Simple Home-made healthy and low-fat cream of mushroom soup recipe

Do you know that those restaurant’s
mushroom soup are high in carb and calories?

I know because I have a close friend who is
working as a sous chef in a semi-fine dining french restaurant. I must say….a
lot of tasty food are really very high in fats and carb.

I love the mushroom soup served by his
restaurant as they are using 100% pure mushroom. And I do ask him for the
mushroom soup recipe and want to try it. After knowing the recipe, I notice
that the ingredients that they use is really high in carb which is not health
conscious.

So, I decided to try my own method in
modifying the recipe into a low-fat, low-carb, healthy and tasty mushroom soup.
I would like to share here to those that love mushroom soup like me….

Cream of mushroom (2 serving)

Ingredients

5     Button
mushroom 20 cal

1 tbsp(15g)     Plain
flour       52 cal

1 tbsp(15g)     Reduced
Fat spread              74 cal

1 tbsp     Olive
oil   126 cal

500ml     Skim
milk       192 cal

1 tbsp     White
onion

Salt and pepper

Fresh flat-leaf Parsley (minced)

Thyme leaves (minced)

2 pcs      Whole wheat bread       100 cal



Total calories about 570 cal for 2 person. Each person only take in 285 cal.

This can be a very healthy and delicious breakfast to start a day.

Directions

Clean the button mushrooms by wiping with
dry paper towel. Remember not to wash them. Trim off any bad parts and chop
them into mince.

Heat the olive oil in a pan. Add the
chopped mushroom, onion, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and cook in
medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes. Check if they are browned and tender. This
is to bring up the fragrance of the mushroom and let it be soft as well. Add a
cup of water, bring to a boil. Turn off the fire and leave it there first.

Meanwhile, use another pot, heat up the butter,
add plain flour and stir it using low heat. Keep stirring until the flour mixed
well with the butter. Don’t get shock when you see a thick mixture forming in
the pot. Add in the mushroom mixed that we prepared earlier into the pot with
medium-low heat. Stir gently. Let it blend in for another 5 to 10 minutes. You
still can add in some water if is necessary. After that, add in skim milk to
the pot and mixed well. Try not to put high heat because we don’t want to burn
the milk.

Now, start adding in minced thyme leaves
and minced parsley. How much you need to put depends on your personal favorite.
If you can’t find any fresh thyme leaves, mixed herbs can be added in as well. Add
in salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 15
minutes, taste it. Serve hot in a bowl with a piece of whole wheat bread. Final touch just sprinkler a bit of
minced parsley on top of the soup to make it delicate. 

Below is the mushroom soup that I cooked. Hope you guys enjoy the recipe.

Swimming Towards Good Health - Start Now

You can start putting swimming as your regular form of exercise. By having frequent swimming workouts, it is one of the best and fun exercise you can do to keep yourself fit and healthy. As water provides resistance to your body movements while you are swimming, it really built a complete workout for your whole body. Best effects I see is the limbs part and arms part.

Firstly, you need to deal with the water if you decided that you want to take up swimming. Good thing about swimming is, you don’t need to get very sophisticated equipments or any special skills. Some basic accessories such as goggles, sun block lotion, floating board will do. Regardless of their age, swimming is a nice sport which anyone can practice.

Swimming really paves way for you to attain weight training as well as providing cardio benefits similar to running. In other words, swimming provides you the greatest of both ends. It’s very good to build up your lung system as well as reducing the risk of diseases such as diabetes, stroke, heart attack and etc. It also helps a person to sustain his or her cholesterol and blood pressure levels. As water have a opposing force of more than 12 times compare to air, that’s why swimming requires more work to go through. Through swimming, you will not only aids in strengthening muscles, but also assist in building lean and flexible muscles too. Additionally, it also maintain the cardiovascular health and muscle flexibility.

Through swimming, our body muscles such as chest muscles, arm muscles, abdominal muscles, waist, hips, leg muscles will be trained. It also improve our lung and heart function. Besides that, swimming can relieve stress, burn more calories, improve our respiratory system and growth process and also for the sake of self-safety too. It also helps in developing other skills like sportsman spirit, setting goals and time management. Another word, swimming really has many benefits if we make it as our regular exercise.

Of course, if you really want to get significant results, you really need to learn and understand the proper strokes of swimming. After learning up the correct technique, you will be able to synchronize well with your hands and legs in each stroke, just like rhythm. Through that way, your body will be slimmer as fats are burn more effectively, and you will be able to tone up your abs.

As I mention earlier, swimming can help you to relax from stress. Swimming is recommended as a kind of mental therapy. Just imagine that you are floating in the middle of the pool, kicking the water once awhile relaxingly and lazily, viewing at the big blue sky, letting all the worries away.

Now since you can see that swimming clearly giving you lots of benefits if you swim on a regular basis. You can still go to some public swimming pool or gym pool which is affordable if you don’t own a pool. There’s nothing to stop you from achieving what you want besides yourself. Believe in yourself and have fun swimming.

Healthy food that can help you loose weight

I heard that by having the correct healthy food, it will helps you burn the fats in your body. Although I’m not very sure about it, I definitely would like to try it. So I start digging into some research. Below are some of my findings which I’m planning to try it out.

Try to select food which is high in anti-oxidant. High anti-oxidant fruits, for example, apple, grapes, cranberries, orange, raspberries, blackberries. For vegetables it will be asparagus, avocado, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, mushroom and etc. As I heard that anti-oxidant food can help in burning fats in your body.

I personally suggest you to have salmon too. As we all know, salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and high in vitamin D content. Salmon can be eaten raw, serving as sashimi (Japanese style) or with salad. Salmon can also be cooked as a dish too. It is high in protein and contain “good fats”. You can try to grill or poach the salmon as well. It served as a nice dish.

Garlic is another type of weight loose food. A lot research being carry out saying that garlic can assist in managing high cholesterol levels. It also consider as a powerful natural antibiotic too. It is also include as a powerful antioxidant.

Eggs are also another good type of high-protein food. One egg is only 68 calories. And it is low-cost food too.

Mushroom is another excellent choice of food. As it has a very low carbohydrates, zero fats and cholesterol, high protein and good fiber amount. You can eat it raw, grill, steam….Mushroom fit perfectly well in almost every dish. It also helps in preventing cancer and is an ideal food for diabetes.

On top are some examples of healthy food. I’m sure there’s a lot more that you can search online too. For food preparation, I find that the best way to prepare is keep it fresh. Try to consume the food while keeping its natural level. Certain ways like steam or boil the food is the best.

Calories Needed per Day for Normal Individuals

First of all, you must know how many calories is needed to maintain your current size, then start to reduce it from there. I believe there is a lot calories measurement out there which you can refer to.

For lasting weight loss, normally you must focus on two things, which is increase your regular exercise and follow a stable diet. This is to ensure there will be more calories out of body (by exercising) and lesser calories intake (by dieting). It is quite impossible just to loose weight by just dieting and without exercising. By doing so, it will normally have temporary weight loss effect, but I am sure that it won’t last long.

Normally, you can refer your current body weight to calculate a minimum intake of calorie needed. Then, from there, try to reduce your daily calorie intake by 10-20%. This figure is just a reference for you. It also depends on your personal weight loss goals as each of us is different. Best practice is loose weight to a healthy state. 

Example of finding the numbers of calories needed

Check the normal weight rule

BMI = mass (kg) / (height(m))²

Underweight     from 15 to 18.4

Normal          from 18.5 to 22.9

Overweight      from 23 to 27.5

Obese           from 27.6 to 40

Morbidly Obese   greater than 40

Women aged 19 through 50

• Sedentary, not active, between 1,800 and 2,000 calories per day
• Moderately active, between 2,000 and 2,200 calories per day
• Active between 2,200 and 2,400 calories per day

Men aged 19 through 50

• Sedentary, between 2,200 and 2,400 calories per day
• Moderately active, between 2,600 and 2,800 calories per day
• Active, between 2,800 and 3,000 calories per day

How to adjust your calorie balance to reduce your weight

Basically, you need to do two thing for energy balance adjustments

1.       Stimulate your body metabolism by increasing your exercise level

In order to burn off the calories in your body, you need to try to increase your body metabolic rate and stimulate the body metabolism. For starting, you can go with a short walk or short jog in the park every day, then slowly increase the duration of walking or jogging of 30 minutes minimum. You can start gradually and slowly increase the time period and intensity of the exercise if your body still can’t cope with too much exercise. After that, you can slowly add in few short sprint into the activity. By doing that, you can increase your heart rate and hence helps to boost up the metabolic rate. Besides, you can gain more body muscle tissue as well. As we know, replacing muscle tissue in the body can burn fat faster, as muscle tissue have higher metabolic rate. That’s why some of us say, body muscle is our primary energy users. Please do take note that in order to build body muscle, sufficient protein consumption is needed in your diet too. Some of the best way to build more muscles are static exercises, weight training, push ups and sit ups. Weight training preferably small weights if you are not aiming to be body builder. 

2 . Body calorie consumption must be reduce

This is very important. Why I say so? Because, if you have intense exercise, but didn’t control your diet with adequate calorie consumption, it will just be waste of time. Normally we recommend high protein diets and low carbohydrate diets.

You can start by taking complex carbohydrates food and reduce your total carbohydrate consumption. Try to avoid those refined food because there are evidence that refined foods contain large amount of simple carbohydrates which is readily absorbed by the body, will cause excess concentration of glucose and store as fat. So, try to avoid those processed foods such as cookies, cakes, sausages, junk food and etc. If you are those that have become “addicted” with these kind of food, try to cut down slowly, have discipline, and you will get through the appetite craving of those food. Some people suggest to take those appetite suppressant pill. But for me, its best to have self discipline than relying on pills.

Jogging for a start

I used to hate jogging. First of all, I don’t like the feeling of suffocation while jogging (because I was overweight and can’t move). Second, overweight people tend not to like to sweat, because sweating will produce more heat and I will feel very uncomfortable with the sweating. Third, I don’t like to wear those sport suits, as it just shows out my fats, so embarrassing.

But, what I found out there are more benefits on jogging.

Jogging, you can do it anywhere, preferably walking streets or parks or gym(if you sign up for any gym which might cost you some money). For jogging, it only require you to have a pair of good quality running shoes (but don’t need to buy too branded running shoes which might cost you few hundred dollars). You can jog solo or with your friends or jogger mates. Jog at your own sweet time. And best thing is, you don’t need to buy expensive exercise equipments for it. How cool is that?

What I suggest here is, go for outdoor jogging. I never tried indoor jogging(which is using the treadmills jogging equipments in the gym). But what I heard from few of my friends saying, outdoor jogging is way much better than indoor jogging. Why so? For outdoor jogging, you can actually feel the freedom while you jog. The freedom I’m saying here is the fresh air and nice scenery, enjoying the nature.

When you start jogging, most important thing is do some warm up exercises, such as body stretching, leg muscle stretching and so on. This is to avoid any muscle strain during your jogging session. Try to search in youtube or library books for some warm up exercise tips, suggest warm up exercise that spend around 10 to15 minutes. For starting, suggest you can try to complete 15 to 20 minutes walking/ jogging. After that, complete your jogging workout by doing a warm down. Warm down is kinda same as warm up, because by doing some warm down exercises, you will relax your muscles. This complete cycle of jogging, which include warm up, jogging, warm down is very important. As if you start or end without the warm up and warm down exercise, your body muscles tend to get strained or pain during the jogging session of after the jogging session. So, protect your body by completely the whole cycle.

While start jogging, start by a gentle or light jog, just to let your body get familiar with the jogging rhythm. It’s is very normal if you feel suffocation or breathless while jogging for the first couple of meters. Try to reduce the speed if you can’t catch your breath. Just take it slow and keep the speed that you feel comfortable with it. Only start adding up your jogging speed after a few consecutive jogs. Try to add jogging as your exercise routine by jogging 3 to 4 times a week. If you are those normal office hours working professionals, you can start by doing 2 times jog a week, perhaps Wednesday night and Saturday/Sunday morning? It’s a lot better than sitting in your comfort sofa, drinking beer, having snacks and watching TV during Wednesday night or lying in the bed until late afternoon during weekends. Come out and have a short jog, enjoy the nature and fresh air.

Finally, actions speak louder than words. I’m going out for my jog now. Hope you guys enjoy too.

How I started?

Well, I’m those type that enjoy finger food. Some finger foods are junk food as well. As you all know, junk food have little or no nutritional value to our body. Junk foods are also known to contain high level of saturated fats, salt or sugar, which are the substance to cause overweight problem if consumed too much. So, what I did is I will select my list of finger food very carefully. If you go to a supermarket, you will notice a lot of different type of finger foods which is healthy. For example, potato chips is one of my favorites. I will select those potato chips that is made out of 100% pure potato, less salt or best is non-salted. I also like cheese. Choose those less fat or non fat cheese. I do cut down on consumption of rice, noodles and bread.

Shopping tip: aim for those foods which stated low fat, non fat, less salt, non salt, less sugar, non sugar, pure, natural, organic term. Of course it might cost you a few more bucks. But hey, by spending few more bucks, you have a healthier body, it’s worth it!

I’m kinda like those type of meat-lover. Select the types of meat carefully. Choose chicken breast, fish, pork lean meat rather than those fatty type. I checked online there is a lot of people asking us to eat only vegetables or salad for whole day. Oh my, I can’t survive with that for a single meal. So starting, I try to consume mixture of lean meat with vegetables, along with those non-fat finger food.

Besides that, I started a short jog/ walk of 10 to 20 minutes per day or alternative days. Which ever that my body can cope. Yes, I do it step by step at a time. Bare in mind that rushing to get results will not help at all. Patient plays a very important role.

If you follow the above, I guess you can start loosing weight 1 to 5 kg in one month time. When you start noticing your body having some good results, you will tend to continue a much more healthy balance lifestyle. It always motivate me the most.

Why I started?

I was thinking for a day what topic should I write for my next post.

Starting I was thinking of writing about “How I started?”. But when I start to think deeper, it’s not the “How” that is so important, it is the “Why” that is important.

Without knowing why, I won’t be even thinking of starting my healthy dieting lifestyle.

Why I started healthy dieting? The reason is simple, I realized that I ignore myself too much, and I didn’t give enough intention to myself. Another word, I didn’t give myself enough love to love my own self. A dear friend of mine once told me, “hey, you can look really good, but why you did not take good care of yourself and ended up like this?”. I was kinda stunned when I heard her comment. My brain was trying to digest what she is saying at that time. Me? Can look good? C’mon, don’t make a joke out of me ok? But when I look at the mirror, I really can’t recognized myself in the reflection mirror if I compare myself few years back. Man, it totally looks like two different person. From that day on, I finally decided that I need to “love” myself and take good care of myself. And this is the main reason that I am still sticking on healthy dieting and exercises.

Get to know your “why” followed by “how”….