calories for later, think again.

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Posted on December 7, 2023 by Calorie_Count

Diabetes is Not a Life Sentence

Mary Hartley, RD, MPH, is the director of nutrition for Calorie Count, providing domain expertise on issues related to nutrition, weight loss and health. She creates original content for weekly blogs and newsletters, for the Calorie Count library, and for her popular daily Question-and-Answer section, Ask Mary. Ms. Hartley also furnishes direction for the site features and for product development.

If you are an American adult, there’s a one in three chance that you have pre-diabetes, and in five to ten years, pre-diabetes will progress to type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a serious metabolic condition that ravages the circulatory system over time, but the long-term damage may begin during the early stages. The good news is that you can reverse pre-diabetes by natural means.

The difference between pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes is a matter of degree. When the Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG) is 100 – 125 mg, it is called pre-diabetes; when the FBG crosses over 126 mg, the name changes to type 2 diabetes. Diabetes has to do with the way glucose travels from the bloodstream into the cells where it is burned for fuel. In pre-diabetes and most type 2, the pancreas still makes insulin, but that insulin cannot help the cells to uptake glucose. Glucose, called ‘sugar’, builds up in the blood and ruins the little capillaries in every part of the body. One quarter of all new type 2 diabetics already have eye damage at the time of diagnosis.

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Posted on November 28, 2023 by Calorie_Count

Fall in Love with Apples Again

“Surely the Apple is the noblest of fruits” said Henry Thoreau.

For sure, apples are one of the basic foods, and all basic foods have nutritional benefits. But in this age of super-fruits, people want to know, what up with an apple?

Apple Nutrition

Question: “Is one apple healthier than another?
Answer: No

Apple nutrition is just a matter of size. A larger apple simply has more nutrients. Apples can be as small as a cherry or as big as a grapefruit. One medium apple is 3-inches measured across the middle.

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Posted on October 18, 2023 by GuestBlogger

Health Buzz: Why Whole Grains Matter and Healthy Cooking from Around the World

We’re excited to introduce our first-ever special guest to Health Buzz! It’s Mary Hartley, registered dietician and nutritionist representing CalorieCount.com. In honor of Whole Grains Month, she digs into real reason whole grains are important for your body. Also in this episode of Health Buzz, our host Jamie Yuenger brings you 10 ways to reduce stress from Self.com and a great series about cooking healthy dishes from around the world by our own Maris Callahan. Don’t miss the recipe! It’s fall squash and Caribbean Chicken from FaveDiets.com.

Health Buzz is a weekly show that brings you the latest and greatest in health news from around the web. Click to watch this week’s show!

See more episodes of Health Buzz here!

Posted on September 22, 2023 by Health Buzz

The Whole Truth About Whole Grains

Whole grains are a complete package. They’re tasty, nutritious, filling, and versatile. Yet, 93% of us don’t meet the three ounces a day requirement. In fact, the average American only eats about one ounce.

Whole grain is the seed of plants in the grass family – such as rice, corn, oats, barley, rye, and amaranth. The seed, called a kernel, has three layers: bran, the tough outer layer; endosperm, the starchy inner layer; and germ, the kernel’s reproductive machinery deep inside the endosperm.

Each layer has a unique nutritional value. The bran is rich in fiber; the endosperm is energy from starch; and the germ is flush with vitamins, minerals, and unsaturated oils. The fibers in the bran and endosperm work to cleanse the GI tract and to promote fullness and the slow release of blood sugar over time.

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Posted on September 15, 2023 by Calorie_Count

TY KU Alcohol Offers More Options to Calorie Conscious Drinkers

By Kelsey Murray

Everyone knows that a Happy Hour with friends can quickly become a diet-buster. With fried appetizers, sugary mixers, and high-calorie alcohols, you can end up consuming a lot more calories than you had planned on. For example, did you know that a typical mixed drink can contain more than 500 calories in a small 4-ounce serving? That’s a diet buster if I’ve ever heard of one.

So, what can you do to lower your total caloric intake while still enjoying the occasional cocktail? For a long time, people have tried tricks such as using diet soda or sparkling water as their mixers or limiting how many drinks and finger-foods they consume. Recently, Skinny Girl Margaritas and Budweiser’s Select 55 hit the scene and calorie-conscious drinkers rejoiced. However, there still was not a lot of low-calorie alcoholic drinks. Luckily, there is now another option hitting liquor stores for those who want to sip up but not ruin their weight loss goals.

TY KU is a liquor brand that has long been concerned with creating healthier liquors by using all natural ingredients and ancient Japanese distillation and brewing techniques. They have now released a low-calorie line of liquors that contain about half of the calories of other brands and come in several varieties.

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Posted on September 9, 2023 by Health Buzz

Health Buzz: Soak Up Summer While You Can

In this week’s Health Buzz, host Jamie Yuenger shares some ideas for getting the most out of the final weeks of summer.

With ideas and guidance from FitBottomedGirls, Calorie Count, and our team, you’ll find an inspired new playlist and how to cut the guilt at BBQs. Plus, Panini Happy has a recipe for an unbelievable grilled peach panini.

It’s all in this week’s Health Buzz! Click to watch it now.

See more Health Buzz episodes.

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Health Buzz

A Summer Food Bucket List: 5 Recipes from Calorie Count

By Mary Hartley, RD, MPH for Calorie Count.

There’s no denying that this summer was a scorcher. Certainly one for the record books. Come winter, we’ll be wishing for a heat wave – and summer food – again. Just so there are no regrets later on, it’s time to attend to your summer food bucket list. Beat the heat one last time with these highly nutritious, oh so good, summer favorites. This list of foods to eat before summer dies includes recipes that are analyzed and maintained in Calorie Count’s extensive recipe browser.

Caprice Salad

The queen of tomato salads from the magical Isle of Capri. There is nothing to cook, but it does require perfectly ripe, heavy, aromatic, lycopene-filled tomatoes and cool, fresh, calcium-loaded buffalo mozzarella. (more…)

Posted on August 19, 2023 by GuestBlogger

Huge Meta-Analysis Shows No Link Between Saturated Fat and Cardiovascular Disease

Saturated fat was recently in the news at the Institute of Food Technologists expo when experts revealed, again, that the link between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease is inconclusive. Both the public and professionals are now confused, since diets low in fat, particularly saturated fat, have been the mainstay of scientific consensus for more than 30 years. Saturated fat, a solid fat mainly found in animal foods, includes cheese, whole milk, butter, and fatty cuts of meat. It, together with liquid poly- and mono-unsaturated fats from nuts, seeds, grains and fish, make up all naturally-occurring dietary fat.

Back in the 1970s, the American Heart Association and other authorities said to reduce all fat to 30 percent of total calories and saturated fat to 10 percent or less. The recommendation was drawn from epidemiologic studies that compared the diets among different countries, in particular, the Seven Countries Study. Those studies showed a correlation between total fat intake and rates of heart disease. That, along with the National Diet-Heart Study of the 1960s, form the basis of the message that reduction in saturated fat lowers blood cholesterol and risk of heart disease.

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Posted on July 16, 2023 by GuestBlogger

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