Archive for wellness – Page 2

Everyday Health


By Leslie · Comments (0) · June 27th, 2012

Did You Miss Our #WeightChat on Twitter? No Worries. EverydayHealth Captured for You!

So excited that Everyday Health has asked me to be a part of a twitter chat today about veganism and weight loss!  If you have a twitter account, come on over and join us!  I’ll be tweeting with fellow veganista Christy Morgan @theblissfulchef We’ll be at tweetchat.com/room/Weightchat starting at 10am PT for about 1 hour.

Please stop by and ask a question or two!  Can’t wait!

xo

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Categories : featured, wellness

Goin’ Bananas For Potassium


By Leslie · Comments (2) · May 29th, 2012

Potassium… what the heck is it and why exactly do we need it??  I know, bananas have a lot of it (I think)… but so what, right?  Well, let’s explore exactly why it’s so important and where we can get lots of it!

According to The University of Maryland: “Potassium is a very important mineral for the proper function of all cells, tissues, and organs in the human body. It is also an electrolyte, a substance that conducts electricity in the body, along with sodium, chloride, calcium, and magnesium. Potassium is crucial to heart function and plays a key role in skeletal and smooth muscle contraction, making it important for normal digestive and muscular function.”  Sounds pretty essential right?!  Potassium is also shown to lower blood pressure.

Here are two quick banana tips from @DrCraigBrown, one of the coolers docs on Twitter:

1. Eating 1-2 banana/s a day increases immunity

2. As for green versus yellow, consider this: Yellow skin banana with dark spots on it is 8x more effective in enhancing the property of white blood cells than Green skin, so the riper the banana the better the anti-cancer quality

Fascinating!  And great to know since we tend to use the ripen, mushier ones in our smoothies (another great way to ‘Go Bananas’) ;) and our baked treats (like my d’lish blueberry-banana muffins.)

If you are eating a diet chock full of fruits and veggies you are probably getting plenty of potassium, but if you are not sure, you may wanna grab a few bananas for the road. Heck, they’re cheap and sold everywhere these days. If bananas aren’t your thing, consider adding a few of my favorite potassium rich foods to your diet: tomatoes (cooked and uncooked), beet greens, beans, lentils, raisins and potatoes.

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Categories : featured, wellness

Lemons


By Leslie · Comments (9) · April 11th, 2012

Every time I head down to my parents house in San Diego I always return home with a huge bag of lemons from the magic lemon tree.  ”Magic” lemon tree? Yes, my parents backyard contains a magical tree!  First of all it’s huge!  And secondly it produces hundreds of lemons year round!  I’ve never seen a tree produce so many lemons!  (p.s. I shot this pic after I picked about 40 lemons off of it!)

I am always looking for new and creative ways to use lemons.  It’s a tradition in my family to make homemade limoncello every Spring.  More on that later! ;)  And it got me thinking about the properties of lemons… I’m sure they are good for you, but just why?  So I decided to investigate a little.  Here’s what I found:

- Lemons contain no saturated fats or cholesterol, but are rich in dietary fiber (7.36% of RDA)

- They contain up to 8% citric acid in its juice. Citric acid is a natural preservative, aids digestion (why it’s perfect for limoncello!) . Studies found that citric acid help dissolve kidney stones.

- They also are a good source of B-complex vitamins such as pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, and folates. These vitamins are essential in the sense that body requires them from external sources to replenish.

- Lemons contain a healthy amount of minerals like iron, copper, potassium, and calcium. Potassium in an important component of cell and body fluids helps control heart rate and blood pressure.

So there you go! When life gives you lemons, make anything you can from them!

*information collected from wikipedia.com


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Categories : featured, wellness

Finding Local Produce in Any Weather — Even a Snowy NYC!


By Leslie · Comments (2) · March 4th, 2012

For some people, eating well means opting for local ingredients versus supermarket produce that’s usually flown in from thousands of miles away (kinda like me flying from LA to NYC!) Watch me check in with vendors and shoppers at the Union Square Farmers Market in NYC, where I’ve discovered that, unlike me, good local food needn’t travel far, even in the dead of winter!

The world-famous Union Square Greenmarket began with just a few farmers in 1976, has grown exponentially over the past 35 years: in peak season, 140 regional farmers, fishermen, and bakers descend upon Union Square to sell their products to a devout legion of city dwellers who support local agriculture with their food dollars.

Leslie Durso illustrates the weather as Mother Nature Network’s Weather Girl – just enter your Zip Code here and Leslie will prepare you for any weather! 

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Categories : featured, wellness

Vote For Life — Vote For Veggie Dreamgirl


By Leslie · Comments (0) · February 29th, 2012

‘Veggie Dreamgirl’ has been nominated for Best Healthy Cooking Site in the 2012 HOMIES.  Regardless of whether you’re a vegetarian, a vegan or a card-carrying carnivore, pretty-please show your support by casting your vote for LeslieDurso.com—Veggie Dreamgirl, so I can continue sharing my message of eating for life!

Thank you!

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Categories : featured, wellness

Diet Friendly Snacks


By Leslie · Comments (1) · January 3rd, 2012

So it’s January 3rd… how is your New Year’s diet holding up?  I thought I’d share a list of my favorite fruits and veggies to snack on that have a negative caloric intake.  That’s right, that means if you eat raw versions on what’s on this list you will actually burn more calories than what you intake.  Which makes them the perfect snacking foods!

Apples, asparagus, beets, blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, grapefruit, guava, lettuce, oranges, pineapple, raspberries, spinach, strawberries, tomatoes, watermelon, and zucchini.

Enjoy!

 

 

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Categories : featured, wellness

New Year… New Goals? GET REAL


By Leslie · Comments (2) · January 2nd, 2012

Happy 2012 everyone!  I hope you all had safe and joyous New Years Eve!

Today, like most, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and goal setting for the new year.  I love this time of year because I still believe that anything is possible and the beginning of January always seems to confirm that it is.

I find most people set diet and workout goals as part of their new years resolutions…  Can I offer one little seed of advice?  Don’t deprive yourself, but make the goal trying to eat more “real” food.  Ok, what is “real” food?  It’s food in it’s whole form.  Fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains!  Not fruit flavored, not derived from, but the actual source.  These foods are easiest to digest, contain all the nutrients you need and are free of all the chemicals that are now being blamed for most of the major diseases in the world.  If you eat this plant based “real” food diet, I guarantee, you will lose weight, have more energy, sleep better, and feel so much better about yourself.

I’m sure a lot of people I know are reading this thinking it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but let’s be real.  No one in their right mind can possibly think that chemicals are better for you than “real” food right?

So let’s get honest with ourselves and stop the “non-fat”, “low-cal”, “diet”, “low carb”, all chemical diets and embrace “real” food!

And I know we live in modern times and sometimes it is near impossible to eat “real” food all the time, but I’m just asking you to give it a try.  When you have an option to grab a granola bar or an apple, choose the apple.  Diet Coke or water?  You better be grabbing the water ;)  If you are making dinner, try to make the entire meal from “real” food and not from boxes.

I’ve found that severe life changes seldom work because you miss and crave your former way of life, so this year, maybe try “leaning” into this new lifestyle instead.  Go to sleep every night knowing that you did what you could for your body that day.  Don’t forget, you are what you eat.

What are your New Years food goals?

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Categories : featured, wellness

Cancer-Fighting Kale Salad + Giveaway!


By Leslie · Comments (18) · October 7th, 2011

As some of you may know, October is breast cancer awareness month.  Veggie Dreamgirl has paired up with the fabulous organization Save the Ta-Tas to bring you information about cancer fighting foods.  In exchange they sent this fabulous t-shirt to giveaway to one of you!!  Cute huh?!

To enter just leave a comment below.    Screen shot 2011-09-28 at 9.18.23 AM
Bonus points for following me on facebook and twitter and super bonus points for tweeting and mentioning on facebook!

Save the Ta-Tas donates a percentage of all sales to cancer research.

Oh, the retail value of the shirt is $45 :)

Must be a US resident (sorry!) and contest ends this Sunday (9th) at midnight so make sure to tell your friends quickly.

Most people know that kale is super good for you, but I’ve found that they’ve been turned off after eating a cooked kale dish.  Let me tell you something… kale tastes way better raw than cooked!  Seriously… give it a try, I’m not lying.  This kale salad contains loads of cancer fighting foods and the fabulous thing is by not cooking the ingredients they retain all of their nutrients!  Here is some information about these ingredients that I got from Stanford University’s website:

Kale: Kale is “rich in a variety of compounds that have been shown to slow cancer growth and development in a number of laboratory studies. Other larger human studies have shown that cruciferous vegetables can help to reduce the risk of lung, stomach, colorectal, prostate, and bladder cancers.”

Tomatoes: “The anti-cancer compound in tomatoes, lycopene, has been shown to be especially potent in combating prostate cancer. This compound appears to be more easily absorbed if the tomatoes are eaten in processed form-either as tomato sauce, paste, or juice. In addition to preventing prostate cancer, lycopene may also protect against breast, lung, stomach, and pancreatic cancer.”

Avocados: “Avocados are rich in a multiplicity of nutrients, including many potent anti-oxidants and phytochemicals as well as vitamins, minerals, fiber and monounsaturated healthy fats.”

Almonds: “Nuts contain the antioxidants quercetin and campferol that may suppress the growth of cancers.”

So not only does this salad taste awesome, but now you have a few new reasons to make it!

IMG_7203-web
Cancer Fighting Kale Salad:

Serves 6

What you’ll need:

1 bunch of kale (usually 8 or 9 stalks), washed well, stalks broken off and chopped

3 roma tomatoes, diced

2 avocados, diced

a couple handfuls of slivered almonds, toasted

dressing:

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 tbsp. kosher salt

1/3 cup white balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp. agave nectar or honey

3/4 cup olive oil

What you’ll do:

After you wash your kale well, pat it dry and cut the stalk off and discard.  Chop the leaves leaving them salad lettuce size pieces and place in a big salad bowl. (the leaves will reduce to about 1/3 of the size when you dress it)  Make the dressing.  Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk together.  Taste and vary as needed.  Pour the dressing over the kale leaves and massage with your hands.  Yup, you heard me correctly!  Get your hands in the kale and massage it like you would dough.  Do this for about a minute; you’ll start to feel the kale soften.  Let the salad sit for anywhere from 7-20 minutes.  Toss in the tomatoes, almonds, and avocado and serve.

Lesliesarnasig

CONGRATULATIONS TO LINDSAY @THE LEAN GREEN BEAN YOU ARE THE WINNER!  PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR ADDRESS!

Comments (18)
Categories : Salad, Vegetables: Kale, wellness
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