When I was preparing to go on vacation with my husband last week, I packed some snacks and a couple of cold meals that I knew would hold up in a cooler, that would give me a healthy option to help me bypass the typical traveling drive thru stop. One of those meals was a salad, but when meal time came around, given all of the cycling and kayaking we had been doing, it never sounded like enough to build my energy supply back up. Finally, on the way home, the salad was all I had left, so I dug into it. And now I can't stop making/eating it. This is one of the most satisfying salads I've ever had, and it definitely fills my belly and gives me enough energy to not only make it until my next meal, but to get me through a tough workout in between, too.

The salad, altogether, is a little bit high fat, but it's all naturally occurring fat from clean sources. Here is some more information on why you may want to consider a lower carbohydrate, higher fat diet (to summarize, Harvard found that people who ate a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet lost more than those on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, even when they consumed 25,000 more calories over the course of 12 weeks).



Ingredients:
Salad:
2 oz. spinach (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 hard boiled eggs, quartered
1/2 red pepper, diced
2 green onions, slivered
1/4 cup Maple Nut Toasted Trail Mix
I've eaten this salad with goat cheese (1 oz), cheddar cheese (1 oz), and no cheese, and it tastes good every way. If you want to spare yourself 120 extra calories, 10 extra grams of fat, and 190 mg sodium, opt for no cheese.

Dressing:
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
Juice from 1/2 lemon
Salt, to taste

To make the salad last, I pack my dressing in a little container and tuck it into the bowl to drizzle on before I eat it. The dressing is very simple to make and saves you from a lot of unwanted, added ingredients in commercial dressings.

Nutrition Facts
523 calories // 21 g carbohydrates // 40 g fat // 20 g protein // 208 mg sodium // 13 g sugar

If you're looking for a way to encourage your family to be active together, Fort Wayne Parks may offer an opportunity for you. You can find a map of Fort Wayne's 86 parks here. Additionally, the parks department offers many programs the can help you in your efforts to be more active--as a family or solo--while also giving you a chance to connect socially with others. The entire summer schedule of programs can be found here.

Whatever helps you to get there, turn the electronics off and make your way outside. As we know too well, living in the midwest, this summer will be gone all too soon. Take advantage and enjoy it now!

The majority of information on this wellness blog focuses on two of the biggest subjects that come to mind when people consider wellness - nutrition and exercise. While these two components of wellness clearly impact your health, there are some activities/habits that people may not be as quick to link to health, like technology and, more specifically, social media use. Let's explore the connection between the two, and allow me to offer an opportunity for you to improve your health by limiting your technology use for the remainder of the month of July.

With the amount that we recognize the need to limit the screen time of children, I've been amazed that there isn't more research and media attention devoted to how screen time affects adults. With today's technology, it's nearly impossible to avoid screen time, and it seems that comes with a price.

1. Disrupted Sleep

Back in a previous post I shared all about sleep, I shared this resource, which demonstrates how the blue light from your cell phone can affect your melatonin levels, disrupting your sleep, and in turn, negatively impacting other areas of your health, like making you more susceptible to obesity and depression.

2. Increased Neck & Back Pain

The average adult head weighs 10-12 pounds, but the more your head tilts forward, the more force the neck experiences. By looking at a cell phone in your lap, with your neck flexed 60 degrees beyond neutral, your neck and spine will experience around 60 pounds of stress. Here are some more details on "text neck" and what you can do to prevent it.

3. Increased Risk of Metabolic Syndrome

It seems pretty common sense that the more screen time a person engages in, the less physical activity they are doing. But the result of that can have a brutal affect on health, leading to an increased risk of Metabolic Syndrome (a combination of Diabetes, hypertension and obesity), independent of physical activity. What that means is that people that binge on TV, even if they go out and run afterward, are still at an increased risk of developing chronic health problems.

4. Strained Relationships

According to this article from Time, based on a study published in Psychology of Popular Media Culture, those that indicated they felt dependent on their smartphone, as well as those who perceived their partner had a dependency on their smartphone, reported lower levels of connection and satisfaction in their relationships. Additionally, in studies conducted by the University of Essex in the UK, researchers found that when two strangers were put together for face-to-face conversation, those with cell phones nearby were perceived less positively than those without.

My challenge to you, for the month of July, is to limit unnecessary screen time (including internet/social media browsing, TV watching and game playing) to less than one hour each day. For every day that you do, you can earn one point toward your MyWellness balance. Throughout the month, come back here to find support and more ideas on other activities that you can replace your screen time with that carry health benefits. If you have any questions, please call Lauren at ext. 2137.

One of the biggest barriers I hear from people struggling to eat clean, nutritious food is the cost. While Fort Wayne has drawn more natural-based grocery stores in the last couple of years that offer healthier options, the open, airy, coffee-in-your-hand shopping experience can come with added costs. Enter ALDI, the no-frills, generic cousin to Trader Joe's.

ALDI has a couple of tricks up its sleeve that allows for money savings. For one, it mostly carries its own food, meaning direct sales with no middle man. Most grocery stores offer a generic brand, but ALDI is able to offer additional savings by cutting all of the frills you normally experience at a grocery store. Upon arrival at the store, you'll notice one big difference right off the bat - you have to pay for your cart. ALDI saves money that most grocery stores shell out to pay for someone to return carts to the store by requiring a quarter to unlock your cart, which you get back when you return it to the only corral, by the entrance. You'll also find that if you want bags, you have to pay for them.

Check out the way that simple, no-frills shopping can create savings on a handful of healthy food choices, when compared to a local, natural grocery store:

ALDI milk: $1.49/gallon
Fresh Thyme milk: $2.49/gallon

ALDI organic milk: $2.95/half gallon
Fresh Thyme organic milk: $4.29/half gallon

ALDI organic plain whole milk yogurt: $2.99/32 oz. container
Fresh Thyme organic plain whole milk yogurt: $4.19/32 oz. container

ALDI organic avocados: $1.99/pack of four
Fresh Thyme organic avocados: $1.99 each

ALDI seedless watermelon: $2.49
Fresh Thyme seedless watermelon: $3.99

ALDI eggs: $0.69/dozen
Fresh Thyme eggs: $1.49/dozen

ALDI grass fed beef: $5.89/pound
Fresh Thyme grass fed beef: $6.99/pound

ALDI organic free range beef or chicken broth: $1.79
Fresh Thyme organic free range beef or chicken broth: $4.79

While you may not be able to find everything you need at ALDI, if you're looking to save some money and eat well, you may find that it's the worth the extra stop for you. To find the ALDI store closest to you, check out their site.

While trail mix is often thought of as a healthy snack, many packaged versions add in some unhealthy ingredients, like preservatives and tons of added sugar, in the form of granulated sugar, candies like M&Ms and/or dried fruit. If you're interested in a cleaner option, or if you'd just like the ability to pick and choose the nuts and fixings you like best, a homemade option is a good, simple one. I only have a few nuts in the one below, but you can tailor it to suit your tastes as much as you'd like.