How To Get Rid of Fruit Flies

Follow these steps to get rid of fruit flies naturally by eliminating their breeding grounds and using homemade traps to kill them. Then, keep fruit flies from coming back with some easy, practical steps.

Though it does take consistency and effort, you can get a fruit fly infestation under control and keep them away for good.

Some Facts About Fruit Flies

They Live Longer than You Think

There’s a myth that fruit flies live and die in 24 hours. It turns out, their life cycle can be over two weeks. They begin life as tiny eggs laid on the surface of fruits, buried within rotting fruit, or inside poorly sealed containers.

Within 48 hours, those eggs turn into larvae — also known as maggots — that start feeding right away. After another 5 days or so, the larvae reach adulthood and are ready to get busy with other fruit flies.

And then they live another 50 or so days! Some species even live for several months.

They Breed Like Crazy

Imagine you have a suitable breeding ground for just four females in your kitchen. At 100 fruit fly eggs per day, you’ll have thousands of flies in your home in a week.

So, when it comes to getting rid of a fruit fly infestation, you can’t really wait for them to die. And there are good reasons why you should kill them quickly.

They Carry Disease

Fruit flies don’t just eat your food — they also carry disease. If you have a cat litter box in your home, you’ve probably seen a few flitting about when you’ve gone to scoop kitty’s business. You’ll find them near the bathroom and kitchen drain, too, as well as around toilets and other sources of water.

They Lay Fruit Fly Eggs in Your Food

Guess where fruit flies most love to breed? Your fruit, vegetables, or any other food left on the counter. Those fruit fly eggs quickly grow into microscopic larvae (maggots).

And what happens to those larvae? You eat them.

How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies for Good

As with any attempts to get rid of household pests, a lazy approach won’t work. So, read through these steps and follow them diligently.

Use These Homemade Fruit Fly Traps

One of the easiest ways to kill fruit flies is to drown them into a bowl filled with liquid. I’ve used several different kinds of such traps. Here are the three I’ve found most successful to get an infestation quickly under control.

With new fruit fly eggs hatching daily, you’ll need to keep the traps clean and in place for a couple of weeks. If you prefer a “set it and forget it” approach, many people report having success with commercial fruit fly traps.

Apple Cider Vinegar Fruit Fly Trap

A shallow bowl of apple cider vinegar left on the kitchen counter attracts fruit flies with its scent. Cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap (or a lid) in which you’ve poked a few small holes with a toothpick. The flies will go in, but they won’t come back out. Change the vinegar daily.

Red Wine Fruit Fly Trap

A bottle with an inch or so of red wine or beer is practically a magnet for fruit flies.

Add a paper funnel at the top so they fly in but can’t easily get out. Use a kitchen funnel or roll a piece of paper to form one and insert the narrow end into the bottle. Tape it in place if needed. Change daily.

Soapy Water Fruit Fly Trap

A bowl of water with just a drop of dish soap left under a light at night attracts fruit flies, gnats, and mosquitoes that have found their way into your home. (The light over your stove is perfect for this.)

The light’s reflection on the water lures them in but the soap creates a surface tension that keeps them from flying away. Change every morning.

How to Kill Drain Flies

Some fruit flies hide in sink drains. So do gnats.

It’s not convenient to place a trap in these. Instead, pour a 50-50 mixture of hot water and white vinegar down drains to kill drain flies and fruit fly eggs they’ve laid. Do this daily until they’re gone. (Here are more ways to clean stinky drains, where pests like to breed.)

How to Keep Fruit Flies Away

Once you’ve done the work to kill fruit flies, keep them from coming back with these preventative measures.

1. Keep Counters Clean

Fruit flies will feast on spilled food, crumbs, spilled juice — just about anything. Clean your counters at least once a day, so they don’t turn into a snack bar for the pests.

2. Wash Fruit Right Away

Fruit flies piggyback their way into our homes on bananas and melons more than any other fruits. Wash any produce that you plan to leave on the counter as soon as you get back from the store.

3. Cover Fruit Bowls

A fruit bowl on the counter is a great way to encourage your family to eat healthy snacks. If left uncovered, though, it turns into a single’s bar for fruit flies.

If you do leave a bowl of fruit on the counter, cover it with a cake dome, an upturned bowl, or even plastic wrap to keep fruit flies from it.

4. Deal with Odors Immediately

If it stinks, it attracts fruit flies. Clean your drains, garbage cans, pet bedding, litter boxes, and toilets regularly. 

5. Repeat For Two Weeks

Remember how female fruit flies lay 100 eggs or more per day? With new eggs hatching every day, you’ll need to be diligent for a couple of weeks about using traps, depriving them of food, and keeping them from favorite breeding places.

Once you’ve got the fruit fly infestation under control, keep using traps and cleaning surfaces for another week to make sure there are no fruit fly eggs waiting to hatch.

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Go Vegetarian once a week

 

Benefits of Going Meatless Once a Week

Benefits of Going Meatless Once a Week

            In recent years, a trend has gone around called Meatless Monday. It has become so 

popular that beloved musician Paul McCartney even wrote a song about it.

For those who do not know about Meatless Monday, it is exactly how it sounds. You 

avoid eating any type of meat (including fish and poultry) every Monday. This option is 

very flexible for everyone who wants to reduce meat in their diet.

Going meatless has many health benefits that will make you feel and live a better life. 

This post is to help you understand some of the health benefits that going meatless

 at least once a week will bring you.

 

Health Benefits

There are many health benefits to going meatless at least once a week. You are 

lowering your chances of developing many diseases such as:

• Heart disease
• Diabetes
• Certain types of cancers

A day without meat is a stepping stone for those who are at risk for developing heart 

disease and diabetes. Some people are not ready to completely eliminate meat 

consumption, but a weekly meatless meal can show people how easy and great 

food can be without meat.

Eating processed meat can lead to a higher chance of developing heart disease, 

type 2 diabetes and cancer. A meatless day can help with lowering the risk of cancers 

like colorectal by avoid processed meats like bacon for a day.

The health benefits for going meatless, at least once a week, is amazing as most of 

these diseases are avoidable. Being healthy is more important than eating meat.

Obesity 

Obesity is a serious health problem that affects many people. According to studies, 

obesity and health problems related to the condition is now one of the top leading 

causes of death. It is also costly to treat the condition and any health problems 

associated with it.

There are many reasons why people are obese, and there are many solutions that 

can help the condition such as diet and exercise.

Going meatless at least once a week can help treat obesity. People with a 

plant-based lifestyle usually have lower BMIs, and a plant-based lifestyle can help with 

weight loss.

Live Longer 

Studies have shown people on any plant-based lifestyle, whether it is some type of 

vegetarian diet or veganism, live longer than those who are on a meat based diet.

This means the less meat you eat, even if it is for a day, can help you in the long run. 

As you have a higher chance of living longer and healthier than those who do not go 

meatless for at least weekly.

Digestive Help 

Studies have shown that going without meat for a day can help with your digestive 

system. Animal meat is harder to digest than other food and eating less meat can 

help your system fully digest food.

Improve Your Nutritional Needs  

Certain types of foods can help your intake of important vitamin and mineral needs. 

For example, oatmeal can help your iron intake while beans and peas can help your 

intake of such minerals like fiber, iron, and protein. Improving your nutritional needs 

can help you become healthier. Eating more beans, grains, fruits, nuts and vegetables 

on a meatless day will make sure that you meet your daily nutritional needs.

It can even help you save money... but most importantly it's 

easy and a great start to better eating habits. 

Anyone can do that... We are only talking about once a 

week after all !!😉

                    Because we care...

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Fresh vs frozen

 Fresh vs. frozen: Eat enough of the good stuff and it doesn’t really matter

It’s midwinter and near-impossible to find fresh local produce beyond root vegetables. So what is the second-best choice? Frozen? Or well-traveled fresh? What about when it comes to meat?

It depends, of course. The experts cite many, many variables. But perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions.

Produce

Most frozen produce is picked at peak season and then immediately frozen to retain nutrients and freshness. Fresh produce from faraway places, on the other hand, loses some of its nutrient value while traveling and then sitting on a shelf for days or longer. But the amount of nutrient loss varies greatly depending on the type of produce.

In fact, in general green leafy vegetables are the most delicate and susceptible to nutrition loss, while vegetables and fruit with a skin or shell (think oranges or squash) are more robust and stay nutritionally intact longer.

Fresh baby spinach. (istockphoto.com)

And this is generally the story on produce. Get your five to nine servings a day in whatever form you can.

Just make sure, that the frozen variety doesn’t include added salt (vegetables) or added sugar (fruit and berries).

Another thing to keep in mind is to buy whole frozen or fresh fruits and vegetables whenever possible.  “Because whenever you accelerate the degradation process, you lose nutrients.”

Along the same lines, the way produce is prepared actually is more important for nutrition retention than picking the absolute freshest of fresh spinach, for example.

“If you were to boil spinach you would lose much more folate than if you had it sitting in the fridge a few days,” lightly steamed or raw would be preferable.

Other things to consider are the economics of produce (frozen often is cheaper than fresh) as well as taste and texture. Some produce just doesn’t fare very well when frozen.

But let's just emphasize that the main message, though, should be to eat more produce whether fresh of frozen.

“Don’t over-worry this frozen/fresh thing. The most important thing here is to eat plant food in whatever form it may be — up to nine servings a day.” “Most people don’t eat enough produce, and not being able to buy local produce should not be an excuse to eat even less.”

 “You’re missing the boat if you won’t eat anything but organic and local. Are you going to replace an apple with an organic cracker?”

Fish, meat and poultry

Although they’re not seasonal, like veggies and fruit, meat and fish are part of the fresh-vs.-frozen debate, too. And the answers here echo those for produce.

“Frozen fish is not inferior, nutritionally speaking."

Back in the day all you heard all the time was " only buy fresh fish". “But things have changed. The freezing technology is so much better now.

These days, the freshly caught fish is flash-frozen aboard the fishing boat, keeping it nutritionally intact and “fresh” longer.

It should also be noted that all wild-caught fish – by law – has to be frozen in order to kill parasites, she says. In other words, unless you’re catching it yourself, there is no such thing as fresh, wild-caught fish, she says.

Farm-raised fish, on the other hand, often is shipped and sold to consumers without being frozen first.

So, it comes down to what looks good at the store.

Fresh fish should not smell fishy — at all. And if it’s frozen, look for freezer burn or crystals. If you see them it means the fish has been thawed and refrozen, which affects quality.

If a fish is flash frozen as soon as it's caught, it's just as fresh when you taw it than if you bought it fresh at a local fish market, sometimes even better.

Wild caught frozen is better than farm raised fresh also.

The same nutritional rules hold true for meat and poultry. Freezing meat and poultry does not affect the nutritional value.  But keep an eye on the fat content — the fattier the meat, the better it will freeze, just like fish. Look for bigger cuts and vacuum-sealed packaging, and make sure to keep the freezer as cold as possible. 

Important aspects of preparing frozen meats and fish,  are to make sure they thaw slowly (in the fridge) and aren’t overcooked.

With fish, prepare with olive oil, lemon and maybe some parsley and perhaps top with fresh salsa — all healthy choices.

Just don’t over-think the frozen versus fresh. The biggest problem is that people don’t eat enough fish — not that they eat the ‘wrong’ fish.

In other words, “fresh or frozen?” is the wrong question. Instead, the more important question is: Are you getting enough produce and lean proteins?

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It's not a diet, It's a lifestyle

 

        Healthy weight loss- It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle

        

Happy Monday!!  Don't try to do a short fix... Make it your life

It's not a diet. It's a lifestyle

Weight loss and weight management are two trendy topics in the country today. 

More and more people are joining weight management programs. Whether it's

for aesthetic purposes or health reasons, people take weight management more

 seriously than ever before. While some people may result in a workout program, 

others try out dietary changes.
When was the last time you went on a dietary change? Your answer is probably

recently. While many articles or books may advocate for people to try dieting to 

lose weight, many misconceptions surround this approach.
Studies have shown that approximatively 45 millions Americans go on healthy dieting 

each year. Dieting can produce impressive results at first, but this change largely 

disappears after a year. Only a small percentage of people who go on healthy 

dieting are able to successfully keep the weight off after dieting. The other 

percentage resort back to their regular eating habits and regain the 

lost weight. 

This statistic is alarming and goes on to prove that dieting is not 

an ideal approach to losing weight.

Your body needs healthy food in order to run properly and healthy. The results of 

dieting are almost immediately but not long-lasting. As the body loses weight, 

the metabolism rate slows down and makes it harder to continue dieting. It is 

important that you understand what works best for you without 

feeling deprived and reverting to prior unhealthy eating habits.

Why Diets Don’t Work

Diets simply focus on losing weight, which is not sustainable and goes against the 

intuitions that the body has developed through evolution. The body reacts to 

hunger by producing hormones that are designed to ensure you eat and improve 

your taste. While you can temporarily resist these signals, it is almost impossible 

to do it in the long run.

Reasons Why Diets Don’t Work

1. A one size fits all approach
People have different backgrounds, body chemistry and overall health goal. The

results of dieting vary from person to person. Therefore, dieting may work for some 

people but not for others. It is essential that you customize your eating plan to your 

own goals and needs.
2. Losing Weight Through Dieting Is Temporary
Losing weight through dieting is not permanent, and there is a huge possibility of 

weight gain. Although you may lose weight at first, the results do not last, especially 

after quitting dieting. Dieting can cause weight gain when done repeatedly, which 

may lead to obesity.
3. It Ruins Your Relationship with Food
Anyone who has tried dieting has experienced this. Restrictive diets deny you the 

pleasure of eating delicious food. You struggle to understand what it means to 

approach food in a natural, intuitive way. Dieting can make you obsessed with 

counting calories instead of eating proper nutrients. It can take away the satisfaction 

your body and mind crave from eating proper food.
4. Dieting may Lead to Unhealthy Eating Habits
Losing weight through dieting leads to a drop in the hormones that help you feel full. 

It also amplifies the hormones that make you feel hungry. The body reacts to famine 

by helping you gain weight. Dieting slows down your metabolism, causing any 

calories you eat to be used more efficiently. This makes it easier to gain weight 

than it is harder to lose it. Weight is gained as fat, and this is counterproductive 

in the weight loss process.
5. A focus on weight loss vs. health
The main reason most people start dieting programs is to lose weight and look thin. 

People want a perfect body type to look like models or movie actresses. The truth is

 you can be thin and still be unhealthy. You may not have an ideal BMI, depending 

on your body type and genetics. The body is deprived of essential nutrients when 

you focus only on losing weight.
The society pressures women to have a certain type of body in order to be beautiful. 

For this reason, some women have undergone immense pain and suffering to meet 

this false standard. So, dieting has become more about beauty than wellness and 

good health. The beauty industry has instilled insecurities and profited handsomely 

by selling products that are meant to fail.
Most people do not address why they are doing it in the first place. Dieting only 

focuses on the end results of losing weight. It is vital that you know why you want 

to lose weight and your overall health goals. Other factors that you should consider 

include your self-image and how it's shaping your eating goals, how you became 

overweight, and any history of trauma around eating.
6. Dieting leads to emotional instability
Dieting interferes with certain hormones in the body, which leads to disruptions in 

others. The human body is like a small eco-system where one action leads to 

counter-reactions. A low-calorie diet can raise cortisol levels in your body, which is

the hormone related to stress. This may result in eating more as your brain sets up a 

reward system. This can also bring about eating disorders like binge eating disorder.

So, What Actually Works?

Now that we have established that dieting is a quick-fix approach that will make you 

happy for a short while before you become overweight again, what should you do? 

There are ways that we can develop a healthy body without compulsive exercising 

and restrictive dieting. Nutritionists suggest lifestyle changes as a more efficient 

and healthy approach to weight management. Lifestyle changes aim to keep up 

similar habits for a prolonged period, while dieting is a systematic temporary change.
Lifestyle changes can include but not limited to moderating healthy food intake, 

managing stress without food, increasing physical activity, workout sessions, and 

getting for depression and any other illness. It is important that you do what works 

best and matches your personality. Here are a few ways in which you can start 

making lifestyle changes.
1. Clarify what your goals are and why
There are plenty of reasons why one may choose to lose weight. You may want to 

improve your self-image or reduce the risk of developing pre diabetes due to 

increased fat or even just wanting to more active to keep up with your kids. It is

 important that you set realistic fitness goals on what you want to achieve. This will 

ensure that you don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself or try quick fixes. This 

will also help you to stick to a long-term healthy lifestyle.
2. Make long-term choices
Dieting advocates restricting what you eat for a short period. You may want to eat 

clean, but it can become tiresome to keep up with and leads to more problems. 

Focusing on achieving optimal health for the long-term has a lot of benefits and

 helps to know what is sustainable for you.
Lifestyle changes set you free from restrictive dieting practices. It gives you a 

chance to learn what works for you and become more intuitive of your cravings and 

needs. They are the foundation for being happy and achieving your health goals.
Unlike dieting, lifestyle changes are not drastic but progressive. This means you can 

deal with occasional setbacks and forget the fear of failure. This gives you the 

freedom to eat clean and trying out different kinds of meals without the guilt of 

ruining your diet. This occasional indulgence is still part of your long term health plan.
3. Change Your Mindset
You should move your focus from looking good to actually feeling good about 

yourself. Although dieting may have results that make you look 

good in that Instagram post, 

it doesn't feel good restricting yourself. We both know you want to eat that bacon or 

grilled cheese sandwich, but you are afraid since you are dieting. Lifestyle changes 

help to stay healthy without feeling bad about it. The brains seek the reward of feeling

 good.
It is equally important that you change the way you view exercise. There is a huge 

difference between doing what you want and what you have to. Doing what you 

want replaces shame and anxiety with a new relationship of happiness, making 

exercise part of your life. Exercise does not necessarily mean you burn calories and 

lose weight, but it can be something you enjoy doing. Doing this means that losing 

weight comes as an outcome rather than a goal, and the results are long-lasting.
4. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness can help you better choices in stressful times. This helps to avoid using 

food as an escape, which leads to bad eating habits. Enjoy your life and making 

choices that support both your emotional and physical well-being. Set aside time 

for mediation and practice being present in the moment. This will ensure that you 

live a rich, healthy and meaningful life.
5. Reflect
Over time you can adjust and recalibrate what isn't working for you. Changes in life 

circumstances, health or aging, can affect the shape of your overall health goals. 

You may need to do away with certain foods at some point or include others to meet

 your goals.

We believe that understanding the connection between 

your mind and body is the key to attaining your fitness goals.

                        BECAUSE WE CARE...

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