Thursday, June 1, 2023

Sleep MORE - Eat LESS & Tropical Overnight Oats!

Holistic Habits by Cheryl A. Mothes, Ph.D. Natural Health Nutrition Counselor

Content is a daily radio script from my KHIS radio spot - tune in at 6:15 (CST) every morning to Justin and Meredith’s morning show on 89.9 FM.

 It is Transition Tuesday and to plantify your plates more, add one new vegetable, fruit, bean, and grain to your grocery cart every week, meaning something you have never eaten. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, fresh is best, frozen is good, and canned is least desirable due to additives. Less SOS is always best! Less salt, oil, and sugar. If you purchase items with added salt, the milligrams of salt should not exceed the calories - if it says 150 calories then it should be less than 150 milligrams of sodium. Do not cook with oil, maybe drizzle it on veggies or salads…a little. And rather than using a sweetener like sugar or sugar substitutes, use dates, date sugar, all-fruit, or pure maple syrup. Soon you will be using less and less salt, oil, and sugar. Plantify your plates more to have a terrific Transition Tuesday! 

Interestingly, if employees “pull an all-nighter,” they get hungrier and choose larger portions. Those who have just a few hours less of sleep every night eat an average of 677 calories more a day compared to a normal sleep group! Studies found sleep deprivation led people to overeat about 180 to 560 calories a day. Worse yet, if we get less sleep, we also start craving unhealthier choices - more snacks and more foods that are fatty and sugary. Brain scans after staying awake all night or after a few nights of four-hour sleep show reward pathways light up brighter in response to high-calorie foods. It is another reminder that 8 hours of sleep should be non-negotiable, and recognize that working nights can impact your nutrition, but you can plan to overcome it! Live longer and live stronger with better sleep on this wonderful Wednesday! 

Yesterday we mentioned that insufficient sleep inadvertently leads to much higher calorie intake, so it is no surprise that studies show if you sleep less, you gain more weight. But THIS is another interesting fact:  even if you control calories, you still lose more fat when you get more sleep. On the same diet, those who had more sleep ended up losing more than twice as much body fat. So, "you snooze you lose"…fat! Getting people to bump their sleep from five and a half hours to seven can lead to an overall decrease in appetite within two weeks, particularly for sugary and salty foods, like by quite a lot! You will eat less, choose better foods, and more sleep has lots of additional benefits as well! 

How about Tropical Overnight Oats for Fix-it Friday!?  Oats are fantastic whole grain and cold, overnight oats are good for any time of day! 

Ingredients: 

1 ripe banana, peeled.

1 cup rolled oats.

1 cubed mango

1 T ground flaxseed

½ t pure vanilla extract

Dash of ground allspice

1 ½ C unsweetened almond milk

1 T sliced almonds 

Directions: 

In a medium bowl mash banana and add the next seven ingredients. Spoon the mixture into two pint-sized canning jars. Cover and chill overnight. Just before serving, sprinkle with almonds. If desired, top with additional mango, pineapple, and allspice. Visit Forks Over Knives for more recipes! 

From The Archives: 

Most of us want to get healthier, feel great, function better and live longer. Let us face it though, it is hard to know how to change lifelong habits and trade them in for healthier choices. There are some "quick wins" you can achieve, trying each one for a week, then adding another. Today is about breakfast. What is your "go" and how can it be healthier? Try replacing it with oatmeal with walnuts, pecans, or almonds mixed in, a tablespoon of ground flax seeds or chia seeds then raisins or dried fruit, and lastly cinnamon, cloves, or any other spice you would like. Use plant-based milk instead of cow's milk to make it, and for your mornings to be super-fast and easy, mix it all up the night before then eat it cold - overnight oats are fabulous! It is Meatless Monday, and their website is loaded with great breakfast ideas for you and your kiddos! Have a marvelous Monday everyone! 

Yesterday we started a list of "quick wins" to get healthier when it comes to food choices. For your morning snack, have a huge bowl of fruit and always include berries. Do not be concerned about the sugar in fruit - nature made it for us perfectly. Nutritionally it is most beneficial if you eat it by itself, so a snack is ideal. For afternoon snacks, pack a snack bag size of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins, nuts, dates, and dried fruits to charge you for the afternoon. Hummus or nut butter with carrots, peppers, or celery is also great, and cold edamame is superb. Add dark chocolate at the end to top it off! For lunch and dinner, learn to LOVE SALADS and to make a variety of soups. Use different vegetables, beans, and grains in your salads and soups because our bodies thrive most on diversification. Plantify your plates to live longer and live stronger and have a terrific Tuesday everybody! 

We talk sometimes about food "hacks" - things to do and not do, to make the most of their nutritional qualities. And we have talked MANY times about the nutritional benefits of berries - blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, cranberries - so powerful are their antioxidant and vitamin levels that Dr. Gregor lists them in his Daily Dozen, meaning eat them every day. He also recommends drinking tea every day, preferably green tea. In a recent large study, it showed very favorable results of eating blueberries each day when it comes to reducing high blood pressure. It is impressive when there is a clinical improvement for a killer disease by just adding one food to our diets. But there is more - another study showed that if you mix berries with milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese - anything dairy - it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces the antioxidant activity of those berries! Smoothies with whey powder, milk, or yogurt are canceling out many of the benefits of the added berries. And guess what? It does the same thing with tea if you are a person that adds milk or creamer. Nix the dairy for lots of reasons, particularly when you are eating berries or drinking tea. Have a wonderful Wednesday everyone! 

Many women struggle with growths inside their uterus that are called fibroids. A new study shows that diets deficient in fresh fruits, green vegetables, and vitamin D increase the risk of fibroids. Opting for fiber-rich whole grains that aid in removing excess estrogen, as well as avoiding gluten, dairy, and white, starchy foods can reduce fibroid risk. Lastly, cruciferous veggies like broccoli, kale, and Bok choy can boost detoxifying enzymes in the liver, as are sweet potatoes, carrots, apricots, pumpkin, and spinach all of which can reduce fibroids. Enjoy a wealth of health with all these great, whole foods. 

 Legumes - all kinds of beans, chickpeas, split peas, and lentils are excellent sources of essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and much more - they are perhaps the cheapest source of good nutrition as well. Those who eat more beans tend to have less heart disease - to the point that just a single daily serving of beans was associated with a 38 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack! When you measure cholesterol values and add beans to the diet, then remove them, cholesterol levels go down and then back up. Eating beans can also elicit major improvements in arterial functioning, reversing artery disease. Wow! We grossly underestimate the power of legumes! Load up on them to improve your health on the shelf and have a fantastic Friday everyone! 

References:  The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, NutritionFacts.org, Forks Over Knives 100 Best Plant-based Recipes 


Cancer Prevention, Sleep Enough (Not Too Much), and More on Meat Analogs

Holistic Habits by Cheryl A. Mothes, Ph.D. Natural Health Nutrition Counselor Content is a daily radio script from my KHIS radio spot - tune...