Recipe – Glazed Grilled Salmon with Onions and Garlic

As you can tell, I love food with flavor.  I love the rich tastes of onions and garlic, especially when they come together in a tasty dish – either cooked in the oven, on a pan on the stove or on the BBQ.  And with summer time here, the BBQ reigns supreme in our house!

We tried this fantastic recipe a few weeks ago and it was great – the onions and garlic were a little much for my son, and my wife didn’t like it too much (she’s more of a traditionalist when it comes to certain foods) but I loved this.  I shared this with friends at work and they thought it was great.

This recipe makes 5 servings and takes about 45 minutes to complete.

Ingredients

5 fillets with skin on
2 feet of thick tinfoil
3 sprays of cooking spray
1 onion
6 cloves of fresh garlic
1 fresh lime (or lime peel)
2 tablespoons butter (I like to use low fat)
2 tablespoons olive oil (EVOO)
2 pinches give or take of the following:
2 pinches of Basil
2 pinches of Sea Salt (can use regular)
1 pinch of Pepper
2 pinches of Spad-L seafood seasoning
2 pinches of Lime peel
0.5 can coca cola
2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons Spad-L seafood seasoning
2 tablespoons of Original BBQ sauce
1 Squirt of fresh lime

Preparation

To make Glaze:

In bowl mix a half of a coke, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire, 3 tablespoons of Spad-L seafood seasoning, a squirt of lime and 2 tablespoons Original BBQ sauce.

1. Use tinfoil to make a make shift pan, double it and fold corners in to make a little square pan out of Tinfoil
2. Use cheese grater to grate lime to get fresh lime peels use the smaller rougher side of cheese grater
3. Spray bottom of tinfoil pan with non stick cooking spray, put Salmon Fillets side by side in tinfoil pan.
4. On top of Salmon add fresh lime peels, Salt, Pepper, Spad-L, and Basil.
5. Peel onion and cut into medium slices, peel and mince garlic, in frying pan sauté onions with olive oil add garlic and salt/ pepper to taste
6. Add 2 tablespoons of butter until it melts
7. Drizzle the butter, onions, and garlic over salmon
8. Set grill to 350
9. Put salmon fillets in tinfoil pan on top of grill for five minutes add glaze
10. Flip salmon every five minutes for about 15 minutes or until meat is light pink or cooked all the way through every time the salmon fillet is fish side up add the glaze.

Looking for the original recipe?  Click here!

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Recipe – Spicy Grilled Salmon Steaks with Black Butter

This great recipe makes servings for two, and takes around 45 minutes to prepare and cook – beginning to end!  If you enjoy fish, then you’ll love this BBQ favorite - Salmon!

Did you know that there are seven type of salmon?  The principal Pacific Salmon species are sockeye, chum, coastal cutthroat trout, chinook, coho, steelhead and pink.

Typically, salmon are anadromous: they are born in fresh water, migrate to the ocean, then return to fresh water to reproduce. However, there are rare species that can only survive in fresh water. Folklore has it that the fish return to the exact spot where they were born to spawn; tracking studies have shown this to be true but the nature of how this memory works has long been debated.

Ingredients

Preparation

In a bowl stir together the black pepper, the paprika, the cayenne, the garlic, the onion, the thyme, the salt, and the oil until the mixture forms a stiff paste.

Pat the paste onto both sides of each salmon steak.

Heat an oiled ridged grill pan over moderately high heat until it is smoking and in it sauté the salmon for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, or until it is cooked through. While the salmon is cooking, in a small skillet cook the butter over moderate heat, swirling the skillet, until it is dark brown, but do not let it burn. Transfer the salmon to heated plates and pour the butter over it.

Look for the original recipe by clicking here.

Recipe – Spicy Grilled Chicken

This is a great recipe that takes about 15 minutes of preparation, and another 15 minutes of cooking time and overall about 1 hour and 30 minutes to prepare (including the time to marinate) but the results are fantastic!

A little high in fat at 15g and a total of 242 calories and 67mg of cholesterol.

Directions

Preparing this delicious summer time dish is simple.  In a shallow glass dish, mix the oil, lime juice, lime zest, garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, salt, and black pepper. Add chicken, and turn to coat. Cover, and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour, turning occasionally.

Preheat grill for medium-high heat.

Lightly oil the grill grate. Drain and discard marinade. Grill chicken for 6 to 8 minutes each side, or until juices run clear.

Original recipe can be found by clicking here.

Can Stress Make You Fat?

There are several ways in which stress can contribute to weight gain. One has to do with cortisol, a stress hormone. When we’re under stress, the fight or flight response is triggered in our bodies, leading to the release of various hormones.

Whether we’re stressed because of constant, crazy demands at work or we’re really in danger, our bodies respond like we’re about to be harmed and need to fight for our lives (or run like heck). To answer this need, we experience a burst of energy, shifts in metabolism and blood flow, and other changes.

If you remain in this state for a prolonged amount of time due to chronic stress, your health becomes at risk. Aside from a host of other dangers, chronic stress can also cause weight gain — which is why some products like Cortislim are marketed as diet aids.

Chronic stress and cortisol can contribute to weight gain in the following ways:

Metabolism — Do you feel like you’re prone to putting on more weight when you’re stressed, even if you’re eating the same amount of food as you always have? Too much cortisol can slow your metabolism, causing more weight gain than you would normally experience. This also makes dieting more difficult.

Cravings — OK, you’re stressed. Do you reach for a nice salad or a pint of Ben & Jerry’s? I’ll bet on the latter. People experiencing chronic stress tend to crave more fatty, salty and sugary foods. This includes sweets, processed food and other things that aren’t as good for you. These foods are typically less healthy and lead to increased weight gain.

Blood Sugar — Prolonged stress can alter your blood sugar levels, causing mood swings, fatigue, and conditions like hyperglycemia. Too much stress has even been linked to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of health concerns that can lead to greater health problems, like heart attacks and diabetes.

Fat Storage — Excessive stress even affects where we tend to store fat. Higher levels of stress are linked to greater levels of abdominal fat. Unfortunately, abdominal fat is not only aesthetically undesirable, it’s linked with greater health risks than fat stored in other areas of the body.

Stress and weight gain are connected in other ways:

Emotional Eating — Increased levels of cortisol can not only make you crave unhealthy food, but excess nervous energy can often cause you to eat more than you normally would. How many times have you found yourself scouring the kitchen for a snack, or absently munching on junk food when you’re stressed, but not really hungry? More on what causes emotional eating.

Fast Food — Experts believe that one of the big reasons we’re seeing more obesity in our society these days is that people are too stressed and busy to make healthy dinners at home, often opting to get fast food a the nearest drive-thru instead.

Too Busy to Exercise — With all the demands on your schedule, exercise may be one of the last things on your to-do list. If so, you’re not alone. Americans live a more sedentary lifestyle than we have in past generations, yet our minds seem to be racing from everything we have to do. Unfortunately, from sitting in traffic, clocking hours at our desks, and plopping in front of the TV in exhaustion at the end of the day, exercise often goes by the wayside.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to reverse the pattern of weight gain and actually reduce your stress level and waistline at the same time.

Sources:

Stress System Malfunction Could Lead To Serious, Life-Threatening Disease. NIH Backgrounder September 9, 2002.

Teitelbaum, Jacob, M.D. How Stress Can Make You Gain Weight. Total Health Vol 25. no. 5. Oct/Nov 2003.

http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/weightgain.htm

Low-Cal Diets May Make You Gain Weight

Restricting calories increases stress hormone, making it harder to keep weight off, researchers say

If losing weight feels like a never-ending battle, new research may explain why: Diets that restrict calories can actually make it harder to lose weight and keep it off.

Cutting calories increases production of cortisol, the stress hormone, which is linked to added belly fat, a new study finds.

“For the first time in humans, we are finding out that cutting your calories increases cortisol,” said lead researcher A. Janet Tomiyama, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We think this may be one reason dieters tend to have a hard time keeping weight off in the long-term,” she said.

People who count calories feel stressed, she said, but it’s the reduction in calories that increases cortisol, which, in turn, stresses the body and leads to weight retention.

“No matter how you cut calories, whether that’s doing it on your own, or doing something like Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig, it doesn’t matter, it’s still going to increase your cortisol level,” she said.

At any given time, 47 percent of U.S. adults are dieting, but up to 64 percent gain back more weight than they lost, according to background information in the report published online April 6 in Psychosomatic Medicine.

For the study, Tomiyama’s team randomly assigned 121 women to one of four diets. One group tracked their calories, keeping them to 1,200 a day; another group ate normally but recorded the number of calories they consumed; a third group ate 1,200 calories a day, but did not have to record them, and the fourth group ate normally without any calorie-tracking.

At the start and end of the three-week trial, the researchers measured each woman’s cortisol and stress levels. When calories were restricted, cortisol levels increased. In addition, calorie-counting also increased the women’s perceived stress, the researchers found.

“The term ‘dieting’ brings to mind deprivation, starvation, being miserable and uncomfortable and ultimately failing in weight loss efforts,” Samantha Heller, a dietitian, nutritionist and exercise physiologist who is familiar with the study, said.

Burning more calories than you consume is how your body loses weight, she said. “However, severe calorie restriction, diet fads, pills and potions, detox cleanses and other quacky approaches to weight loss only contribute to people’s diet failures and, in fact, may increase the likelihood of regaining even more weight than what was lost — if any,” Heller added.

The best way to drop unwanted pounds is to adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors that include eating a variety of healthy foods, physical activity, patience and a game plan, she said.

“Many people want to lose weight and do not know how to begin. Creating a step-by-step plan is one piece of the puzzle a lot of people forgo,” Heller said.

Starting a weight-loss program takes discipline, motivation and a desire to make behavioral changes and finding support can be very helpful, Heller added.

Another expert, Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., said while dieting isn’t easy, certain strategies can help reduce stress and achieve a healthier lifestyle.

“Food itself, a reliable source of immediate gratification, may be used to relieve stress,” Katz said. “When food intake is restricted, something else should replace it.”

In general, dieting alone is not all that useful, Katz added. “Eating well and being active for life is the way to go,” he said.

“By eating foods of higher overall nutritional quality, fullness can generally be achieved on fewer calories, eliminating the need for deprivation,” Katz said. “In addition, physical activity can accelerate weight loss, promote health and alleviate stress in the bargain.”

SOURCES: A. Janet Tomiyama, Ph.D., Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, University of California, San Francisco; David L. Katz, M.D., M.P.H., director, Prevention Research Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.; Samantha Heller, M.S., R.D., dietitian, nutritionist, exercise physiologist, Fairfield, Conn; April 6, 2010, Psychosomatic Medicine, online

http://m.medlineplus.gov/mlp/main/rw/web/news/fullstory_97389.htm

Fast Weight Loss – Four Success Tips To Lose Weight Fast

Who doesn’t want to lose weight fast?  I do – it would be great to diet and within a week lose 50 pounds, but it’s not that easy to lose it.  I mean think about it, it probably took a few years for you to put the weight on – do you really think you can lose it in a day?  Nope.

But these tricks will help you lose weight.  They’ve worked for me, and continue to work for me…

Tip #1 for Fast Weight Loss

Exercise.  You need to burn calories in order to lose weight, eating less will not do it.  It does not need to be very active, vigorous exercise – but moderate exercise.  Some great examples of moderate exercise are: watercize, walking or even bicycling.

If you’re not in a position to go outside, consider an exercise bicycle for your home and try 3-5 times per week for as little as 10 minute per session and gradually work your way up.

I can understand that if you are obese exercise is difficult and you don’t want to over exert yourself, so start slowly and work your way up.

If you have other health issues, you should also speak to your doctor to let them know what you’re planning so that they can give you good advice about the type of exercise you should undertake and any limitations that they may suggest.

Tip #2 for Fast Weight Loss

Drink water.

Yes, soda pop, juice and all the other sweet drinks are tastier than water – but your body needs water.  I find drinking a glass or two of water before I eat helps me control how much I eat and makes me feel fuller, quicker.

If you can’t drink water straight up – try adding something like Crystal Light to it.  I did this, and do this from time-to-time and it really helps me stay hydrated.

If water just won’t cut it – you could try decaffeinated drinks like tea or coffee – cut the sugar and use skim milk instead of whole milk or cream.

Tip #3 for Fast Weight Loss

Proper nutrition.  OK, you can’t get away from it.  You need to eat right, you do not (and should not) cut out, but cut down on the bad foods but you need your share of good foods: fresh fruits and vegetables, grains. Plus stop eating  fast foods, fried foods, sugary foods, and white flour products – to mention a few.

Cutting out fast foods is a must.  Did you know that one fast food meal could contain the amount of calories you need for a full day!

Tip #4 for Fast Weight Loss

Sleep.

Your body needs it.  You should try and get at least 7 or 8 hours of good sleep every night.

Try and keep your room cool.  A good pillow, and great bed will help you get the best sleep.  Consider the type of bed you are using – I used to use the typical spring bed — but was introduced to a bed made from “rubber” — and you know what, it supports my weight better, is firmer and I get a GREAT nights sleep (I’ll talk about beds and sleep in a future post).

Your bedroom should be used for sleeping, and well OTHER activities.  You shouldn’t use your bedroom for eating, or watching tv.  Keep these activities confined to those areas where they’re meant to be conducted.  Associating your bedroom with TV or FOOD means it will distract you from what the bedroom is intended for.

Do you have any tips that you’d like to share?  Though we moderate all comments we review them daily!  I’d love to hear your tips.  Oh yes, we are a FOLLOW blog so we’ll share link juice with you.

Here is to your health!

Secrets of Weight Loss: Cut Down, not Cut Out

Losing weight is difficult.  I’m the first to admit.  While the 1st 100lbs I lost came off relatively easy, I did put some of that weight back on (30lbs) and am now trying to lose that.  But going back to healthy eating habits isn’t easy – what has helped is a family that really cares.  My wife goes out of her way to find me recipes that I’ll enjoy and my 7-year old son is always after me to play soccer or tennis with him.

That’s great support.

One aspect of weight loss that I stick by, eventhough some may disagree is that you should CUT DOWN not CUT OUT foods that you like.

I love my snack foods, like chips (my favourite) and soda pop.  I’m not a fan of ice cream, chocolate or other types of candies.  But I love my snacking food.  Rather than cut them out, and then face cravings that I end up satisfying by binging on those items I cut down on how much of them I eat and how often.

I tend to buy chips in those small, single serving sizes.  This way I can enjoy the chips but control how much I’ve had.

I know what you’re thinking – but you won’t feel satisfied with just one small bag.  You’re right, and that’s where you have to use will power and exercise control to keep from eating 10 bags.  Weight loss is about cutting back, and getting exercise – but it’s also about controlling your cravings and finding ways that help you control those cravings.  Indeed most of my cravings are as a result of not eating the right foods or at the right time, or starving my self when I know that this will not help me lose weight.

In my never ending quest for good information on weight loss, I found this site – Fooducate.  They offer some excellent information on what food is made up of, which also give you great information on the nutritional value of food.  A few posts that I read most recently:

• Comparing Kellogg’s Fiber Plus Bar to LaraBar [Inside the Label]
• FDA to Take On the “Serving Size” Hoax
• 11 Short Acrylamide Facts (French Fries Foe)
• The Real Reason Schools Are Still Full of Junk Food

Have a look at the posts, all well written and provide some excellent information.

Here is to your health!

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