Tweak… and twerking would help too!

Reminder

Doing this is your choice. Everything is your choice. Everything you eat, drink, think and do will effect how you feel mentally and physically. If you have an illness, an auto-immune problem, lack energy, have hormone imbalances, mood swings, lack of concentration, brain fog, constipation, acne – you fill in the words for you – you can change how you feel if you choose to.

You only need to tweak really – tweak a salad for a pie haha, no, I am kidding! Well I am not but there are better ways; Tweak a good pie for a bad pie (suggestion in the last post), roast some sweet potatoes with cumin and smoked paprika in place of fried potatoes. Use Make almond milk instead of drinking pasteurised milk, homemade almond milk its cheaper, fresher and more natural than prepacked. Top some roast aubergine slices with onions, red peppers, mushrooms, garlic and some goats cheese instead of pepperoni pizza and so on. Lots more ideas will follow over the coming weeks.

As you tweak and add in good stuff, move more,  sleep and look better you will be more inspired to do more of it.

Make it a habit to have a really fresh and juicy green salad with meals; if you don’t already love that you will start to. You just need a good dressing (recipes coming up over the next few posts) to make it just as you want it.

Be prepared

Be prepared for feeling a bit rubbish as you remove the bad. If you are used to drinking coffee and black tea all day, fluffy or stodgy white stuff (pasta, bread, pastry, cake, biscuits, pies you know what I am talking about) then as you remove them your body and head will probably complain a bit. Drink more water, rest if needed, move more to push the toxins through. Have warm salted baths to pull the rubbish out. You might be a bit bloated and windy (sorry) as you add more fibre to your diet – chew well, eat slowly, stop when full. Consider taking probiotics and digestive enzymes. You can find them in health food shops and online. They can help but you don’t have to. I take a course now and again and make my own probiotics which I eat and drink daily, more about that in another post.

MOVE

Walk, run, jump up and down on the spot, go for a swim, walk or run up and down stairs, dance, do whatever it takes and whatever you can to move. You need to use those muscles. They support you and hold you up, keep all your bits together. Moving raises your heartbeat, increases your oxygen intake, moves your lymph and so removes some of the toxins. It helps digestion, increases metabolism and mood. That’s enough for now, trust me, MOVE!

Humus Recipe

Drain and rinse 1 tin or jar of red kidney beans or chickpeas, put in food processor. Peel and chop 1 big courgette and throw that in too.

Add 1 big TBS Tahini,

Juice of 1 lemon plus a grate or two of zest.

1 clove garlic.

1 tsp cumin.

Pinch salt (GOOD salt!).

Blend adding a few drops of very cold water until you reach the consistency you prefer.

Serve as it is or with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice (please don’t be afraid of good oils, they oil your joints, your skin, feed your cells – olive oil, sesame oil, coconut oil, avocados all GOOD).

Serve with chopped veggies, in wraps preferably made from coconut or cabbage/ lettuce leaves, in baked sweet potatoes etc.

Bits and bobs meal

Last night I served this humus with:

Raw courgette, flax seed, physilium husk, onion powder wraps

Fried courgette, red onion, mushrooms, tomatoes, cumin and ground coriander

Chopped avocado, tomatoe, fresh coriander leaves, lemon juice

A pile of roquette and coriander leaves

Cherry tomatoes

Non dairy cheesy sauce made by blending soaked cashews, pine nuts, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, dash umboshi vinegar or a stoned umboshi plum, pinch salt and ground pepper. Actually I confess I used a few other ingredients (hence the interesting colour!), which have to remain secret for now, but that recipe will get you an amazing cheesy sauce!

There is no way you could feel deprived eating that!

Our diary for the last two days:

Monday

Me: corn crackers with butter and jam (homemade). Dates, soaked and sprouted almonds.

Robin: meusli type cereal (bought) homemade almond milk.

Both: 1 coffee with breakfast

Smoothie: celery, dandelion leaves, parsley, bananas, cherries, maca, spirullina, chia

Robin: Banana, Magnum ice cream!! (note to self make some sweet snacks to be at the ready!)

Humus (recipe in this post) carrots sticks and cherry tomatoes

Raw seed based Falafels with cucumber, tomatoes, tahini sauce wrapped in cabbage leaves.

Piece very delicious, old, hard cheese (using it up!) with Quince paste (homemade).

Apple cidre vinegar in water X 2, 1 ½-2 litres filtered water, green and red tea.

Walked over 10,000 steps (through forest, speedy), swam ½ KM (again, speedy).

Tuesday

Breakfast; Me as above, Robin whole grain toast.

Juice: celery, kale, cucumber, lemon.

Me: Chia pudding with homemade almond milk, banana, spirullina and acai.

Robin : Cereal with homemade almond milk and fruit. Ice cream (NB he is doing masses of physical work and when they are gone they are gone 😉

Grain free wraps, cooked veggies with spices, humus, chunky guacamole, Coriander and roquette from the garden, tomatoes, cheesy (non dairy sauce) recipes in the post.

Plenty of water, red tea, ACV in water x 2. Filtered water, green and red tea.

Walked over 10,000 steps (through forest, speedy), Me danced 30 mins, Robin active work. Ten minute meditation.

Wednesday so far:

Similar breakfast.

Smoothie using the large quantity of juice I made and stored yesterday with banana, mango, frozen cherries, pollen.

Boiled eggs (me 1 Robin 2).

Tonight I am not sure but probably heading for roasted veggies as I haven’t given it any thought and my hands are still covered in wax from renovating a floor!

Take it easy, be kind to yourself, keep hydrated and think about your left hand (see last post here Feel better!).

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Feel better!

First things first.

This post is the first of a few after the huge reaction I received to this Facebook post –

“If you are feeling tired, achy, demotivated, tense, cranky, ‘your age!!!’ Sleeping badly, looking and feeling bloated, sad, down, fat, floppy, grumpy, mentally fudgy, slow etc etc and would like to change that, pm me. Robin and I are doing a recharge, defrag, reboot and I’ll share what we are doing if you want to join in.
Lets peel back those layers, feel energized and find our shine!

What I am aiming for is to reduce inflammation ( a few flare-ups lately) calm my head, (can’t sleep properly as brain is whirling with ideas), calm stress (walls in wrong place, cracks appearing in ceiling of main house etc /:), reduce migraines ( Robin has been having lots of dream state and opthalmic ones lately) and in the process I’ll probably lose a few pounds.”

As this goes on I will get to the point of just journaling what I eat, drink, do plus share a recipe and maybe a bit of info. This post is word heavy just to get you going, sorry!

BE PREPARED
It is really easy to grab a piece of toast, a mug of coffee, a sandwich, a piece of cake from home, supermarket or motorway service station.
It is hard to travel or work healthily unless you are prepared either to just drink water and munch on fruit (which is a really good option if it is just for a day or so) or are prepared to be prepared.

Being prepared simply means having things with you that will taste good and do good.

FEELING STODGY                                                                                                                                                                       Have you noticed that when you eat stodge you feel stodgy?
If I eat bread for example I feel heavy and bloated. If I weigh myself up to 24 hours after eating bread, and I am talking about a bread roll rather than a loaf, I will weigh 1 – 1 1/2 kilos more than if I hadn’t. We have been away this week and I have eaten bread each day. Almost all the food has been cooked which probably means a heavyish hand with the salt (and not the Himalayan good kind), and from the second day I have been around 59.5kg. I normally average 57-58kg. All the time we were away, between 9.30am and 7.30pm, I have only drunk water and eaten a couple of pieces of fruit. I have not eaten excessively in the evening. I’ve had a few glasses of wine, a piece of bread with a reasonably healthy meal by most people standards.
I not only feel heavy I am heavier. That is because my body is holding onto water; It actually is bloated. The bloat is all over, inside and on the outside so if you think my tummy cells are a bit bloated, so will be my brain cells and so on. Not a good thing I am sure you will agree.
Today I am 59kg. Tomorrow I expect to be about 58.5kg. All that is simply not eating processed food or bread.

So when I feel stodgy I AM stodgy. I feel bloated because I AM bloated.

That is just my reaction. If people are doing this every day it is building and growing, water retention leading to high blood pressure, fat cells filling up leading to extra padding, less movement, strain on joints and organs….

OBSESSING                                                                                                                                                                                    So, secondly, food can be obsessive.
You can eat obsessively and you can ‘not eat’ obsessively.
You can find yourself not eating because there isn’t anything healthy (so drink lots of water and have some fruit until your find something good or do your prep!) and so not eating too often or eating whatever there is and then feeling bad about it OR even saying “I’ve blown it I might as well continue eating badly, gimme another pie!”.

None of those things are healthy in any way.

SO:
1, Be prepared.
2, Eat before you are desperate and monster mind takes over rational mind.
3, If monster mind takes over and you have eaten the pie (whatever your pie might be – ice cream, chocolate, cornish pasty, stodwich …) spin round three times and put it in the past! Continue in your new, healthy way.
4, DO NOT BEAT YOURSELF UP!
5, Every mouthful of food or drink you take can heal or hurt. Make each one count.

HAND TEST
Hold both hands up. Left hand good, right hand bad.
Raise a finger on each hand for relevant food –

I.E. I had two dates, 6 almonds, two crackers with butter and jam and a little coffee for breakfast.
Dates, almonds, crackers on left hand, topping and coffee on right hand. As long as the  left hand is ahead we are doing OK. As we move ahead you will need to borrow your right hand for the good side 🙂

THINK
If you are dealing with an Auto immune disease, are simply out of energy, over weight, stressed, struggling to be enthusiastic, depressed, anxious, find you haven’t laughed or even smiled in a while, wake up all night long, feel bloated, get constipated, wind, acid reflux, have cellulite, beer belly, menstrual problems, hormone problems, spots, dull hair, brittle nails… then what you eat will effect all this!
Think of each morsel you eat as something that is going to cause change for the better. Flood yourself with nutrients! We are made up of nutrients, every process in our bodies is aided and abetted by how we nourish ourselves.

You know that if you eat a quiche made from pastry, bacon, eggs, cream and cheese served with chips it will not have the same effect as a quiche made with a crust of blended nuts and seeds, filled with organic eggs, spinach, sweet corn, peas and capers  and served with a crispy, juicy salad (or to take it to another level a creamy filling of cashew nut cheese with tomatoes, wilted spinach, softened red onions and red peppers and sprinkled with capers) BUT I can assure you it will taste delicious.

The first will make you feel full, heavy and tired, the second will leave you feeling satisfied and the left hand will have all fingers up, the right will be close 🙂

SHOP
I suggest that today you shop for fruit and vegetables with a few extras;
This is my shopping list, some will not be available or not good quality so I will use it as a guide (I get as much as I can organic, the benefits are multiple) as well as stuff I have in my cupboards that you would do well to stock. Buy enough but not too much that it goes off before you eat it or the quality is compromised. If you can shop every few days its better.

Apples, bananas, lemons, oranges, courgettes, aubergines, parsnip, garlic, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, celery, red onions, avocados, tomatoes while they are still good, butternut squash (or any squash of pumpkin), mushrooms, capers (packs that salty punch!), any good salad leaves, actually I will be getting mine from the garden including dandelion leaves (and using self seeded herbs and roquette I discovered joyfully!), curly kale and/or spinach, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds/cashews/walnuts (not salted – raw) Quinoa, tin chick peas, tin red kidney beans, tahini, dried seaweeds, tamari and/or Braggs liquid amos and/or nam shoyu for flavouring, really good olive oil, maybe add in some avocado oil, sesame oil, Himalayan salt, apple cider vinegar with the mother – the cloudy bit in the bottom which means it is alive! Any herbs and spices you like – I use a lot of cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, cinnamon. Maybe some organic eggs, goats or sheeps cheese (feta is a good one), kefir or live sheeps of goats yogurt, raw honey and agave or coconut syrup.

The main thing here is fresh, non-processed, clean, easy to digest. Any fruits or veggies you like with enough variety to cover lots of colours (eat a rainbow). Be guided by what you like, can afford, is fresh.

MAKE
Following on from this will be some recipes but for tonight use some of the your veg – carrots, parsnip, courgette an onion, a clove or two of garlic an apple or some blackberries (if you have access to figs I would use those, I freeze ours as well as blackberries to use all winter) – chop them up (wash and/or peel if not organic), toss in some olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and some spices, I would use cumin, smoked paprika, cayenne and maybe a bit of cinnamon and pop them in the oven for half an hour. Add some shopped mushrooms and crumble some feta over the top. Leave another ten minutes in the oven until all is cooked through.  You could plop an egg in for the last ten mins if you fancied and sprinkle some rinsed capers over the top for that extra bite!

Make extra to have for lunch tomorrow either just as it is or wrapped up in some kale or lettuce leaves with a dollop of yogurt on top and a sprinkle of cayenne for a bit of a kick.

NB Please have your doctor check out anything that is ongoing, seems strange, causes pain, where blood is evident – use common sense, I am not a doctor, I do not diagnose, I am a clinical nutritionist with 16 years of experience on myself and others who want to help themselves naturally and significantly. Also if you have had chemotherapy please take your doctors advice – if you go into a detox of any kind (this is clean eating and taken to an extreme could put you into detox) any chemo chemicals stored in your cells could flush out and your organs have to deal with that which could have a negative effect.

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Getting juicy!

Day three of a juice cleanse and I feel oddly fine. No detox symptoms to date other than tiredness and a bit of a light head late on day 1 and part of day 2 – I am not remotely convinced it is because I am so pure and clean. No complaints from me though. On day 2 my tummy was flatter, today my skin looks smoother, eyes brighter and I feel bouncier!

We did ease into it a week before we started filling our days and our tummies with more juices and smoothies than usual….and being on holiday in Scotland there were also some glorious pub meals and local produce – we haven’t been tempted by the whisky yet though!

We have also been doing loads of walking in the amazing countryside and powering up the crags and crevices.Keeping our spirits up, and having a lot of conversations that start with “Do you really think this is a good idea”, “We are on holiday….:(“, “Look at those people eating their picnic/ in the cafe/ eating fish and chips, looking all healthy and happy…..”.

We are doing this cleanse for us and also to be able to share our experiences with others who come to us at Recombobulate. We have done quite a few over the years and each one is different. People like to know others have experienced what they are experiencing. That they understand how they feel, the frustration, hunger pangs (mostly imagined it has to be said) and the need for motivation and to be reminded that it is only a few days and you will feel good and have had a whopping boost of nutrients in the mean time.

If you decide to do something similar from a book, a blog or an online/app lead version, listen to your body, ask advice, be prepared, be careful!

We once went to a juice fast centre, which was lovely, but Robin, who was doing way more exercise than me in high heat, was given exactly the same juices, quantities and ingredients as me. By the end of the week he was totally depleted in electrolytes. We would probably go again but I would take some supplements along and would include some Himalayan salt.

Fasting of any kind can be very beneficial and it can also be dangerous in certain circumstances. Be aware.

Not only your body detoxs, your mind and emotions can do to. Not a bad thing although it can be uncomfortable to go through; again be aware, be prepared, have support and have a plan before you start – of exit as much as during. Keep a note book and pen and write everything you feel down. Let it out. Be kind to yourself.

If you said I want to come to you and do a juice fast/fest/cleanse firstly I would talk to you and ask  “Why just juice? What do you want from it, what will you do afterwards, what are your expectations?”.

If you said you wanted to kick start a weight loss program, change your way of eating, knock cravings on the head, deal with a health problem, almost anything actually, I would probably advise a different route. If after discussion you still wanted a juice cleanse that is fine. It is important to know what you are doing, why, what to expect and what alternatives there are – in everything.

If you could only take a few days out of your life I would probably advise a cleanse of a different kind.

Juices yes, green and lots of them plus some good supplements such as Wheatgrass, Spirulina, Chlorella, probably some bee pollen and some Maca, maybe something else. We would look at YOU and decide what you need.

I would suggest adding in some delicious, clean, raw plant based meals, smoothies and snacks. Yep, all of that!

Food to nourish and to delight and that are still clean. Sorry, I can’t describe anything, I’m on day 3 of a juice cleanse remember? Too cruel !

We would work on your mindset, why whatever problem has arisen and how we can help you change it.

However recent, however trivial you think it sounds, if it is causing you suffering or holding you back or leading to negative ways of living (over-eating, self criticism, hormone imbalance, bad habits, negativity, stress) it needs dealing with.

However old, deep seated or profound it is, however you feel nothing can change it and maybe you are not even sure what it is or don’t want to tell anyone what it is, it seriously needs dealing with and there is hope.

We will fill a virtual kit bag with tools to assist you to deal with hurt, negative thoughts, mood swings, anger, cravings, depression, stress whatever is your trigger or whatever you are living with.

There would be some deep work with you and your subsconcious to really make some changes. There would be some movement, lots of it (depending on your ability), to help flush the bad stuff out and increase the good stuff, the endorphins, the metabolism, the spring in your step.

There will be some physical tools to use (and take home of course) to facilitate cleansing, lymph movement, change of thought and more.

So, to cleanse, to me, is to clean everything in a way that suits the person. We are not all the same. For example, by mid afternoon on the first day it was clear Robin needed solid food. So, we dealt with the obvious and automatic “Am I just wimping out?” thought and he eat something and we carried on with our juices.

People have had a amazing results from juicing, me included, and with some raw meals added in and some really good education of what to do next and some significant work on other elements of self while you are at it is a wonderful combination.

Do all that and you will walk away from your cleanse lighter and brighter on all levels and ready to feel better and better. Super boost your life, you deserve it!

Oh and by the way, this is not an advert but we are taking bookings for next year now and working on phase two of our retreat this winter with a newly renovated building so that we will have three more spacious and super comfortable ensuite bedrooms. I’m am so excited.

It’s going to look gorgeous.

Oh, yes, that’s another thing cleansing does, gives you energy to put your clearer, more focused thoughts into action.

Cheers!

 

 

 

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