Health + Fitness advice and plans
Enjoy meal plans and workout routines free of charge to ignite your health journey!
Hello there! My name is Laila McGill.
I am 15 years old and am focused on maintaining a healthy, balanced, and happy life. I have taken an interest in recent years as to making sure I am consuming healthy and fresh foods, as well as exercising the right amount to keep my body strong. All of this said, this website is an interest based project with the goal of not only bettering the overall well being of my Community, but also reaching outward into the U.S. to help others farther away.
This website is divided into three subgroups with everything you need to get started on your health journey in one place for convenience and practicality. There is a section that goes over the importance of a balanced outlook on both the fitness and consumption aspects of health and the actual impacts of fast food. The second section provides healthy, quick, and cost effective recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Lastly, a third section that includes sample workout routines that are able to be done in 15 minutes or less so that everyone is able to fit it in daily. The three sections are meant to deliver all areas that will help you better not just your health, but because of it your life. I believe that there are two perspectives on life and health. #1. Do whatever you want because we all have the same ending, which is quite sad and disregarding your health can lead to a rough time while you are here. Or there is # 2. You should live life to your fullest potential and nourish your body so you can be here longer and more enjoyably, which is what I want to help you all achieve. Please enjoy this site and share with friends and family.
Throughout childhood, there has been a recurring sentence that we all hear.
I am talking about the general point blank sentence “Fast food is bad for you”. The problem with this is, it has been said so much that most people have lost its meaning. Let me give you the real take and help you see the realities that fast food has brought on the human population. To begin, let me propose a question. Why do people keep going back to fast food if they know it negatively affects their health? Well, people just refuse to take in the severity of what its impacts are or cannot afford or spend the time to make a homemade meal. To provide an example of a negative impact of fast food, according to Factors that Affect Fast Food Consumption: A Review of the Literature there is “a positive association of frequency of fast food intake with breast cancer” (Factors that Affect Fast Food Consumption: A Review of the Literature 3). High consumption rates of Fast food are causing cancers in some people, and the number of people it affects will only rise as studies show that “36 percent of students eat fast food meals more than three times per day”. And the study result suggested that “48 percent of the students who were overweight and 23 percent of those who were obese perceived themselves as being in the healthy weight category” (Factors that Affect Fast Food Consumption: A Review of the Literature 4). Fast food is not only attacking our bodies, it is intercepting our minds.
People are beginning to alter the reality of optimal weight categories
This is because of the mediums becoming the small sizes and the large sizes becoming the new mediums that they are exposed to in fast food establishments. Additionally, for some people, it isn’t just about wanting a tasty meal that drives them to pull up to the drive through, portions of the population do not have the money to spend on full out dinners every night or the time to prepare the food in their busy lives. My goal with this website is to provide quick meals that are nutritionally balanced, and cost effective so that the issue of timing and money are resolved and it can become easier and faster to meal prep and enjoy tasty and nutritional meals all throughout the week instead of taking the time to drive to the fast food establishments and then constantly be giving money out of your pocket to food that isn’t going to give your body what it needs to excel. It is mentioned that “(the) recommendation is to build a better local food environment by efforts in decreasing the local availability of unhealthy food, as well as increasing “programs to help customers identify strategies for obtaining healthy meals at fast food outlets” (Kruger, Greenberg, Murphy, Difazio& Youra, 2014, p.340)” (Factors that Affect Fast Food Consumption: A Review of the Literature 11). If I can produce an effective program that helps viewers like you reading this to better themselves from whatever starting point they are at, then I believe I will be able to help my close community and farther spanning country to build a better food domain. I will strive to achieve this by including food intake and exercise aspects of health, because they need to work together to accomplish the common goal of improvement of health.
Healthy Recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
Breakfast PB toast and fruit salad
Time to prepare: 7-10 min
Lasts up to: 5 days
Need:
16 oz pkg strawberries
9.8 oz pkg blueberries
3 apples
1 Jar all natural peanut butter
2 bananas
Barbecue rice bowl
Time to prepare: 15-20 min
Lasts up to: 5 days
Need:
2 bags of small 90-second pouches of brown rice
2 orange peppers
1 pkg baby carrots 16 Oz
8oz small potatoes
10 Oz garden plant based chicken strips
1 can corn
1 can black beans
Small barbecue sauce
Feta Italian salad
Time to prepare: 10-15 min
Lasts up to: 5 days
Need:
2 cucumbers
2 peppers
16.5 pkg mini tomatoes
1 count 6 oz pkg feta crumbles
Italian dressing 16 oz
4.25 oz Simple Mills crackers
Recipe to prepare:
Recipe to prepare:
- Chop all fruit. Halve the strawberries, slice bananas, cube apples, rinse blueberries
- Place in large bowl that is store able in fridge with cover or Saran Wrap
- When serving, toast 2 slices of toast and apply ½ Tbs to each piece. Then, scoop ⅕ of the fruit mixture onto serving plate
- Enjoy!
Recipe to prepare:
Recipe to prepare:
Recipe to prepare:
- Chop 2 peppers
- Cook chicken on medium for 8 minutes
- While cooking, stab potatoes and cut in half, Chop a large handful of carrots: place carrots and potatoes in microwave safe bowl and cook for 4 ½ minutes until soft
- Microwave rice
- Place rice and veggies in fridge storable container and mix in beans and corn
- When ready to serve, portion ⅕ of it into bowl
Recipe to prepare:
Recipe to prepare:
Recipe to prepare:
- Chop cucumber, pepper, and tomatoes and place in bowl
- Sprinkle in ⅓ of feta container
- Pour ¾ cup Italian dressing in
- Store in fridge storable container
- When ready to serve, stir and portion ⅕ of it onto plate, then add handful of crackers to complement.
Alright everybody, we all have heard whether from our gym coach, mom, doctor, or the internet about?
How fitness is good for your body…but there is more to it than that. There is evidence that shows exercise can do incredible things to help our bodies, even increase our life span¹. Exercise is proven to increase functionality in purposes like transporting oxygen to our muscles, capillary density, transporting of oxygen and much more¹. Unfortunately, citizens especially of the U.S often fail to meet health guidelines as seen in this statistic: “ >90% of U.S. individuals >12 yr of age and ∼50% of children aged 6–11 yr old fail to meet U.S. Federal physical activity guidelines” (Troiano et al. 2008). Exercising is very important to our bodies, but people often neglect it by thinking or saying they are too busy / do not have the time. My goal was to create a few workout circuits that are obtainable for everyday completion, without feeling like it is a drag or too much effort. A multitude of different exercise types exist nowadays, including aerobics, cardiovascular and endurance to name a few. However, endurance exercise works on maintaining the tip top shape of your heart, lungs, and overall fitness³. I have created 2 workout circuits for you to choose from that are designed to be performed 5-6 days per week, though making sure that you are being active a little bit each day is the key to consistency and success. Even activities that you think are fun get you a good amount of exercise, including riding a bike, swimming, dancing, skateboarding and such of the like. The workouts I created range from 10-15 minutes, so they should be very ideal for the day to day lives of many in our country. Are YOU ready to better yourself both physically and mentally, inside and out? Let’s do it!!!
¹, ² Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, paragraph 1
³ American Heart Association: Endurance Exercise (Aerobic) https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/endurance-exercise-aerobic#:~:text=Also%20called%20aerobic%20exercise%2C%20endurance,and%20improves%20your%20overall%20fitness
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