Making The Holidays A Little Healthier

The holiday season often brings together family, friends, and good food; but many of the traditional favorites aren't the healthiest options out there. Although you may not be able to convince the kids to eat carrots instead of cookies, there are a few sneaky ways to make your holiday baking just a tad bit healthier without loosing the flavor!

-Replace regular white flour with whole wheat flour. This will make your end product a little heavier, so it works best for things like cookies...a light, fluffy cake won't turn out very fluffy if you swap flours.

-Reduce the amount of white sugar in your recipe without loosing the sweetness by adding fruit. You can also try out some natural sugar substitutes that have micro-nutrients that is missing white sugar.. Do some test recipes with honey, sucanat (unprocessed cane juice), or coconut sugar.

-Try using applesauce instead of butter; you'll cut the fat content and add a little fiber to your baked goods. This works especially well in brownies!

This recipe for chocolate chip cookies is one that I've tinkered with over the years in an effort to create a cookie with a few more nutrients than your average treat. Although you're never going to find a healthy cookie, this one has a few more nutrients and a good amount of fiber in it...and it still tastes great!

"Healthy" Chocolate Chip Cookies

9 tbs date sugar (or 3/4 cup blond coconut sugar, this replaces white sugar)

3/4 cup sucanat (sucant is unprocessed cane juice, it replaces brown sugar)

1/2 cup margarine, softened

1/2 cup canola oil (you can also try applesauce here but be aware that whole wheat flour absorbs more moisture than white flour, so if you use applesauce you may need to play around with the recipe and add some water)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 375°F. With an electric mixer beat the sugars, margarine, oil, vanilla and egg until blended. Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in another bowl then add them to the other mixture until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips.
• Drop a heaping tablespoon of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet, space the cookies about 2 inches apart.
• Bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until very light golden brown (centers should be soft). Cool for a few minutes then place them on a cooling rack. 

If The Shoe Fits: Drop and Ramp

As most of you know, I love shoes...I might even own as many as Yury! Most runners have strong feelings about their shoes, and if you've been shopping lately you've probably noticed that running shoe design is going through a transition, leaving many people wondering which shoe is right for them. So in this multi-part series we'll go over some of the different features you might come across in your search for the perfect running shoe.

Shoe "Drop" or "Ramp Delta"

These two terms are used interchangeably, and are one of the hottest topics in shoes right now. When you see a number, usually in millimeters, followed by "drop" or "ramp," it's referring to the difference between the height of the foam and rubber under your heel to the height under your forefoot. Just a few years ago this information wasn't listed because almost all running shoes (except for racing flats and spikes) had a drop of about 12-14mm; now thanks to the minimalist shoe trend you can choose between a drop of 20mm all the way down to 0. Keep in mind that different companies might give you different information. For example, runningwearhouse.com will tell you the "stack height" for both the heel and forefoot; in this instance just subtract the forefoot from the heel to find the drop.

Here's why this number is important; when you change the plane that your heel is on relative to your forefoot you change the way your muscles and bones work. As an extreme example, think about the way a person's body works when they're wearing a fancy pair of high heels. At the very least, a lot of pressure is being exerted on the forefoot, and when worn regularly, the muscles in the back of the legs will adapt to being in that shortened position and will become tight. There's a lot of other problems that can happen further up your body as well, like in your knees and back, but we'll keep it simple for now and just talk about the foot and lower leg. Running shoes obviously don't have this big of a difference, but they can still cause the same effect to a smaller degree.

Does this mean you should run out and replace all your 12mm drop trainers to a zero drop shoe? Not right away. If you are interested in moving to a lower drop shoe you should do it very gradually; most of us have grown up wearing shoes with a higher heel than forefoot and have spent very little time barefoot, so our muscles and bones haven't adapted to being in that position. Our bodies will need time stretch muscles and tendons back out. Luckily there's a wide range of drops so you can step down slowly; if you've been running in 12mm shoes go down to a 10mm or 8mm first, and see how they feel. Spend some time just walking in them before you go run, and when you do run in them, don't go out for a 20 miler right away. Gradual adaptation is the name of the game, and how long that takes will depend on the person. Always listen to your body and you can't go wrong!

~Nicki