Gluten Free Brownies

Recipe serves 12

Ingredients

·         225g of 70% cocoa chocolate

·         100g of Doves Gluten Free white flour

·         4 large eggs

·         120g of unsalted butter

·         100g of caster sugar

·         1 table spoon of green and blacks cocoa powder

·         A shot of espresso

Method

·         Preheat the oven to 170C for 20 mins

·         Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, don’t forget to also cover the sides

·         Heat the butter and chocolate in a bowl above a saucepan of simmering water

·         Stir in the shot of espresso

·         Leave the chocolate to cool

·         Whisk the eggs with the caster sugar till light and fluffy. It should look airy with lots of bubbles

·         Fold in the cooled chocolate and sieve in the flour and cocoa powder and fold that in also

·         Pour the mixture into the baking tray and leave in the oven to cook for 15 mins.  Check at 10mins see if they are firm as gluten free tends to cook with quicker.

Morning Juice Boost

With summer here, a thirst quenching juice is always a good start to the day.

Before a cycle in the morning make up a fresh juice before I leave to kick start my digestion and give me a good level of sugar to support energy for the cycle.

The fruits and vegetables are packed with antioxidants to nuetralise damage induced by exercise.  The recipe below also contains vitamin C which may even help improve energy output.  

 

Here is this mornings, give it a go, put it through the juicer and see what you think:

½ grapefruit

½ lemon

1 braeburn apple 

3cm by 2cm cube of ginger

3 sprigs of mint

2 carrots

1 orange

Is your thyroid functioning

How your thyroid is functioning?

Answer yes or no if you have the symptoms from the questions below

1.    Do you tend to suffer from cold hands and feet

2.    Have you losing or lost hair from the outer third of the eyebrows

3.     Are you experiencing thinning and brittle hair

4.    Do you have a BMI above 25(To work out your BMI:

divide your weight in kilograms (kg) by your height in metres (m)

then divide the answer by your height again to get your BMI)

5.    Unexplainable weightgain

6.    Do you have a low libido

7.    Is there a sign of infertility (unable to conceive after 6months of unprotected sex)

8.    Do you tend to have dry skin similar to eczema

9.    Do you suffer from excessive tiredness

If you have said yes to 3 or more, try doing the Broda Barnes Test.

Broda Barnes Test:

The basal temperature test should be done as soon as you wake up and before you get out of bed.  Women menstruating vary in their body temperature varies days 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the cycle and therefore readings shouldn’t be taken that day.

Place a themometor (mercury or digital) under the armpit for 10mins

Note the reading, and do this for a calendar month so the results can be averaged out, since they may vary slightly day by day.

Your temperature under the arm, the normal temperature is:

36.6ºC - 36.8ºC (97.8ºF - 98.2ºF)

If your temperature is below 36.6ºC (97.8ºF) then hypothyroidism should be considered if you have symptoms.

If your temperature is above 37.0ºC (98.4ºF), hyperthyroidism is possible if symptoms are present and if there is no other illness present to cause a fever.

What to do if your temperature is not within the normal range

Explore this with a practitioner (www.BANT.org) or your GP. They may suggest a blood test, below are the optimum ranges therefore it is important that you get the readings back to see where your results lie.

Optimum blood levels

TSH	1.3 – 2.0
Free T-3	3.59 – 6.56
T-3	1.54 – 3.53
Free T-4	9.1 – 19.7
T-4 Thyroxine	77.2 – 154.4