Your Guide to Healthy Life

Chicken Thighs with Shallots in Red Wine Vinegar (Poulet Au Vinaigre)

8 Freestyle Points 353.5 Calories

I lightened up this popular French chicken dish known as Poulet Au Vinaigre, which is made with chicken thighs and shallots cooked in red wine vinegar and white white.

Red wine vinegar gives it an intense, tangy flavor, that mellows as it simmers. Shallots are similar to onions, and are always a staple in my house along with onions and garlic. They can transform any ordinary dish and make it extraordinary. The ease of this dish makes it perfect for a busy weeknight dinner.

This recipe is an oldie on my blog, I first shared this 9 years ago adapted from Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking by Paula Wolfert. I revived this with some new photos to bring it back to life because this dish ALWAYS gets rave reviews. To lighten the dish from the original, I used skinless boneless chicken thighs, and replaced the créme fraîche with light sour cream.

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15 Tips for How to Attract Health Coaching Clients

Fitness

Forging a business in the health and wellness industry isn’t easy, even for certified professionals. Though there’s tremendous competition to secure clients and establish yourself as a health expert, the rewards of helping others (and making a living while doing it) are well worth it for many professional health coaches.…

Vinegar Caveats

Nutrition

As I note in my chapter on greens in my book How Not to Die, vinegar may be one condiment that’s actually good for you. Randomized controlled trials involving both diabetic and non-diabetic individuals found that adding just two teaspoons of vinegar to a meal may improve blood sugar control, effectively blunting the blood sugar spike after a meal by about 20 percent. How? I discuss this in my video Vinegar Mechanisms and Side Effects.

Originally, we thought it was because vinegar delayed the gastric emptying rate, slowing the speed at which a meal leaves your stomach, which makes sense because there are acid receptors in the first part of the small intestine where the stomach acid is neutralized. So, if there is excess acid, the body slows down stomach emptying to give the intestine time to buffer it all. The acid in vinegar was thought to slow the rate at which food leaves the stomach, resulting in a blunted sugar spike.…

The truth about ‘Blue Monday’

Mental Health

Each year around this time, the internet starts going abuzz with warnings about the dreaded “Blue Monday,” the so-called most depressing day of the year. Where did the Blue Monday concept originate, and is it a real phenomenon?

Is Blue Monday real? Where did this concept come from?

A quick internet search will reveal that today, the 21st of January, is supposedly Blue Monday, the worst day of the year, when doom and gloom govern the general mood.

Blue Monday does not fall on the same date each year, but it has to be a Monday (of course), and it has to be in January, and it is usually the third Monday of the first month of the year.

Truth be told, today, as I write this article, I am not in the best of shapes. Fighting off a stubborn and painful cold, stressed by pressing deadlines, and worried about the challenges that the week ahead may present, I am tempted to say that the Blue Monday label is fitting for a day like today.…

Fish Florentine

Healthy Food

6 Freestyle Points 351 Calories

This easy Fish Florentine recipe, made with a pan seared firm white fish served on a creamy bed of spinach feels like something you would order out in a fancy restaurant!

I love fish and try to eat it once or twice a week. You can see all my fish recipes here! This recipe takes under 30 minutes to make, the creamy spinach is what makes the whole dish, made with a little cream cheese, half & half cream and Parmesan cheese. It’s dreamy, delicious and the perfect pairing for the simple white fish.

I adapted this dish from this recipe I found online, which I lightened up simply by reducing the butter, oil, Parmesan and cream cheese. I had reduced-fat cream cheese on hand so I used that instead and it turned out amazing! Rich and decadent and feels like it should be a lot more calories!

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Through my eyes: Aphasia

Mental Health

Around 4 years ago, when I was just 26 years old, I experienced a serious brain injury. As a result, I couldn’t use my arms or legs, and I could no longer read, write, or speak. Essentially, I lost all the skills that made me who I am. This is called aphasia.

‘For years now, I have been using lists to help organize my mind.’

Aphasia can happen to people who have endured serious brain injuries or strokes.

It often requires relearning all of their communication skills.

Following my brain injury, my family and friends taught me about who I was before it happened.

As I became increasingly aware of what I’d lost, I realized that I needed to regain my previous skills and talents. I wanted to have that part of myself back.

I started to work every day, firstly focusing on relearning the entire English language. I focused on reading, writing, and speaking, and as I gradually improved in these areas, I started reading each day.…

Skinnytaste Meal Plan (January 21- January 27)

Healthy Food

posted January 19, 2019 by Gina

A free 7-day flexible weight loss meal plan including breakfast, lunch and dinner and a shopping list. All recipes include calories and Weight Watchers Freestyle™ SmartPoints®.

I just had an exciting week in Chicago promoting my cookbook Skinnytaste One and Done on Windy City Live and doing a cooking demo at Macy’s on State Street. Here’s the segment if you want to watch!

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If you’re new to my meal plans, I’ve been sharing these free, 7-day flexible healthy meal plans (you can see my previous meal plans here) that are meant as a guide, with plenty of wiggle room for you to add more food, coffee, beverages, fruits, snacks, dessert, wine, etc or swap recipes out for meals you prefer, you can search for recipes by course in the index. You should aim for around 1500 calories* per day.

There’s also a precise, organized grocery list that will make grocery shopping so much easier and much less stressful.…

Insomnia breakthrough: Scientists identify 5 types

Mental Health

There are five types of insomnia, each with its own distinct features, according to a recent study.

New research concludes that insomnia may vary by personality type, among other factors.

Scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience studied thousands of people who had voluntarily signed up to an online sleep registry.

They concluded that insomnia has five subtypes that differ by personality traits, risk for depression, brain activity, and response to treatment.

The team suggests that the findings will likely speed up research on insomnia and lead to better, more personalized treatments.

The Lancet Psychiatry journal has now published a paper on the study.

“While we have always considered insomnia to be one disorder,” says Tessa Blanken of the Department of Sleep and Cognition, “it actually represents five different disorders.”

She likens progress in insomnia research to that of dementia, which has uncovered subtypes with marked differences in underlying brain mechanisms.…

How to Start Your Online Nutrition Business

Fitness

Starting your own business might be a little intimidating at first, but with the right plan in place, it’s very achievable. As a certified nutrition professional, you’re already an ace at paying attention to the details of helping your clients reach their goals. Just take those skills and bring them over to your business launch and you will be opening shop in no time.…

How Much Vinegar Every Day?

Nutrition

Consuming vinegar with a meal reduces the spike in blood sugar, insulin, and triglycerides, and it appears to work particularly well in those who are insulin resistant and on their way to type 2 diabetes. No wonder the consumption of vinegar with meals was used as a folk medicine for the treatment of diabetes before diabetes drugs were invented.

Many cultures have taken advantage of this fact by mixing vinegar with high glycemic foods. For example, in Japan, they use vinegar in rice to make sushi, and, in the Mediterranean, they dip bread into balsamic vinegar. Throughout Europe, a variety of sourdough breads can lower both blood sugar and insulin spikes. You can get the same effect by adding vinegar to boiled white potatoes then cooling them to make potato salad.

Adding vinegar to white bread doesn’t just lower blood sugar and insulin responses—it increases satiety, or the feeling of being full after a meal.…