Keeping your food fresh ‘n new and inspiring your taste buds to keep you dieting is hard. It’s hard to vary green vegetables to the point where they begin to look like hot fudge sundaes. That takes talent.

And who wants to troll around the produce section of a store, looking lost, while searching for new and exciting things like: vegetables? Umm…not I said the pig. Plus, what if it tastes bad or even worse, isn’t that good for me.

Alright, alright…pipe down, already. The following are some veggies that you may have forgotten all about or never really paid attention to that are not obscure or unheard of that will surely give your diet a kick in the arse:

Cabbage: Sure, I know what you’re thinking. Thanks Jo, I just emptied a small convenience store in one swoosh. Not only are you not helping my cause, but you are creating mass destruction in the mean time. Ok, sorry. But cabbage, specifically red cabbage, is yummy and is stuffed full of antioxidants for beautiful skin and shiny hair. There are a bunch of different varieties of cabbage to choose from so you don’t have to stick with the red version, but it is my fave.

Cooking it: Saute it. YUM!

1 small red cabbage
1/3 cup chicken broth
2 T Olive, flax or udo’s oil
2 T lemon juice, divided
Clove of garlic, chopped or pressed

Cut up cabbage and let it sit for a minute. Sprinkle with 1T of lemon juice to preserve color. Steam cabbage in a pan with the broth for about 5 min. and then transfer to a separate bowl. While it is still hot, toss with the rest of the ingredients and enjoy.

Shiitake Mushrooms: I know, your freebies are mushrooms of every kind alongside trough size amounts of onions and peppers. Bear with me, will ya? You most likely buy the button mushrooms which are great for you, but they’re not shiitake. These babies are high in nutrients (iron, cholesterol lowering compounds, immune building phytonutrients) and come in a few different varieties as well. Not sure which ones are good ones? Grab the ones that are firm, plump and dry.

Cooking it: Saute it! Another YUM!

Same as above minus the lemon. However, make it into a soup after and it’s to die for.

4 cups boiling water and a ¼ c of miso paste and some sautéed onions and you are good to go. Let that simmer for about ten minutes and enjoy.

Lastly,

Swiss Chard: If you’re anything like me you are thinking: What in heaven’s name is swiss chard. Well I’m glad you asked…it’s a leafy green. Mmm, Jo. Just what I need (rolling your eyes), another leafy green. Oh stop it. This one tastes different. Like earwax with a sweet flavor. But don’t take that from me, try it yourself. Good stuff!

Ok, all kidding aside. It is different in taste that it is a bit on the bitter side, but its texture is what gets you. It’s nice and crunchy and also juicy. Good stuff all around. Plus, it’s not spinach.

Cooking it: Saute it! How’d you guess?

Only this time, no chicken broth. Use olive oil only and sauté it up with everything else. THEN, add 1 diced tomato, 6 black olives, ½ c crumbled feta cheese and 1 tsp fresh or ½ tsp dried oregano. This is different b/c it is warm and cold mixed together and the tanginess of the recipe adds just enough kick. Have fun!

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…do it at your own pace and do it for real.

Are you fatalistic? All or none? In it to win it or you just couldn’t care less?

If you or a family member is like this, you are not going to go very far in the heart healthy arena.

Yes, you can psycho diet and hit your goal quickly. You’ll be down 20 pounds in 8 weeks and aren’t you fabulous? Where will you be 6 months from then, though? You could still be down in weight, but odds are you won’t be any healthier.

The AHA doesn’t want you thin, they want you healthy. Having you lose the weight and the bad habits is not about making you look good in your room. It’s about keeping you alive in your room. Nothing is worse than getting excited about your new body and possibly having a heart attack because of it. Let me clarify that statement, too, because I think it will be lost on many. When you lose weight without investing in the process, you run the risk of having a weak heart but a lighter, faster body. This is dangerous stuff and you see this with people who want to just “lose the weight first” and then bring in the good habits second. The thing is, you strengthening everything—including your heart—when you do it the right way and leave yourself weakened and vulnerable when doing it the wrong way. Commit to at least one good habit every 2 to 3 weeks and you will be more likely to keep them.

Here are 3 of the easiest changes that you can get your mom, aunt, cousin, friend or whomever to buy into without them feeling backed into a corner:

1) Movement attached to something enjoyable. Typically shopping. Go with them to a mall and make them move at least once a week. While you’re doing that, ask them their schedule and have them tell you when they have periods of downtime. Give them examples of how they can fit 10 min. of exercise into those spaces. Things that do not count as exercise: running late, giving you the run around, jumping to another topic, etc.

2) One colorful food per day: Tell them they must eat one colorful fruit or veggie per day and they cannot have the same one two days in a row or more than 2 times in a week. That’ll make them a bit mad but they’ll get over it and begin to change or they’ll eat red peppers every day and tell you to MYOB. Beware of the latter.

3) A glass of water at 3 meals/day: You’re not saying every meal. You’re not saying they can’t have their precious diet Coke. You’re saying I just need you to have 3 glasses of water every day. If you can do that for me, I will {fill in the blank here: mow the lawn, pay your taxes, stop growing hemp in the basement, whatever} and they will be more likely to adopt this habit as well.

They say it takes 21 days to make a habit (and 3 min. to locate the nearest Coldstone Creamery—keep the away from Google!) so stay close to them for a while and encourage.

You know someone who is worth it to you. Help them along wouldja?

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This is for my ladies!

You know I am coming after my girlfriends who smoke, do not exercise or eat unhealthily. I know you all read my blog—you tell me so all the time—so I figure I would sneak in a post about your heart health and see if you noticed I was talking about you.

I just entered the “club” (as TP says, lol). That would be the 40 year old club. This means many of my girlfriends are right behind me—although I have heard that some of them are bypassing it and going straight for the 21 club. Umm…yeah. But for those of us who are brave enough to enter the club, we have more to think about now than wrinkles and “cougar” status. Heart health is key!

If you have been reading my blog, I am representing the AHA Better U program for the month of February and into March and April. Every week I will have a post on this topic giving you the lecture of a lifetime good information about how to be heart healthy. And you need to listen. (By the end I know I will be calling y’alls out by name.)

During week 2 of the Better U program it calls for you to follow Your Personal Course of Action. OH I LOVE THIS!

Let me break that down for you:

Your Personal: This means this is yours. Not mine. Yours. YOU decide what it’s going to be—so no pressure here. Go at your own pace. YOU put it into action—this means there’s some accountability on your part but it’s worth it. Lastly, YOU reap the benefits—not your doctor, not me, just you. There is a personal reward in this for you—Heart Health!

Course: This word implies plan with a known destination. You are going to PLAN for your success. There is a road to be charted, paved and followed. No mystery involved. And because it is Your Personal course, you set your own destiny, your own pace, if you want someone on the course with you, how long the course will be, etc.

Action: DO something! Quit smoking, eat better, exercise, pay your bills (Ooo, sorry. Did I just put someone out there? Bwahahaha, j/k) I don’t care what it is, just put something in action! This means to move. To head toward a result. Let’s just do this and get it over with, shall we? It must be horrible to be healthy, live a long life, enjoy your children and so on so let’s just try to make the best of it while we can.;)

Ok…that’s my heart healthy lecture of the day. Thanks for joining me in the fight for a healthy heart. I know I will reach you all soon enough. The stakes are too high. Love you!

Woop woop!:o)

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No, I am not a peeping Tom and I don’t want to come over and help you get dressed! But…

Would you mind wearing red for me today?

Ladies this post is for you. It’s for your health and it’s for your family’s health. What am I referring to?

AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION’S Blog Your Heart Out Campaign that I am a proud participant of. I will be blogging for the next 12 weeks (yes, I’m back and in full swing! Woohoo!) on behalf of Fitlosophy, the makers of Fitbook, and the AHA for their Go RED for Women campaign and their Better U fitness series.

To tell you I am excited doesn’t even scrape the surface.

Heart disease in my community (black women) is huge and underrated. I will be opening your eyes to things that you take for granted everyday and I will be pointing out how you can fool yourself into thinking you are healthy because you are “skinny” when in fact you are not even close.

I will be picking a day of the week to discuss this topic as well as the normal “look good naked” topics I usually cover for the rest of the week. How can you help me while I do this?

• Join the Go Red for Women movement
• WEAR RED TODAY! It’s National Wear Red day and I want you showing your true colors.
• Commit to any type of workout challenge for the next 12 weeks and follow the Better U program, too. I also encourage you to track your progress using a fitbook. It’s great to see how far you have come and this is the best way to do it.
• If you have a blog, Join us on February 12th to Blog Your Heart Out on that day and link to as many BYHO sites that you can.

Heart disease is no joke and it is taking approximately one woman every minute. That’s more than breast cancer and the top 4 women killers combined. WHOA! It’s time to do this. Hit the closet, find some RED and let’s get this done, ladies!

Woop woop!

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One woman dies every minute of this disease.

It is the number one killer of women.

And it kills more women than the next 5 causes combined.

Whoa.

What am I referring to? Heart disease. And it is being brought to the forefront of attention this year by the American Heart Association’s Go Red Campaign. They are running a 12 week FREE Better U program to help spread the word about fitness and how it can help prevent this horrible disease.

Why do I want you to know?

For 2 reasons: This silent killer is taking women faster than you can say “go get a check up” and they chose me as one of their FitBloggers to represent them and Fitlosophy during this 12 week campaign. I will give you all the details this Friday when the program launches on all of the Fit Blogger’s sites (and I’ll link you to them all, too) but until then, spread the word to your moms and aunts and cousins that it is time to get healthy. Draw them to this blog this Friday for the launch of the program and together we help keep the ladies of your life alive and healthy.

Do not make the mistake of believing because you may not be heavy that you are not at risk. Check out the information I present this Friday and take the screening test that I will link you to because it is more than just weight that puts you at risk for heart disease.

I will let you know how heart disease has directly impacted my family and how it changed our lives, how you can join in this campaign with me and things you can expect over the next 12 weeks. There will be posts in between now and Friday but in the mean time, round up your family members and get them on board. It is time for us to make them as healthy as you are striving to be.

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Last week (and some of the week before) I was hit with a bug that nearly took me out.  It has been a long time since I have been sick and it made me sit down and analyze my diet and sleep patterns to see if there is a “whole in the bucket” somewhere.  While no one can live completely sick free, there are ways to boost your immunity enough that sickness is a rarity.  For the most part, I feel pretty confident about nutrition and sleep because I almost never get sick (honestly cannot remember the last time I was) but knowing that no one is perfect, I brought out my check list to make sure I was covering all my basis.

Fruits and Veggies

If you do not know by now, I am a true advocate for variety in the diet.  Eating the same foods every day assures you that you have only those nutrients covered in your diet while leaving you hopelessly deficient in others.  It goes without saying that you need to get out there in vast landscape of the supermarket called the produce section and move past the apples and berries.  Find some foods that will help you make it through this season like garlic, onion and leeks.  All 3 of those are high in a sulfur-containing compound called allicin which is a no-joke antibacterial and antiviral agent that hugs up on Vitamin C to get the job done.  Not only will it keep you healthy, but it will make your breath so nasty that no one else (who may be sick themselves) will want to get close to you thereby keeping you healthy.

Buy Local and In Season

Right now you may be tempted to add variety to your diet by eating the latest and greatest food that has been shipped in from North Kalamazoo.  While I encourage you to open your diet with new stuff, I want to try and discourage you from eating foods that might have sat on a truck for more than 3 days.  The longer that fruit or veggie has been sitting on a truck, the less nutritious it is.  Try to find your local produce market if you can and buy what they have on display.  I live in MA and we have a store here by the name of Lambert’s.  Their produce comes from local sources so you can be assured that it still has most of its nutrient profile in tact. 

Holy Crap!  Is That Normal?

Another temptation we all have is to buy the biggest or best looking fruit or veggie in the market.  Umm, don’t do that.  I know you are thinking that it looks amazing, but I betcha ten bucks it doesn’t have as many nutrients in it as the small guy next to it.  Big mumbo jumbo perfectly looking fruits and veggies tend to be grown with fertilizers that are higher in nitrogen count.  These fertilizers cause the fruit or veggie to take up more water making them look bigger and better—but they aren’t.  They are just bigger and more water logged.  They still have the same amount of nutrient in them as the small ones do but now they come with more nitrogen—and that can’t be good for you!  Nitrogen can reduce the body’s ability to carry oxygen and as an athlete, there can’t be much worse than that!

Honestly, You Make Me Sick.

Lastly, when you look at your diet and start to switch things around, look for items that may also cause you to have sensitivity to them.  There are some more notorious than others (dairy, eggs, wheat, nuts and shellfish can wreak havoc on your life more than spinach, tomatoes and oranges) but nonetheless, they are harmful to you in that they keep your immune system so busy that little buggies have a chance to sneak in.  Try to be cognizant of how foods make you feel when you put them in your diet.  Since you are not eating the same thing every day (cough, cough), make a note if you become tired, queasy or irritable after eating certain foods.  This info is vital to your success because you could be wearing yourself down day after day with foods that you think are good for you when in fact, they are hurting you little by little.

It was a long 2 weeks for me that I was sick.  It was not a flu, more like a head cold on crack but it took me out regardless.  I will be doing the nutrition overhaul starting today to make sure there was nothing missed because I would rather be dragged down the street by wild horses than go through that again.  Make today a healthy one!

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It’s the fall right now but winter is around the corner in New England.  We will go from balmy and 70 degrees one day to dry and 30 degrees the next.  When that happens, the first thing on your body to “complain” is your skin.

I’m going to let you in on a secret:  my skin is a source of stress for me.  There is very little in my life that bothers me quite like my skin does.  Now you know I am going to tell you it is all my fault—because I am my own worst enemy.  So I am a sun lover for sure!  Nothing I love more than lying out in the sun…in Aruba…on the equator…with oil on me…and a meat thermometer to make sure I’m not overcooked. Hehe.

Yeah, I know, read me the riot act.  But I am now paying for my over indulgence of the big fireball in the sky with age spots.  Now truth be told, it could be worse.  I could have a whole host of things cropping up left and right for as much as I abused the gift of the sun, but I do not because of my insatiable love of omega 3 fatty acids.  Besides keeping my wrinkles at bay and smoothing out the texture of my skin, EFAs provide the structure necessary for skin with “snap”.  You know, non saggy skin.  So let’s get right into it and talk about what you might be going through this winter:

Dry skin:

Ignoring the fact that you want to shower with molten lava and wash your skin with heavily perfumed soap, you may find that no matter what you do you cannot rid yourself of dry skin.  The first place to look is your diet.  Are you hydrated and are you eating fats?  You want to have at least ¾ of a gallon of water per day and at least 3 to 5 servings of a good omega 3 rich fat source preferably in the form of an oil.  A long time ago I was told by a well known naturopath that you should have as much oil as you can tolerate that leaves your skin moistened after coming out of the shower.  I can tell you right now, none of y’all will try that, so let me ease your burden a bit with this recommendation:  if one serving of good fat per day does not help, add a ½ serving per day until it does.  Give it as much as a week to kick in before going up in the fat and cut a little bit of something else out during the day to make up for the extra cals.

Greasy skin:

You have a sweet tooth, girl.  Knock it off.  Too much sugar and fat helps the body to form a layer on the skin that is shiny.  If you replace those sweets with EFAs, you will fair much better.  Feel free to share those sweets with the rest of us so we may help you to move on from your bad habit.  Hopefully it was brownies you were eating…I’m just sayin.

Bumpy skin:

Increase the amount of orange foods in your diet (Vit A) and ease off the dairy a bit.  These occur more as an allergy to a food and typically dairy is the chief offender.  I know you love your greek yogurt, but 2 in a day is a bit much.  Let’s diversify a bit, shall we?

Acne prone skin:

Just like the greasy skin, walk away from the processed fats and the refined sugar.  They are killing you.  A clean diet with adequate hydration should begin to give you some relief although it is not always the full answer.  Also, a vitamin deficiency will also cause your acne to come out more and you know how I feel about vitamins so this should already be handled! [giving you a hairy eyeball]  If you are an athlete, or as active as one, you will not get all that you need from food alone and then your body begins to give you a hard time.  Listen to it when it talks to you, it knows more than you do.;o)

Nutritionally there is more to it than just EFAs if you want to survive a rough winter.  Vitamin E, Vitamin C, zinc, Vitamin A and selenium all aid in keeping your skin soft and healthy and are abundant in a clean, varied diet.  If you can venture out of your zone and eat more than just the same two veggies and one fruit that you eat every day, you should be well ahead of the game.  Another thing to note is, all those vitamins and minerals also do well for you topically.  So if you can find a good moisturizer with any of those added, grab it.  The more back up you can provide your skin with, the better.

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It is a rarity nowadays to speak to any woman who isn’t on some sort of diet.  Low carb, no carb, South Beach, cookie, Blood Type—you name it, they’re on it!  There is no shortage of deprivation and suffering amongst us women!  But there is a very serious shortage of information out there of how to diet to be beautiful.  Face it, when you get to the end of your diet, don’t you want to look good, too?

I have dieted many women in my short 15 year career.  I honestly can put that number in the thousands and still be very accurate.   Over the years I have seen more and more of a sense of desperation among woman:  an “At all cost” approach to dieting.  It really disturbs me simply because when you get to that stage your sense of judgment goes out the window.  When did this become so prevalent?

I don’t know about you but when I reach my diet destination, not only do I want to be the size I desire to be, but I also want to be healthy and beautiful at the same time.  Dieting, however, is not very healthy and you are lucky if you come out of it without a major case of wrinkles, loose skin and brittle hair–or even worse, hormone issues.   What’s missing in our diet adventures that causes us to look like a vagabond when we declare “scale victory”?  I would have to say attention to detail.

The foods you choose (or do not choose) can have more of an impact on your diet experience than the actual diet itself.  I hear so many people going back and forth over carbohydrates and whether they should have grains vs. potatoes but that has so little to do with you looking hot at the end.  And let’s be honest here, how many women really want to suffer through a diet only to come out haggard and beastly?  Why bother?  I would much rather be fat, happy and gorgeous then skinny, deprived and wretched!  Heck—if that was my only choice I would say bring on the Krispy Kreme!  Hair must be shiny, skin has to be dewy, nails long and healthy—and my cycle better be regular! 

I will be talking about this A LOT!  So many foods to cover, so many diets to pick apart…all with one thing in common:  beauty!  You need to look good mama!  And looking good is not about facial features or the prettiest girl in the classroom.  Beauty is about health—inside and out.  Hormones that work properly so that your hair, skin and nails shine;  healthy teeth and bones so they last a long time; make up that compliments your skin and preserves the environment.   Ladies, it’s time to get fit AND gorgeous!!  WOOP WOOP!

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