Low-sugar healthy recipes Archives - Page 18 of 22

Crow Pose Yoga For Stability

Crow Pose is one yoga pose that can help you feel strong along with the messages you feed yourself. Learn about how in this article.

Do good and Be kind are heart action messages worth taking into the day!

Maybe when you start your balance pose initially, you’re not able to hold the Crow Pose without your feet or toes touching the mat or floor.

…But as you practice regularly, you’ll be able to! 🐦‍⬛

Crow Pose could be a goal this week that gets your mojo back to blood flowing activity and to keep moving and growing. 🥅

Building Strength Stability

If you want to become stronger, gaining arm strength is one impactful way. Strength represents resilience that’s needed to get through tough times… and build stability and progress.

One starter exercise way is to be in your push up pose. Alternating legs, pull one knee at a time closer up to your shoulders one side at a time.

Then like a push up, push straight up and down. Your hiked up leg is extra body weight to use as muscle weights for your arm. 😉

Then switch leg sides. After a weekly habit of doing arm strength building exercises, your muscle memory will remember (fostering stable reinforcements) and that’ll help you in your Crow Pose…

If only you could see how cool you look!

This exercise I just described (that I’m not sure if it has a name) helps you get to used to vertical arm strength that Crow Pose needs. Chataranga pose is another.

In good form, vertical arms will support your body along with your strong ab muscles. And speaking of the gut, I share below some strong food ways that complement your pose.

…But let’s not got ahead of ourselves. For starters, you may want to see where you’re at with your Crow Pose today. So give it a try today (or now) and fail forward or beam in your Crow!

Keep reading 👇 for tips…

Crow Pose For Beginners (Or Starting Again)

As a beginner, you can have a yoga block in front of you for strength and moral support. Set the soft-place-to-fall security block on the floor on the lowest setting side where your forehead would fall on… don’t worry, as this likely won’t happen.

The placebo effect is a confidence booster. 🤸🏻

…And that way you can enter the pose confidently without fear of injury that can stall your progress or hold you back unintentionally.

Especially when you want Crow Pose to build your confidence (and not build a fine line wall divide that keeps you stuck).

And when you move into your first Crow Pose moments, you can feel like you can handle the world in all its cruel ways that can sometimes make any of us feel like we’re broken down. Stay at peace. ✌️

When you look up and out with a grin on your face knowing you’re able to support yourself, the weight of the world crumbles into the mat.

Plus, you’re building up arms that are becoming more chiseled. 😊

And after you’ve mastered Crow Pose, you can advance to a taller Crane Pose or take a slight bend (detour break) into Side Crow.

There’s always a next or side step. Before you know it, you’ll be flying! 🕊️

Side Crow Pose and Crane Pose

In Side Crow Pose, you crouch down and tip your body to the side where the back of your upper arms catch your legs and side buttock. So you get a different muscle workout and perspective.

And if you want to lengthen taller and gain more stability in your moves, you can try a more advanced pose: Crane Pose.

Cranes are the tallest flying birds. They’re powerful so the pose matches the yoga pose name.

What I like about these two other poses is what they’ll tell you more about your core and arm muscle state.

Many women think they’ll build Popeye arms with regular 10 lb weights, but that’s not the case.

We underestimate ourselves and what we can lift. If you can lift your travel carry-on luggage up to the compact overhead bin, then daily 10 pound weights should be no problem.

If you look more compact, then you could have more muscle that’s lean mass which means it will become denser or smaller.

Think of a compact ball of yarn versus a loose skein that yarn is usually sold in. On the shelves, it’s soft. But if you take it home and unravel the yarn and make a tight ball 🧶, then it becomes hard like a rubber ball.

We want our muscles to have shape, tone, and hard compactness that a rubber ball represents. In between, it can be like a squishy stress ball.

Our arm muscles are easy to scope out, but the hidden body muscles that give us the most trouble and least strength are the ones we don’t use or stretch often. And in yoga, you can discover those small areas in poses.

Balancing Food Macros to Support Crow Pose Moves

If you’re like many trying to lose weight, be sure to amp up your protein so your body stays full longer. Proteins burn more calories.

Taking a step further, the body burns fat for energy after it runs out of glucose. And that’s why I’m so gung-ho on intermittent fasting for metabolic flexibility. On and off switching teaches the body who’s boss. 😊

As we age, we lose muscle. Our protein macros help make up the deficit, for especially women. We can include large doses of protein foods with specific amino acids to help us restore what’s lost.

Protein food sources also keep us feeling full that saves us time from taking time to eat so we can spend more time doing other activities we want to get to.

If you’re like me, after graduating from baby milk as nutrients, I started out life with sugary bowls of cereal and milk as a breakfast meal. That was what I woke up to, growing up. Protein wasn’t a priority.

With cereal, it’s not the sugary sides that’s the biggest problem… it was the starting with cereal as a meal. Cereal wasn’t and isn’t filling enough and also begs us wanting more sugar in our veins.

But as a snack treat to fulfill sweet cravings, low-sugar cereals are better and I prefer them over sweet alternatives like cookies (my love 💕). Many cereals are fortified with macros and minerals while cookies are mostly empty calories (unless you bake them with healthy goodness like I do these days).

Gluten-free coconut flour, cocoa, shredded coconut, cinnamon, coconut oil, and water make this cookie batter.

But in my earlier years, I was in double trouble working in catering food management at the Doubletree Hotel known for their large paper weight-dense cookies. 🍪

And that’s how I started my breakfast morning at 8 am…

But decades later with better intentions and experiencing a season of excess sugar bothering my skin with eczema, I changed my ways. I didn’t think I could ever switch to starting mornings with a savory meal.

…I mean, forget protein like lean meats. But I let health motivate me and after many bites, savory foods grew on me.

…So I started adding proteins from leftover meals. Because eggs, tofu, and chicken aren’t necessarily the favorite first thing meal when your gut isn’t even awake yet…

And if that’s you…don’t give up on yourself! The a-ha change I made also made me realize that I could ignore my cravings (like unproductive thoughts) if I wanted to and focus on building healthy habits.

Protein substantial foods are also a better stomach cushion for coffee (that’s acidic).

…And you too can start the habit if you want!

Trust your feelings will follow. 💖

That’s how you can change tastes effectively for your health and build in more protein ma-crows in your life, so you can support your Crow Pose calling you!

Yoga moves calling for strength can be the canary in the coal mine indicator to add more daily muscle and protein to your body and diet. 🌱

And doing a daily Crow Pose could just be the starting reminder.

Intermittent Fasting Guide (And My Journey)

Intermittent Fasting is fairly easy once you get the hang of it and create a schedule for yourself that works for now. Even once a month or weekly, it’s healthy not just for weight loss, but also anti-inflammatory healthy living.

As someone who does IF weekly, I’m confident about what I’m doing when I haven’t eaten for hours, where I’m not co-dependent on food. My relationship with food is healthy and I love to eat! And on eating days, end up eating healthier foods.

But if you’re first starting out, that can be a small hill to climb as you learn the ropes. So, this is a simple do’s and don’t intermittent fasting reminder checklist, for when you intentionally decide to not eat (fasting) and gain all the healthy body benefits from intermittent fasting.

That’s also helpful for the productive mind (like l-theanine calming benefits in green tea).

So intermittent fasting helps the mind and body (in the mind-body connection).

Today, I wanted to let you in on my intermittent fasting journey (and provide an Intermittent Fasting Guide) as that may help yours if you’ve begun, or maybe you’re curious what it’s ALL ABOUT.

If either sounds like YOU, I created a FREE Intermittent Fasting Guide with you in mind that you can download. It’s called The Start and Sustain Intermittent Fasting Lifestyle Guide… and it also comes in handy when you start IF and then take a short break.

That’s exactly what I did in 2023 during the holiday season, and then realized what I was missing from the benefits I saw on and in my body earlier in the year. I took a quick selfie for comparison…

…Um, that’s a bit of skin showing there! 👙 Oh and believe me, I’m not someone who bares all skin in case you’re wondering why this photo doesn’t fit along with my food and other healthy lifestyle inspo ones.

But the photo really does hone in on my gut ab area (as deep as I can show) and is the healthy reason why I started intermittent fasting in the first place.

I was feeling discomfort in my gut in the upper stomach area where the esophagus meets the stomach (aka the lower esophageal sphincter).

Despite doing all the healthy tips regularly like sourdough, veggie fiber, and ACV, I could feel a dull feeling in the stomach gut area when the optimal feeling is no nagging ache (or even better, feel nothing in those areas). An uneventful inside body feeling day is a good day.

You’ve probably felt similar if you ever experienced heartburn, GERD or acid reflux. Last summer’s heat didn’t help either (hottest recorded in history). That kicks up the Pitta. And, not the kind of fire-in-the-belly you want! 🔥

Even though my stomach case was mild, it’s probably what most people feel who experience heartburn in daily busy and stressful work lives. 🙋🏻‍♀️

And as someone who once-upon-a-time lived a stressful corporate work life (and works on feeling good and better all the time), I don’t believe you should suffer more than a minute necessary. So, I had to figure it out!… I couldn’t just let it slide. And maybe that’s how you are too in your health areas…

But, lemme backup just a minute so you have some background info…

I started cooking and baking virtually all my meals after the pandemic. So, I knew which ingredients were put into each healthy dish or snack (that I ate 90% of the time). I often show some of the celebrational weekly meal tables, healthy bakes, and dishes weekly here in my blog articles.

…That comes from the side of me that worked a decade in catering party planning, where food is love.

And chocolate soft serve ice cream is love.

But most my eating ways were healthy (…with a lot less sugar for this former refined sugar addict!). And I was intentionally feeding healthy foods to help a happy gut as that’s where most of the happy hormones (serotonin) are produced.

But I could still feel the gut discomforts even though everything else was running smoothly. And after researching, listening to health interviews, and putting it all together… I came to the conclusion that it’s not the type of food that’s the problem, it’s the food itself.

Every food ingredient on the planet seems to be in question in some way these days. The only purer ones are the whole ones. And where there are edible food skin nutrients, that’s where the invisible poisons are too.

Even with good intentions to eat more healthy, our daily healthy foods are tainted.

The year prior, I was writing articles for wellness national publications on health and the Blue Zones, the oldest groups of people alive on the planet to date. So I was researching daily and comparing their food and healthy lifestyle ways with my own.

And I realized their B.Z. cheese is not our cheese process, and their bread is not our bread. Starting at the flour.

What we source and bring back home from grocery stores is processed, stripping out the gut valuable nutrients.

…So even with healthy and anti-inflammatory eating intentions, disappointingly we’re still off-setting so much food damage that’s out of our control.

From garden to grocery store, the good nutrients contain some harmful pesticide sprays and/or preservatives to make food shelf life last longer.

…And that means all of us have imperfect guts. And then we add plastic packaged food products, antibiotics, and daily stress into our lives… and that all compounds to the gut issues…

Or in some cases, leaky guts, bloating, IBS, etc. The list is long. And the gut stretches taller than you and me both. With over 15 feet, there’s all kinds of growing bug opportunities where we want to tip the scales to the good ones daily. Doing this impacts so much of our health and daily energy.

And long story short, all this is to say that’s why I started intermittent fasting regularly in 2023 for healthy preventative gut reasons and to help let the body naturally repair the gut.

It’s a great way to lose bad habits like snacking, sugar, overeating, drinking too late, drinking too much, etc. And a great opportunity to let your body detox reset, sleep more efficiently, and lose weight. If you want to discover more about the benefits and strategies, get the free guide.

When Dental Worry Is Healthy For You

Onions are good for teeth as they’re antibacterial and spinach has teeth remineralizing properties, so chomping on a few leaves is a good thing! 🥬

Have you ever thought about the worse that could happen in a situation like dental worry, but it didn’t end up so bad?… Or end up at all?

…And that’s usually because your worry prevented a bad outcome. Some worry is healthy… it’s built into our DNA human-ness.

But in society, we tend to demonize all worry when it can help us to magnify an area we should focus more on, and then put the thoughts to rest.

Worry is healthy when it prevents growing problems. And worry is healthy when it helps us come up with better solutions.

When it falls healthy short and is outta balance, is when the scales need to tip back to peace and calm.

Don’t let your worry take over your Vata mind and from living life… because long-term stress is an inflammation cause in the mind-body connection that shows up in or on the body as a warning.

When you’re conscious knowing what you’re doing and thinking, you activate your subconscious to help you out in the back of your mind.

…EVEN when you can’t connect the dots.

Your subconscious mind is like your passenger seat helper who’s providing directions even when you’re focused on what’s in front of you.

…So, when I didn’t get to the dentist because of the pandemic and several moves later, I thought I would have a bad report.

A month before I could get into the busy dentist’s office, I did everything to keep my teeth and healthy smile at their maintained best… flossing with multiple flosser types, brushing, rinsing, and even scraping. And if you have teeth and dental worry about your teeth, then you may floss more often.

These days, it’s so much more easy… we have much better dental supplies from convenience stores than we did as kids… or imagine what they did back in the Stone Ages?

And those memories and dental worry kept me magnifying on healthy habits leading up to the Big D-Day…

At that dentist chair moment, time stood still and I was pleasantly surprised with the assessment. I had nothing to dental worry about.

It was a compliment when I heard the word “good” from my new dentist, and was even asked about how I take care of my teeth.

She asked me what I did. And my response was, “I do everything!”

I shared my routine and healthy daily teeth habits that make up for the food and coffee acid, and sugar buildup. Really the best tip is to brush more often softly or with an electric toothbrush. 🪥

…There’s nothing new under the sun. ☀️

But I also told the dentist about teeth healthy foods I ate to fortify the good and diminish the bad. We add back healthy for a more neutral effect.

So often we forget that foods act as secondary toothbrushes when we can’t get to our toothbrush.

You don’t need to dental worry if you brush after eating sugary foods.

And with acidic sources… you can soften the blow. For ACV, use an eyedropper or a straw where you drop the liquid to the back of your throat.

And certain foods are teeth helpers that have Vitamin D, calcium, and other minerals that re-mineralize natural teeth enamel.

That’s double bonus points for bones and teeth. 🎯

Stronger teeth enamel helps prevent common inflammation or an infection spreading inflammation.

Because inflammation or worsened infections in the mouth can cause problems just like inflammation in other parts of the body.

To counteract, they say that flossing can add 4 years and so can eating beans. (They these days are healthy social media sources that’s common knowledge). But at worst, you won’t lose 4 years, so it’s worth the effort gamble. 😉

And if you’re wanting to be more anti-inflammatory and hang onto any wisdom teeth, check out this anti-inflammatory food guide for your easy grocery shopping essentials.

Healthy Habits Today Matter Big-Time for Tomorrow

Healthy habits matter today big time for results tomorrow. And we can get a good dose of influence from the Blue Zones (discovered by Dan Buettner), where their habits feel like worlds apart from our modern, Western world.

But we can adopt their healthy ways. And I share a few of mine below along my journey including a healthy potato habit I have. 🥔

As for healthy habits, I’ve been eating whole-wheat bread and foods since I was young. I don’t think I ever had a slice of white sandwich bread. It was wheat, rye, or pumpernickel… but never white.

Whole wheat cherry glace pancakes with frozen Greek yogurt for Sunday brunch! 🥞

I’m so glad I didn’t let those past years of dissatisfied field trip bag lunches hold me back. Those and other healthy habits are happy keepers.

Below you’ll learn about some Sunday brunch inspo that came from healthy habits and endings too.

And what you create as eating healthy habits today becomes your tomorrow’s habits. And can be part of happy memories.

Some of them stick around from when you were younger, and still work. They need no replacement.

When I was younger, working smart was en vogue. Why?… je ne sais quoi.

…Maybe we were trying to learn how to cut corners? But working hard never went outta-style. Work was (and is) what made the world go round but talking about grunt work especially would be like going rogue.

And today, in a sharing society, we learned that there are no shortcuts. The good stuff is in the work and comes from the working hard process. So glad we kept the healthy habits. 🌱

And even the tough work proved useful for growth and experience.

Especially when we’re young, we need all the experience we can get…

In those years, I walked everywhere. I had no wheels. I walked to the bus, to the dentist, to school, on the paper route, and to my friends’ houses.

And when my high school friend got a new set of wheels, a brand spanking new red Cabriolet convertible for her 16th birthday, she offered to pick me up in the mornings to take me to school. It surprised me when I turned down that exciting offer.

My young mind told me that I shouldn’t count on that routine. Our young intellects were at work even when we weren’t fully conscious. 😉

And in a higher gear, I knew I made the right choice.

At that moment I solidified the habit of counting on myself… and not taking shortcuts that breed laziness.

No lazy (Kapha) mind is a better mantra…

And a good way to break out of that mold is to exercise even when we don’t feel like doing it. You always feel better after the burn.

An easier way is to step outside. Because there you don’t feel the sting. You don’t count calories burned. Your wristband does it automatically for you.

And you breathe in new air and let your senses do the rest.

And when you naturally go up and down steps, you’re doing exercise without having to convince your brain to work. It’s automatic to your mind and legs.

Simply, if you want to get to where you’re going, you need to take steps… or even better, the stairs. Fair, right?

Too often we automatically think of exercise as cardio and keeping up our heart rates. That’s just one type.

And the kind that makes a difference will be the exercises and moves you do.

Another habit area is consistently showing up.

Your presence becomes known. And you’re seen as someone who’s accountable and takes the time to be available. We all like to know people like this.

It’s a form of welcomed dependability.

And there are ways we all can be consistent whether it’s online or in-person. And where we can be part of our community.

For some years, I was part of organizing a regular brunch group. It fit what I was doing. I was helping others plan their hosted events, so why not host my own? It was volunteer mixed with fun healthy habits.

What made the group special was that we (I had a co-lead with me) opened the event to everyone. There were always newcomers to the group and the DC metro area. And the restaurant of choice had to set up several tables.

It was fun to try out new local restaurants including swanky Michelin Blue Duck Tavern places, historic National Press Room restaurants, and mod-deco fare ones on the Potomac River. Many celebrated Cherry Blossoms 🌸 like this one (speaking of en vogue):

And we met restaurateurs like this distinguished chef who put foodie restaurants on the maps in the 90s before Jose Andres.

Restaurant lunch time for brunch isn’t usually busy like dinner so that was a good fit for all. And being plugged in that way became part of healthy habits that season.

And during those years, as a theme, I was also inviting my own bunch to the restaurants where I ran the group events.

Similarly, if you take a look at your healthy habits, you’ll notice some repeats. Your regular habits that stick become what sticks out in your life tomorrow and years later.

Taking inventory of your healthy habits will help show you the gaps so you can have a fulfilling life.

You can consider:

Where are you spending most of your time?

What do you wish you were doing more of?

Are you plugged into your local community in some way?

How are you helping the world?

Just some food for thought as you go about your week.

For anti-inflammatory food shopping inspo, check out this 200 anti-inflammatory food grocery guide/list. 🛒

And these spuds could be part of your healthy habit start.

Healthy Loaded Baked Potato Skins

This used to be one of my favorite lunch meals when they had a loaded potato fixins' bar at my work. The skins are often tossed out and are loaded with fiber and vitamins that can be cooked, baked and enjoyed in our daily meal healthy habits!

Course Side Dish, vegetables

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

Russet potatoes (or favorite potatoes)
Greek yogurt
Herbs (chives, thyme, and/or tarragon recommended)
Alliums (scallions or minced onions)
olive oil (optional)

Instructions

Cook your potatoes until soft on the stove.
Cut each potato in half and face down halves on baking sheet drizzled with a little EVOO if you like.
Bake on 350°F until browning occurs.
Let potato cool sligthtly and then add your healthy Greek yogurt topping and herbs to garnish and enjoy!

Coconut Carrot Cake Recipe – Gluten-Free and Healthy

Coconut carrot cake flavors make a super moist dessert with the healthy and gluten-free ingredients below.

It’s a spring and Easter celebration must to add to your food table.

This moist carrot cake is delicious and made with coconut oil, that’ll make it super moist. And you can keep the taste with coconut, theme by using coconut flour. Or use almond flour that’s also a gluten-free flour good for cakes and desserts.

And if coconut or almond tastes are your vibes, you can use the matching milk tastes. You can make your own coconut milk so easily.

And in one fell swoop, combine batter in a bowl that you hand mix to make this deliciously moist coconut carrot cake. Add currants, nuts, or coconut into batter as desired.

Also, instead of adding sweet to the batter of this cake, the sweetness can be added at the end in this recipe. That way it can be made to individual sweet tastes, and kept low-sugar.

For a food table, you could make a special milk glaze, or serve your individual carrot cakes or slices with maple syrup. Add to a cup or gravy boat, and let each person glaze their own cake.

That would make for a great brunch party experience. 🍽️

If you make more carrot cakes, they will take the same amount of time so you can make several individual carrot cakes or one large carrot cake at a time.🥕🥮

When in the oven, sometimes the beige cake exterior looks baked and the inside is still moist. But the fully baked carrot cake will come out clean, with a simple toothpick test.

Let it cool and then add a light glaze to give it a finished look. You could add mandarin oranges or shredded coconut to cake top if desired. That’s so spring and pretty for bunny season. 🐇

You can also try a gluten-free cake and learn lessons on how to work with coconut flour for cakes. And more low-sugar dessert recipes, waffle iron and brunch ideas, and healthy smoothies and drinks to pair with.

Coconut Carrot Cake (Gluten-Free)

This recipe is for an individual carrot cake, but for a one pan/layer cake multiply by 3, and for a two layer cake, multiply by 6.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

2/3 cup milk (coconut or almond recommended)
1 tsp coconut oil
1/3 cup shredded carrots
1 large egg
1/3 cup gluten-free coconut flour (or almond flour)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
honey or syrup for sweet glaze
1/4 tsp almond extract (optional)

Instructions

Mix dry and wet ingredients. The coconut flour will absorb the milk more than a gluten flour. You will end up with a batter that looks like creamy mashed potatoes (instead of a more liquid batter).
Bake at 350°F/180°C for at least 45 minutes depending on size of your baking vessel and amount of liquid. This recipe could be baked in a variety of baking pans: e.g. deep dish glass pan, oven-safe ceramic pan, or a bundt pan. When a toothpick comes out clean, then the cake is baked done.
Add a glaze. Zhugh with nuts and mandarin oranges (optional).