NUTRITION + HEALTH BLOG

Are your cupboards full of cooking gadgets you never use? Hands up if you have a pasta maker getting dusty in the shed? Clients in clinic often ask me what they really need to make healthy eating a breeze, so here are my favourite must-have kitchen gadgets that you’ll actually use! Just in time to ask Santa …

Stick Blender

Makes light work of chopping, pureeing, blitzing and whisking. These usually come with a range of versatile accessories, like mini chopping bowls and whisks. Just the job for blending soup or chopping up nuts.

I LOVE:Dualit 700W Hand Blender in Polished Chrome (http://amzn.to/2io54RF), has everything you’ll ever need and more, including the wand itself, a whisk plus TWO chopper bowls – one of them has a feed tube so you can add ingredients as you go, just like a food processor. It’s not the cheapest on the market, but it is pretty special (and why have a cheapie model on your wish list, right?).

Slow juicer

If you are a fan of...

There’s a lot to like about winter. I LOVE reading by a roaring fire with a little glass of spicy red. I love the first flush of going outside in snuggly boots, coat and hat (until my bones start to feel the chill)...

I shan’t list all the things I don’t like about winter, but right up there must be catching a cold, and feeling a bit blue come January.

In this blog, I’m going to explain why so much of that is down to your levels of vitamin D, which is sometimes called the ‘sunshine vitamin’ (and hence a lack of it in winter).

We’ll look at all the stuff you really need to know about vitamin D (this is how I’m going to convince you that really is vital for life and you should get yourself tested if you don’t know your levels already). We’ll look at how you can tell if you might be a bit low, who should get tested, and where to have it done (and what to say to your doctor to have this done free of charge). Oh, and how to...

I wonder how long you have spent over the course of your life searching for the magic pill when it comes to weight loss? And how much money you have spent on miracle products that promised to make the weight drop off over night – or at least not make the business of losing weight seem so tricky?  

First things first, if you are someone who has spent a significant amount of times in slimming clubs, what you should know is that almost certainly you have been taught to eat the wrong things. And the community mindset seems to be about finding ways to cheat the diet. It’s no wonder people lose weight and put it straight back on again. Of course, actually eating the right things will help you lose the weight naturally, without calorie counting. And eating the way I show my clients has them naturally wanting to eat the foods that will love their body rather than deciding to seek solace in a bag of Haribos.

What the slimming clubs miss is the vital mindset element of losing...

Being vegan is really fashionable right now, and those in favour of this way of eating will tell you that it’s the absolutely healthiest diet you can have from a nutritional perspective, plus you get to save, not only the lives of animals but the planet, too. For most people, it is a bit of a stretch to go from where you are now to a 100% vegan diet. In this newsletter, I’m going to put it all out there for you: what it means to be vegan, what’s great about it, what’s not so good, where you might struggle – and I’ll also be giving you tips for getting started, whether your intention is to immerse yourself fully or if you just fancy dabbling (either is fine – just saying).

What is a vegan diet?

A vegan diet is a stricter version of a vegetarian diet. On top of not eating any meat, fish or seafood – i.e. dead animals, a vegan diet also cuts out any food stuffs made from animal sources (some of which are the most nutrient-dense...

Fruit and veg is good for you. No one would argue with that. But what is better for your health – and losing weight? – juices or smoothies?  Both are trending right now and there’s a huge debate. Some people swear by weight loss smoothies and others claim juicing for weight loss is best.

There has been a great deal of research in recent years to support the claim that eating more fruit and veg may be able to reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer, while also helping to manage your weight. 

It can be a challenge to eat five portions of fruit and veg each day, even when you like vegetables. And now a new report suggests that eating 10 portions is what we need to stay healthy for longer. Most people don’t come nearly close to having enough, and I bet you’re wondering how the hell you’re going to manage that!

And, if you’ve been wanting to try a weight loss smoothie for breakfast, but you’re also...

1 What you eat is really important

Having the right diet and eating the right foods is so important when you’re preparing your body for a baby. When YOU get healthy by changing the way you eat, your body gets healthier, creating healthier eggs, healthier sperm and an altogether better environment in which to start growing another human being.

In many ways it’s a bit like car ownership. One of the absolute basics about owning a car is that you put the right fuel in it. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? You put petrol in a petrol car and diesel in a diesel car. You’d be surprised. According to the roadside recovery people the AA, hundreds of thousands of people misfuel every year. The result is thousands of pounds worth of damage: new fuel tank, new fuel lines, new fuel pump, new injectors – in fact, the whole fuel system.

What if I told you right now that the car you drive is the last one you will ever have. You can’t ever have a new one ...

If you're struggling with your weight, I'm betting that you have got some bad food habits going on. It's not just the knowledge of WHAT to eat. Knowledge – surprisingly – isn't what makes the biggest difference when you're trying to lose weight (and this is why everyone who wants to lose weight really needs a coach!).

How to get rid of those bad habits

You might not like this, but that’s the way it goes with tough love. Getting rid of bad habits is ONLY about  taking responsibility. You see, it’s all very easy filing all of this under ‘well, it’s my habits’… And then leaving it where it is. "I would change, but it’s a habit” (and similar). It is astonishingly easy in life to make excuses like this to less ourselves off the hook. Isn’t it? What are the examples in your life where you do that?

Another thing to just try on while we are at it is that in life generally, our generation (compared to that of our...

As you get older, one of the things that can start to happen is that you experience aches and pains. If your aches and pains are a regular feature of your life, it’s definitely worth asking your doctor or physio for advice. Sometimes that regular twinge you are getting is something more serious, but don’t let the possibility of ‘something more serious’ prevent you from getting it checked out. If it’s nothing but creaking joints, that’s great. If it’s something else, well we can work on that, too.

You may have guessed that the ‘something else’ I am thinking about is arthritis. In aid of World Arthritis Week, I want to share some of my top tips for using food to help alleviate some of the symptoms of arthritis.

What are the different types of arthritis?

There are 2 types of arthritis: osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Osteoarthritisis the type of arthritis associated with wear and tear of cartilage within joints. It...

Over the years – and some of us have racked up more years than others (speaking form myself) – you have probably developed hundreds of little habits. Some of them good, others bad. That’s all completely normal. But look to see that sometimes you’re going to be saying (to yourself, to other people) something along the lines of ‘I have slipped back into a bad habit’ to excuse your drinking more than you want to, or eating lots of chocolate biscuits, for example.

How to train yourself to stop eating 'bad' foods

There are a few things at play here. One of them is the habit loop. Here’s how that works and how to deal with it.

The Habit Loop

A habit is an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.

Habits allow us to focus on other things and, a lot of the time, we are not really thinking about what we’re doing. Willpower is a limited resource and, when it runs out, we default back to our...

It's National Cholesterol Month all though October, but you are very welcome if you are reading this at any other time of year. The information doesn't have a use-by date.

Cholesterol is one of the things that might be on the high side if you have an underactive thyroid and tends to go up a bit with age if you're not careful. I'm going to answer some common questions for once and for all.

Does eating cholesterol cause high cholesterol?

Short answer, no. But read on. 

Will eating fat give me high cholesterol?

Again, not in the way you think, but read on. 

How can I lower my cholesterol?

Don't do it by taking prescription drugs. There's a lot you can do by making changes to how you eat.

First of all, I'd like to introduce you to Charlie the rabbit. He took part in the experiments that led to that 'golden nugget' of science doctors have always been very keen to tell you about (don't worry, they're getting more clued up now)... that eating fat or foods containing...