The gluten free lifestyle is on the rise these days with people being diagnosed with Celiac Disease and Gluten Intolerance. Even some cases of autism seem to improve with a gluten free diet which increases the search for gluten free recipes and dining options.

Sisters, Susan and Cate Hamilton, both discovered they were intolerant to gluten at 25. Quickly they became aware of the struggles of this dietary restriction when it came time to eat out. They had been compiling lists of safe foods and sharing with one another when they decided to share it with the world. Their App, Glutenless Dining, features over 150 top US Chain Restaurants with more than 3,200 menu items listed. This takes the guess work out of choosing what to eat. The restaurants are sorted by price, type, and cuisine.

Once you find a restaurant you plan on eating at or you find yourself in the middle of a Cheddars, you can quickly pull up the list of gluten free menu items.

Included in each restaurant listing is The Sisters Hamilton’s Tips which includes the date that the items were last verified.

Then, when you decide on an item, you can select it to see the sister’s special instructions. For instance, the Aged Ribeye Special is gluten free as long as you order it without the onion straws. I am sure this information is invaluable depending on your sensitivity level to gluten.

If you find the menu item you would love to dine on, you can use the Map It feature to find one of these restaurants close to your current location. This would be very helpful if you were traveling or in an unfamiliar area. It even offers directions to the restaurant you choose as well as an address and phone number which is very nice.

 The app is easy to use and packed with lots of information about all your favorite restaurants and plenty of fast food selections. This is a great service for anyone with a gluten restricted diet, especially those starting out in the lifestyle. I found it especially interesting which restaurants had the most options and that some restaurants like Taco Bell, which I assumed would be a good gluten-free location, did not have many options. This is exactly why this app would be helpful for people who truly cannot tolertate gluten.

The Hamilton sisters also write a blog with gluten free tips, restaurant information, and more app information called, Glutenless Life.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the 2011 International Food Blogger Conference in New Orleans. It was such a great experience, as I met so many fabulous bloggers, saw great historical sights, listened to fantastic jazz music and learned crazy amounts of information.

Most importantly though, I ate some of the best food. After all, New Orleans is renowned for its distinctive food culture. From gumbo and jambalaya to red beans and rice, New Orleans food is universally recognized. However, as someone who doesn’t eat meat of seafood, I knew that New Orleans food might not be very welcoming of my tastes. Luckily, I still had the opportunity to try unbelievable food. After all, in New Orleans it’s hard to avoid good food. Here are some of my New Orleans food highlights:

On Thursday night, my colleague from RecipeLion.com and I stopped at The Gumbo Shop for our first taste of classic New Orleans food. For my main dish, I had a Creole style beans and rice dish:

As a side order, I got Mache Choux, a Creole style corn dish:

They definitely hit the empty spot after a long day of traveling. To end things, I finished the night at Fritzel’s, a jazz club on Bourbon Street. Nothing beats listening to fantastic live jazz music while sipping on a Hurricane.

The next morning, I knew exactly where I needed to go: Cafe Du Monde! The place is a New Orleans tradition, serving up coffee with chicory and beignets 24 hours day. Beignets are a French style of doughnut, and I knew I had to try one in New Orleans. I know it’s not exactly FaveDiets-friendly, but…

Throughout the 2011 International Food Blogger Conference , the attendees were treated a wide array of food from some top notch local restaurants. My personal favorites were the black eyed peas paste from La Petite Grocery, the Honeyed Rice Cream from Sucre, an apple-Brussels sprouts salad with chickpeas and the Valrhona White Chocolate Creme Brulee With Blood Orange Infused Courvoisier Coulis.

Of course, I was at the conference to not only eat food, but to talk about food too. Of the many great sessions I attended, I was especially tickled to see Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, Kate McDermott of Art of the Pie, and Diane Jacob of Will Write for Food talk about recipe writing. Know that I will be taking their tips to heart here on the FaveDiets blog!

One of the coolest talks I saw was Scott Heimendinger of Seattle Food Geek talking about Food and Technology. After that talk, I now have a whole new appreciation for food science. That, and I really want a Sous Vide machine!

Outside of the talks, I also had the honor of watching Chef John Folse cook up some unbelievable New Orleans-inspired dishes. Plus he gave great background information on the history and evolution of New Orleans food. Call me a nerd, but I always love a good history lesson.

To cap off my time in New Orleans, I stopped at The Green Goddess, a hip and contemporary little restaurant nestled in a French Quarter alleyway. I had their Cuban Sandwich, filled with curried Collard greens instead of pork:

This was my first trip to New Orleans, and needless to say I thought it was an unbelievable city. Beyond just that world famous New Orleans food, it is a city beset with culture and history. If you have never been to New Orleans, then you need to head down there ASAP!

Your Turn: What is your favorite New Orleans food item?

Summer is the time to get out on the open road and travel. If you plan on embarking on a road trip this summer, then prepare with some healthy road trip food built for the open road.

Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to set aside time to travel the continent (Toronto, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Texas, the Southeast and New England) by car. While I actually don’t own a car, nothing beats traveling the country in one.

One of the big problems that always arise for me on road trips is with road trip food. Too often, the best road trip food consists of fast food and gas station finds. Even for non healthy eaters, this diet gets burdensome by the end of a long trip. However, it doesn’t have to be this way! Here are some tips, tricks and recipes to ensure that you actually have healthy road trip food on hand.

Road Trip Snacks

Inevitably, if you are in a car for long periods of time getting from place to place, you’re going to want to snack. This is fine, so long as you’re smart about it. Either way, I like to prepare myself with healthy road trip food for snacking before I leave. For road trips, I like to stock up on roasted nuts (unsalted), no sugar added dried fruit and homemade granola (my personal favorite!). In a pinch, these healthy shelf stable snacks fill me up in the car or after a hike without excess sugar or salt. Of course, staying hydrated with plenty of water is a must on road trips, even if it means taking a few extra stops.

Make your own healthy road trip snacks with these recipes:

• Nut and Raisin Granola
• Quaker Oat Granola
• High Fiber Energy Bars
• Cranberry Pear Oatmeal Power Bars

Healthy Road Trip Ideas for Lunch

Depending on how far you are traveling, bringing healthy food for lunch is a snap. Road trips provide the perfect opportunity for picnicking!  Whether at highway rest stop or somewhere further off the beaten path, finding a park or picnic area is a breeze. Pack along some portable lunch recipes, and complete your meal with some fruit, a salad and some cookies for dessert. The ultimate road trip sandwich, for me, is the old peanut butter and jelly, but canned tuna sandwiches are also great.

Healthy Road Trip Ideas for Dinner and Breakfast

This can be a little tricky, as it is often too easy to stop at a chain restaurant or a diner for a meal. These are tasty options, but be sure to read the menus carefully to make sure you know what you are eating. The best option is to do some research on the places you are traveling to in order to find some inexpensive restaurants and grocery stores with healthy options. Of course, you can always stick with some granola in the morning and some no cook meals at night to make sure you’re eating well on the road.

Since my road trips usually involve a lot of camping and hiking, I have more options for breakfast and dinner. I can cook burgers (or veggie burgers) or sausages over the campfire for dinner, and then I can whip up breakfast over a camping stove if desired as well. Here are some of my favorite recipes that are easy to make over a campfire:

• 10 Minute Beef Chili
• Potato and Cabbage Soup
• Chuckwagon Stew
• Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes

Your turn: What are your tips and tricks for eating well when traveling?

Many dieters spend so much time thinking about what they are eating, that they neglect to consider everything they drink. And it may come as a surprise to many that just one beer or cocktail can pack a ton of calories and extra sugar. Just one pina colada, for example, may contain oever 600 calories and 75 grams of sugar. And while there are few options that most dieticians would deem “healthy,” there are ways to enjoy a drink or two without consuming an additional day’s worth of calories. Beer manfacturers are now rolling out low-cal options (hint: they taste like water), which may not be a bad option for someone standing around at a party or a bar sipping their drink. Below are a few other options that keep the calorie count on the lower end. Take note: many of these drinks still pack a lot of calories, and two or three of these could wreck your diet.

Bloody Mary
150 calories, 10 g of sugar

Mojito
160 calories, 15 g sugar

Cosmopolitan
150 calories, 12 g sugar

Rum & Diet Coke
65 calories

Cocktail information from Men’s Health.

Epiphany: Cheat less and get better results from your diet regimen.

I’m getting married in a year from tomorrow. The scariest thing about this whole endeavor is the threat of being not-my-ideal-weight when it comes time to walk down the aisle in a hopefully-flattering white gown. So after many months of keeping this thought in the back of my mind and eating cautiously on a not-so regular basis, I’ve had an epiphany: You get better results when you don’t cheat.

You may think this is really not such a break through – duh – stick to a program and the pounds will fall off. Easier said than done. Diet plans like Weight Watchers, for example, emphasize the importance of writing down everything you eat because otherwise it’s easy to lose track of what you put in your mouth. So cheating isn’t necessarily something  we do consciously. We just do.

So what am I eating? Salad mostly. I’m stockpiling the lettuce and veggies in my fridge and making glorious huge salads for lunch and dinner. Glorious! On the weekends, I eat outside the diet if I’m out with friends or hanging out at my parents’ house. If I’m at a restaurant I’ll order a salad. But if I didn’t grant myself the freedom to enjoy my social life, I would go crazy.

So what’s made the biggest difference? Lightening up on dinner. For several months prior to this epiphany week, I would eat clean all day long and then have a nice hearty dinner of pasta or chicken and rice, with the justification that I had eaten well all day and I deserved it. So not true. What I deserve is to feel great on my wedding day (and beyond)! End of story.

Here are some salads on Favediets.com that I’m putting into my daily repertoire:

Vegan Asparagus with Roasted Red Pepper Salad

Vegetable Salad in 24 Hours

Broccoli Salad with Pinenuts and Cranberry

Strawberry Spinach Salad with Poppyseed Dressing

Our second fave dieting site is Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone. It may not look like much from the homepage, but it has so much nutritional info I don’t know what to do with myself! If you click on DWLZ restuarants the possibilities are endless. I found myself getting lost in the site because all my favorite places are there.

Dotti’s supplies weight watchers points and other nutritional information for what seems like every restaurant, even those that you only have in your home city. As a Chicago-native, I was amazed (and appalled) by the Lou Malnati’s stats for my favorite deep-dish pizza. It’s too bad no calorie count could keep me away from that! The chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory does have enough calories to keep me away forever. I’ll let you do the research on that one.

So have you tried Dotti’s out yet? Have you made any changes to you diet from your findings at this site?

We’ve got six great dieting websites for you and we’re going to unveil one every week! First up is Calorie King, and it offers a HUGE database of nutritional information on calories and nutritional facts for every product from your favorite treat at DQ to your go-to Pizza Hut pasta. You can search for pretty much any food or drink, and you even find out how long it takes to burn off the calories from the meal when doing different exercises. How smart is that?

The website also includes health articles, recipes and allows you to download software to your computer or phone to stay on your dieting schedule. It can’t get any easier to stay healthy when you can watch what you eat out!

What health or dieting websites do you use? Would you use Calorie King? Let me know!

In case you have been living under a rock, fast-food mecca KFC has recently rolled out a healthy grilled version of their famed fried chicken. True to their marketing, the grilled chicken is a much healthier option: A KFC grilled chicken breast contains only 180 calories and 4 grams of fat, compared to 370 calories and 21 grams of fat in an original recipe chicken breast. And yesterday Oprah announced that she would be giving everyone in the United States a coupon for a free 2 piece grilled chicken meal (complete with two sides and a biscuit). This announcement sent starved consumers into a frenzy, leading to huge crowds, long lines and some chaos. As ridiculous as I think the hype is, I am excited to try KFC again after brushing it off as sub-par fast food many years ago. It’s always nice to see healthy (affordable!) options popping up on restaurant menus, even if they do cause some problems.

Have you tried the new KFC? What are your thoughts?

We’ve just launched a brand feature at FaveDiets.com called What to Eat/What Not to Eat. This section is designed to help you make healthy choices and stick to your diet plans while eating out or ordering delivery. Every once in awhile, you can have convenience without sacrificing your diet.

To mark this new feature, here’s a What to Eat/What Not to Eat for everybody’s favorite delivery: pizza!

What to Eat

Thin Crust- These crispy crusts are generally lower in calories and, in my opinion, must tastier!

Hawaiian- Give it a try! You’ll get an extra serving of fruit through the pineapple, generally leaner ham and you might just love the taste!

Vegetables- Look for veggie pizzas, especially those with spinach, or create your own with mushrooms, bell peppers and onions.

Low-fat Cheese or No-Cheese- Many pizza places offer lower-fat mozzarella or no-cheese options. Just ask!

Bread-sticks- Just order two bread-sticks or share a larger portion. Have with marinara or “pizza” sauce instead of cheese sauce.

What Not to Eat

Beef/Pepperoni/Sausage- Just say no to meat-lovers!  Most of these meats will give you a much higher-calorie pizza.

Deep-Dish/Special Crusts- Avoid the calorie-laden traps of “pan crust,” “deep-dish” or cheesy crusts.

Garlic bread- Generally swimming in butter and cheese, skip the garlic bread.

Chicken wings- You don’t even want to know how awful these are for you.

With such busy schedules and long work weeks, it’s tempting to spend multiple nights a week out at restaurants. But all those oversized restaurant portions may start adding up to extra pounds. So here are a few tips for staying healthy while eating out.

1. Pack It Up. Articles along these same lines always recommend asking your server to pack half your meal in a doggie bag before you even dig in. I’ve always thought this was a little ridiculous (and still do), but I have started separating my meals into two and doing my best to only eat half. I take the rest home for lunch the next day, and since I’ve started doing it, I’ve never gone home feeling hungry. If you’re worried about self-control, you might want to try packing it up at the beginning of the meal.

2. Look for Healthier Options. Many chain restaurants now offer “lighter options” that are either smaller portioned entrees or options like grilled chicken or fish served with steamed vegetables. It’s a good idea to check these choices out, especially when many restaurant menus are chock full of fried options.

3. Split. A good way to indulge in fried chicken, a big steak or dessert is to split it with someone. Share a garden salad and a heavier entree and save yourself the temptation of eating the whole thing yourself.

4. Read the Menu. Pay more attention to what is included in each dish, and you can find easy ways to save some extra calories. For example, restaurant salads are rarely the healthy option they are perceived to be. Many come loaded with unhealthy fried noodles or toppings and fatty dressings. Look for grilled and steamed items and ask for the sauce or dressing on the side, so you can control the amount you consume.