Can You Get Your 5 A Day With the Best Smoothie Maker?

Buying a smoothie maker is a good way to get your daily allowance of fruits and vegetables.In order to maintain good health and prevent any deficiencies, the government and healthcare professionals advise us to consume at least 5 pieces of fruits or vegetables in a single day. This seems like a very simple thing to do but most of us here in the UK don’t actually have that many fruits and vegetables as a part of a healthy diet. Time flies by and sometimes this makes us forget what we should have eaten. This is especially common when a person has a very busy lifestyle. On top of this, children aren’t very fond of some fruits and almost all vegetables. Don’t worry they’ll realize the importance of vegetables when they get older. But what can you do to ensure that you and your children get your 5 a day on a daily basis? Well, making smoothies can certainly help you to get started.

A common question I’ve heard before is whether you can use smoothies to get your 5 a day. Well, of course you can but this can often be misinterpreted. Having a smoothie maker is real handy and there’s a helpful guide written by ReviewInsider UK that’ll help you to pick the best smoothie maker. I have one at home too but I never use it too much. Personally, I don’t think there’s any harm in trying to get all of your 5 a day by making smoothies. The only problem is that blending fruits and vegetables can reduce the fibre that you would normally get from the whole fruit or veg. On top of this, the sugar becomes concentrated and can also damage your teeth. That’s why I would never just have smoothies throughout the day. It just isn’t healthy for me. However, there’s no doubt that there will be plenty of nutrients in the smoothie and it’ll certainly mask the bitter taste that can be contributed by some vegetables.

Personally, I always try and get at least 2 of my 5 a day by using my smoothie maker. But, I also try and maximise this by adding as many vegetables as I can. This is to try and minimise the sugar that I’ll be consuming. By doing this, I can usually have something that doesn’t taste too bad but is extremely nutritious. In addition to this, I also eat lots of whole fruits and vegetables throughout the day. This gives me sufficient energy and good health to do whatever I need to do through the day. My skin, hair and the entire body feels great and I have this strategy to thank. But if you’re looking for a solid answer to whether you can get all of your 5 a day from smoothie then I would say no. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t create a new strategy. I would advise you to combine smoothies with eating fresh whole fruits and vegetables during the day. This is what our department of health advises too! This will ensure that you get sufficient nutrients from the smoothie along with other essential nutrients that get broken down in the smoothie maker.

I think if the main problem is that your kids won’t have fruits and vegetables especially then you could make smoothies for them. In this situation, you should put different varieties of vegetables in your smoothie maker and then mask the taste with some sweet fruits. This will be far better for the growth and overall health of your children when compared to having no fruits and vegetables in their diet.

There are lots of different recipes available you can try and change up the taste and nutritious value. Make sure you find and try as many as you can!

Walking – The Simplest Exercise If There Ever Was

Whether it is to lose weight or just have a healthier lifestyle, serious fitness enthusiasts often assume that the fancier an exercise is, the more effective it will be. To be honest, the complicated exercises do tend to target hard-to-touch parts of the body. However, we’re all aware of the compound exercises that work the entire body at the same time. In this case, there’s one form of exercise that always goes unnoticed. To be fair, it’s probably the most underrated exercise ever and that’s walking. All you do is put one foot in front of the other and do the same with the other foot. Then you repeat this movement over and over again.

On top of improved fitness levels, there are many other benefits of walking regularly. It offers better control over your blood pressure, improves the health of your heart and some people also get some relief from stress and get better sleep at night. If you’re not a fan of the intensity then you could raise this intensity and walk faster. The highest intensity of walking will be challenging regardless of whether you are a beginner or a pro.

A little while ago, I mentioned compound exercises. To be honest, I wouldn’t consider as that but it will improve your overall fitness and also work your lower body. It can be great for working your leg and calf muscles. If you were to walk up on a hill, this can also work your glutes. Walking is an aerobic exercise and as I said, it’ll improve your overall fitness while also strengthening the legs and the lower body in general. A lot of cardio exercises can have a lot of impact, which can ultimately lead to an injury. The good thing is that walking is considered to be the opposite so wouldn’t cause any injuries or damage to joints and bones.

Walking can be a very effective form of exercise if done properly.

The best thing about walking is that you can literally do it anywhere. You don’t any special equipment or a visit to the gym. You can just put your walking shoes on and head out your front door. If the weathers bad, you can even walk at home. I think we should all do a little bit of walking everyday because these days, we don’t do much of this. It’ll certainly be good for our overall health.

The Best Exercises For Our Body

Exercising is very important because it not only allows us to be in the best possible shape but it also helps to prevent or lower the chances or serious disease. But if you’re a newbie, I’m sure you don’t know what to do when you’re in the gym. If you’re not on a specific fitness regime, there are some exercises that can be quite effective.

Walking is one of these as it can help us to build our fitness and can be done anywhere. It doesn’t require any equipment and will develop our legs and help us to control our blood pressure and blood sugars a little bit better. If you’re doing this on a treadmill, you can even increase the intensity by walking on an incline setting. This will give you a similar intensity as if you were walking on hills.

These are some excellent body exercises for getting stronger.

Similar to walking, running is also very effective for obvious reasons. But one way of increasing the intensity of this exercise is to try interval training. This basically means that you sprint for a short period of time e.g. 1 minute then slow down and jog for around 2 minutes. This is very effective especially in weight loss. The positive thing is that this technique can be used with almost all kinds of cardio exercises.

Doing squats is highly beneficial because this requires a compound movement that works all of the body in addition to concentrating on the glutes, hamstrings and the quads. This is highly effective and can even be done with a barbell. The important thing here is to keep working to improve your technique. During the movement, you should never bend your back as this can cause a back injury.

Lunges are also similar to squats in the sense that you can use them as a compound exercise that specifically targets all of your lower body. If you’ve never done these before then you’ll be struggling when you do them. The best thing to do is to start slowly and monitor your progress. Eventually you’ll be able to use weights and will also see results quite rapidly.

There are lots of other exercises you can do to get results quickly. Pushups are one of these. These target the chest and arms. Crunches will also help build your core. However, it’s essential for you to learn the proper technique when you do all of these exercises.

VIDEO: Home Workout To Lose Belly Fat

Many of us assume that in order to be serious about losing weight, we need to do join a gym. The good thing is that this isn’t true. You can easily work hard to eat healthy food and do body exercises to lose weight. In the video below, there is a home workout video that efficiently targets the stomach.

Healthy Low Fat Recipes for the Best Soup Maker

Introduction

Regardless of whether you’re dieting or not, there’s nothing better than having soup in the winter. At a time when everyone is baking cakes and cookies for the holidays, you can be forgiven for being tempted to give up your diet for a little bit. However, one way to prevent this is by trying delicious, healthy and low fat soup recipes. Making these recipes isn’t usually too difficult either as normally, all I do is put the ingredients into the machine and I’m ready to go. I quite like the Morphy Richards 501014 soup machine but you can pick any other soup maker that suits you. 

Whenever I’m making soup, I try and use healthy recipes that will fill me up but won’t be overloaded with calories. I try to make low-calorie meals that taste great. I’m sure you’ve seen small tubs of healthy low-calorie soup available in supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury’s. These are quite cheap and I guess you can buy these and pop them in the microwave before serving. However, I personally like to make fresh soup myself by using high quality fresh ingredients. The thing is that you can never be too sure what’s been put into the soup packets in supermarkets. They usually have extra sugar added and lots of other processed ingredients. The very fact that they’re available to buy in packets puts me off and even if they have very few calories, this doesn’t mean they are healthy. These are the reasons that I use the Morphy Richards 501014 so much, as I consider it to be the best soup maker at the moment.

Healthy Low-Calorie Soup Maker Recipes

As you can get easily bored of trying the same recipes every time, I tend to try new soup recipes every week. If I like a particular recipe then I note it down and if in the mood, I usually try it again at some point. I’ve listed some of my favourite recipes below.

Creamy Corn Soup

This creamy corn soup tasted delicious and was prepared well in this soup maker.I know what you’re thinking but no, this creamy corn soup doesn’t contain any cream. I tend to replace it with low fat milk and increase the thickness with a potato. This usually improves the texture and gives it that creamy flavour and my goodness, does it taste great! The ingredients for this are as follows: fresh kernels of corn, which have been cut from the cob, garlic cloves and some scallions that have been chopped. I use olive oil and combine it with a russet potato, skimmed milk, a chicken/vegetable cube, fresh cilantro and if needed, a little bit of low fat sour cream. Sometimes, when I’m in the mood, I also add in a little bit of low fat cheese. Once the ingredients have been chopped into smaller pieces, I pop the ingredients in my soup maker and within half an hour, I usually have it ready to serve. I then add salt and pepper as the final addition before serving. Of course, you can change the recipe according to your own likes and dislikes but what you’ll eventually get is a creamy, delicious bowl of soup that doesn’t have many calories.

Potato Leek Soup

This is an easy-to-make recipe for potato leek soup.In case you haven’t realised it by now, I absolutely love potatoes and almost always have them in my soup even if they aren’t the healthiest of ingredients due to the starch. Like the creamy corn soup, the texture of this soup also comes out quite creamy and almost velvety. I would say that this is probably the easiest soup to make but tastes like a pro made it. You need to get a few leeks and remove the stems. Following this, you’ll need to chop half an onion and cut two russet potatoes into small pieces. Next, you need to add in a tiny bit of flour and butter. I also add in quite a bit of vegetable broth into the mix. The final steps involve the addition of skimmed milk along with salt and some fresh pepper. Once you’ve added all of these into the soup maker, you can be sure that you’re about to taste one of the tastiest yet healthiest soups around.

These are just two recipes I’ve tried this week. With a little bit of effort, I’m sure you can find lots more of these delicious yet healthy soup maker recipes. They’re easy and very quick to make but at the same time are healthy as long as you use as many fresh and low-fat ingredients as possible.

How you can Lose Weight With Soup in your Diet

Introduction

Crazy unhealthy diets are the norm these days as more and more people go out of their way to lose weight. However, losing weight in the healthiest manner should be the focus. One way of doing this is by incorporating soup in your diet. But how can you do this?

Soup can be healthy, but you need to avoid the wrong ingredients.

Using Soup to Lose Fat

How does one gain weight? Simply by eating more than the recommended amount for Adults right? Even if all the calories are healthy, eating excess could still pile on the pounds. One possible way of counteracting this would be to incorporate soup into the diet. Soups normally contain very low number of calories but still hold lots of vitamins and minerals due to the fresh ingredients like vegetables. They can also have lots of protein due to meat like chicken. Some people often use soup diets but this would be unhealthy. For this reason, incorporating soup into the diet would be the healthiest way possible to lose weight.

Before you get started, just make sure that you don’t choose just any soup. Ideally you should use fresh fruits and vegetable in combination with protein ingredients like chicken and whole grains in order to create a complete meal. You should also be careful when you buy soup from shops because they might not be as healthy as you think. Cream or cheese-based soups should definitely be avoided. In addition to this, most ready-made soups have too much sodium content and this can be unhealthy too. In order to avoid all of these, you should always buy fresh and even organic ingredients that are free of pesticides.

If you combine soup with a healthy diet and exercise, you’ll be feeling healthier and losing weight in no time at all.

Make Sure you include these Brain Foods in your Diet

Introduction

As children we used to eat a lot of bad foods without a care in the world. I remember when my parents used to tell me to stop but it was no use. Children will be children and as you and I grow older, the cycle repeats with our own children. The truth is that as we get older, our body ages too and we no longer feel invincible as children normally do. We no longer have the energy to run around and do the amount of work we used to when we were younger. At this time though, we’re constantly being forced to change our diet in order to accommodate foods and dietary supplements that will energise us to new levels. But is it just hype or do they actually work? And if so, what are the best brain foods that can be easily included in the diet?

These brain foods help to improve your concentration and memory.

The Best Brain Foods for Increased Concentration

Well, caffeine is that first one that I’m sure you were already aware of. It’s the reason why we drink tea isn’t it? Caffeine works and works well. It will give you an energy boost and keep you alert though you shouldn’t have too much for obvious reasons. While sugar is bad for weight control, it does improve the memory and raises concentration levels very quickly. However, make sure you don’t have plain table sugar. Have natural sugars from fruits instead but again, don’t overdo it. Fish like Salmon is another brain food because it holds essential fats like Omega-3 fatty acids. These are essential for brainpower and will lead to a lower incidence of dementia and stroke. Similarly, Avocados also provide these nutrients to ensure that your body remains in the best possible shape, both physically and mentally. Blueberries are another food that taste delicious and also protect the brain from free radicals. As a consequence, these may slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

All of these brain foods aren’t foods that are difficult to obtain. They can easily be purchased from a local supermarket and when combined together, they’ll boost the body and the mind. This will keep your brain in its best possible condition.

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close