Plan Budget-Friendly, Healthy Meals

With the rich foods you'll be having at all the upcoming holiday parties, you might find yourself wanting lighter healthier meals. We've compiled a list of websites that will help you stay on track with healthy meal planning:

Healthy Chinese recipes from Eating Well.

EatingWell’s healthy Chinese recipes are makeovers of traditional favorites, such as Sweet & Sour Chicken with Brown Rice and Scallop & Shrimp Dumplings. Skip the white rice—instant brown rice is quick and more nutritious—and you’ll have a crowd-pleasing meal ready in no time.

(Us: A great resource for all kinds of Chinese/Asian inspired dishes. Scroll all the way down for more recipes.)

Daily Meal Planner from Meals Matter.

Our daily meal planner makes it easier to prepare healthy, economical meals at home by helping you organize recipes and meals for each day. You can contribute your favorite recipes to Meals Matter and then plan your meals for the week by adding them to your daily meal planner. If you don’t have a recipe to add you can also write in what you plan to eat for any given meal.

Cheap and Healthy: 15 Nutritious Foods for About $2 from WebMD.

How do you eat a nutritious diet while keeping your grocery budget low? The good news is that cheap food isn't necessarily unhealthy food.

You can cut food costs by eating more meals at home, and by making sure they feature some of the healthiest foods from your supermarket -- foods like whole grains, vegetables, and beans.

Enjoy the festivities and happy eating!

A Few Good Tips For Sticking to Your Healthy Diet

More useful, expert tips can be found on Helpguide.org

# Fill up on colorful fruits and vegetables
Fruits and vegetables are the foundation of a healthy diet. They are low in calories and nutrient dense, which means they are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber.

Try to eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day and with every meal—the brighter the better. Colorful, deeply colored fruits and vegetables contain higher concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants—and different colors provide different benefits, so eat a variety. Aim for a minimum of five portions each day.

Some great choices include:

• Greens. Branch out beyond bright and dark green lettuce. Kale, mustard greens, broccoli, and Chinese cabbage are just a few of the options—all packed with calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, zinc, and vitamins A, C, E, and K.

• Sweet vegetables. Naturally sweet vegetables—such as corn, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, yams, onions, and squash—add healthy sweetness to your meals and reduce your cravings for other sweets.

• Fruit. Fruit is a tasty, satisfying way to fill up on fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants. Berries are cancer-fighting, apples provide fiber, oranges and mangos offer vitamin C, and so on.

Ten Tips on Healthy Eating

This list is compiled by the President's Council on Fitness and Sports:

1. Start your day with breakfast.
Breakfast fills your "empty tank" to get you going after a long night without food. And it can help you do better in school. Easy to prepare breakfasts include cold cereal with fruit and low-fat milk, whole-wheat toast with peanut butter, yogurt with fruit, whole-grain waffles or even last night's pizza!

2. Get Moving!
It's easy to fit physical activities into your daily routine. Walk, bike or jog to see friends. Take a 10-minute activity break every hour while you read, do homework or watch TV. Climb stairs instead of taking an escalator or elevator. Try to do these things for a total of 30 minutes every day.

3. Snack smart.
Snacks are a great way to refuel. Choose snacks from different food groups - a glass of low-fat milk and a few graham crackers, an apple or celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins, or some dry cereal. If you eat smart at other meals, cookies, chips and candy are OK for occasional snacking.

4. Work up a sweat.
Vigorous work-outs - when you're breathing hard and sweating - help your heart pump better, give you more energy and help you look and feel best. Start with a warm-up that stretches your muscles. Include 20 minutes of aerobic activity, such as running, jogging, or dancing. Follow-up with activities that help make you stronger such as push-ups or lifting weights. Then cool-down with more stretching and deep breathing.

5. Balance your food choices - don't eat too much of any one thing.
You don't have to give up foods like hamburgers, french fries and ice cream to eat healthy. You just have to be smart about how often and how much of them you eat. Your body needs nutrients like protein, carbohydrates, fat and many different vitamins and minerals such as vitamins C and A, iron and calcium from a variety of foods. Balancing food choices from the Food Guide Pyramid and checking out the Nutrition Facts Panel on food labels will help you get all these nutrients.