:Our recipes are just a sample of ways to eat each meal. You can find many recipes online. This is not a cookbook. We hope to add suggestions you may not have thought of which can give some variety to your meal planning. We also attempt to include recipes that are fast, pack well on a trip, accommodate a variety of dietary needs, and are easy to take in a cooler or to someone’s house for dinner.
Frequently, people eat the same breakfast every day. Many people have been brought up on cereal. Often, Southerners have been raised on biscuits and gravy with sausage, ham or bacon. Our goal is to help find alternatives to this old southern tradition that will help keep you healthy and prolong your life.
We will also add recipes as we receive them, as long as they align with healthy options and the rules for healthy eating.
Often, lunch and dinner can be interchangeable. You can easily eat leftovers from the night before for lunch the next day. However, I really want this page to help people figure out how to take a lunch when they are on the go! We often have to pack our lunch or dinner if we truly want to stay healthy. Although eating homemade takes a little more planning and forethought, it is so much better for your health in the long run than purchasing convenience or junk foods on the go. Below you will find many ideas for foods that are both portable and healthy that I’ve used personally. I also look forward to hearing about any tips or suggestions you may have as well.
Eating well on the go can be tricky, especially with the availability of so many convenience foods and restaurants. The primary goal of this page is to make it easier to follow the rules for healthy eating! As a reminder, those rules are: avoid processed foods, avoid sugars, and eat healthy fats.
For many of my patients, eating healthy away from home is an enormous challenge. I have many patients who are truck drivers and we often have to talk about what they can take with them on the road in an 18-wheeler! I have many other patients who work at various jobs with a wide range of amenities available in their work environment. Some jobs are easier than others to accommodate healthy eating. Having coolers, fridges, and microwaves or stoves to keep and heat food are all benefits. However, many jobs do not provide access to these things, so we will also include lunch options that do not require reheating, and are more ready-to-eat.
Besides lunch suggestions, below you will also find information on how to pack a cooler for longer trips, other events, and meals outside of work.
I have often packed a cooler when I travel long distances in the car to my kids’ houses or to see my family in faraway states. A cooler can keep us from eating highly processed foods on the road and it can often help us save money. But, it is something that requires thinking ahead. Packing food can actually cost us money more if we don’t plan wisely and we let the food go uneaten or spoil! Unfortunately, that has happened to me a few times. But I hope to help others learn from my experiences and mistakes.
As a parent, when visiting my kids, I will often help buy groceries for them and bring them in order to both get some of the healthy foods that I normally eat and help them get the foods they enjoy. It is much harder to eat healthy while considering the needs and tastes of others while traveling! I do pretty well when I am by myself. But sharing food is much more difficult. I will add recipes and suggestions for tasty treats here to help eliminate or ease some challenges I have run into.
These meals are actually very similar. I usually recommend 2-3 vegetables and 4-6 oz of meat for each of these two meals. For people who have to be away from home for lunch, we have several recipes we can recommend packing in a lunch box.
Some ideas include lettuce wraps, left overs and tuna/salmon/sardine/chicken salads. Egg salads. Salad salads. Deviled eggs. Pickles, olives, carrots, cherry/plum tomatoes. Other raw veggies, real cheese of various sorts. Sugar free beef jerky.
There are an infinite number of recipes for lunch and dinner meals, so here you will only find those that are fast and easy for busy people to prepare.
I have learned to fix pork chops, lamb chops and several cuts of steak regularly, as they are fast and simple. I have never been good at cooking many types of meat. But these types of meat cook in less than 10 minutes most of the time. I can add a quick salad, green smoothie and some other leftover cooked vegetable and have a quick meal. I will also add pickles and olives to the side. Asparagus is also nutritious and quick to fix.
Everyone loves desserts! So, we will add many ideas here for a treat. I usually recommend that we not always eat dessert but save it as a treat when others are eating something we may not want to eat or we just have a hankering for something that won’t hurt our health!!
Some mouthwatering examples include coconut cream pie, fat bombs, cheesecake, chocolate, ice cream, and dessert chaffles, just to name a few.
American food, and especially Southern cooking, heavily relies on condiments. Most people don’t realize that the sauces and dressings are the source of many unhealthy omega six oils. It seems like just a little would not hurt us, but unfortunately, we use large amounts of condiments in our cooking. We especially do this when we eat out. Americans, and especially restaurants, use salad dressings in large quantities. Even so-called “healthy” salad dressings are using unhealthy fats and oils. Barbecue sauces, mayonnaise and other condiments and toppings for fish and meats have unhealthy oils in them.
Here, will have recipes for a few condiments and suggestions about how to replace condiments in a healthier way. This presents its own challenges, however. For example, barbecue sauces are particularly hard to replace, as many people swear by their particular sauce. You may have to experiment at home with those recipes that work better for you based on our general suggestions and recommendations. We will add a quick mayo recipe that can be used as a base for additional salad dressings as well. We will add other salad dressing recipes that can serve as inspiration to help you make your own favorites healthily.
When people ask me to help them with their diets, we often have to talk about what to drink. Drinking one soda a day in addition to otherwise normal eating habits can cause 10lbs of weight gain in 3 months. I can attest to this from personal experience.
When I was 14, I got my first job pouring molds for a ceramics shop. I made $0.50 an hour! She had a coke machine in her office and cokes were $0.25. I was so excited. During that period, I worked for about three months and I began buying my own soda. I would only buy one a day, and my mom did not let us have these at home. It tasted so good! But I actually gained 10 pounds, going from 110 to 120 lbs. I have never forgotten that experience, so when I heard about this in medical school, it struck home.
Many people ask me, “what can I drink?” There really are a variety of options. But we also recommend not drinking in between meals. Even if the drink has stevia in it (rather than white sugar or corn syrup), it will still cause some weight gain from drinking and sipping on liquids all day long. It will also tend to raise our insulin even when the drinks are zero calories. So, it is best to drink small amounts with meals if you are thirsty or drink water in between meals.
We all will still drink during the day. So we have recommended drinks that are much healthier than high fructose corn syrup or other sweetened sodas and drinks. A major contributor to our unhealthy lifestyles is the habit of drinking sweet drinks during the day.
Recently, I had a patient come in with a Mt. Dew. I had not looked at the label bottle in a long while since I do not drink them. When I checked to see how many carbohydrates were in the bottle, I was shocked! It was a 20oz bottle and there were 73 g of carbohydrates! Some folks will drink several of these a day. I have patients who are in pain all day long because of drinking so much sugar. It has been difficult to help people understand how hard this much sugar is on the body!
So, as an alternative, please check here for healthier recipes for popular drinks such as hot chocolate, eggnog, coffee, lattes, and other drinks! We hope to make it easier to remove processed sugar and excessive carbohydrates from your diet, including your beverage choices.
Picky eaters, kids and adults!
This section will have recipes for those who are very picky. I often tell people I can’t help you be healthy if you won’t eat a vegetable. I really mean that. But we often try to inspire people to try new foods and work at eating foods that you may have always thought you hated. I do often see people who say they don’t like something even though they have never tried it. Also, some foods can be less than desirable one way, but fantastic another way. Proper preparation is key!
One way to try new foods is to hide them in soups or salads. Just put tiny amounts in the recipe and slowly increase the amount as you go. For example, you can add butternut squash or carrots to tomato sauce or blend avocados into smoothies. It takes about 6 weeks for the taste buds to change and get used to new foods. I was fairly picky when I was a kid and now there is very little I won’t eat!