About

Welcome to Simple Nourished Living. I am so glad you stopped by.

My name is Martha McKinnon. I have a passion for all things food including cooking, eating and avid cookbook collecting. I’m also a passionate Weight Watchers Lifetime Member and Leader-in-Training who is currently at below goal.

This blog is mostly a place for me to share my love of food, cooking, and recipes and talk about my personal view about weight loss, nutrition, exercise and my own approach and experiences dealing with weight and as a Weight Watches member.

You’ll find lots of easy healthy recipes that I think taste delicious.

I believe that the best approach to healthy eating, cooking, living and weight loss is to you keep things simple, stay positive and focus on finding your happy healthy balance. It’s about finding the balance between your love of delicious food and desire to be slim and healthy.

Balancing the love of delicious food and desire to be slim and healthy

Easy Healthy Recipes for Weight Loss

Healthy home cooking doesn’t have to be complicated or boring. Cooking can be easy and delicious when you have the right information, tools, techniques and quick and easy recipes.

Healthy meals cooked at home are always better for you (and your wallet) than take out or fast food and they can be a lot more satisfying too. And so much lower in calories and fat.

Easy Spaghetti & Meat Sauce

What you need to make this a reality are easy recipes with simple common ingredients. The key to simple cooking is finding recipes with just a few easy-to- find ingredients and preparation steps.

And sometimes, if you’re like me, you don’t even need a recipe, but just some help with quick easy meal ideas that are good and good-for-you.

On this site you’ll find lots of easy healthy recipes for quick dishes that taste delicious, including lots of easy soup recipes (one of my favorite things to make), along with a healthy dose of sweet treats, like easy cookie and brownie recipes (another favorite).

You’ll also find quick easy dinner recipes that are easy to make and taste great, easy slow cooker recipes that practically cook themselves, along with lots of cooking tips, hints and how-tos to help making cooking easier.

Please Note: I’ve also begun including nutritional information and Weight Watchers POINTS PLUS on new recipes as I add them (effective September 2011). I’m a longtime Weight Watchers Lifetime Member, and recently hired Weight Watchers employee who believes strongly in their message that it’s not about dieting; its about embracing a healthy lifestyle. I love that fruits and vegetables are now zero PointsPlus foods on the new PointsPlus program. But this site is not affiliated with Weight Watchers in any way. What I write here is about my personal experience on the plan. The views expressed are my own and do not reflect the views of Weight Watchers.

Balanced Healthy Eating for Weight Loss

A balanced healthy diet changes everything. Good health begins in the kitchen with the food you eat. In addition to nourishing you, food is one of life’s great pleasures. I believe that one of the keys to sustainable weight loss is slowing down and really ENJOYING your food.

It doesn’t matter how healthy or low calorie a food is, if it doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to eat it! (At least not for very long.) Life is too short not to nourish yourself with delicious healthy food!

Balanced Healthy Eating

Healthy eating can be easy and delicious!

All it takes is the desire along with the right information, techniques, tips and tools.

That’s where this website comes in.

After years of wading through conflicting nutritional information and struggling to determine the “correct way to eat healthfully” I decided that the best approach to healthy eating is one of simplicity and common sense.

It’s about adopting a healthy lifestyle you can live with – not going on another diet.

Although, we are all unique and may have different dietary needs, there are some things from which we can all benefit – such as reducing highly processed foods, refined and manufactured food, cutting back on excess sugar and unhealthy fats, increasing fruits and vegetables, and enjoying simple home-cooked meals that are low in calories and fat as much as possible.

It’s about creating a simple healthy balanced lifestyle that is realistic, practical and not subject to the latest nutritional fads, whims and popular diets of the moment. It’s about finding a happy healthy balance – eating healthy most of the time and not worrying about the occasional indulgences. (I believe that sometimes a food’s love content totally outweighs its fat and sugar content!)

As a longterm yo-you dieter turned enthusiastic Weight Watcher’s Lifetime Member, I’ve learned that the an instinctive/intuitive approach to eating along with moderation and common sense and a focus on good health works best for me.

Easy Chocolate Cake

You don’t need to be perfect. You can eat out, order takeout and indulge in cookies and chocolate - just not all the time.

I believe that it’s healthy to have some indulgent things in life that please you and for me that includes reading cookbooks, baking and making desserts so you’ll find lot’s of wonderful easy dessert recipes here. I even have a website dedicated to easy cookie recipes where I indulge my sweet tooth.

Day-to-day and week-to-week it’s about finding the balance between health and pleasure and letting yourself really ENJOY your food in moderation.

There’s lots of information here to help, including articles to help you make healthier food choices and healthy easy weight loss tips as well as lots of information about yoga and fitness.

Recipe Index

Here you will find an index of all of the easy recipes on this site sorted both by recipe category and by ingredient. So you can browse easy chicken recipes or easy dinner recipes or recipes using bananas or beans or lemons. You’ll also find links to cooking tips and how-to information, cookbook reviews and healthy diet and lifestyle information.

Easy Weight Loss Tips

Weight Loss can be easy and effortless and even enjoyable when you have the right information along with the right attitude. I’ve found that the key to easy weight loss is taking a mind – body – heart approach. Focus on taking care of yourself, getting happy and healthy and losing weight becomes easy (or at least a lot easier). You’ll find lots of great articles full of information and tips to make weight loss easy.

Yoga & Fitness Tips

Enjoyable movement is an important part of living a happy healthy life and for me that means lots of walking and yoga. As a certified yoga instructor -specializing in gentle, accessible yoga – I love sharing the joys and benefits of yoga with women of all ages and abilities.