Super Sites: Helpful Sites to Keep You Slim

Not up to date on the latest health news? Need some virtual support for your dieting journey? Dieting blogs and sites are the best way to keep yourself on track.

Sometimes dieting mistakes are as simple as losing motivation, not knowing about the latest tips and tricks or lack of healthy recipes. Use some of these great websites to help you stick to your healthy lifestyle whenever, whereever.

1. Diet magazines: Combining fitness, nutrition and recipes, magazine websites provide a central destination for all things diet:

Shape Magazine

Fitness Magazine

Self Magazine


2. Some general sites are great resources for the latest diet information:

Fit Sugar Blog





3. Foodie Reviews: These sites are devoted to trying and reviewing the latest diet products that way you can buy and enjoy easier.

Yummy Diet Food

I Ate a Pie




4. Super Fans: Dieters who offer inspiration and/or comic relief for anyone’s dieting journey:

Fat Lady Singz

Diet Girl

Step Away From the Cake



5. Great all around site:
Hungry Girl

Super Snacking: Portable Twosomes

Sometimes 3 square meals a day just won't cut it. We need snacks! But instead of stocking up on on-the-go baddies (chips, chewy candies and chocolate bars), try to reach for the goodies -- portable AND healthy. By combining healthy fats, proteins and carbohydrates, these snacks won't weigh you down but will actually fuel you to keep going for longer...

5 easy, healthy AND portable twosomes to try:

1. Replace crunchy calorie bombs with a healthier crunch, try:

       Hummus + Carrots

2. Treat yourself to a disease fighting snack with a combo of protein and whole grains: 

          String Cheese + Crackers

3. Build your own mixed nuts: 

          Pistachios + Almonds

4. Something sweet:

Frozen Grapes + Pure Chocolate Chips

5. Get all the benefits of a meal with this snack: 

      Rolled Turkey Slices + Mustard

SUPER TIP: Remember food is fuel. Think of that the next time you reach for the candy bar. Feeding yourself candy and junk food provides no nutritional benefits and is simply empty calories. If you need to indulge, though, at least treat yourself to some home made or store made desserts. Avoid heavily processed foods at all costs.

Super Shades: Color Coding Your Diet

The color of our food is extremely important not just for how appetizing our food is but also to gage how healthy some items are or aren't. 

Foods that display different varieties of the color wheel indicate that they contain high amounts of certain vitamins, minerals, fats, and other breakdowns.

This post will focus on foods that contain the color BEIGE:

What are the first foods that come to mind when you think beige?

BREADS

PASTA

BATTERED AND FRIED

PASTRIES

Notice how these foods provide very little nutritional value (if any). These starchy and highly caloric items provide immediate blood rushes that lift you up quickly and bring a fast energy crash down.

So by all means try to avoid BEIGE and adorn your plate with colorful edibles to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Super Swaps: French Fries

Pommes frites. Chips. Potato Wedges. Freedom Fries.

No matter how you slice the potato, french fries are still just salty strips of spud fried in deep pools of oil. Which is exactly why they typically clock in at an obscene  440 calories for a 4.7 serving (typically a small/medium size). Restaurant servings are usually 2X that size and more often than not go through a double frying - driving the calories and fat way up. 

Yet we keep coming back for more! Whether they're a lunch or dinner side dish, late night snack or the classic BBQ staple, fries are everywhere. We eat them at home, at sporting events, in malls, at restaurants, and the list goes on and on. 

We consume INSANE amounts of these potato spears! A 2010 poll revealed that the average American consumes 29 lbs of french fries a year!

But how can we, potato loving citizens, get our fries fix without all those extra calories? A simple swap a few times a week, maybe even altogether, will save you tens of pounds and countless calories. 

Try these easy swaps for the same tasteful punch:

Baked white potatoe fries (4.7 oz) = 125 calories

Chop up the potato into spears, spray with 0 calorie spray, sprinkle salt and any other herbs/flavorings and cook in the oven at 350 for 25-30 mins. 

Baked sweet potatoe fries (4.7 oz) = 120 calories

Same preparation as white potato fries but instead of salt and herbs, sprinkle with cinnamon for a sweet kick.

Butternut squash fries (4.7 oz) @ just 50 calories for the same serving.

Prepare the same way as sweet potato fries but cook in the oven for 40 mins, flipping mid way, to achieve a crispy finish. 

RESTAURANT MISTAKE: 

By no means does choosing sweet potato fries at restaurants make for a healthier choice over french fries. Both are super caloric options. Instead, choose a baked potato (white or sweet) and a dipping sauce of either ketchup and mustard.

Super Slimmers: Overeater

This is the first edition of what we at Super U call "Dieting Divas." 


What is a Dieting Diva? Well we recognize that everyone has a different way of eating and experiences different craving patterns. By understanding what your specific dieting personality is you can better tailor your diet to satisfy those specific cravings and avoid your particular pitfalls...

Find yourself saying: "Look at these portions?" "I'm getting seconds..." "Supersize it!!!"

Diagnosis: You are an overeater

Weakness: BIG portions and many of whatever you're eating - healthy or not

Avoid: Small items that pack a high calorie bang. 

An overeater's biggest fear!

Don't fight it. Just don't bite it...for example, you know that a delicious home baked brownie can be a small indulgence in a portioned out size but you won't stop at just one because you crave large servings. Therefore, avoid temptation altogether by just forgoing such a calorie dense item and try to stretch your calorie buck with numerous other, lower calorie items that will satisfy your particular appetite.

Eat: Anything that enables you to eat large quantities for relatively small calories. Some good options are popcorn, omelettes, broth based soups, puffed cereals, etc.

Out to eat? Ask for a side dish of steamed veggies and mix it in with your dish, thereby increasing the portion of your meal but not adding too many excess calories.

Super Picks: Pretzel M&M's

What we're loving today...Pretzel M&M's.

We at Super U find these little spheres of chocolate pretzel amazingness simply divine. In the chocolately world of mostly nutritional evil, pretzel m&m's come out looking like angels.

They're a perfect sweet and salty dessert or snack that will satisfy any chocolate fix. In a 1.14 oz package there are just 150 calories and 5 grams of fat (compared to a Snickers bar that has a whopping 14grams!).

We sometimes throw these in the freezer for a great frozen summer treat.

Try these easy and delicious combos:

0% fat plain greek yogurt + pretzel m&m's package 

= 250 calories

1 cup fiber one + pretzel m&m's package + 1/2 cup milk 

= 300 calories

1 cup unsalted popcorn + pretzel m&m's package 

= 195 calories






You can pick up these packaged indulgences at any local bodega or street vendor, just look for the bright blue bag!

Super Shocker: What's Really in Our Food

Something totally irked us at Super U this week...watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Correction, watching Jamie Oliver show us what's really in our ice cream sundaes. From duck feathers in cookie dough to beetle secretions in strawberry sauce, Jamie Oliver demonstrated on his Food Revolution show just what the food industry doesn't want you to know. They insert these unthinkable ingredients because they're cheap.

The processed food you eat is not necessarily what you think it is. A long ingredient list with words you can't pronounce should be every indication that what you're eating may be hiding some pretty nasty stuff. The food industry replaces duck feathers and beetle secretions with scientific names that fool YOU, the consumer, into eating these gross products in everyday foods like candy and ice cream.


We did some research and here are some other repulsive ingredients in every day foods:

Yum :)

#1 Hot Dog Casings

What it is: Submucosa

Huh? A layer of the intestine from the intestinal track of farmed animals.

Even grosser...the outer fat and the inner slimy lining are removed so that the casings actually resemble the original intestines!

Don't I look delicious?!

#2 Red Food Coloring

What it is: Carmine

Huh? Crushed scale insects release carminic acid, a red crumbly substance modified with other products to create a brilliant red hued food additive.



Found in...strawberry flavored yogurt, fruit cocktail, strawberry ice cream, frozen popsicles, bottled juices

#3 Chewing Gum Base

What it is: Lanolin


Huh? Yellow waxy substance secreted by the skin glands of wool-bearing animals (mostly domesticated sheep)

So this is where my haircuts go...

#4 Dough Conditioner in Bread

What it is: L-cysteine/cysteine/cystine

Huh? Human hair and/or duck feathers

It's not just bread...most cookie dough in ice cream contains cystine





So the next time you indulge in a factory's concoction remember that Shakespeare had it right...A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. What matters is what something IS, not what it is CALLED.

For more surprising hidden ingredients, click here