Today I have a wonderful guest post to share with you from my friend Grace Onyango of “Healthy Snippets“. In her post Grace shares some great tips on how to add some spice to your foods and your day. I love spices and certainly appreciate Grace’s suggestions. I hope that you do too. Enjoy her guest post…

Spices have been used for centuries to add flavor and zest to food. In a way they give variety to the everyday. They provide health benefits too. The unique thing with spices that make them so valuable is the fact that you only need a small amount. Too much and it spoils the taste.

We buy a small amount of cinnamon and it can stay for a very long time if we only use a small amount. In addition some like cayenne pepper are per individual tastes, mild, medium or hot, you get to choose. It is not a one fit all. Spices need not only include the conventional, turmeric, rosemary, sage and all the likes. You can also spice up with berries, apple cider vinegar, tropical fruits and quickies too.

We can manipulate and use spices to add tremendous amount of health benefit in our lives. The good thing is that the spices we add to our lives need not be huge investments of our time and energy. Just the small little changes in our everyday with some readily available resources. When we spice up daily it turns into a healthy habit that pays some long term dividends.

We are all different in the same way there are different ways to spice our lives for particular reasons. In this post I want to look at some of the ways we can spice up some specific elements in our everyday to boost good health with some added bonus of weight loss.

Here are some simple and powerful ways to spice up…

Add some ‘mother’ to your water

Since the first thing I do in the morning is to drink a cup of freshly boiled water, I want to start with it. We need water for every single metabolic process in the body. It is true that you can live without food for eight or ten days but not without water. Give your body a good supply. The last time I checked it was eight glasses. I take way more than that. I spice it up with Bragg’s apple cider vinegar with the ‘mother’. This is ACV with malic acid that offers some antibacterial properties. Add one table spoon more or less in some 1000ml (8oz) of water and enjoy. So much has been said about ACV but sincerely I am one of those people who swear that ACV helps with weight loss especially reducing belly fat. I have used it and it worked for me. The good thing about it, it is cheap, readily available and adds zest to your water.

Enjoy your food!

I believe food is to be enjoyed not misused, overused or hated. I love to sit down with my cup or plate and feel good. What better way to enjoy this basic need than to spice it up. The problem we have is that our children are growing up thinking good food comes in a packet, good looking, full of, salt and sugar. Processed food has been artificially flavored to taste really good to the taste buds. Once we eat it we want more and it needs no spicing for the most part. The chemicals mimic everything. It is food yes but with added chemicals, dangerous fats, excess salt and sugars. Processed food is very addictive and it lies to the body that the good old natural fruits and vegetables with their beautiful colors full of phytonutrients are bland and hard to chew. The truth is natural food tastes really good and if you spice it up, it tastes heavenly good and it is healthy.

Try adding some ginger and fresh lemon to green tea and top it up with some pure honey. A spiced up evening in a cup, sweet and healthy. And ginger is full of antioxidants too. Some hot peppers like cayenne are used as a spice and cayenne pepper does speed up metabolism burning some fat in the body. Research has shown that garlic aids in weight loss. We however do not need all the research to start using the spices, some very powerful spices like turmeric have been used for centuries in India. Back home in Africa we eat some very bitter vegetables and one way to ease the ordeal is to add some hot cayenne pepper. Spice up your food, and make your everyday even better.

Break the fast with a berry spice.

Even though this has become a cliché, it is still worth a mention, eat a healthy breakfast and you will reduce cravings it is a perfect way to aid with weight loss. As a child the breakfast I knew was black tea with milk, some sugar and white bread and I hated the whole combo. I never took breakfast. When I came to the United States I stumbled upon some red, blue and black berries and I have loved my breakfast ever since. They spice up my mornings. The benefits of the berries can fill up a book they are really good. I buy them frozen and thus have good supply throughout the year. Mix them up with some yogurt and oat meal and you have a balanced start to the day. If you love coffee or tea do not give it up, have the berry mixture and top it up with the coffee.

If you have some time on a Saturday morning you can try the following tropical smoothie suggestion.

One cup whole milk yogurt.( Some people may have issues with the word ‘whole’, for me whole milk yogurt tastes better and if I am exercising it is more filling. It never stopped me from losing weight-go figure)

Three slices of papaya.
Six pieces of frozen mango pieces.
Five frozen straw berries.
A good amount of blue berries or mixed berries. Depending on how much you like.
A cup of pasteurized passion fruit juice if you can find one.
One ripe banana.

Put all this is a blender, blend it as your coffee or tea is brewing. Take a full glass of this then grab the coffee or tea to wash it down. Try it with some green tea.

If you are going for groceries, add in some protein powder this will keep you full to avoid the cookie and soda aisle. Trust me this works even with children if they help you make it.

A berry break fast is a spiced breakfast and it makes a big difference to the everyday.

Spice up your torso too

I can go on and on the very different ways to spice up. However since we have our bodies with us all the time, it is important that we spice it up. Make it lightweight for quick displacement and look great in the in the process. The best way is to give your body a quickie. Yes that may help in our sex life but from Scott’s perspective it also helps with fat loss. The Fat Loss Quickie is a guide that helps spice up the torso in small daily doses. Sitting down to work or watch TV the whole day leaves the body really dull. A sweat, small or big gives it some zest. You can have a mild exercise, medium or hot exercise. Hot is where you really get to sweat it out. I love the sweating after some exercise but some people hate the whole thing about exercising. The best way is to look at small bits of exercises as spices. You can have your taste and you can change the taste ever so often. We are all different and we can choose when and how to spice up our bodies. It is very important that we spice it up that is the bottom line. An easy one is a good long walk, which you can also add more spice by walking with some light weights or having a brisk walk.

Spicing is all about individual choices

My best approach that works to boost my morale for the day is to start the day with a glass of boiled water, then have some time of prayers and meditation. I then get on to do some exercise before the children wake up. I always have this notion that if I exercise before I eat then my body will have to use the excess body fat and thus help me lose weight faster or keep my body weight low. With the kids up I make a very heavy breakfast which includes yogurt berries and oat meal with protein powders with added apple cider vinegar and flax seed.

I have only given very few examples on how you can spice up your everyday, water, food breakfast and your torso. In essence they are just some healthy habits I have stumbled upon. People have their own different ways and I would love to know from others how they are spicing to a good health and losing fat in the process.

Grace Onyango