Ten Healthy Snacks For Hungry Kids

Trying to help your kids lose weight, but aren’t sure how? Try these healthy snacks to break your junk food addict of his or her bad habits.

Start serving fresh fruit at least once a day. Let your child choose some new fruits at the grocery store and then have a fun fruit tasting party at home. Mix in some everyday favorite with the new exotic fruits.

Try serving air popped popcorn (without butter, please). Instead spray with a tiny bit of water and then salt it. To satisfy a sweet tooth, toss popcorn with a small amount of reduced-calorie maple syrup--it'll taste liek caramel corn.

Check out the new pretzel thins and a modest amount of cheese. Try using a strong-flavored cheese so you won't need much to flavor the pretzels.

Boil up some eggs. Let the kids have fun peel and eat the eggs, which will keep them feeling full because they have a lot of protein in them. Serve them with salt and pepper.

Ants on a log. Cut up celery sticks, smear a small amount of peanut butter on them, and dot them with raisins or a scant number of miniature chocolate chips.

Offer plates of veggetables with salad dressing on the side. Older kids may like to use a knife to carve the veggies into flowers and shapes.

Offer seasoned shrimp. Add a Cajun seasoning pack to the water and watch your kids gobble up this high-protein, low-cal snack.

Make roll ups out of lunch meat and cheese. Serve this treat with toothpicks, as little rolls of any lean meats with little slices of cheese rolled up inside them.

Get your kids hooked on smoothies instead of milkshakes. Blend frozen fruit and low cal juice and serve with a crazy straw. Add yogurt for those who like it creamy.

Greek yogurt. With double the protein and no fat, this snack is a winner for everyone, kids and adults alike. It comes in all kinds of flavors--even honey and chocolate!

If you model healthy eating habits, your kids will be more likely to eat healthfully as well. If you need more ideas, purchase a healthy eating cookbook or two.

Edamame a Day Can Keep you Healthy

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Edamame is slowly becoming a household name. If you wish to find edamame, check the freezer section. If you purchase edamame in the pod, you must remove the seeds. Removing the seeds is very simple though so don't worry. Removing the beans only takes a small amount of pressure to remove them. Edamame is an immature (green) soybean.

Edamame is frequently used in Japanese cooking but it has gained favor in vegan and vegetarian cooking. This bean is an excellent source of protein. Our bodies require certain amino acids to function.  Proteins that contain all of these amino acids are called complete.  This bean is a complete protein. This bean is one of the few vegetarian options that are complete.

Edamame is a great source of iron for our bodies. One cup of edamame beans contains 17 grams of protein, twenty percent of our iron, and sixteen percent of our vitamin C. This bean, like other beans, are high in dietary fiber and is low on the glycemic index.

Although edamame is poisonous when raw, it is very easy to cook safely. There are a number of ways to do it. If you prefer a simple option for cooking you could steam or boil the beans. You can impart a great salty touch to edamame by boiling them in very salty water.

If you are allergic to soy, do not eat edamame. This bean is completely safe for those people who suffer from gluten allergies though. Edamame is gluten free since it is a legume. You can get dry roasted edamame in some stores, which is great because this makes an excellent and quick snack to eat out of hand or to sprinkle over salads.

Give edamame a try.  It is a nutritious and easy to cook option to add to your dietary options. Most stores are beginning to carry frozen bags of edamame. Your local health food store may also carry soy products, so you can look there also.

Which Fruits Are Best To Eat If I Am Trying To Lose Weight

A lot of people naturally tie "eating healthy" together with "losing weight," but one thing they often fail to realize (or, at least, that they are shocked when they do realize it!) is the fact that fruits are high in both carbohydrates and sugars - and of course, carbs and fruits are two of the main things you will want to avoid if you are trying to lose weight; because of this, it is helpful for you to make sure you know which fruits are still good to eat if you are wanting to lose weight, and which fruits you should try to avoid.

For the most part, the more sweet a fruit is, the more sugar it has in it (and the worse it is for you if you are trying to lose weight); this means that even as delicious as fruits such as pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, and mangos are - along with most other "tropical" fruits - they will be best left alone if "losing weight" is your primary goal.

The second category of fruits are the ones that are not exactly "great" for helping you lose weight, but are not bad either; these fruits include such favorites as apples, oranges, and cherries - but you should also realize that drinking the juice of these fruits is not the same as eating these fruits, and that the juice of these fruits will have a lot more carbs and sugars in them!

And in the final category, you will find the fruits that will not be a problem at all for you if you are trying to lose weight: berries pretty much dominate this category, as everything from blueberries to blackberries to raspberries to cranberries will be excellent fruits to focus on in your efforts to lose weight.

Of course, if you are trying to lose weight, you should not think too hard about what fruits you are eating - after all, if you are even at the point of asking which fruits are best, you have gone far beyond where most people who are trying to lose weight have gone - so simply use these tips as a guideline, and remember that really, fruit is great for you no matter what!

How To Use The Sleep Cycle App

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You may have heard about the "Sleep Cycle" app if you have an iPhone or an Android phone, which is supposed to work by monitoring your sleep and making sure it wakes you up when you are at your lightest point of sleep - which will leave you feeling much more awake than you would if you were awoken from a deep sleep.

Of course, the first question is: Does the Sleep Cycle app work?

The answer to this question is simple: It absolutely works, as the way in which your body moves will differ depending on the sleep cycle you are in, and the app tracks your movements to know when you are in deep sleep and when you are in lighter sleep!

The app costs only 99 cents, and if you ever feel more tired than you should after a full night of sleep, you should certainly consider using this app - after all, as long as you use it correctly, it just might be the trick you needed to keep you feeling more awake!

You will have to use this app with your phone plugged in, as the screen cannot be shut off during the night in order for the app to work (which is an inconvenience, of course - but this inconvenience is easy enough to deal with if it helps you wake up feeling more refreshed!).

You will set the alarm for a certain time, and the Sleep Cycle app will wake you up within a 30 minute window leading up to that time - making sure it waits to wake you up until it registers you as being in light sleep. Once you have set the alarm and plugged your phone in, you will need to simply set the phone face-down near your head, with the top of the phone facing you (you can slip it under a corner of your sheet if you want, to keep yourself from knocking the phone off during the night), and you will be all set to sleep!

In the morning, the Sleep Cycle app will wake you up when you are in your lightest state of sleep, and you can go into the day feeling much more rested because of this!

Looking At Myths About Coffee

As any regular caffeine drinker probably knows, there are a lot of ideas out there that claim that caffeine has many negative effects on the body - ranging from causing irregular heart rates to causing weight gain to causing dehydration - but while all of these ideas are rooted in some sort of fact, all of them are also (mostly) false!

Starting out with the idea of caffeine making people jittery and causing them to have an irregular heart rate, one thing you need to realize is that caffeine affects different people in different ways - and there are a number of factors that can dictate how caffeine affects an individual, such as age, gender, weight, or regular caffeine intake - but if you have been drinking caffeine for years and have not had problems with nervousness or "jitters" as a result, you are probably perfectly fine to continue consuming the amount of coffee you typically consume.

Another thing that can be true, but is not necessarily true at its core, is the idea of coffee causing weight gain; one way in which caffeine functions is that it turns glucose into fat, which means that coffee will, in fact, cause you to gain weight if you are putting sugar in it, or if you are drinking down some sweets with it, but on its own, coffee is pretty much a dieter's dream, as it has nothing bad in it at all!

Now, as is the case with nearly anything you can consume, you must realize that coffee should be consumed in moderation; if you have anywhere from 2-4 cups of coffee per day, you should be safe from the jitters and from the dehydration that coffee can cause (and in fact, drinking 2-4 cups of coffee is just as good as drinking 2-4 cups of water, for hydration purposes!). But if you start to edge toward 5-7 cups of coffee per day, you just might experience some adverse effects - including dehydration - so make sure you know your facts when it comes to coffee, and you will feel quite fine consuming it!

Do I Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

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Roughly one million adults in America are adversely affected by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. While Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - commonly referred to as CFS - is largely described by its name, a diagnosis of CFS takes a bit more. If you have found that you are unusually tired for reasons not related to exertion or lack of sleep, use this handy guide to discern whether you might be suffering from CFS.

One of the first signs of CFS is that you might be feeling tired all the time, or fatigued all the time, with no reason that you can think of. If you have CFS, this fatigue would be so extreme that it is reducing your activity levels. You should begin to look for additional signs of CFS if this is the case.

The following are among the additional signs of CFS: decreased levels of memory or concentration; muscle pain for no discernable reason; headaches that have increased in regularity or severity from what you are used to; a persistent and recurring soar throat; joint pain; and sleep that hardly refreshes you at all. If a combination of these symptoms persist for an extended amount of time - around six months or longer - you should see a physician so they can test you for CFS. CFS is defined and diagnosed in a variety of ways, and so, this diagnosis from a doctor is likely to come from process of elimination. They are mostly likely to decide that you have CFS if they are unable to establish any other cause for your symptoms.

There are a lot of "cures" for CFS, but there is no cure that has worked consistently for all those afflicted by CFS. The instigating factors of the CFS and the severity of the CFS both come into consideration here. For instance, depression can be one of the causes of CFS, and this can be solved by taking antidepressants. Furthermore, dietary adjustments and regular exercise can help some people combat their bouts with CFS. Search for a doctor who has dealt with CFS before if you find that you have it yourself. Such a doctor will be better-equipped to help you with the nuances of this terrible affliction.

Hopefully, if you find yourself feeling tired all the time for no reason that you can put your finger on, you can wait it out and it will go away. If, however, it does not simply go away, you might have CFS, and you will certainly want to begin fighting it as quickly as you can.

Tips For Sleeping In Cycles To Feel More Awake

There are a lot of people who usually feel tired no matter what time of morning they wake up or how much sleep they got during the night; people who encounter this often assume that the key is for them to get more sleep, but actually, it is much better to understand how sleep works than to simply get more sleep, as understanding how sleep works will enable you to sleep "correctly," and this will give you much more energy than you would get from any other method - even from adding extra sleep.

When you sleep, your body and mind work in a 90-minute cycle; you have probably heard the term "REM sleep" - and maybe you even know that this means "rapid eye movement" - but this does not necessarily mean you know how to use this information to your advantage.

Generally speaking, the first 65 minutes of your sleep cycle is taken up with normal, non-REM sleep, followed by about 20 minutes of REM sleep - which is the time of your sleep during which you dream, and during which your body and mind are both able to get their deepest rest.

Of course, this leaves five remaining minutes before it reaches the 90 minutes of the sleep cycle, and these five minutes constitute the time during which your body and mind are in limbo - the time during which they are gearing up for the next set of sleep, and during which you are most likely to wake up to small noises or disturbances.

When you are woken up (or when you wake up) while in this "in-between" phase, you are going to feel much more rested and far more ready to start your day, which means that the best way to ensure that you feel rested when you get up in the morning is to time your "wake up" so that it comes at the end of one of these 90 minute cycles.

In order to feel more awake, don't just add more sleep; try to schedule your sleep so that you will wake up during this limbo period, and you will feel much more ready to get out of bed and start your day.