Snacking Archives - Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Intermittent Fasting Guide (And My Journey)

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.

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.

Ideas for Healthier Lunches, Picnics, and School

Ideas for healthier lunches is always on the agenda year-round.

Ideas for healthier school lunches make kids and adults happy with a balanced plate of veggies, fruit, protein, dairy, and carbs.

The time we take for lunch is often hurried and goes by in a blink of an eye. There are ideas for healthier lunches that you may have forgotten to try in your busyness.

We learn to speed through lunch when we’re old enough to learn. Lunches can be an afterthought when we’re hungry, running in between activities.

I would encourage the idea that lunch is the most important meal of the day (one I don’t recommend skipping or skimping on) when you need the extra energy to carry out your day!

If you like and can eat carbs or pasta, this is a meal where you can get the most efficiency out of your carbs.

You need and burn the energy in a working or working out afternoon. If you focus on carbs for your dinner meal, as you age, this can slow you down.

That’s why I like the idea of the plant-based dinner. But that doesn’t always fill you up during the day when you need the energy boost to keep you going like carbs can.

Growing up you have a memory about your overall childhood lunches.

My public-school lunches were both memorable… and not.

They were a special time that I could sit and spend time with my friends, and that probably helped me appreciate just sitting around with others socializing and chatting.

The cafeteria food I ate though was a different story… I wish we had ideas for healthier lunches. Continue reading “Ideas for Healthier Lunches, Picnics, and School”

5-Minutes of Healthy Mindful Snacking

Healthy mindful snacking can be a game changer. Learn from my snacking display ideas deployed in a decade of party planning including weddings and other special occasion events.

If you didn’t grow up with a healthy mindful snacking habit, this may seem odd to you, your mind, and body (mind-body). And why I don’t question others who don’t snack between meals!

But if you do regularly snack or are open to the idea, you may find that snacking time is a nice healthy mindful break to reset, start a new project and give your body some needed energy.

healthy mindful snacking ideas.

That’s exactly why I take a 5-minute mindful snack break at least 2-3 times a day. Maybe this is just what you need to add to your day to reset your emotions, thoughts, and moods (while keeping your body in tip-top shape).

I also find that snacking helps me to maintain a consistent dress size that I’m comfortable in and can help you with your ideal frame and size.

There are many added factors why this will work better for some people and not as well for others, including the beliefs you have behind this truth.

Busting The Myth That Eating More Healthy Mindful Snacking Will Make You Gain Weight

I like to use the analogy of your brain. One of your brain’s primal concerns is to keep you alive. Your thoughts alert you and your body of potential dangers through fear and anxiety. Your body has similar concerns and is sending signals like hunger pains, to protect you from starvation.

If you feed your body often, then you’re teaching your body that there’s no need to go into food conservation red alert mode. If instead you feed your body say one meal a day, then that’s a trigger to your body to store fat more easily, as fat energy would keep you alive longer.

Your body pays attention only to what is happening, not that you’re a good cook or to all the potential groceries you have access to. Your mind doesn’t alert your body of all the food delivery options available to you with a few clicks on your phone. Mind-body communication is delayed like an audio lag.

They myth above may be new news to you, or a reminder news flash. Either way, I encourage you to try healthy snacking regularly.

How else does healthy mindful snacking regularly benefit you?

Besides body efficiency, time efficiency is another reason snacking can help…

If you get hungry, into unproductive moods, or have nervous butterflies, opening the fridge door can help you get over your temporary undesired feelings faster than if you mull around without changing your situation.

As a mindful action, you can snap out of a funk when you look in the fridge.

Plus, most of your household, fresh, non-dry ingredients are stored in there: leftovers from the day before, yogurt, smoothie ingredients, fruit, and vegetables.

The fridge is your efficient grocery store.

When you look at snacking from that angle, the 5 minutes of snack-prep time is nothing compared to getting in and out of the grocery store that can take at least 4 times that amount of loss efficiency time.

If you’re one of the people who check out of the “under 15 items” grocery line with just 2-3 items, think how much time you’d save if you changed your regular shopping habits.

Still on the fence? Another way to look at it: can you think of anything more valuable than your time and energy?

Moving on… besides efficiency and uplifting-mood changing reasons, there are physical health benefits today to add as we have healthier snacks and food trends available to us and on our side.

When you prepare and eat small, bite size healthy snacks regularly (like a bird does pecking at crumbs) and in between meals throughout the day, your body can counter-intuitively lose weight and give you fuel energy to keep going.

You can replace the need to afternoon nap or have an espresso with a 5-minute mind-body benefitting snack.

Healthy Mindful Snacking Ideas:

This isn’t the only way (in an age where intermittent fasting is mentioned as healthy), but it’s the way that I have found works for maintaining a consistent ideal weight, and where the hunger for the next meal doesn’t enter or control the day.

And then on the usual eating days, having a tasty bite. If you wish you could do a display like this…

Shanklish is a popular Lebanese, high quality sheep’s milk cheese that pairs well with falafel (meat and gluten-free) for a “charcuterie” board with a twist.

I’m with ya. This Lebanese restaurant cheese and fruit display was for a very special wedding occasion.

And toning it dow a notch, you can make a charcuterie board or snack board inspired by these bright wedding food colors.

And everyday food colors…

Growing up, one snacking color that was unforgettable were bright orange salty snacks, chips, or sweets (the latter being the default 😉).

How about a mid-day bright orange sweet potato board with balsamic buffalo mozzarella cheese and healthy Za’atar crackers?

party snack board — Za’atar, Buffalo Mozzarella, and Sweet Potatoes Casserole Dip are a great way to express your snack creativity in minutes.

Those processed and high sugar snacks are still available and popular for kids, but healthy options, recipes, and desires are in high demand and introduced earlier on in a young person’s life today.

Low-fat eating dominated trends when I was a young adult so that a no-fat cookie could questionably appear to be healthier than a handful of higher fat almonds for healthy mindful snacking. We know that’s not today’s truth.

An apple is still an apple, but now we have many varieties including organic types to choose from.

In a metro-city area, finding healthy snack options is at our fingertips. Here are eight 5-minute break ideas that never get old… Continue reading “5-Minutes of Healthy Mindful Snacking”