The sacred ritual of eating


Eating – The most natural thing in the world.

We’ve been doing it since we can remember ourselves and we continue to do so every single day.

Most people will agree that eating is an important part of life. It’s our sustenance, we need it to live. But nowadays, eating is a lot more than that. Eating is part of almost every event, celebration or occasion. Going out to eat is probably most people’s favourite pastime when they’re not working. We eat on our desks at work, we eat when we’re watching movies, we snack while we commute, we eat at parties and we even have midnight feasts.

Most of us will agree that we don’t just eat to live though.. we eat because of the delicious taste of food, we eat out of habit, we eat to be social.. etc etc.

Food is just such a normal everyday thing that everyone around us and ourselves included do every single day. And with so many people now learning about the importance of good nutrition and healthy diet – they want to make some changes. The truth however, is that most people fail to make changes. In fact, I recently read a ridiculous statistic of something like 95% of people who try to change their diet and maintain the change – fail. We are failing at such epic rates that it’s strange that it doesn’t occur to us that this is weird and something is very off.

And it’s not that your nutritionist didn’t give you a good diet plan – in fact almost any healthy diet plan, if maintained, will give you the results you seek. It’s not that you do not have access to information about what to eat and what not to eat – do you. It’s also not that you are lazy or have no will power – you do.

So what is it?!

Back to basics

Eating is one of the most intimate acts of self care that we can practice.

Our body cells renew themselves all the time. And where do they get the energy and materials to do that? From the food we eat.

We eat to build ourselves, literally.

Every bite we take is a foundation laid for new cells, new organs, new hormones, new skin, new hair… new you.

Perspective

Whoever said we should be grazing all day long – is wrong. Sorry for the bluntness but it’s true.

Food and eating is so special and should be treated as such. Since you are literally creating and re-creating yourself with every meal you take, don’t you think you ought to treat the whole thing with a little more grandness, more wonder, more respect?

A sacred daily ritual

Make each and every meal you take an occasion.

Eat your meals with the people you love – what happened to family meals?

Present your meals nicely – arrange everything on the plate in a way that is pleasing to you.

Use your very best plates and cups and cutlery – yes, those “special occasion” ones you have in the back of your cupboard. Every meal is a special occasion.

Lay out the table nicely and watch how all of a sudden, without intending to, you’ll summon the whole household (hehe).

And then sit and look at your food. Look at the delicious, healthy, natural food which soon will become a part of you, and say thank you. Thank you to the supermarket worker who put your food out on the shelves, thank you to the people responsible for transporting your food from the farm to the supermarket. Thank you to the people who picked your food from the soil. Thank you for the food itself, for growing, for giving you its nutrients and lastly thank you to the sun – the main source of nourishment for giving you it’s life-sustaining energy. (Interesting fact – It has been proven that if you bless or thank your meal before consuming it you actually absorb a much higher percentage of the nutrients in the food!)

Finally eat your food slowly and mindfully. Enjoy each bite and enjoy the company of the people you love around you.

Do this and watch your health, your relationships, your overall well-being turn around completely. Like magic.

Top 12 Most Addictive Foods

Food addictions are real.

It is estimated that at least 20% of the population have some sort of food addiction or exhibit addict-like behaviours.

My clients always ask me “How do you know whether you are addicted to a particular food?”

My response is very simple. Think of the particular food – for an example let’s say chocolate. Imagine never having chocolate ever again in your life. How does that feel? Do you feel an abnormal amount of fear/discomfort rising up within you or just sheer discontent? For real though, if you were told you can never eat chocolate again ever – does this thought scare you? Do you feel like your life will be diminished in some way?

Now think of cucumber. If I told you that you can never ever in your life eat cucumber again. How does that feel? How does this feeling compare to the feeling you got with the chocolate?

I think you see where I’m going with this.

Susceptibility of Addiction

Every body is different, and so of course this does not apply to everyone. But it does apply to a lot of people. And for those to whom it applies, this may literally save their life. So here goes;

  1. It’s not your fault – I repeat, it is not your fault that your brain is so susceptible to food addiction. This has nothing to do with laziness or lack of willpower. You are not weak.
  2. If you discover that you have food addiction to a particular food – you have to cut it out completely. I’m talking cold turkey! Trying to have a little of the food you’re addicted to will literally drive you nuts.
  3. Your addiction can heal – and it will if you eliminate the food completely.
  4. After a period of time without the addictive food you will not only feel “normal” and not miss it but you will be happier. Addiction = down regulation of dopamine in the brain. As a result, once you heal your addiction – whole, real foods will taste amazing and will satisfy you completely. You will naturally know when to stop eating and you will eat just the right amount of food that your body needs, intuitively.

without further ado, here are the..

Top 12 most addictive foods

  1. Pizza – this is the number 1 most addictive food! Surprised?
  2. Chocolate – this one is a no brainer
  3. Crisps
  4. Cookies
  5. Ice cream
  6. French fries
  7. Cheeseburgers
  8. Soft Drinks
  9. Cake
  10. Cheese
  11. Fried Chicken
  12. Breakfast cereal – most people think of cereal as a healthy way to start the day – you may want to think again and check the food label. Many popular “healthy” cereal brands can contain up to 13g of sugar in 1 serving of 45g… that’s almost 4 teaspoons!!!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and hopefully you’ve become more aware of the addictive pull that some “every day, normal” foods can have on your brain and essentially your quality of life.

If you are struggling with food addiction, please know that you are not alone. Do your research and get some help. There are so many fantastic books you can read on the topic or alternatively if you prefer a more personalised approach you could visit a specialist who can help you heal at your own pace. You’re also more than welcome to reach out to me, as a recovering sugar addict I believe I could be of service and provide you some comfort while you’re making the necessary changes.

Sweet Summer Superfood Salad

Salad… What pops up in your mind when you think of salad?

Most people would probably say boring, restrictive diet food. And they would be 100% correct if all they know is salads made only with lettuce, cucumber and tomato.

I absolutely love salads! I could even go as far and say that salads are my favourite meals. But not simple salads. I love rich and wholesome ones. The kind that have everything inside from dried fruits, seeds and nuts to leafy greens, organic cheeses and even crackers.

So, to help ignite your perhaps dormant passion for salads, I’d like to share one of my favourite superfood salad recipes (and yes, there are many! :))

Ingredients

Salad base

  • Lettuce and salad leaves
  • Baby Spinach leaves
  • Cucumber
  • Cooked quinoa
  • Apple cut into cubes
  • Avocado
  • Dried fruits; Raisins, Cranberries, Goji berries (you can put a little of each)
  • Figs (fresh is best but dried will also do)
  • Pomegranate
  • Organic goat’s cheese
  • Mixed seeds
  • Walnuts

Salad dressing

  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Sea salt
  • 1 tsp organic honey

Method

  1. Firstly, take out your favourite bowl.
  2. Cook the quinoa.
  3. Wash all the fruits and vegetables thoroughly.
  4. Put the lettuce, salad leaves and spinach at the bottom of the bowl as a base.
  5. Then add the cooked quinoa.
  6. Cut up all the fruits and veg and start layering them on top.
  7. Add the nuts and sprinkle the seeds on top.
  8. Finish off by pouring the simple dressing over the whole salad.
  9. And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, look at your creation, admire it, marvel at it, be grateful for it and Enjoy every single bite!

Tips on how to get started with Intermittent Fasting

Hello my beautiful darlings,

I am absolutely thrilled by the overwhelmingly positive response that I received from my previous post about intermittent fasting. So many of you have expressed interest in trying the 16/8 method that I recommended. So, in an effort to help you get started, I’ve put together a brief post on little tips and tricks that you can try in order to give you the best chance of succeeding with intermittent fasting. Hope you enjoy!

Start here

The first thing I’d like to say to anyone new to fasting is to take it easy. We’ve grown up predominantly in a society which encourages the consumption of three main meals, the first being shortly after we wake up in the morning. Only recently have we began questioning the reasoning and logic behind this. So don’t pressure yourself to master this “new” way of eating. Just like any habit change it will take some time and patience. To make things easier you can try;

  1. Start gradually: Try fasting for 12 hours and gradually increase your fasting time to 16 hours. So for example, say you finish your evening meal at 9pm, try not having anything (except water, herbal tea or black coffee) until 9am the next day. Then gradually begin delaying the breaking of the fast to 10am then 11am etc.
  2. Drink water: It’s easy to confuse thirst with hunger. Start your day with a large glass or two of plain water. Not only does this kick start your metabolism, hydrate you after the many hours of not consuming liquids but it also gives you a feeling of fullness due to the stretching of the stomach which then suppresses the hunger hormone.
  3. Drink black coffee: Black coffee is an excellent appetite suppressant. Studies have shown that people who drink black coffee on average eat less food, have lower blood sugar levels and are at less risk of developing diabetes. Don’t go overboard with the coffee though, I’d recommend no more than 2 cups per day.
  4. Drink your coffee slowly: I can drink one americano for 4-5 hours! Just keep the cup at your desk and whenever you remember just take a sip of coffee followed by 2-3 sips of water. Call me crazy but this ratio works wonders! The bitter taste of the coffee kills off any appetite for food and the water after that tastes almost sweet.
  5. Do not have absolutely anything that contains calories during the fasting period (not even a bite): This is extremely important. Ever heard of the saying “Appetite comes with the food” ? Well this applies 100% here. For example, say that at around 11 am I ate 2 strawberries. I guarantee that by 11:30 am I will be ravenously hungry. While if I didn’t eat the two strawberries I could go until 4/5pm without even being hungry. So unless you’re having a meal do not eat anything because it will just make you hungry. This means no snacks. Who even invented snacks?
  6. Keep your mind focused (on something other than food):The beauty of fasting is that it frees up so much of your time so that you can focus on your work, studies or hobbies. For those with too much free time it may be a little more difficult. Especially in the beginning, you may find yourself thinking about food which is completely normal, and trying to block out those thoughts is just plain exhausting so the easier way is to just focus on something else, and focus on that something else fully.
  7. Be flexible: What I love about the 16/8 method is that it’s so flexible! As long as you make sure that there 16 hours of fasting every single day you can play around with the exact timings of your meals. For example, say that I have brunch at 11 am on Sunday, in order to make sure I still fast for 16 hours I will finish my evening meal by 7 pm on Saturday night.

 

Hope this has been helpful and feel free to ask me any questions in the comment section below!

 

Happy fasting!

 

The miracle of intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting, prolonged fasting, religious fasting … chances are you’ve heard of fasting before. The topic tends to spark a lot of confusion and perhaps may trigger images of emaciated individuals or yogis meditating on a mountain top in your mind when you think of it. So the aim of this post is to somewhat clear the confusion surrounding the topic, give you the top 5 health benefits of intermittent fasting and provide some solid reasons as to why I think you should try it!

What is intermittent fasting?

In very basic terms, fasting allows you to burn your own excess body fat. Intermittent fasting therefore refers to doing this at set recurring intervals. It is important to know that this is completely natural and that your body does this even without you being aware of it. When you sleep at night you are essentially fasting that’s why the first meal you have when you wake up is called breakfast, you are breaking your fast.

Body fat is merely stored energy from previously eaten food. So when you’re not eating, your body is “eating” its own fat for energy. You can probably already guess some health benefits associated with that! But more on the health benefits a little later, let’s first look at some different fasting styles.

Different intermittent fasting styles

Intermittent fasting is essentially a pattern of eating. The specifics of the pattern vary with each of the different forms however they all have one thing in common and that is a cycle of eating followed by a cycle of not eating. There are many different forms of intermittent fasting but here are a few of the most common ones.

The 16/8 Method: This is by far the most common fasting style. Essentially you have an 8-hour eating window followed by 16 hours of not eating anything (sleeping is included in the fasting hours). This is the method that I use most commonly although I alternate between the warrior diet and this method quite frequently. So, for example, what I do when I follow the 16/8 method is I stop eating at 9pm and have absolutely nothing (except water and black coffee) until 1pm the next day. So basically skipping breakfast. You can play this out however you want, you can skip dinner if you prefer. The key is to have 16 hours of eating absolutely nothing and eating all your meals within an 8-hour period.

For women, this is the preferred method of fasting as it has been shown that women do better on it when compared to the others. This is mainly due to women being more sensitive to ghrelin, the hunger hormone.

For people who are hungry in the morning, this may take some time to get used to while on the other hand, many breakfast skippers will find that this way of eating comes instinctively to them.

The Warrior Diet: This is my next favourite form of intermittent fasting. The warrior diet is basically eating one large meal a day within a 4-hour window. You can eat a small amount of fruit or vegetables during the day and you have one large meal in the evening.

The arrangement is essentially 20 hours fasting and 4 hours feasting.

What I love most about this style of fasting is the mental focus I achieve when I do it. You see, when you eat your body goes into “Rest and digest” mode which means that it’s expending a large amount of your total energy on digesting your food while only a small amount is left to perform other tasks. This is usually why many people feel less productive during the afternoon. So not eating anything, or just having one or two small fruits during the day means that you have the majority of your body’s total energy available to use in productive ways.

The 5:2 Diet: This is when you eat normally for 5 days of the week and fast for 2 days. In the 2 days of fasting, it is recommended that women eat 500 calories, while men 600 calories. This form of fasting was popularised by Michael Mosley, a British journalist and doctor. For example, this can mean that you eat normally on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday while on Tuesday and Thursday you have only two very small meals of 250 calories each.

Alternate-day Fasting: This is where you fast every other day. Some people either fast completely (i.e. eat nothing at all the whole day) while others choose to consume up to 500 calories on fasting days.

Eating nothing at all every other day is rather extreme so I would not recommend this form of fasting for beginners or for prolonged periods of time.

Eat-stop-Eat method: This method involves doing a 24-hour fast once or twice per week. The way you can play this out is for example by finishing your dinner at 7 pm on Tuesday night and eating nothing again until 7 pm on Wednesday night.

Top 5 Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

  1. Weight-loss and improved fat burning – When you don’t eat your serum insulin levels drop and when this happens your body can tap into your fat storages for energy. This means that you are using your own body fat for energy rather than the food that you eat. As you can imagine, this results in fat loss.
  2. Improved mental clarity and concentration – As mentioned previously, when your body isn’t using its energy to digest food you have access to a large amount of your body’s total energy to use for productive purposes. This for me is one of the most important reasons to fast as I love the feeling of mental clarity.
  3. Reversal of type-2 diabetes – This is major! Science is just beginning to recognise how important fasting can be in preventing and reversing type 2 diabetes.
  4. Increased growth hormone – Many people believe that if you fast you may lose your muscle mass and therefore think they need to eat every 2-3 hours. Research however, says otherwise. Scientific studies suggest that periods of fasting are followed by a surge of increased growth hormone.
  5. Lowered blood sugar and cholesterol levels – When you are in a fasted state your blood sugar levels are maintained at a low level and your cholesterol levels are also lowered.

 

 

 

Recommendation

If you’re new to fasting and want to give it a go I would recommend by starting with the 16/8 method listed above. Alternatively, you can start with a 12 hour fasting period and gradually increase it to 16 hours. This is the most gentle form of intermittent fasting which can be safely maintained over a long period of time.

Also, remember that this isn’t unnatural and you’re not starving yourself. Humans have evolved to thrive on periods of fasting. What’s unnatural is eating every 2 or so hours. Not only is it not good for your health but it also takes so much time of your day just thinking about food, preparing food and eating food that could be used for other purposes.

Give your digestive system and body a break to experience the healing effect of intermittent fasting.