Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas

I don’t know if there is a name for this but when I see a recipe that sounds intriguing, I have this bad habit of cooking it either right-that-very-moment or pretty much never.
I do the same with clean laundry, I either get every single thing into its proper closet/drawer or it sits on my bedroom chair for days — never bothering to put it away. Same thing happens when I buy something I’m not sure of, I either return it the very next day or it stays in its bag forever.
The fact is, once something leaves my short-term memory, it may as well be lost eternally.
But with recipes, at least today, I’m on a rescue mission.

The Importance of Being Healthy

It’s Monday and I think you and I should have a little talk.
No food or recipes to share on this post, just a talk among friends.
“About what?” You may ask.
About being healthy.
Because it says right there on the blog’s header “The Iron You | Eat Well. Exercise more. Become A Healthier You”, hence we should talk about it, at least sometimes…

The Feel-Good Equation

Eating well, being active, and positive thinking are the most important factors in the “feeling good/being healthy” equation.
Is it a hard equation to solve?
Of course it’s hard.
When was the last time you have done anything worth that wasn’t hard?
It’s so worth though.
The initial step is usually the hardest. But once you get started, there’s no stopping you.
What matters is that you make changes that you can stick with for a long period of time.
The road to being healthy isn't one that ends, it’s long. At first it might be tough - after that - it takes less and less effort.
You get used to the routine, the routine gets easier. You start feeling better and begin to change your life.

It Feels Good To Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”

You’ve probably seen hundreds of inspirational quotes - such as the one above from Brian Tracy - encouraging you to step out of your comfort zone, take on new risks and challenge yourself.
It’s (supposedly) good for you and may even lead to something big.
But is this always true?
Change takes effort, time, and courage too.
After all, the comfort zone is a space where our activities and behaviors fit a routine and pattern that minimizes stress and risk. We’re “at home”, happy and relaxed.
The comfort zone is neither a good or bad thing; it’s more like a safe zone that we all need.
However, sometimes, it’s good to step out of it.

Eat When You're Supposed To (and Snack Very Little!)

Today, we eat all the time, munching on snacks, convenience foods, or sipping lattes, sodas or smoothies at every hour of the day.
It’s a fact. Just take a look around yourself.
We eat while driving or riding in a car or walking or at our desks or while watching TV. We are snacking more and eating fewer meals.
We do so little eating at the table that sociologists and market researchers - who study American eating habits - report that we have added to the traditional big three meals (i.e., breakfast, lunch and dinner) a fourth one that lasts all day long: the constant snacking meal.
Snacks are less and less the hunger-soothing bridge between formal meals. They have become a meal in their own right.
As a result, we eat much more food than we need and we're gaining weight at an alarming rate.
We’re a nation of overweight and obese people, because we eat too often, not only too much.
The solution? Going back to our roots — eating only at designated meal times and limit snacking.
It’s OK to feel hungry between meals. However, being hungry doesn’t mean you have to eat.
If it isn’t breakfast, lunch or dinner, always ask yourself: “Am I really hungry?”
Maybe you’re just bored, tired, distracted, sad, or happy. Try to understand what you’re really feeling before you grab something to eat.

Find 60 Minutes Each Day For Yourself

Photo credit: nike.com

There are 24 hours (or 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds or 86,400,000 milliseconds) each day. In that time, we manage to carve out the time to work, to eat, to sleep, to watch TV, to stare at our smartphones, to go out, to bathe and to brush our teeth. When it comes to exercise however, we like to pull out the “no time” card.
Modern lives are busy; there’s no point denying that, and there are some legit reasons for not working out - we’re working very late or recovery from an injury - but often, we’re just talking ourselves out of it. Am I wrong?

What Does It Mean To Be Healthy?

What does it mean to be healthy?
I know, big question. One that we should have asked ourselves a while ago. After all, this is a blog promoting healthy living; so one could have rightly assumed that we knew the answer all along, before even starting our daily ramblings.
In all honesty, I decided to discuss this topic today, because I recently found out that people are quite confused about the meaning of being healthy.

Is There Such A Thing As Too Many Antioxidants?

I’m not sure why, but this question has been daunting me these past few days. So I figured, I must get to the bottom of it, because I’m the type of person that goes bonkers over these sort of things.
Too much green tea? Too much fruit? When too much of a good thing becomes bad? 
You see, over the last decade or so we’ve been relentlessly told that antioxidants are the key to better health. “The more, the better!” is the adage we keep hearing. 
As a result, grocery stores shelves are now chock-full of products with labels bragging that they contain large amounts of antioxidants, implying that you’re just few bites away from better health. 
However, when it comes to antioxidants, as I discovered, more doesn’t necessarily means better.  

It's Summer, Give Swimming A Chance

Credit: Image courtesy of swimmingpeople.tumblr.com

I know that not many of you are fond of swimming and this is particularly true during the colder months. Throughout the years I've tried to convince many friends that swimming (just like ice-cream) can also be enjoyed when outside it’s freezing; but I have always failed.
I get that the thought of getting into your swimsuit and jumping into cold water when outside snowing is not exactly appealing. Or better yet, I try to understand this, because I believe that it’s just a lazy excuse to slack off.
Anyway, now it’s summertime and a refreshing dive might just be what you need to the cool off the heat. So I do urge to take this chance and make swimming part of your workout routine and maybe, by the time Fall rolls around, you won’t be able to give it up.

Cauliflower Power

Not everyone is a fan of cauliflower. I get that. It’s a non pretentious vegetable, that deserves much more attention it’s actually getting.
Cauliflower is cheap, versatile, and features a high concentration of nutrients for the calories contained. The bad rep has something to do with the fact that it stinks badly when it cooks. The taste can also be a bit off-putting. Cauliflower is definitely not a kids favorite and sometimes that also applies to the grown-ups.
Cauliflower is enjoying a revamp lately though. No longer just for dips and soups, this unlikely veggie is taking the center stage in main dishes at some of the best eating spots around.
We have also found new ways to use it: what about cauliflower crust pizza? Or cauliflower rice?
Back in the days, even Mark Twain was very fond of this cruciferous vegetable. In Pudd’nhead Wilson he states “Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.” Conferring cauliflower a college degree.
Cauliflower was indeed an expensive and fashionable vegetable on the Victorian table. It was the queen of vegetables, and was often steamed whole and served elaborately garnished. Cabbage, on the other hand, was on everybody's plate, with no college education.

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Negative Calorie Food: Fact or Fiction?

The term "negative calorie food" has been around for quite some time now, creating a good amount of confusion. 
Allegedly “negative calorie food” identifies certain foods that use up more calories in digestion, absorption and metabolism that they contain in the first place. In other words, calories from these foods are so hard for the body to breakdown and process, that their thermic effects are greater than their calorie values. This in turn could cause a calorie deficit, giving these foods a tremendous fat-burning advantage.  
If this assumption was true, eating these foods will cause weight-loss. The problem is that it’s not true. The calories your body burns in the digestive cycle are minuscule compared with the calories in the food itself1.

Stay Hydrated!

There are plenty of hot days ahead of us and while it's always a good idea to stay hydrated, it's especially important when summer temps start rising. Whether you’re training for the NYC Marathon in Central Park, hiking some peaks or just going on a shopping spree in the street of Soho with your friends. 
Here are some tips for how to stay hydrated during the warm weather months.

Breakfast Like A King, Lunch Like A Prince, Dinner Like A Pauper

“Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince, Dinner like a Pauper” this adage by Adelle Davis (which is also rule #54 in Michael Pollan’s “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”) delivers some valuable advice to maintain a healthy lifestyle. 
It stresses out the importance of front-loading the calories at the beginning of the day and decrease the intake as the hours goes by.
The rationale behind is that the human metabolism slows down as the day progresses and - furthermore - the chances of burning calories are fewer as nighttime approaches. 
Accordingly, breakfast should be the biggest meal of the day and dinner the smallest.

Eat Food Not Edible Foodlike Substances

This is one of the my favorite quotes from Michael Pollan’s Food Rules.
It focuses on the importance of eating real, whole food over any sort of junk food or food like product.

Heavy processing of food - which improves shelf life and palatability - also removes nutrients, adds chemicals and makes food more readily absorbable, which might be a problem for insulin and fat metabolism.
That’s why you should try to avoid heavily processed foods, labeled by Michael Pollan as “edible foodlike substances.”

"They’re highly processed concoctions designed by food scientists, consisting mostly of ingredients derived from corn and soy that no normal person keeps in the pantry, and they contain chemical additives with which the human body has not been long acquainted. Today much of the challenge of eating well comes down to choosing real food and avoiding these industrial novelties1."

___________
References

1 Pollan, Michael (2009-11-24). Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. New York

Getting All The Nutrients Without Consuming Too Many Calories

When trying to control calories while balancing the diet, some foods can be especially helpful. Foods that are rich in nutrients relative to their energy content.

It is well established that some foods deliver more nutrients than others do for the same amount of calories, as they have a higher nutrient density.
Those nutrient dense foods give you the "biggest bang for the buck." You get lots of nutrients, and it doesn't cost you much in terms of calories1.
Let’s take for instance ice-cream and fat-free milk. Both supply calcium, but milk is much more calcium dense than ice-cream. The latter having over 300 calories per cup versus 80 calories for a cup of milk2.

Nutrition Science Should Be Taken With A Grain Of Salt

On this little space we like to call “TheIronYou” we talk about food, nutrition and health, almost on a daily basis. We create recipes that are supposed to be good for you. We discuss about the ultimate superfood landed in grocery stores. We point out the latest researches made by scientists. Often, we just ramble about what goes through our minds.
Whatever that might be, there’s one thing we want to stress out: when we talk about nutrition science keep in mind that it's a relatively young science still surrounded by much uncertainty.
So whenever you’re reading about “this is good for you”, “this is bad for you”, “if you eat this it will kill you”, “if you eat that you will live forever”, don’t take it for granted but process it into your mind with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Credit: Image courtesy of University of Aberdeen

Make Activity Part Of Your Lifestyle...

New research at Oregon State University suggests the health benefits of small amounts of activity – even as small as one- and two-minute increments that add up to 30 minutes per day – can be just as beneficial as longer bouts of physical exercise achieved by a trip to the gym.

The nationally representative study of more than 6,000 American adults shows that an active lifestyle approach, as opposed to structured exercise, may be just as beneficial in improving health outcomes, including preventing metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University

The Importance Of Breaking A Sweat

There’s a great quote by Isak Dinesen that says “The cure for anything is salt water - tears, sweat, or the sea.”  I truly believe in it.  

If I’m in a bad mood, or I can’t seem to wrap my mind around something, breaking a sweat clears up my mind, getting rid of that negative feeling.
Going for a run, swimming my heart out, hopping on my bike, killing it in a Bikram Yoga class; whatever that might be, sweating always work (for me).
It’s not only about mental health though; sweating is a necessary part of helping maintain balance within your body. It also helps detoxification, strengthen the immune system, and boost mental awareness.
That’s why it’s so important to break a sweat from time to time, or better yet, daily.

One Simple Eating Rule

This is rule #19 in Michael Pollan’s book “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”. One of my favorites.
It stresses out the importance of eating real food, not creations of the food-industrial complex. Real food doesn’t have a long ingredient list, isn’t advertised on national television, and doesn’t contain stuff you can’t even pronounce the name.
Part of being healthy means consciously choosing wisely what you put in your mouth. So do eat food that comes from plants not that is made in plants!

Let's Talk About Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting (IF) is a topic that I find fascinating. The more I read about it, the more I want to know.
Chances are that you have already heard about IF. The hype has been booming recently. But don’t think of it as a new "it" thing; in fact the first study on IF dates back to 1943.
The growing interest is due to new found evidence suggesting that IF can bring many health benefits, including a potential increase in human lifespan.