Eating Yummy Healthy

Yummy 100-calorie snack: Yellow-tail Tuna and miso soup. From Womenshealthmag.com

We all want to eat healthy, but we also know that hunger and snacking seem to be something of a way of life here in the good ol’ USA. What’s a body to do? Welllll….. why not ask a dietician?

Lisa Drayer, R.D. had a recent article on Woman’s Health Magazine’s web site, sharing 28 100-calorie snacks. You should go see the article, here, because the photos of the items are awesome. (The picture at the start of this column is one of them.) The list shows that you can eat sensibly, get good taste, and overcome the nibbles.  Here is the list:

1. Sliced Tomato with a sprinkle of Feta and Olive Oil
2. Vitamuffin VitaTop
3. Starbucks Tall Skinny Latte
4. Banana
5. 1/2 c edamame (measured shelled)
6. 3 c Air-Popped Popcorn
7. Quaker Instant Oatmeal (regular flavor)
8. Yoplait Light Yogurt (fruit flavors)
9. 8 Shrimp and 4 Tbsp Cocktail Sauce
10. 2 Sargento Light String Cheese Snacks
11. Curves Granola Bar
12. 1 c Baby Carrots with 2 Tbsp Hummus
13. 1 1/4 oz Turkey Jerky
14. 1/2 Cantaloupe
15. 1 c Vegetable Juice, such as V8, and 2 oz Oscar Mayer Oven-Roasted Turkey Breast
16. 1 Tbsp Peanuts and 2 Tbsp Dried Cranberries
17. 1 c Strawberries and 3 Tbsp Cool Whip Free
18. 3 Amy’s Cheese Pizza Snacks
19. 1 c Raspberries with 2 Tbsp Plain Yogurt and 1 tsp Honey
20. 2 Egg Whites with 1 Slice Whole Wheat Toast
21. About 1/2 c Frozen Yogurt
22. 5 Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Kisses
23. 2/3 c Barbara’s Bakery Cinnamon Puffins Cereal (dry)
24. 1 oz Yellowtail and 1 oz Tuna Sashimi with 1 packet Kikkoman Instant Tofu Miso Soup
25. 18 Fat Free Rold Gold Tiny Twists
26. 2 oz Veggie Land Veg-T-Balls with 2 Tbsp Muir Glen Chunky Tomato Sauce
27. Chocolate Milk (1 c nonfat milk + 1 Tbsp Hershey’s Lite Chocolate Syrup)
28. 1 Nutter Butter Granola Bar

One thing I love about this list is that it has it all — protein, carbs, fiber… even chocolate milk. Yes, if you love your Starbucks, there is a way to have it on a 100 calorie limit. (OK, if you cannot abide the taste of non-fat milk, you probably won’t go for that one.)

The real point is that if you take a few minutes and think or research things, you can put yourself into a position to win. If you don’t, you’ll probably go for the 200 calorie Krispy Kreme glazed donut  (but who can eat just one of those, especially when they are hot off the line!). Seriously, What makes all of these list items great is that they can satisfy a craving your body might be having without going overboard, and that is what it really is all about.

Do you have a go-to low calorie snack you enjoy? Why not share it in the Comments section below?

Top 28 Best Healthy Snacks by Lisa Drayer, R.D. at Women’s Health Magazine’s website

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Its the Dog’s Life for Great Communication

Sam the happy British Lab and sage teacher.

Pet owners know that you can learn a lot from your animals. My wife and I have been “renting” Sam, a British Labrador Retriever — actually watching him for my sister-in-law since February who is selling her home and relocating near us. I recently wrote a blog about Sam and what I learned about communication and leadership. You will enjoy the full article, here, but let me summarize the points for you:

• Make your needs known. Sam knows I cannot read his mind. When he wants something, he gets my attention and doesn’t stop until I acknowledge his need.
• Tomorrow is another day. Hope springs eternal with dogs. If I don’t play fetch with him now, it doesn’t mean he won’t ask again later. No isn’t forever.
• Make time for those you care about. Dogs (and kids) start acting up if you don’t make time for them. But give them time and you get enriched AND a well-mannered pet (kid).
• Love one another. I don’t have to do anything but show up and Sam loves me (see his tail wagging in the picture?) His gratitude is infectious.  Gratitude is a form of love. Who are you grateful for? Do you show them love?

Sam will be moving out soon, but his lessons will stay with me. I hope that we can continue to have a great relationship here on Leaderclip. I hope these posts are useful and enjoyable, and that you get as much from them as I do. I would love to had a dialog with you, so please feel free to share your thoughts on this or any other post. I’ll reply…

What Man’s Best Friend Can Teach Us About Communication and Leadership by Dwayne Baptist at dbaptist.com

The Three Stooges Communicate!

I was reading on my iPad using Zite, a news aggregation application you can tailor to get information that interests you (I find many of my Leaderclip post subjects via Zite), and came across today’s article. What caught my attention wasn’t the title so much as the graphic — Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk! (Which you see here…)

If you want to talk about three rules of anything, one great way to attention (at least of middle-aged white guys) is to show the Three Stooges. Fortunately, Mike Figliuolo of ThoughtLeaders LLC wasn’t offering silly ideas when presenting Three Rules for Successful Communications. Here they are:

1. Its always three things. As Mike suggests, even if you have 47 things to share, break things down into three major points. Some people can keep track of a bunch of things, but keeping organized so that there are only three things keeps you (and your audience) focused.
2. They have to hear things three times. Why do you think your high school or college speech teacher told you when planning a speech, “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.”? People need some repetition to understand and process your message.
3. After three emails, go have a conversation. If you have to keep going back and forth, there is probably something that can be handled much more deftly if you talked to one another than continue to waste a bunch of time typing emails. Relying solely on email just slows things down and invites misunderstanding.

Yes, Mike really kept it to three things. You can be a stooge, or you can adopt these simple rules to help you improve your communication with others.

Three Rules for Successful Communications by Mike Figliuolo at ThoughtLeadersLLC.com

Interning with Tony Stark

I came across a new blog recently, The Savvy Intern, at youtern.com. The site focuses on helping people find internships, which they believe are essential for getting a job, especially if you are just entering the workforce. And why not? Interning is a form of networking, which I believe is essential to finding “the right job” if having a job is what you want right now. But I digress…

One of their bloggers, ComeRecommended, offered a playful article called “8 Leadership Lessons We Learned from Tony Stark (aka: Iron Man)“. I love this thoughtful and playful look at being a leader. Here they are:

1. Choose your mission – don’t just pick a mission, find one worthy of you
2. Stick by your mission – things will get rough, but see it through; after all, it is worthy of you
3. Be socially responsible – Our highest calling is to serve others, even when things get tough
4. Always improve – Don’t get complacent, always seek to expand your vision and make yourself grow
5. Isolate yourself occasionally – doing is important, but we cannot find creative solutions if we do not give ourself space and time to just think
6. Have a good team – even a genius cannot be everywhere at once; you need a team to get anything great done
7. Be transparent – people will follow someone who is authentic; hiding things does not engender the trust needed to build a great team
8. Enjoy yourself – keeping things light helps you reduce tension, and encourages those around you to give their best

If you are an Iron Man fan, check out the article; you will probably enjoy the Tony Stark graphics…

8 Leadership Lessons We Learned from Tony Stark (aka: Iron Man) on the Savvy Intern blog

Protein and Your Diet

Pop Sugar Fitness reblog an article from Shape Magazine about the mystery of protein and diets. The writer (unnamed in the post) does nutrition counseling and likes to make several points with clients:

• You need protein with meals and snacks
• Protein helps you avoid overeating
• Typical Americans tend to eat more protein than they need, when you consider that the USDA recommends that 10-35% of a person’s diet consist of protein
• Consider how a food/product is consumed when considering whether it is a problem if it doesn’t have protein in it. For example, breakfast cereal might not have much, but if  you will be eating with milk, there will still be protein in the meal
• To get the best balance when meal planning, let lean protein be 1/4 of your plate, another 1/4 be a high-fiber carbohydrate, and the rest be fruits and vegetables.
• For snacks, make it 50-50 protein and carbs

What nutrition advice has helped you?

How Much Protein Do You Need? at Pop Sugar Fitness

 

Eating Right — What We Can All Agree On

The updated USDA food pyramid, published in 2005, is a general nutrition guide for recommended food consumption for humans. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nutrition is a hotbed topic, and there are lots of views on what really is right for people to eat. Kris Gunnars, a blogger at io9.com, posted a thoughtful post about consensus ideas, regardless of your approach to nutrition. The article does a good job of sharing those varied points, so check out the full article:

1. Added sugar is a disaster. 
2. Omega-3 Fats are crucial and most people don’t get enough
3. There is no perfect diet for everyone
4. Trans fats are very unhealthy and should be avoided
5. Eating vegetables will improve your health
6. It is critical to avoid a vitamin D deficiency
7. Refined carbohydrates are bad for you
8. Supplements can never fully replace real foods
9. “Diets” don’t work, a lifestyle change is necessary
10. Unprocessed food is healthiest

Hard to argue with this list, isn’t it? How many of these do you really live by?

The Rules of Good Nutrition (That Absolutely Everybody Agrees On) at io9.com

Science and Rose-Colored Glasses

Science is all about discovery, sometimes deliberate, sometimes by accident. I understand that Sucralose, the artificial sweetener that goes by the trade name “Splenda” (among others) was first discovered when two researchers were conducting an experiment. One told the other to “test” the compound. The other thought he was told to “taste” the compound… A sweet discovery, I’m sure.

I ran across an article recently about a researcher testing some glasses designed to help medical professionals better see blood vessels just under the skin. When the researcher, who was colorblind, looked at the rest of the world through these glasses, he discovered that he could see red and green! 8% of men and 0.5% of women are colorblind. Advances like this might help them see better. While there are side effects — the researcher could not see yellow at all with the glasses, he felt that they would make a difference when he was at the museum or when looking at PowerPoint presentations with colored pie-charts…

The science behind the glasses — the research and the goals are also worth looking at. The scientist behind the work, Dr. Mark Changizi, is studying color perception and has some interesting ideas about why we developed color perception and how we use it, perhaps unconsciously to gather information about others’ physical and emotional conditions.

Related Posts:

• Science, Perception, and Rose Colored Glasses

Keeping fit

The Daily Mail Online has an article about an exercise technique that even the busiest of us could make time to do. Have you ever heard of an approach like this?

Can you really get fit on four minutes a day?