Your Guide to Healthy Life

Skinnytaste Meal Plan (June 17-June 23)

posted June 15, 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 WW SmartPoints®.

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. Save you money and time. You’ll dine out less often, waste less food and you’ll have everything you need on hand to help keep you on track.…

What are the perks and problems of being a night owl?

Mental Health

In the collective imagination, night owls are free, creative spirits. Yet studies have shown that people who are more active at night face greater health risks. Do night owls experience more benefits or risks due to their rhythms? This Spotlight feature tackles this and related questions.

What health risks do night owls face, and why? And should they strive to turn into morning larks?

If, like Bram Stoker’s famous character Dracula from the 1897 novel of the same title, you are most active when the moon is up and tend to go into hiding at sunrise, then you might not be a vampire, but you probably qualify as a night person or night owl.

Literature often romanticizes night owls. The fact that they keep unusual hours, and that they are most productive in the evenings or even at night can make them seem mysterious — both appealing and somewhat frightening.

“There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), his account of hiking in the French mountains.…

How the online world is affecting the human brain

Mental Health

Technology has impacted human activities monumentally. Now, scientists want to know if human brains are being affected too.

Being constantly connected to the online world may have long-lasting effects on the human brain.

The internet has been around for less than 3 decades, but the technology has already had an immense impact on the way humanity functions. This is apparent to us all in the way people communicate, foster relationships, and source information.

But there is one thing that scientists are still unsure of: What effect is the online world having on human brains? A new review by researchers from five universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia attempts to find the answer.

The theory goes that neuroplasticity ⁠— or the brain’s ability to structurally change over time ⁠— means that the experiences and lessons we gain from internet use could be having a significant impact.

Identifying and understanding these changes in children and young adults is particularly important as their brains are still developing.…

The Diet We Were Designed to Eat

Nutrition

There are three broad theories about evolution and food. One is that humans have become adapted to grains and other products of the agricultural revolution over the last 10,000 years. Two is the paleo view “that 10,000 years is a blink of an evolutionary eye, and that humans are adapted to paleolithic diets with a lot of lean meat,” but why stop there? The third theory is that the last 200,000 years “is a minute of the evolutionary year” when we were mostly Stone Age humans and represents just the last 1 percent of the roughly 20 million years we’ve been evolving since our common great ape ancestor. So, What Is the “Natural” Human Diet?

During our truly formative years, which one might say was the first 90 percent of our existence, our nutritional requirements reflected an ancestral past in which we ate mostly leaves, flowers, and fruits, with some bugs thrown in, thanks to wormy apples, to get our vitamin B12.…

25 Personal Training Marketing Ideas to Get More Clients

Fitness

With the tremendous growth of the health and fitness industry over the past few years, choosing to become a personal trainer can be an extremely lucrative career path. But when bills are on the horizon and you still don’t have your first paying client, many newcomers can feel discouraged and give up too soon.…

Insomnia: ‘Long-distance’ CBT as effective as in-person therapy

Mental Health

Thousands of people around the world experience insomnia, which affects their quality of life, health, and productivity. One effective way of managing insomnia is cognitive behavioral therapy, but many individuals may not have the time or money to visit a therapist’s office. So, what is the solution?

New technologies can effectively deliver the therapy that people need to manage chronic insomnia.

Studies have shown that at least 10–30% of the world’s population, if not more, deal with insomnia, a sleep disorder in which people frequently have difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or getting good quality sleep.

Chronic insomnia can also increase a person’s sense of fatigue and their risk of experiencing poor mental health. People with insomnia also report having other health conditions more often than people who do not experience this sleep disturbance.

Such conditions include chronic pain, heart disease, and high blood pressure, among others.…

Chicken Chimichangas (Air Fryer or Baked)

Healthy Food

Chimichangas, deep-fried burritos popular in Tex-Mex cuisine, are seriously delicious, but usually dripping in grease and loaded with calories. These lighter chicken, green chile, and pepper Jack cheese Chimichangas are a much healthier twist on the classic.

Chicken Chimichangas

I’m excited to share a recipe from The Skinnytaste Air Fryer Cookbook: The 75 Best Healthy Recipes for Your Air Fryer to give you a sneak peak of what’s inside!

When I was testing these chimichangas for my cookbook, Tommy was a very happy man. They are really so delicious, and come together pretty quick. They are great to make anytime you have leftover chicken.

To simplify this for a quick weeknight meal, I used the breast of a cooked rotisserie chicken but you can make your own shredded chicken in the slow cooker by covering the chicken breast with broth and cooking them on high 3 to 4 hours. To finish them, they are delicious with a dollop of sour cream, pico de gallo and avocado.…

AFPA Graduate Spotlight: Harvey Slater, Holistic Nutritionist & Weight Management Consultant

Fitness

During the last 25 years, we’ve certified over 110,000 professionals. To celebrate our 25th year in business, we’re selecting 25 grads to showcase this year. Meet our next featured grad, Harvey Slater, an AFPA Certified Holistic Nutritionist & AFPA Certified Weight Management Consultant, who shifted careers from being a chef to building his own private nutrition practice.…

What’s the Secret to Latino Longevity?

Nutrition

Latinos living in the United States tend to have “less education, a higher poverty rate, and worse access to health care” and “represent the ultimate paradigm of healthcare disparities,” with the highest rate of uninsured, lowest rates of health screening and counseling, and poorest levels of blood pressure and blood sugar control, as well as “other measures of deficient quality of care.” So they must have dismal public health statistics, right? According to the latest national data, the life expectancy of white men and women is 76 and 81 years, respectively, and that of black men and women is shorter by a handful of years. And Latinos? Amazingly, they beat out everyone.

Latinos live the longest.

This has been called the Hispanic Paradox (now also known as the Latino Paradox), which I explore in my video, The Hispanic Paradox: Why Do Latinos Live Longer?. Latinos have a 24 percent lower risk of premature death and “lower risks of nine of the leading 15 causes of death,” with notably less cancer and heart disease.…

Chickpea Salad with Cucumbers and Tomatoes

Healthy Food

This healthy, summer Chickpea Salad with cucumbers and tomatoes is great for lunch or as a side dish with anything you’re grilling!

Chickpea Salad

I’m always craving chickpeas, it’s my favorite legume and I just can’t get enough! I toss them in any salad I eat for added protein. Some chickpea salad recipes on rotation in my house, this Greek Chickpea Salad which is great for meal prep, this easy Chickpea Egg Salad and this Chickpea Tuna Salad.

With summer cucumbers and tomatoes in season, I make this salad all the time. It’s a great side dish to bring to a BBQ, picnic or backyard gathering, simply double (as pictured here) or triple the recipe.

The best part about this salad is it takes just a few minutes to make, and because it uses canned chickpeas, there’s no cooking.

Can I eat chickpeas from the can?

Canned chickpeas are already cooked and ready to serve.

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