It’s finally here, my vegetarian for a week challenge. I explain the background of the challenge here, but to recap, my husband had this “brilliant” idea to go vegetarian for a week and I accepted. Watch to see how day one went.

Day one was relatively easy on us. Our vegetarian meals were all simple to prepare, tasty and rather filling. One of my only real concerns going into this was feeling hungry. I admit I felt some hunger yesterday; I don’t know if I was just psyching myself into it, or if the pangs were legit.

Day One Vegetarian Menu

Breakfast – egg white veggie omelet. This is actually what I have most mornings. We wrapped it in a whole grain tortilla with about a tablespoon of shredded cheese. Served with a cup of 0% fat greek yogurt with blueberries, strawberries and honey.Lunch – tuna fish sandwich. I use the tuna packed in water in the foil pack, mix with a little paprika, one tablespoon of light mayo and dice half a sweet pickle. Served on whole grain bread with a bunch of grapes on the side.

Dinner – grilled portabella mushrooms. Having seen many vegetarian friends choose this at cookouts, we knew we had to finally give it a try. A light spray of olive oil, fresh cracked black pepper and a pinch of kosher salt and then we cooked on the grill for about 20 minutes. Served with roasted red skin potatoes (chop potatoes in about sixths, toss with a little olive oil, cracked black pepper, dried thyme and basil, cook on 425 for about 30 minutes, turn once), skillet seared asparagus, and a small spring green salad with balsamic vinaigrette.Snacks – reduced fat string cheese, whole grain crackers with peanut butter, six ounce smoothie made of 0% fat greek yogurt, banana, strawberries and blueberries.

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This Thursday, April 9 on The View, learn how to diet on a budget with expert dietitian Joy Bauer. As a contributor to Self magazine and author of Joy’s LIFE Diet, Bauer will share her secrets with the ladies of The View on how to trim down for spring and not spend gobs of money on expensive diet food or fitness equipment. With the economy and approaching bikini-season on the forefront of everyone’s minds, we could all use a little savvy know-how from the experts to help us keep our spending and weight down.

To do a little homework before the show, read DietsInReview’s 10 ways to Diet on a Budget.

Check your local listings for specific show times.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control, one out of every three children in the United States is overweight.Humana, the health and supplemental benefits company, has an interesting challenge underway to help combat that horrible statistic. It’s called The American Horsepower Challenge, which is a part of the Humana Games 4 Health.

Here’s a nice background video on the event, including interviews with participants:

The challenge brings together 2,000 fifth and sixth graders and 20 members of Congress to race across the country. Well, not literally. What makes the challenge interesting is that it’s a cyber race, in which the participants power a cartoon horse avatar by taking real steps monitored by a pedometer.

“We have an explosion of obesity, as far as Americans are concerned,” says Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). “There is more time on videos, there is more time being schlepped to school, there are more opportunities for people to avoid simple common sense activities that make a difference. This is what is so great about the challenge is that it engages young Americans to do something that young Americans of a generation or two ago did.”

The American Horsepower Challenge is a part of a trend known as “exergaming” that incorporates exercise or some form of movement into video games. The most famous example of this is the popular video game platform Wii.

The brilliance in exergaming is that it makes fitness fun and challenging. That’s the perfect combination. especially if you’re at all competitive.

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Most of us know that when followed correctly, a vegetarian diet can be incredibly healthy for both humans and the planet. But what happens when someones’ intentions for being healthy go too far? According to the Journal of American Dietetic Association, twice as many teens and nearly double the number of young adults who had been vegetarians reported having used unhealthy means to control their weight like diet pills, laxatives, vomiting or diuretics, compared with those who had never been vegetarians.

These recent findings underscore a chicken-or-the-egg scenario: does being a vegetarian enable an adolescent to develop an eating disorder, or does the youth’s choice to become a vegetarian mask an underlying eating or body image issue? Health and nutrition experts see it as more of an issue with the latter, namely that there are predisposing factors that initially lead a child to choose to abstain from meat and also carry out unhealthy behaviors to control their weight.

While health benefits and animal-cruelty may be the driving forces for a teenager to abstain from eating meat, they might also be drawn to vegetarianism because it restricts or limits the kinds of foods they can eat. With eating disorders like anorexia or orthorexia, the choices of what a person is allowed to eat becomes smaller and smaller as their disease progresses. And when body image and body weight weigh heavily on the minds of these teenagers, it is easy to see how this disordered eating can become out of control when a young adults’ reasons for becoming a vegetarian are layered and do not just include the sole intention to inflict less harm to animals.

(Via Yahoo News.)

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Vegan’s often get a pretty bad rap from their stringent ways of eating. And while eating vegan is very specific and requires a lot of thought and planning, anyone who has ever eaten a truly vegan meal or bit into a decadent vegan dessert knows firsthand that veganism is not just healthy, but quite delicious.

Veganism is like the stricter sister of vegetarianism. Eschewing not just meat, but dairy, eggs and fish, vegans subsist on vegetables, fruit, grains, soy, nuts and seeds. And just as shunning meat has become increasingly popular among health and eco-friendly devotees, so has veganism seen a rapid rise in its comrades of followers.

For anyone who is interested in becoming a vegan, even just for a day, getting a good vegan cookbook is a necessity, unless you run the risk of eating salad with tofu and sunflower seeds for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The great news is that there is now, more than ever, an entire mini library of vegan cookbooks to choose from.

Here are some of our favorite vegan cookbooks:

Vegan with a Vengeance: Written by a quirky and edgy Brooklyn born and raised vegan, Isa Moskowitz, this cookbook includes 150 recipes like fresh corn fritters, orange scones, BBQ pomegranate tofu, TLTs (tempeh, lettuce and tomatoes) and tons of other vegan-friendly fare. Moskowitz gets rave reviewers for her innovative and yummy recipes and her entertaining and upbeat dialogue.

The Garden of Vegan: Two-hundred pages of meat- and dairy-free recipes makes this cookbook a real hit. Dishes like portobello mushroom bake, caramelized onion and fennel mashed potatoes, coconut spiced vegetables are not for the advanced vegan chef, but are rather fairly simple and straightforward. It also features a section for college students who want to cook vegan in the dorm room. One downside is that the recipes don’t include photos.

Simply Vegan: If sweets are your thing, but dairy isn’t, Simply Vegan is your must-have dessert cookbook. Featuring 140 recipes of your traditional favorites like chocolate cake, fudge, apple pie, cheesecake, rice pudding and some creative ones too like jelly donuts, hold the wheat carrot cake, pink passion smoothie, and Boston cream pie, Simply Vegan will do more than just satisfy your sweet tooth. Fifty of the recipes are wheat-free, too.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: Another gem by Isa Moskowitz, this cupcake bible includes 75 different recipes for cupcake batter and frosting. From lemon macadamia and pumpkin chocolate chip to from white chocolate marble and cappuccino filled with espresso cream, Vegan Cupcakes will tantalize and inspire, especially with the beautiful photos of each recipe.

Skinny Bitch: From just plain old Skinny Bitch to Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and Skinny Bitch Bun in the Oven, vegan devotees Rory and Kim have created a mini dairy-free empire arm-wrestling women to eat and become just like them.

Ten years ago, you would have had a tough time finding a vegan cookbook, let alone one devoted solely to cupcake-making, but the vegan cooking climate has surely changed. And don’t think you’re going to restock your pantry with funky ingredients like xanthum gum and amaranth flour, most of the recipes call for ingredients commonly found in grocery or health-food stores.

Happy vegan cooking!

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Our public servants in Washington, D.C. get some pretty nice perks. But one such benefit, the congressional gym, isn’t to the liking of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI).

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter

When going to the gym, McCotter can’t stand it if there are no ashtrays available. The congressman told Fox News that he doesn’t “go there very much because A, they don’t have ashtrays… And B, the one time I was there, my first trip, someone sort of was talc-ing themselves, and offered their hand and I just said, ‘Hey, we’re cool, dude.’”

McCotter didn’t reveal the name of the senator… or why he’s so uptight about talcum powder. But thankfully, the video tape of the interview with him revealed that he said all the above in a deadpan, tongue-in-cheek manner. We have all kinds of reasons to lose faith in our public officials, at least in this case the representative from Michigan isn’t the clueless jerk one would think when reading the video transcript out of context.

(via: Fox News)

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It seems that television and the internet have destroyed our attention spans. We have become too used to working, answering emails, following Twitter, and responding to text messages all at the same time. Even worse might be driving, applying makeup, and texting… you know who you are! It may seem like we are getting more done when we are multi-tasking and doing more at once, but are we doing it well? I recently burnt a grilled cheese sandwich because I was distracted with blogging or Twitter, or something else I was doing while trying to prepare lunch.

I burnt my lunch because I was not actually paying attention to what was happening on top of my stove. I am not the only one who has noticed an inability to focus. Researchers have found that when we multi-task we are actually wasting, not saving, mental energy. We are only able to devote our attention to one task at a time.

When we try to juggle several things at one time, just like juggling, we are actually only holding one task in the grasp of our attention at a time, quickly switching from one to the next to the next. Switching our attention from one item to the next takes some time, especially when attending to complicated tasks.

I know multi-tasking is not assisting my productivity and I am working to focus more on whatever task is at hand. Unfortunately, my attention span is not always cooperating. Instead of Facebook or Google Reader, I am challenging myself (and you) to find healthy distractions when your brain needs a break from focusing on the task at hand. Rather than re-engaging my brain on something new, I can allow myself to rest mentally by engaging myself physically. The next time you need a break try stretching, sit-ups, push-ups, jogging, preparing a healthy meal, splitting snacks into serving sizes, or other household chores.

(Via Thaindian.com)

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You find your stomach growling, but know you’re hours away from lunch time. That vending machine down the hall is very tempting and is practically calling your name. What do you do? If you plan ahead and make your own healthy snacks at home (or having things to prepare at work) you can avoid the high fat, high-calorie vending machine temptation. Healthy snacking and being prepared will help provide your body with nutrients needed, as well as not adding pounds to your waistline.

Remember, you shouldn’t feel guilty about snacking while dieting, as long as you are making healthy choices. Snacking when you’re hungry may help because you will be less likely to over eat at your next meal (i.e. getting seconds or thirds), therefore help you stay on track to losing weight. The key to incorporating snacks into your weight loss plan is to plan them with variety, moderation and balance in mind.

Try some of these springtime snacks that are great for all ages!

Make your own trail mix- mix ready-to eat cereal, dried fruit and nuts.Frozen banana-pop- Peel a banana and dip it in yogurt then roll it in crushed cereal or granola.  Freeze and enjoy!Spread peanut butter on apple slices.A scoop of frozen yogurt on two graham crackers and add sliced strawberries or bananas for a yummy sandwich.Make a smoothie by blending low-fat milk, yogurt, frozen berries or peaches.Make mini egg or tuna sandwiches.Microwave instant oatmeal, dried cranberries and chopped walnuts.Sprinkle 2% cheese on a wheat tortilla, melt in microwave, and top with salsa.Microwave a small potato and fill with low-fat cheese and salsa.Try a whole-wheat pita filled with ricotta cheese, green apples, and a dash of cinnamon.Have a bowl of fresh fruit topped with low-fat frozen yogurt, low-fat yogurt, or Cool Whip.

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Pizza is often the worst thing you can eat. But there are options that can make that pie a decent dietary option.

I’ve recently taken to making homemade pizza. Sure, it saves a little money as opposed to ordering takeout, but I also have fun kneading the dough and spreading the toppings myself. I’ve yet to graduate to throwing the dough in the air, which could be pretty scary stuff.

I’m not hear to tell you that what I make is the ultimate health food. I try my best to mimic a secret family recipe that has a sweet flakey pie-like crust (it remains under lock and key, no matter how hard we try to pry). But, I’m not so sure it’s altogether unhealthy either. I make it with a super thin crust, and I load it up with tons of mushrooms and chopped green peppers. And I go fairly easy on the cheese. There’s little to complain about.

The problem I face is that since it’s not your usual greasy pizza, and it has such a tasty sweet crust, I have to fight the urge like crazy to overindulge. My advice to you would be to experiment and research low-calorie options. Pizza doesn’t have to be a death knell to your diet.

Here are a few interesting stats on pizza culture in America:

Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or about 350 slices per second.Pizzerias represent 17 percent of all restaurants.Pizza is a $30 billion per year industry.Pizza accounts for more than 10 percent of all food sales.Sixty-seven percent of Americans order pizza for a casual evening with friends.Each man, woman and child in America eats an average of 46 slices, or 23 pounds, of pizza a year.

The stats come via the Mayo Clinic website. The article also gives some advice to diabetics who have problems indulging in pizza.

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