Blog Posts by Tips on Healthy Living

Stumped at the supermarket? Crystal Paine, author of The Money Saving Mom's Budget: Slash Your Spending, Pay Down Your Debt, Streamline Your Life, and Save Thousands a Year, shows you to how to get the best bang for your buck at the supermarket by planning a menu based on what's on sale and what you have on hand.

1. "Shop" Your Cupboards. Look in your freezer, refrigerator, and cupboards. This simple exercise often yields a great deal of inspiration. If you open up your freezer and find a bag of chicken and a bag of frozen broccoli and you open up your cupboard and see a bag of rice, that could be the beginnings of a Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole. Just add cheese and cream of chicken soup to your grocery list and one dinner is taken care of.

2. Consult the Sales Fliers. When you're in the middle of planning your menu and grocery list, quickly browse through your weekly grocery store sale fliers (most grocery stores have their weekly sale fliers available online) and see if

By Jill Smokler
Author of Confessions of a Scary Mommy
Have you ever wondered how to tell if an unknown woman is a mother or not? Well, there is one sure-fire way to tell the mothers of the world from non-mothers of the word and it doesn't even involve checking their stomachs for stretch marks. Walk into a restaurant, alone, on a Saturday evening. Go to the hostess stand and ask for a table. When prompted for the number in your party simply respond, "One."

Watch for the hostess' reaction. You will know in an instant if she is or is not a mother herself.

The non-mother will look at you with pity in her eyes. She will wonder if you've recently split with your husband or have been fired from a job. Did your mother die? Your best friend get diagnosed with cancer? What has a grown woman done to be eating alone on a Saturday night? Poor, poor you.

She will make small talk as she escorts you to a discreet location in the back, by the restrooms. She'll ask the waitress

Photo courtesy of DanoBy Kristin Sidorov
Coca-Cola has been a part of American culture for decades. It's considered a classic, an icon, and perhaps that's why it's so troubling that one of its ingredients has recently been added to a list of known carcinogens. We all know that soda can be unhealthy, but cancerous, too?

That's debatable, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The ingredient in question, 4-methylimidazole (4-MI), is used to help give colas their characteristic caramel color. In January, 4-MI was added to California's list of carcinogenic chemicals after studies found a correlation between it and cancer in rodents. While this finding's translation to humans is unreliable at best, 4-MI's addition to the list nonetheless imposed a requirement on cola's producers to include a cancer warning label on all products containing the ingredient.

As a result, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. are both making changes to their soda formulas with lower levels of 4-MI that will meet

It's important to raise active kids who move their bodies every day, but it's also important to make physical activity fun-not a chore to be endured, says David Walsh, Ph.D., author of Smart Parenting, Smarter Kids: The One Brain Book You Need to Help Kids Grow Brighter, Healthier, and Happier.

DO

• Make sure your child plays and exercises every day.

• Talk to your child about the connection between moving muscles and building brains.

• Encourage a variety of movement to build strength, endurance, and flexibility.

• Get started with family exercise time.

• Have fun.

• Give your child household jobs that work muscles.

• Check the amount of exercise or playtime your child gets at school and in after-school programs.

• Encourage your kids to dance to music.

• Try wearing a pedometer to increase steps each day.

• Make sure sedentary activity is balanced with exercise and movement.

• Try video games that make your child move.

• Turn electronic screens off

By Dr. Mike Moreno
Author of The 17 Day Diet Cookbook
Are you on the 17 Day Diet and struggling with abstaining from alcohol or just experiencing difficulty with getting in your daily green tea and water? Here are my personal answers to your questions about staying properly hydrated, and why it's so key to your weight-loss success.

I don't like green tea. Is it really important that I drink it? Can I substitute black tea or coffee?
Green tea contains certain natural chemicals called catechins that increase fat-burning and stimulate the calorie-burning process, which occurs as a result of digesting and metabolizing food. Research shows that green tea also helps with detoxifying your system, something that's really important when you diet.

Coffee and tea do have some antioxidants and the caffeine in both can jump-start your metabolism, but one to two cups a day is the ideal. Too much coffee or tea can result in elevated blood pressure, and the tannins may

All hail, kale chips! You'll no longer need to worry about satisfying cravings for fattening potato chips once you've tried these. From The 17 Day Diet Cookbook by Dr. Mike Moreno.

Crunch a few and you'll never have your hand in a bag of chips again, or at least I hope not!

Ingredients
1 pound kale leaves, washed and dried
Nonstick cooking spray
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. Position the racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven; preheat to 375°F.
2. Cut out the thick, center stems from the kale leaves; tear the leaves themselves into ragged 3-inch pieces.
3. Spray two large baking sheets with nonstick cooking spray. Lay the leaf pieces on them in a single layer. Spray the leaves lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
4. Set the trays on the two racks. Bake for 15 minutes. Use tongs to turn the leaves over; reverse the trays top to bottom. Continue baking until crisp, about 15 more minutes. Sprinkle with salt while hot.

Yield : 4

By Dov Seidman
Author of HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything
In the 21st century, it's no longer what you do or what you know that counts most. It's how you do what you do that has become today's greatest source of advantage. Of course how we do what we do has always mattered. But today, how we behave, consume, build trust in our relationships, and relate to others matters more than ever before.

In today's world the production of good and harm has been democratized. One London banker can lose over $2 billion in unauthorized trading and it leads to bonuses being wiped out at his bank and the global economy experiencing more volatility. One vegetable vendor in Tunisia can spark a revolution for freedom across the Arab world.

We are deep into what I call the Era of Behavior. Our behavior now matters more than we thought and in ways we never imagined.

The world has gone from being connected to interconnected to interdependent. So many more people can now

By Jill Smokler
Author of Confessions of a Scary Mommy
There are no rights and no wrongs in parenthood. We all learn and we go and do the best we can and that's called success. We're talking about raising children, after all, not taking the SATS.

Actually, I take it back. There are wrongs and where sleeping is concerned, and I did them all. If there are any mothers out there struggling with sleeping, or wondering how to best approach it, I'd like to share with you exactly what I did so you can do the complete opposite.

You're welcome.

Force your newborn to sleep on top of you. I couldn't breastfeed Lily, and was convinced that she would never bond with me because of it. To achieve a sense of closeness, I forced her to sleep on top of me during her early days, which of course resulted in nothing but a newborn who couldn't sleep unless she was on top of me. It took months and months to undo.

Don't make them cry. Ever. Despite my name, I am quite a pussy when