Nutrition for a Busy Lifestyle

Modern life can be busy and extremely stressful. Maintaining a healthy diet can sometimes feel like another chore, but with a little forward planning it is simple! Here are my top five time saving tips to eat more healthily:

1.     

Add some protein to your breakfast. Protein and good fats will keep you fuller for longer so try adding boiled eggs to your whole grain toast or a handful of nuts and seeds to your porridge or muesli. When you’re in a rush, muesli can easily be carried to the office.

2.      Cook batches of food. By preparing big batches of foods on your days off, you can save valuable cooking time after a hard day at work. Separate meals into individual portions and place in the fridge, or freezer for longer periods. 

Now that it is cold weather, you can buy a bag of Tescos seasonal vegetables (carrots, suede, parsnip and onions), prepare and add to the slow cooker with chicken, beef or lamb and add vegetable stock. Leave to slowly cook over the evening and freeze in batches to use over the week.

3.      Snack on nuts and seeds, humous and gluten free oatcakes or crackers . Keep these in your desk drawer or bag for the day, keep them in serving sizes which would be a palm full of nuts or seeds as a snack, or 50g with humous with a couple of oatcakes/crackers. These will provide vital nutrients to keep your energy levels balance throughout the day to support a stressful lifestyle.

 

4.      Salads and soups at lunch time. A number of supermarkets have a great selection of healthy soups (CoventGarden can be a good option) and salads which require no preparation! Add protein rich foods such as meat, fish eggs, beans and lentils to support your energy levels.

5.   

   Take a good quality multivitamin and mineral. There is no substitute for a healthy, balanced diet but a multivitamin and mineral can help to safeguard your nutritional intake if you are not eating enough vitamins and minerals. The Patrick Holford pack covers your essential fatty acids, immune system and a general multi all in a simple blister pack. 

January Detox Drink

Juicing is a great way to boost the metabolism, support digestion and encourage fat breakdown. After the heavy Christmas season, many of us are trying to shift those additional pounds we enjoyed putting on so much through Christmas treats.

Below is a recipe that you can follow each morning to cleanse the system and boost that weightloss. The ingredients are included to supress the appetite and kick start the digestive system that may have become a little sluggish over the last few weeks.

Juice:

2 carrots

1cm cube of fresh ginger

½ teaspoon of cinnamon (optional)

½ a lemon

1/4 of a medium sized pineapple

1 teaspoon of organic burst wheatgrass

2 teaspoons of organic bust spirulina

300 ml of still filtered water

The fat metabolising trick:

After juicing, aim to drink within 15 minutes whilst the digestive properties of the juice are still active.  

Improving Digestion to reduce bloating and weight gain

Just after Christmas and nobody wants to be sporting a Santas belly from feeling bloated from festivities.  We can get a little carried away at Christmas with warm cosy food choices and a bit more of a tipple to get into the festival spirit that can cause us to feel a bit bloated. 

Digestive enzymes

Our body naturally produces enzymes as part of the digestion of food, these are stimulated initially in your saliva; and stomach acid produced in the stomach when you smell food and begin to chew. This process continues throughout the body also being produced by the pancreas. As we get older, follow a poor modern diet or are under stress this can impact on digestion leaving us feeling bloated due to our food not being fully broken down.

Below are this weeks tips to encourage a healthy digestion. 

Tips to support digestion for a flat tummy

1. 1.  It seems obvious but chew your food properly, so many of us are guilty of not doing this.  This is your first point of digestion! Ideally put your knife and fork down between each bite and chew to a pulp

2.2.  Go for a nice winter walk after dinner to stimulate digestion.

      3. Drink plenty amounts of water, sometimes being bloated is due to water retention because you are dehydrated

       4. When having protein such as meat and fish add pineapple or papaya to help tenderise them.  The tenderising is due to pineapple containing bromelain and papaya containing papain which naturally digest protein.

5.       Have lemon water first thing in the morning to kick start digestion.

6.      Just before each meal have a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to encourage stomach acid.

7.       Taking a digestive enzyme with each meal

8.       Slippery Elm Soothes the digestive tract  and aids milk digestion

9.       Zinc contributes to normal carbohydrate metabolism

10.   Green tea supports the breakdown of fat which can be supportive to weight control