How to Make Healthier Meals With ELEVATE

If you’re wondering how to make healthy meals but don’t know where to start, you’re not alone. While it may feel overwhelming to consider completely changing your food choices and time spent cooking and prepping, it doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to completely overhaul your life to improve your health and reach your wellness goals. You can make a big difference in your nutrition by making small adjustments to your current diet and routines. As a registered dietitian, I’ve found three common blockers (that you can overcome) when it comes to elevating meals from a nutritional standpoint: time, accessibility, and the influence of others.  Healthy Meal Blocker #1: Time Busy schedules, work commitments, social calendars—it can be hard to find the time to plan out nutrient-dense meals and muster up the energy it takes to shop, prep, and cook. More often than not, my role as a dietitian is not only to provide nutrient recommendations but to break the meal planning process down into easily digestible chunks that can seamlessly integrate into your unique lifestyle, so the time spent making healthy meals is minimal and realistic for the everyday, busy person. Healthy Meal Blocker #2: Accessibility  Accessibility is often overlooked. Setting nutrient expectations for your meals that align with your budget and the foods you can access daily or weekly is important. For example, suppose fresh wild-caught salmon is only available at a specialty store outside your neighborhood shopping center, and the price is outside your weekly grocery store budget. In that case, a frozen or canned option is a great way to adjust expectations without skimping out on nutrient density. If you’re a dietitian or nutrition coach, you can apply this to the suggestions you make for your clients. Ensure that your recommendations are realistic based on your clients’ access to healthy foods—both locationally and monetarily.  Healthy Meal Blocker #3: The Influence of Others  When it comes to the influence of other people, I’m talking about friends, family, partners, and people outside of your inner circle. Influence from social media feeds, and the marketing and branding of diets and food products also come into play here. All of this influence—both on a micro and a macro scale—can create confusion and chaos when identifying what is “healthy” and what may work best for you. Learn more about your food and what works for your body. Then, commit to sticking to those things—no matter what other people say is “best”—and you’ll be on your way to living your most Nutritious Life. That is exactly what we’re here to help you do. An “ELEVATE”d Approach to Cooking Healthy Meals The Nutritious Life team is so excited to share a course that addresses all of these main concerns. Whether you are looking to easily boost the nutritional value of your go-to meals in a quick, budget-friendly, and educational way or gain tools and tips for how to tackle time, accessibility, and the influence of others with your own clients—ELEVATE is for you.   ELEVATE is a four-part video series taught by Andrea Rogers, founder of XTEND Barre, and Keri Glassman, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and founder of Nutritious Life and the Nutritious Life Studio. As two single mamas running busy businesses, they recognize that many people don’t have time to cook elaborate lunches and dinners. And no one—especially those with tighter financial circumstances—should have to spend top dollar at specialty organic markets just to get “healthy”  ingredients. ELEVATE will show you how to build meals and start enjoying the energy that comes from empowered eating. The ELEVATE Course  Keri and Andrea conducted a nationwide survey and collected hundreds of go-to meals and snacks—think traditional smoothies, salads, and weekday dinners.  Using this data, they took each of the top three go-to breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks and gave them a healthy (elevated!) makeover. As they explain the easy changes, you’ll learn the key tips on elevating the nutrient density in your meals and why certain ingredients are better than others. Each meal will contain an ingredient call-out. Keri will explain exactly which ingredients to look out for on a nutrition label or in a “healthy” product so you can cut through the clutter and confusion of nutrition in the media and make empowered decisions at the grocery store.  Keri and Andrea will also de-bunk some of the most common nutrition myths so you can further your understanding of healthy meal planning. Each meal will contain a tangible takeaway—a quick tip to help you easily boost your meals’ nutritional value without causing stress on your schedule or your wallet. You’ll also get the ELEVATE guide, an in-depth product PDF with all of the ingredients used in the workshop along with Keri and Andrea’s top picks from major retailers all over the US and from all price points. This course is a game changer for anyone who wants to learn the how AND the why behind healthy nutrition decisions – from grocery store to fork. Join today to start elevating your meals, your health, and your Nutritious Life.

Should You Avoid High-Cholesterol Foods?

Q: I’ve been hearing mixed things: Does eating high-cholesterol foods lead to high cholesterol in the body? For a long time, doctors and dietitians’ advice was to skip high-cholesterol foods. But just like we discovered eating fats doesn’t always make you fat (yay!), research increasingly confirms that cholesterol in food doesn’t necessarily raise cholesterol levels in your blood. We’ve known this for a while, but I still get this question from clients and readers. (There’s also lots of new evidence on how saturated fat affects cholesterol, which I’ll definitely get into in another post, soon.) What does raise cholesterol? Eating fried foods and tons of sugar. (You’re not really surprised by that one, right?) RELATED: Why Healthy Fats Don’t Make You Fat Cholesterol in the Body Here’s a quick review of the high school science you slept through: Cholesterol is a soft, fat-like, waxy substance found in the bloodstream and in all your body’s cells. It’s an important part of a healthy body because it’s used for producing cell membranes and some hormones, but too much cholesterol in the blood is a major risk factor for heart disease and strokes. There are two kinds of cholesterol: LDL, known as “bad” cholesterol, and HDL, known as “good” cholesterol. Increased LDL in the blood leads to the buildup of plaque, which narrows blood vessel walls (arteries) and restricts blood flow. If a clot blocks the flow of blood to your heart, a heart attack results; if it restricts blood flow to your brain, a stroke results. Recent research has also pointed specifically to oxidized cholesterol (from sources like fried foods) as a major contributor to heart disease, via contributing to calcium buildup on artery walls and interrupting blood flow. Age, family history, diet, and exercise can all affect the level of cholesterol in your blood. Which brings us to… Cholesterol in Food Some foods from animal sources naturally contain high doses of cholesterol, but research has not demonstrated a link between eating those foods and increased risk of heart disease or stroke. Foods that are high in cholesterol but are healthy? Eggs, cheese (portion-controlled, please!), grass-fed butter, and shrimp. RELATED: Is Clarified Butter Healthy? Foods that are linked to raising blood cholesterol levels include fried foods, trans fats (particularly partially hydrogenated oils), and sugar. Trans fats and tons of sugar tend to be hiding in processed, packaged foods and fast food, and you already know those aren’t going to help your overall health anyway. The bottom line? Save yourself time by not worrying about “grams of cholesterol” and just stick to a whole food diet filled with veggies, fruits, whole grains, and lean meats. Whatever you do, stay away from the deep fryer—but go ahead, put a little grass-fed butter in your coffee if you love the creamy taste.