Holiday Foods The FASTer Way
Festivities are on their way, and while you love this time of year, you’re absolutely DREADING navigating all the tempting treats.
You know you won’t be able to resist the delicious calorie-packed holiday foods that come with the different upcoming feasts, and frankly, you don’t want to.
Guess what?
You don’t have to! We’ll be showing you some FASTer Way holiday whole food staples that boost your health so you can enjoy that Thanksgiving feast without having to sacrifice taste. With our FREE Holiday Meal Guide, you can create new scrumptious and metabolism-revving dishes to sustain your overall wellness without having to deprive yourself of holiday favorites. And what’s more? Your guests will love them, too!
Interested? Want to know about some of the whole food staples we incorporate in our meal guide to keep your overall wellness running smooth as grandma’s gravy?
Keep reading to find out more!
Holiday Food Items For A Healthy Lifestyle
Dates
Dates are nature's secret to satisfying your sweet tooth while keeping your health and wellness in check. They’re a fruit native to the Middle East, but are grown in the Mediterranean, Asia, the United States, Mexico, and other tropical climates across the globe. Though both fresh and dried dates are available year-round, it's best to get them between November and January when they’re in season.
Their health benefits are many and their versatility for cooking is expansive. They boast an ample amount of essential vitamins and minerals (B1, B2, A1, C, iron) and are high in fiber, some protein, and many antioxidants.
These nutrients provide many benefits, including:
Managing cholesterol levels
Improving your digestive system and overall gut health
Helping to prevent disease
Controlling hunger levels and cravings
Boosting metabolism
Supporting brain and bone health
As a natural source of fructose, they’re also a great way of satiating your sweet tooth without packing on the calories and negative effects of processed sugar. They’re even a good binder for baked goods, like cookies or healthy snack bars, due to their sticky consistency when cooked or melted down!
Check out our Bacon Wrapped Almond Stuffed Dates for a delicious sweet and salty holiday treat!
Raw Honey
Looking for another way to sweeten up your holiday dishes without going into a sugar coma? Search no further than tasty, preferably organic, golden raw honey. Honey, specifically raw honey, has a plethora of essential vitamins and minerals (calcium, potassium, zinc, etc.), antioxidants, amino acids, and enzymes that boost various aspects of your health.
These nutrients protect your cells by providing anti-inflammatory effects that exacerbate the aging process and contribute to chronic diseases such as:
Diabetes
Atherosclerosis (hardening of blood vessels)
Inflammatory conditions
High blood pressure
Heart disease
Neurodegenerative disease
Cancer
Most of these benefits are derived from what's called polyphenols, which are simply antioxidant compounds that stabilize cells in your body to protect your fatty tissue, DNA, and different proteins. In addition, raw honey is filled with phytonutrients, compounds found in plants that protect them from harm. For us, they work to provide the powerful antioxidant, antibacterial, and antifungal properties of raw honey shown to offer immune-boosting and anticancer benefits.
Enjoy the delights of raw honey with our Turkey Rolls with Cranberry Sauce entree found in this year's Holiday Meal Guide!
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) is the highest quality olive oil as it’s naturally extracted from the olive fruit without the use of unnecessary heat or chemicals. Being full of healthy fats (more than any other oil), over 30 types of antioxidants, and both Vitamins K & E using EVOO in your cooking helps to protect your cardiovascular health, improve brain function, and decrease inflammation within various parts of your body.
The main element within EVOO that provides a majority of these benefits are antioxidants. Read on to find out more about these physiological wellness warriors!
Holiday Foods And The Power Of Antioxidants
Consuming antioxidants is crucial to keeping molecules in your body, known as free radicals, healthy and balanced. Without antioxidants, a process called oxidative stress will begin, causing these molecules to start adversely mutating or altering important physiological elements such as proteins and sometimes your very own DNA! This causes all sorts of issues, contributing to both disease and aging.
However, the power of antioxidants in EVOO can:
Prevent or decrease symptoms of Rheumatoid arthritis
Fight chronic inflammation (primary driver of cancer, metabolic syndrome, arthritis, and more)
Decrease the risk of heart disease
Act as neuroprotective agent (improve blood-brain barrier and decrease neuroinflammation)
Help protect your overall nervous system and mental healthy
Other antioxidants in EVOO can also help if you're struggling with Type 2 Diabetes by improving your glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity. They’re resistant to heat (so you won’t lose any nutrients), are easily absorbed by food, and even help cooked food retain nutrients usually lost!
Check out our Vegan Stuffed Mushrooms to bask in all the benefits of these powerful and disease-fighting antioxidants!
Heart-Healthy Holiday Foods: Oats
Oats are a FANTASTIC heart-healthy whole food to incorporate into your holiday meals. They contain vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants essential to your overall health and wellness. By slowing down digestion, and the rate at which these nutrients are absorbed, they also help to control hunger levels leaving you satiated for longer.
In addition, the antioxidants contained within them work to lessen the effects of chronic inflammation commonly caused by cardiovascular disease and diabetes. For diabetes specifically, oats are especially nutritious as they have what's called a low Glycemic Index (GI). This simply means they help prevent spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels after eating.
Enjoy a scrumptious dessert while staying healthy through our Apple Crisp Yogurt Bowl found in the FASTer Way holiday meal guide!
Being serious about your health can be difficult during the holidays, and you may think doing so means depriving yourself of well-loved festive favorites.
This doesn’t have to be the case!
With the help of our Holiday Meal Guide, you can make drool-worthy feasts for yourself and your family. It’s fantastic for entertaining, giving you the ability to share your healthy lifestyle with all your loved ones and create new dishes that will become family favorites! Better yet, you can start a new wellness tradition, improving not just your quality of life but the lives of those you care about as well! In it, we’ll provide you with easy-to-make holiday recipes and step-by-step directions so EVERYONE can be healthy while eating delicious whole-food-based meals!
So, boost your metabolism and increase the nutrient intake of those around your dinner table by downloading our FREE Holiday Meal Guide today!
PS…if you’re ready to make delicious whole foods combined with sustainable workouts the pillars of your new lifestyle, then join the next FASTer Way round! It will change your life in ways you never thought possible. (Spoiler alert: you’ll enjoy every bite of the holidays - without setting your goals back!)