FULL-LIFE EATING GOAL: one serving a day
Grab fast, low-fat chicken Grocery shops typically stock skinless, boneless breasts, thighs; and fast-cooking breast fillets. Don't let price stop you from stocking up on them. These
healthier, quicker-to-prepare alternatives to whole birds ensure that 100 percent of what you buy ends up in your meal, as opposed to the waste inevitable with a whole chicken.
Buy a roast chicken Many food shops today offer roast chickens for sale. Go ahead and buy one! When you get home, strip off the skin, remove the meat from the bones and drain off any sauce or juice. That way, you get rid of the fat and the exculsively high sodium levels of any shop-applied marinade. What's left is deliciously healthy, lean chicken meat, ready for instant eating. Serve it up on its own, shred it into soup or onto salad or add to vegetables.
Make a 10 minute chicken-and-veg meal Grab a pack of boneless, skinless chicken breast fillets and some precut vegetables such as squash, broccoli, green and red peppers and onions. Dump them all in a pan with a splash of olive oil and some low-sodium stock, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Season with garlic, ginger, basil, tarragon or just a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Cook until the chicken's done and the vegetables are as crunchy - or soft - as you like. Voila! Dinner's ready.
Create a marinade habit Marinades make your poultry amazingly tender, moist and flavoursome. The day before you intend to cook, place the raw chicken in a seable container, pour on a marinade, cover and refrigerate until cooking time the next evening. Almost any liquid can be the base:
orange juice, a vinaigrette, even yoghurt. Add your favourite herbs and spices for flavour. If you want even greater convenience, use a shop-bought low-fat marinade. Then cook your favourite way. One important rule: discard marinades once you've removed the chicken, or use to make a cooked sauce.
Leftovers? You've got lunch! Leftover cooked chicken will keep for three days in the fridge. Put some in a wholewheat tortilla; sprinkle with chopped tomatoes, diced avocado, onions and grated low-fat cheese; and grill for a healthy Mexican-style treat. Or combine chopped chicken with a dollop of low-fat mayonnaise, tarragon and grapes for an elegant chicken salad.
Make chicken chilli Add chunks of cooked chicken to a bean chilli to bump up the protein content.
Buy skinless minced turkey breast instead of minced beef Use it as you would minced beef in chilli, lasagne and other pasta recipes.
Grill or bake a turkey breast instead of a whole chicken Slice, then refrigerate or freeze leftovers for use later in turkey sandwiches or turkey salad (toss diced turkey with low-fat mayonnaise, chopped apples, walnuts, celery and grapes).
Make an autumn turkey salad Place cubed turkey, sliced cooked sweet potato, cranberries and walnuts on a bed of spinach and drizzle with your favourite olive-oil dressing.
Keep turkey in the freezer for quick meals Put skinless, boneless turkey cutlets in sealable bags and freeze. Thaw in the microwave, then saute in a frying pan with a dash of olive oil.
Smart Ways
To Eat More Lean beef and other meats
FULL-LIFE EATING GOAL: three servings a week
Look for 'lean' or 'extra-lean' on the label These cuts will have 4.5g or less of saturated fat and 5-10g of total fat per serving. Or ask your butcher to provide you with lean cuts, such as sirloin or tenderloin.
Use learn meat as an ingredient, not a main course This may be the best trick of all when it comes to getting meal portions correct. Rather than thinking of meat as something to be served by itself, make it part of other dishes. Here are several smart ways
Garnish your steak Even better, saute thinly sliced onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic cloves and spoon a healthy portion over the steak slices. This will make the meat portion seem even larger and more inviting - without extra meat.
Cook roasts separately from vegetables Roasting makes fat melt away from meat. That's good. If potatoes, carrots, turnips or other vegetables are in the pan, they'll absorb the fat you're trying to avoid. That's bad. A better approach: cook the meat, decant the fat, then cook the vegetables in the remaining broth.
Use the 'see it, lose it' rule If you see fat on your food, remove it. For example:
Use bacon as a flavouring, not a serving One piece of crumbled bacon goes a long way towards adding that wonderful smoky flavour to healthier dishes.
Choice 6 Eat fewer calories
When your meals are mostly vegetables and fruits, along with moderate portions of beans, whole grains, lean protein and good fats, you're harnessing an important longevity secret: more food but fewer calories.
The key is choosing the right foods in the right portions. You don't have to be stingy with the amount you eat or ever feel deprived or count a single calorie if you make the first five choices of full-life eating - namely, by feasting on fruit and veg and enjoying moderate amounts of other healthy foods such as yoghurt, salmon, olive oil, low-fat cheese and dark chocolate. On okinawa, this strategy (minus the chocolate) allows people to eat more food by weight than people in other parts of Japan yet consume several hundred fewer calories a day because their choices are naturally lean.
This is an important point: you can eat heaped platefuls of veg and fruit for fewer calories than are in a small bag of crisps. And the vegetables and fruit pack several huge health bonuses. First is what they contain they packaged snacks don't: oodles of antioxidants, vitamins and fibre.
Second is what they don't contain that packaged foods do: fat, refined carbohydrates and artificial additives that play a role in memory loss, fatigue and so many killer diseases.
We've made these points before, previous topic Seven Keys to Ageing Well. There we told you of two exciting keys to longevity: not obsessing about the bathroom scales and choosing foods that you can eat to your heart's content without overdoing the calories. In this section, we'll show
you how to achieve these goals - and enjoy every luscious bite of this natural, never-say-diet approach to achieving a healthy weight. The bonus? Eating this way brings extra pleasure to your table because you never to worry about eating the wrong things or 'cheating' on the latest weight-loss scheme.
SAY GOODBYE TO DIETS
Best of all, it's a great, natural, feel-good way to step off the crazy, unhealthy weight-loss roller coaster. Too many weight-loss gimmicks and gurus want you to believe that temporary deprivation and restriction are the keys to slimming down. They've demonised some foods as the cause of the world's obesity epidemic and often market highly processed alternatives (such as food-replacement milkshakes, bars and frozen meals) as the alternative. The truth is, when you re-balance your plate and choose from a wide variety of healthy foods (and treat yourself to the ones you love most), you've found a way to eat that helps your body to settle as its natural, healthy weight; give you the energy you need to be more active; and promote life-long health.
Should you worry about your weight at all? It depends. If excess weight is hurting your health, energy or mobility, then discuss weight loss with your family doctor (and if your doctor agrees that weight loss is a good idea, plan to lose pounds slowly). But if you're just hoping to fit into a smaller bathing suit next summer, reconsider. For many people, 'vanity' weight loss provides limited health benefits, and a growing stack of research suggests that after the age of 55 or 60, vanity weight loss is detrimental to your health. In one 12 year study of 1,801 people aged over 71, women who lost weight increased their risk of dying by 38 percent, and men increased their odds by 76 percent. (Of course, your best option if you'd still like to be trimmer and more fit its exercise).
Grab fast, low-fat chicken Grocery shops typically stock skinless, boneless breasts, thighs; and fast-cooking breast fillets. Don't let price stop you from stocking up on them. These
healthier, quicker-to-prepare alternatives to whole birds ensure that 100 percent of what you buy ends up in your meal, as opposed to the waste inevitable with a whole chicken.
Buy a roast chicken Many food shops today offer roast chickens for sale. Go ahead and buy one! When you get home, strip off the skin, remove the meat from the bones and drain off any sauce or juice. That way, you get rid of the fat and the exculsively high sodium levels of any shop-applied marinade. What's left is deliciously healthy, lean chicken meat, ready for instant eating. Serve it up on its own, shred it into soup or onto salad or add to vegetables.
Make a 10 minute chicken-and-veg meal Grab a pack of boneless, skinless chicken breast fillets and some precut vegetables such as squash, broccoli, green and red peppers and onions. Dump them all in a pan with a splash of olive oil and some low-sodium stock, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Season with garlic, ginger, basil, tarragon or just a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Cook until the chicken's done and the vegetables are as crunchy - or soft - as you like. Voila! Dinner's ready.
Create a marinade habit Marinades make your poultry amazingly tender, moist and flavoursome. The day before you intend to cook, place the raw chicken in a seable container, pour on a marinade, cover and refrigerate until cooking time the next evening. Almost any liquid can be the base:
orange juice, a vinaigrette, even yoghurt. Add your favourite herbs and spices for flavour. If you want even greater convenience, use a shop-bought low-fat marinade. Then cook your favourite way. One important rule: discard marinades once you've removed the chicken, or use to make a cooked sauce.
Leftovers? You've got lunch! Leftover cooked chicken will keep for three days in the fridge. Put some in a wholewheat tortilla; sprinkle with chopped tomatoes, diced avocado, onions and grated low-fat cheese; and grill for a healthy Mexican-style treat. Or combine chopped chicken with a dollop of low-fat mayonnaise, tarragon and grapes for an elegant chicken salad.
Make chicken chilli Add chunks of cooked chicken to a bean chilli to bump up the protein content.
Buy skinless minced turkey breast instead of minced beef Use it as you would minced beef in chilli, lasagne and other pasta recipes.
Grill or bake a turkey breast instead of a whole chicken Slice, then refrigerate or freeze leftovers for use later in turkey sandwiches or turkey salad (toss diced turkey with low-fat mayonnaise, chopped apples, walnuts, celery and grapes).
Make an autumn turkey salad Place cubed turkey, sliced cooked sweet potato, cranberries and walnuts on a bed of spinach and drizzle with your favourite olive-oil dressing.
Keep turkey in the freezer for quick meals Put skinless, boneless turkey cutlets in sealable bags and freeze. Thaw in the microwave, then saute in a frying pan with a dash of olive oil.
Smart Ways
To Eat More Lean beef and other meats
FULL-LIFE EATING GOAL: three servings a week
Look for 'lean' or 'extra-lean' on the label These cuts will have 4.5g or less of saturated fat and 5-10g of total fat per serving. Or ask your butcher to provide you with lean cuts, such as sirloin or tenderloin.
Use learn meat as an ingredient, not a main course This may be the best trick of all when it comes to getting meal portions correct. Rather than thinking of meat as something to be served by itself, make it part of other dishes. Here are several smart ways
- Add thinly sliced beef to your saturated vegetables or work stir-fries.
- Top a crunchy, robust salad with beef slices.
- Make kebabs with lean meat cubes and vegetables
- Add small chunks of cooked pork and sauteed vegetables to cooked brown rice for a one-dish meal.
- Add lean minced beef to spaghetti sauce.
- Make bean, vegetable and meat combinations such as chilli or cassoulet. Just be sure to add the meat to the beans after it's been cooked and drained; otherwise, the beans will absorb the fat.
Garnish your steak Even better, saute thinly sliced onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic cloves and spoon a healthy portion over the steak slices. This will make the meat portion seem even larger and more inviting - without extra meat.
Cook roasts separately from vegetables Roasting makes fat melt away from meat. That's good. If potatoes, carrots, turnips or other vegetables are in the pan, they'll absorb the fat you're trying to avoid. That's bad. A better approach: cook the meat, decant the fat, then cook the vegetables in the remaining broth.
Use the 'see it, lose it' rule If you see fat on your food, remove it. For example:
- If there's fat on the meat, trim it off.
- If there's skin on the chicken, remove it.
- If there's liquefied fat on top of the stew or soup, skin it off.
- If there's a pool of grease underneath your meal, soak it up with a paper napkin.
Use bacon as a flavouring, not a serving One piece of crumbled bacon goes a long way towards adding that wonderful smoky flavour to healthier dishes.
Choice 6 Eat fewer calories
When your meals are mostly vegetables and fruits, along with moderate portions of beans, whole grains, lean protein and good fats, you're harnessing an important longevity secret: more food but fewer calories.
The key is choosing the right foods in the right portions. You don't have to be stingy with the amount you eat or ever feel deprived or count a single calorie if you make the first five choices of full-life eating - namely, by feasting on fruit and veg and enjoying moderate amounts of other healthy foods such as yoghurt, salmon, olive oil, low-fat cheese and dark chocolate. On okinawa, this strategy (minus the chocolate) allows people to eat more food by weight than people in other parts of Japan yet consume several hundred fewer calories a day because their choices are naturally lean.
This is an important point: you can eat heaped platefuls of veg and fruit for fewer calories than are in a small bag of crisps. And the vegetables and fruit pack several huge health bonuses. First is what they contain they packaged snacks don't: oodles of antioxidants, vitamins and fibre.
Second is what they don't contain that packaged foods do: fat, refined carbohydrates and artificial additives that play a role in memory loss, fatigue and so many killer diseases.
We've made these points before, previous topic Seven Keys to Ageing Well. There we told you of two exciting keys to longevity: not obsessing about the bathroom scales and choosing foods that you can eat to your heart's content without overdoing the calories. In this section, we'll show
you how to achieve these goals - and enjoy every luscious bite of this natural, never-say-diet approach to achieving a healthy weight. The bonus? Eating this way brings extra pleasure to your table because you never to worry about eating the wrong things or 'cheating' on the latest weight-loss scheme.
SAY GOODBYE TO DIETS
Best of all, it's a great, natural, feel-good way to step off the crazy, unhealthy weight-loss roller coaster. Too many weight-loss gimmicks and gurus want you to believe that temporary deprivation and restriction are the keys to slimming down. They've demonised some foods as the cause of the world's obesity epidemic and often market highly processed alternatives (such as food-replacement milkshakes, bars and frozen meals) as the alternative. The truth is, when you re-balance your plate and choose from a wide variety of healthy foods (and treat yourself to the ones you love most), you've found a way to eat that helps your body to settle as its natural, healthy weight; give you the energy you need to be more active; and promote life-long health.
Should you worry about your weight at all? It depends. If excess weight is hurting your health, energy or mobility, then discuss weight loss with your family doctor (and if your doctor agrees that weight loss is a good idea, plan to lose pounds slowly). But if you're just hoping to fit into a smaller bathing suit next summer, reconsider. For many people, 'vanity' weight loss provides limited health benefits, and a growing stack of research suggests that after the age of 55 or 60, vanity weight loss is detrimental to your health. In one 12 year study of 1,801 people aged over 71, women who lost weight increased their risk of dying by 38 percent, and men increased their odds by 76 percent. (Of course, your best option if you'd still like to be trimmer and more fit its exercise).
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