Whether you want to avoid putting on a few extra pounds before the years up, control your blood sugar amidst food & beverage-centric occasions, or you simply wish to eat and move so you feel in vibrant health each day, the holiday season can be challenging. But staying mindful of both your eating and moving habits can help you enjoy this cozy season to the fullest extent – while keeping your healthy living goals in check.

As we ease into a more structured way of life, are you short on ideas to keep those inspiring weekends in summer going with some gusto? Or maybe you want a fresh new recipe to feed those infamous 3pm hunger pangs? Whatever your meal idea needs, don't fret! We've got your back in this department.

If you’ve tried and failed to lose weight before, you may believe that diets don’t work for you. We understand the feeling. But digging deeper and looking at the science, the truth is there is just no “one size fits all” solution to permanent healthy weight loss. In other words, what works for one person may not work for you, since our bodies respond differently to different foods, depending on genetics and other health factors.

Not drinking enough water to keep our bodies adequately hydrated is more common than you may think – especially during the warm spring and bright summer months. But I have great news! Changing this habit is one of the easiest ways to further support our health.

Eat more fibre. In this day and age booming with nutrition trends, we bet you've heard this one before. Dietary fibre is probably best known for its ability to improve our digestive health. But foods containing fibre offer other health benefits as well - such as helping maintain a healthy weight and lowering the risk for diabetes and heart disease.

While it’s especially important to monitor blood sugar levels with conditions such as diabetes & pancreatitis and in life circumstances including pregnancy, having a handle on what diet and lifestyle habits will support stable blood sugar levels can have far reaching effects on our feelings of wellbeing at all times. Diet and exercise are widely known to play an important role in helping control our blood sugar. But there are also some less commonly known lifestyle changes that have great potential to help here. Read on for our top ten list.

Whether it’s school supplies, Christmas gifts, or some new cozy threads in the shopping cart, the change of tone that comes with fall can put some weight on our pocket book. But thankfully there are many minor tweaks you can make at the grocery store to ease the financial pressure – some so easy that you’re family/ others you shop for likely won’t even take notice!

As you’ve very likely heard and/or noticed personally, both oats and oatmeal provide us with special digestive benefits – this is largely due to this foods viscosity (or thickness). To get a little technical, while keeping things simple overall, the thickness of the food we eat impacts its rate of flow through our gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Too little viscosity means too quick of a flow (and resulting reduced blood sugar regulation by the body) – with the opposite also holding true. Slow and steady digestion has many far reaching benefits to our health and feelings of wellbeing that go beyond healthy blood sugar regulation & appetite control – but as these two are big ones, we’ll focus our attention here.

Think grilling season is synonymous with high calorie eats? Think again! By nature, barbecuing is actually a very health promoting and figure friendly cooking technique to embrace. We love that minimal cooking oil is needed to keep the food from sticking to the grill and excess fat from meats used has the opportunity to drip off the grates; not to mention the food produced is typically absolutely delicious! But some care must be taken in the methods you use/ what you grill to ensure barbecuing supports you in achieving your health and body composition goals. Whether your menu includes simple burgers or something more elaborate, a little preparation can help you serve up a healthy meal…

Though you may have a good sense over-all which foods work well for you and your body on a daily basis, it seems inevitable that even the most sensitivity-aware of us will come down with the occasional stomach upset. And especially during the eventful summer months, experiencing discomfort in this way can really put a damper on our plans. Food can often be the best medicine and has been used as such for thousands of years with great success - so let's talk specifics...