Your Best You Helps the NHS

It’s clear that the NHS is in dire straights and we hope it’s not broken beyond repair. It’s understaffed and over-burdened and people are suffering and dying from not being able to get help they need, when they need it.

• It’s not just that it’s underfunded.
• It’s not just that it’s hampered by bloated, unsuitable systems with lots of wasted resources.
• It’s not just that it’s understaffed (exacerbated by staff losses due to a badly executed Brexit and Matt Hancock’s mandates).
• It’s not just the bed-blocking (again exacerbated by mandates that cost the already struggling care sector 40,000 workers, laid off for refusing to be bullied into giving up their right to informed consent).

By all means lobby your MP to sort out the big top-level problems.

And also think about how you can help more personally.

The main thing the NHS struggles with is

• ever increasing demand.

And not just from the ageing population – who could and should be healthy enough to mostly take care of themselves, but also from younger and younger people. The percentage of the population succumbing to lifestyle-related diseases (T2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, Obesity, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Cancer, Alzheimer’s) continues to go up and up and up.

Obesity and related diseases took a massive, sudden step up because of lockdown. Some people did use the time as an opportunity to get fitter but most didn’t and I bet you know people who are still heavier now than in 2019.

One of the best things you can do to help the NHS is to be your best you. To use them as little as possible – for the things they can fix that you can’t.

To quote Dr Phil

Health care begins with self-care.

So take self-care to the next level.  Do all you can to avoid such chronic diseases as can be avoided by prioritising movement, fresh air, sunshine, rest, stress reduction, relationships, sleep and real food. However young or old you are, whatever maladies afflict you, it’s always worth looking after yourself as well as you possibly can.

In recent conversations, people have asked, “What do you do?” And then when I said, “Nutrition Coaching”, exclaimed (while patting their tummies) “Ooooh I could do with some of that!!!” It wasn’t one person, or two, but several. People know what they need, they know what they’re unhappy with and they know what they want.

Translating desire into action is a different thing. Yes, their enthusiasm could carry them through to action, but what action?  You need to know the right things to do.

I can give you understanding of why many real foods you’ve been avoiding are actually your friends and help you learn to eat well.

So far, so good – enthusiasm and understanding are hugely important; so is commitment.

1.Commitment to change

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” (I’ve seen this attributed to many people from Albert Einstein or Henry Ford to Forest Gump).

If you’re not slim and healthy the way you’re eating now, you won’t become slim and healthy eating the way you’re eating now.  You need to reach the point where you’re ready for change.

2.Commitment to effort

You’ll have good reasons why you do what you currently do. Haven’t got time? Ready meals so much easier than cooking? There are always better solutions. OK, it might take a little while to get used to new habits but the extra energy you’ll have will compensate for the time taken to prepare your own food.

3.Commitment to yourself

Need to do this for this person? Or something else for someone else? Or your job? Or your family? Great. Except your own good intentions can easily get squeezed out. By moving yourself higher up your priorities you can start to enjoy better health. With extra energy you’ll be able to look after everyone else better too.

That’s why I’ll be asking for your commitment as a client if you want to work with me. We’re all wasting our time if all you gain is understanding of how your current diet is harming you while you carry on eating the same. If you’re determined to subsist on breakfast cereal, low-cal ready meals, take-aways and fizzy pop, then no-one can help you much.

If you’re serious about making your health important in your life then I can help you to enjoy a more vibrantly healthy life, – and you’ll help the NHS.

Top tip – Be your best you to help the NHS

Energy Bars

Energy bars have acquired an air of healthiness which makes them very popular – but are they actually good for you? I’ve been having a look at some of what’s available and this month I share my thoughts with you.

I should first say that the general rule for a healthy life is to eat great meals so you don’t need to snack. If you do want a snack, it’s better to make something yourself and avoid all the sugar and weird stuff manufacturers use.

If you decide to buy snacks and energy bars, be aware that the downsides to factory made food are 1) the aggressive processing and 2) the weird ingredients needed to make a presentable product after it’s been through aggressive processing.

Some of the bars listed here have 20 or 30 odd ingredients, few of which are recognisable foods. I was interested to notice how many of the cereal companies make them, presenting the same cheery image they use to entice us to eat recreational, ultra-processed food first thing in the morning.

The unhealthy bunch – eat at your peril

Too much sugar and weird.

Alpen Light, Double Chocolate

Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain, Strawberry

Jordans Frusli – Juicy Blueberries. Only 2.2% blueberries

Nestle Lion Breakfast Cereal Bar – Chocolate

Kellogg’s Coco Pops – Chocolate.

Maxi Muscle – Chocolate Brownie

Kellogg’s Nuts and More – Dark choc and almonds

Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Bar – Choc and peanut

Tracker – Chocolate chip

Cadbury Brunch Bar

I wouldn’t eat these

Go ahead Yogurt Breaks – Red Cherry. Over 30 ingredients, vast amounts of sugar and only 1% cherry!

Possibly the worst I’ve seen.

.

So-so in a pinch

Nature Valley Protein Bar – Peanut and Chocolate

Eat Natural – Dark choc, cranberries, macadamias. I used to love these. They’re made with real ingredients but they’re sugary ingredients and I can’t cope with the extreme sweetness now. They also do a protein one which I haven’t tried but might be better.

Eat Grub – Cacoa and coconut. Made of good stuff (including crickets, hence the name) but at almost 40% dried fruit that’s a hit to your liver.

Nestle Yes – Coffee, Dark choc and cherry. Reasonable ingredients and nutritional profile.

Nutramino Protein Bar – Peanut and caramel

Atkins Bars – Chocolate fudge caramel. Low in sugar but I’m not sure I’d want to pay money for a product whose main ingredient is “bulking agent”.

The best of the bunch

These have the fewest, most natural ingredients.

Raw Chocolate – Nut pie. All natural.

Naked Bar – Pecan pie. Just 3 ingredients! Don’t eat too many though due to the high percentage of dates.

Nature’s Energy Meridian – Peanut and cocoa. My winner. All 9 ingredients are recognisable foods, the nutritional profile is balanced and they taste nice!

Better Still – Make Your Own

The simplest product is the Naked bar which is only dates, almonds and pecans.

Of course the thought that springs to mind is that you could just buy dates, ground almonds and pecans and squish them together to make your own. Get used to adapting the recipes you already have. I noticed recently that modern versions of old classics have double the sugar. That means you can halve what most recipes say. Lots of websites have recipes but a word of warning; some of them list vegetable oil as an ingredient. Seed oils like sunflower are not heat stable and should never be used in cooking. Use some butter or coconut oil instead.

Snacks like power balls are usually made with dates as a base or nut butter as in this example:

Power balls

In a bowl, thoroughly mix :

• • 2 heaped tbsp of nut butter
  • a drizzle of maple syrup (about a teaspoon)
    
  • 1 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 1 tbsp desiccated coconut.

Take out a teaspoon at a time and roll into little balls. They can be a bit sticky so you could roll them in sesame seeds or more coconut to form a dry coating. Keep them in the fridge.

As an alternative try quick and simple, low-carb, microwave –

Cake in a cup

Put into a large mug:

• • 1 egg
  • a drizzle of maple syrup
  • 3 tbsp Ground Almonds
  • 1 tbsp Coconut Flour
  • ¼ tsp baking powder
  • 1 dsp raisins

Mix with a fork then microwave on high for 1½ minutes. There’s your cake!

Top tip – If you want an energy booster, make your own.

Why Diets Don’t Work and What to Do Instead

We’ve passed Fail Friday now (3 ½ weeks into the year apparently) so most people will have given up on their New Year Resolutions, abandoned their diets and stopped going to the gym.

Diets are 10-a -penny and there’s always a new one to try, from boring to bizarre. You’ll lose weight on them, then pile it all back on later. That isn’t what most people want so it seems to me that diets don’t work.

As Jon Gabriel says,

“If diets worked there would be really one diet, everybody would go on it, lose weight and that would be the end of it.”

It’s actually the diet that causes the weight regain (happens to 95% of dieters) so no need to blame yourself.

Your body is a wonderful survival machine and you can’t force it to keep on losing fat long-term through deprivation. Restrict energy intake and your body will slow your metabolism to protect you against your self-imposed food shortage. Much of the weight you’ll lose isn’t fat anyway but lean tissue that you need to hang onto. A better way is to invest in your health and happiness by learning to eat well.

Have you heard that a calorie is a calorie? That’s right from a physics point of view but it isn’t helpful for weight loss because your body reacts in different ways to different types of foods. The result is that some calories put weight on, others help you lose weight. Your body’s responses include fat storage or fat burning, increased hunger or satiety. Obsessing about calories is also bad because it takes the focus off the goodness in food leaving you lacking in important nutrients.

A Colin Shelbourne cartoon from Survival Guide for the Skint.

What really causes weight gain? Sugar is number 1, via the production of insulin and increase of appetite. Then there’s processed carbohydrate (called ‘soon to be sugar’), including flour and breakfast cereals. Then there are fructose and alcohol which create fat via the liver. Next come seed oils which your body loves to store. And don’t think sweeteners come free; they confuse your brain and upset your body’s appetite controls so you eat more. All those chemical additives can make your body produce fat to safely store them as a toxin-protection response.

The key therefore is to avoid these fat-storage triggers. They’re in most processed foods including: ready meals, takeaways, fizzy drinks, pastry, crisps, chocolate, booze, diet foods. These are the things people snack on all day.

For healthy weight loss, eat home-made meals that satisfy you for 4 or 5 hours to see you through to the next meal without snacking. Each meal should contain plants, proteins and fats. Breakfast in particular should contain enough protein and fat so that you don’t get hungry mid-morning. Here’s a piece I wrote on breakfasts to give you some ideas. Cook your own natural, nutritious food and let your excess weight melt away.

If you want to know more, including your personal metabolic type and the mixture of food that’s right for your body, my next Eat for a Better Life course starts on 20th February at The Foyer, Irish Street, Whitehaven.  Or have a one-to-one consultation any time by ‘phone or Skype.

Top tip – Give up diets, Learn to Eat Well!

Eat for Better Business coming to Kendal

On 12^th April (10am to 4pm), I’m bringing Eat for Better Business to the Mintworks, Kendal for a Cumbria Chamber of Commerce event.

It’s an interactive day focused on busting many currently fashionable food myths to help you feel great and work at the top of your game.
For quality work you need to be at your best without suffering any afternoon slump or fuzzy concentration. That means putting the right things in your body. You wouldn’t try to run your computer on gas or your car on jet fuel, but with confusing messages everywhere it’s hard to know what to eat for the best.
By the end of the workshop, delegates will:

• recognise the importance of diet
• have identified the impact on work
• discover better breakfasts and lunches
• understand why we eat and what we need
• explore what’s hidden in food
• know what to eat for brain power
• appreciate the importance of meal breaks
• have defined a personal goal.

The delegate rate for this full day workshop is £65 +VAT Chamber and Made in Cumbria members / £120 +VAT non-members – to book your place(s) please – BOOK HERE

Should you have any questions regarding the above training event, please do not hesitate to contact me or Catherynn Dunstan from Cumbria Chamber catherynn@cumbriachamber.co.uk.

 

Spring and Sparkle

Have you noticed the lambs in the fields? I love to see them jump and play in the sunshine, full of the joys of spring. We should feel like this too.

Wikimedia commons

Watch people walking down the street and notice how few of them have a spring in their step or sparkle in their eye. People in the Western world are used to struggling along with low energy, aches, pains, excess weight and minor ailments. They think that not being ill is as good as it gets. Real wellness is rare.

When we think about energy use, we think of exercise. Another big drain is digestion. Yes, we use up energy when we eat! Ever fallen asleep after a meal? When you eat unsuitable food, your body can’t cope and keep you awake, so it shuts down all non-essential systems and you nod off. Inside your body’s working flat out. The fashion for processed food is robbing us of energy. It’s called ‘fast food’ because you buy it instead of making it from ingredients. The preparation part is certainly quick – but once you’ve eaten it, fast food is really, really slow. Your body has to work very hard to digest it. The process takes a long time and uses up lots of vitamins, minerals and enzymes and huge amounts of energy.

Contrast this with fresh, natural food. It takes time to prepare but is quicker and easier for your body to use so more of the energy is available for you to feel great.

Dead, processed food may be convenient but it won’t allow you to live as vibrant, healthy a life as you could be enjoying.

Top tip – have more spring and sparkle with fresh, natural foods!

Eat for Better Business

For great work you need to be at your best without suffering any afternoon slump or fuzzy concentration. That means putting the right things in your body. You wouldn’t try to run your computer on gas or your car on jet fuel, but with confusing messages everywhere it’s hard to know what to eat for the best.

I’m delighted to be presenting an Eat for Better Business workshop for Cumbria Chamber of Commerce on 19^th January.

Running at Energus, Workington 10am to 4pm, this interactive day focused on busting many currently fashionable food myths will help you feel great and work at the top of your game.

The delegate rate for this full day workshop is £65 +VAT Chamber and Made in Cumbria members / £120 +VAT non-members.

Contact Catherynn Dunstan if you have any questions about the workshop or Cumbria Chamber.

catherynn@cumbriachamber.co.uk

07841 743067

You can BOOK HERE

 

 

Nourish your body

If you want to weigh less, you’ll notice that encouragement to go on a diet can be found everywhere – TV, magazines, banners, endless adverts for food products. Here’s a reminder of why dieting is only a good idea if you’re intent on eventually weighing more after a short-term loss.

The people who say, “Eat less, exercise more” will tell you diets must work because of the law of thermodynamics. Energy in equals energy out. As a scientist I know the law is true and very useful for engines in a stable state. As a nutrition coach I know that it’s not useful as an approach to weight loss. Your body is not an engine in a stable state, it’s wonderfully responsive and designed to keep you alive in times of food shortage. It will hang onto all the fat it can, but break down lean tissue and shut down your metabolism to eke out the little food it’s getting. Have you ever heard that a pound of fat contains about 3500kCal, so you can lose a pound of fat a week by reducing your calorie intake by 500 kCal a day? No. When you restrict your energy intake you end up with less energy. That doesn’t feel good.

Way back in 1917, an experiment showed that calorie controlled diets have this weight loss / weight gain effect. It isn’t your fault – the diet does it. Later experiments confirmed the result and the diet industry has been cashing in on the cycle ever since. Deprivation will almost always (98%) lead to you weighing more in the long term. Jon Gabriel was on the dieting roller coaster gaining more each time until he reached almost 30st and realised he had try something different. He decided to concentrate on nourishing his body and lost nearly 16st without dieting. You can read his story here. Now he’s one of the world’s nutrition heros.  Check out this delicious ‘pizza’.

http://www.thegabrielmethod.com

My next Eat for a Better Life course will start on 22nd June in Cockermouth. If you’ve done with yo-yo dieting, come and join us.

Top tip: Don’t deprive your body, nourish it.

If you want to read more about the way diets affect your metabolism, here’s a piece by Dr Jason Fung.

Quote of the month

Everyone, it seems, wants or needs more energy. Look around a restaurant at lunchtime – a few wine glasses but plenty of double espressos.

Richard Reeves

Watch the lambs running and jumping in the spring sunshine.  They eat their natural diet and are full of beans!

 

By Jacquie Wingate from Recovery, usa – Flickr, CC BY-SA 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3474660

Food on the Move

I’ve been travelling the country this year doing Eat for Better Business presentations for the staff of a company so that they can enjoy the benefits of better energy, productivity and concentration throughout the day.

Keeping control of what you eat and drink is relatively easy in your own home, especially if your family shares your enjoyment of good food.  It can become a bit more tricky when you travel.

On the motorway, there is no end of unhealthy, processed snacks and meals readily available. Almost everything is full of sugar and vegetable oil and hardly anything is fresh. You have to search really hard to find a few things that resemble food. Instead of buying any if it, I take my own supplies. Cool bags are great. A typical lunch is a delicious salad with lettuce, sprouted mung beans, carrot, celery, avocado, a chicken drumstick and a hard boiled egg. I take a bottle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing too. The bottle is glass, like a half-pint milk bottle, with a lid and came from Lakeland Ltd – very useful.

In hotels and especially B&Bs, breakfast is often pretty good with muesli, fruit and natural yoghurt followed by bacon, egg, sausage, black pudding, tomatoes and mushrooms or porridge and kippers.  Take care to avoid scrambled egg which is usually overcooked which will have oxidised the cholesterol in the egg.  Less healthy items available include cereal, hash browns and baked beans (usually containing a lot of sugar).

On business trips the standard lunch is a starchy nightmare best avoided: sandwiches, chips, crisps, unidentifiable brown deep-fried things.  At a pinch, I  sometimes eat some salad garnish with the fillings from the sandwiches and leave a pile of bread on my plate.  Ideally, I find a nearby supermarket the evening before where I can buy cheese, carrots and celery for the following day.

Evening meals vary.  If there isn’t anything appealing where I’m staying, I find a nearby pub with a chef that uses local produce and actually cooks meals from fresh ingredients.

 

Top tip – on the road, a little planning helps a lot.