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Posts tagged ‘Breakfast’

Dec 19

Change your breakfast, change your life

Breakfast. I don’t know why but many people embracing healthy eating and lifestyle change seem to struggle with changing their breakfast.

Maybe because it’s the first meal of the day…perhaps that “I am going to change, I am going to lose weight and feel better, it all starts tomorrow.” always starts with breakfast.

Day 1. Meal 1. Oh s**t. Ground zero. Healthy eating starts now.

People always ask me what to have for breakfast. People have eaten - just as I did - nothing but cereals and toast for years. I did that every day for about 35 years. 

The short answer: switch to scrambled eggs

It’s quick, it’s easy, and I find most people like eggs. With some practice, personally I have got the art of knocking up a few eggs down to just three or four minutes. I encountered one lady who claims to have it down to 90 seconds. That beats me, I have no idea how she does it that quick!

I grab my unpasteurised, grass fed butter, stick a chunk in a pan, pop the heat on, and it starts melting. I grab a bag of spinach from the fridge, throw two or three good hand-fulls in the pan, pop it back and grab the eggs. Crack three or four in. Start stirring. Slice up a fresh tomato on the side of my plate, stir again, turn off heat, serve.

Scrambled eggs, with spinach and tomato. Quick and easy. Four minutes. Done. Could chop and throw in a couple of mushrooms. Optional.
Four more minutes to eat.
Two minutes to wash the pan and put the plate and cutlery in the dishwasher.
Breakfast. Nutritious, healthy, tasty, done in ten minutes.

Questions

Some folks say to me “I don’t have ten minutes for breakfast!”

Really? You might want to re-evaluate how you are living your life. I mean, get your butt out of bed ten minutes earlier. Do you want to be healthier or not? Set your priorities here, now, and stop making excuses.

Some say “I tried that and it just wasn’t filling enough, I need a bit more bulk.” (Stop. Look down, at your own belly - is that the kind of bulk we’re talking about here? ‘Cos it looks to me like you already have plenty there…yes? Maybe it’s time to reappraise that appetite of yours, and recognise that eating too much has been your issue for some years, and to turn that around we need a period of some years where you have to eat too little. Ouch, that hurts. Sorry.) 

But if you do need a more substantial breakfast, you can always grill a bunch of sausages when you have time (Sunday afternoon perhaps) and then keep them in the fridge. Each day, just chop up a couple and throw them in with your spinach and eggs. Voila, breakfast more substantial for only a few seconds extra effort.

Binding

The next objection (obstacle, reason, excuse) I get is “But I can’t eat many eggs, they bind me up.”

OK, I understand, though from my experience, I would say that if you have the rest of the Mother Nature’s Diet healthy lifestyle in place, such as 10-a-day or more fruit and veg, they you’ll have plenty of fibre in your diet, combined with good hydration and regular varied exercise, this should all ensure you have good gut function and once you get in the habit of eating eggs regularly, everything is usually OK.

If eggs bind you up, is it really the eggs? Eating enough fruit? And veggies? Plenty of water? Plenty of movement and exercise? Check all your bases.

Dead boring

This is the one that makes me laugh.

People say “Eggs, sure, I can try that, but what like, the next day? I mean, surely I’m not going to have scrambled eggs every day? Every day, OMG how boring, like the same thing every day, that’s so dull. What else can I have for breakfast?”

Why is this even an issue?! 

Seriously, years trying to help people improve their diet and lose weight, and I never met anyone eating boxed cereals for breakfast who says “Oh God, bloody flakes of wheat or corn, shaped and covered in sugar and chocolate flavour…again, oh how boring!”

No one.

Ever.

I never met anyone who said “I am so bored of this butter dripping off this toast yet again today, ummm with chocolate spread on it, yeah, so boring.”

No one.

Ever.

When people eat sweet tasting cereals and toast (yeah, those processed comfort foods that got you overweight in the first place) for breakfast they seem perfectly happy to eat the same thing for breakfast every single day for 30 or 40 years and they never complain that it’s boring.

Suggest scrambled eggs, and two days in folks be like “And…?”

Get a grip.

It’s real food.

Once you stop poisoning your palate with the ceaseless sweetness of processed foods, after a few weeks you might actually start being able to taste real, fresh foods once again. Suddenly, your life can move beyond everything needing to be sweet at breakfast, and hot and spicy in the evening. Really, life on Earth isn’t all sugar and chili powder, that’s not real fresh food that’s at fault, it’s YOU, you ‘broke’ your palate and you just THINK broccoli is boring, because all you know how to taste is sugar and chili.

Your problem.

Get over it.

Monday to Friday, when time is tight, have eggs.

At the weekend, if you have more time, you can do more. Experiment with fresh fruits, and some nuts. Learn to make nut porridge. Buy a blender or NutriBullet and make a smoothie. Try fresh fish, sardines, or smoked salmon. Or a good old full English breakfast - bacon, eggs, sausage, mushrooms, tomato. Just buy organic, buy quality, no rubbish.

Change your breakfast, change your life.

Get that first meal, on that first day, nailed, and the rest will follow.

Enjoy.

Feb 23

4 Comments

The hard stuff is easy…it’s the easy stuff that so many people find hard

Promoting common-sense based healthy living, the Mother Nature’s Diet way, I travel around the country doing seminars and workshops, I give people one-to-one training and mentoring, and I meet a lot of doctors, trainers, nutritional therapists and other health professionals.

When I started all this five years ago, I would have thought it would be ‘the hard stuff’ that people would struggle with, that was my expectation. By ‘the hard stuff’ I mean overcoming years of low self-esteem, quitting smoking, overcoming the spiral of negative emotions that so often lead to poor health habits in the first place, or learning about nutrition and exercise, learning what to eat and what to avoid. I would have thought that was the hard stuff that most people did not understand, and I would have thought that would be the stuff folks find hard to deal with.

But in reality, when I talk to people who are making changes to their diet and lifestyle to lose weight, get fitter and improve their health, it’s not that stuff they are looking for help with. Far more often, the stuff they want help with is stuff that I think is ‘the easy stuff’. It’s things like - ‘what can I eat for breakfast?’ and ‘how can I find time to exercise?’ and ‘what am I supposed to eat for dinner?’

Seriously, this is the easy stuff!

Let me share with you some simple tips for the things people tell me they find difficult.

What to eat - breakfast

  • We want to get away from cereals and toast. Make scrambled eggs. Once you get good at it, then it only takes three or four minutes, that’s no time at all. I met a lady the other day, a GP, who said she’s got hers down to under 90 seconds! Quicker than me!
  • I like to add greens to my eggs, so I throw in a few handfuls of spinach while they are cooking, it all cooks down in there and adds valuable nutrients to my breakfast. Sometimes I add some mushrooms too, and then a fresh tomato on the side
  • If you fancy a sausage or two, or some bacon with your eggs, that’s great. But organic sausages, high meat content and gluten free, that’s best
  • If you want the bacon or the sausages, but don’t have time to grill them every day, then just grill a batch at the weekend or one evening when you do have time, and then keep them in the fridge - you can grab a couple out, chop them up and thrown them in your scrambled eggs to heat up while you are cooking, it only takes seconds
  • Cooked brekky in under 5 minutes = no excuses
  • Sometimes in summer I like a bowl of fresh fruits for breakfast, with a handful of mixed nuts added to make things a bit more substantial. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, apple and later in the season, blackberries too. You might like to add pineapple, watermelon or grapefruit
    If you own a blender, ‘bullet’ or similar, then knocking up a breakfast smoothie a couple of times per week can be a very quick solution - you can even take it with you and drink it in the car!
  • Further ideas if you have time, are on this site

Read more

Apr 8

2 Comments

Why people eat sugary crap for breakfast

Breakfast - the most important meal of the day - has become a sugar-fest, and it’s contributing to childhood obesity.

I find my inbox is constantly awash with article that are sugar-bashing, as the world slowly starts to shift from ‘fat is the bad boy’ to realising that sugar is the real problem.

It was good to see Dr Rangan Chatterjee on the BBC One Breakfast Show recently, trying to point out how much sugar is in the typical breakfast options of cereal and toast. Our government seem, to my eyes, to be faced with overwhelming evidence that we need to change dietary advice. We have an out-of-control childhood obesity problem, predicted to add to our already rampant adult obesity problem, yet the government refuse to change dietary advice.

The same day that TV interview was recorded, I saw a blog about a radio interview with Ireland’s top dietitian, slamming low-carb eating (less sugar!) as nonsense! While it’s ultimately true that ‘eating too many calories leads to weight gain’ and no one can deny it, saying that is the whole story misses all the many factors why people eat too many calories!

There are, of course, many factors behind our obesity problems. Personally, I think breakfast is a huge problem, and the UK breakfast table is sadly dominated by cereals and toast. If you follow Mother Nature’s Diet, this obviously isn’t an issue for you anymore, as Core Principle 1 removes that starchy white mass of carbohydrates from your diet. But in reality it’s a stumbling block for a lot of people. I deliver live seminars and people come up to me all the time, or email me in the days after, saying “But what can I do for breakfast? Without cereals and toast, what is there? What can I feed my kids?”

I answer that question a lot!

And the answer is - real food! Plants and animals. You can cook some eggs, that’s the quickest and easiest healthy option for most people. I eat the same food for breakfast that I eat for my other meals - fish, meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits. It’s just a case of putting a new habit in place. I’m rather fond of the ‘I don’t eat crap for breakfast’ habit, it works well for me personally.

You see, the truth is that breakfast cereals and toast have made people lazy. They are both quick, easy options. Really quick. Open the packet, dump some cereal in the bowl, pour on milk. Boom, breakfast in 60 seconds. Hands up. I confess, I can’t beat that, 60 seconds is too quick. I have only one healthy option that is that quick - fresh fruit. I can pick up 2 bananas and an apple and take them with me to my desk or my car and eat them ‘on the go’ - but that’s the only healthy breakfast option I have that is ready in 60 seconds or less.

Today, for my breakfast, I put a knob of butter in a frying pan, sliced and diced about a quarter of a whole red cabbage (it turns my eggs blue!) and threw that in to start simmering, then sliced and diced some savoy cabbage and threw that in too. Stirred that around for a couple of minutes, then cracked in 4 eggs. Making my breakfast took 6 or 7 minutes, maybe 8. My bad.

But I made a choice. A choice that I would prefer to get my butt out of bed 8 minutes earlier, so that I had time to take in some actual nutrition for my breakfast, rather than leaving my alarm to the last possible second and then using the ‘no time’ excuse as my reason for eating crap. And yes, it is crap.

Breakfast cereals are loaded with sugar. If they didn’t fortify the flour for making bread, and the breakfast cereals, with synthetic vitamins and minerals, it would be illegal to sell these products to you because they would make you sick - and eventually kill you. Take the time to read the link and understand why all cereals and breads have to be fortified - breakfast cereals are ‘nutritional cardboard’ and they taste like it, hence the need to add all that sugar.

I appreciate that you’ll face a challenge trying to get your kids to eat red cabbage for breakfast (though it is delicious fried in butter!) but there are plenty of options available. Scrambled eggs, fresh fruit salad, add a dollop of Greek yoghurt if it helps, fresh fruit and a few nuts, maybe make a smoothie and then you can even sneak in some veg like spinach without them noticing.

Do yourself a favour going forward and start every day the best way you can, with some quality nutrition and a few servings of fresh vegetables before you leave for work in the morning - rather than your entire day’s sugar allowance in one meal.

Nov 25

1 Comment

A[nother] typical day eating the MND way!

MND packs in a lot - and I mean a LOT - of nutrients in a typical day, and I am asked every day for more meal ideas, recipes and meal plans. I know I have posted “a typical day of eating the MND way” before, but you keep asking for more, so here is another!

Breakfast!

Eggs and greens, the MND stock favourite breakfast. There are so many things you can do, this is never the same any two days, it always comes out different. It only takes 5 minutes, it’s simple, tasty and nutritious. The greens are not cooked to oblivion, they are only in the pan for 4 or 5 minutes at most, just enough to warm then up and soften them a little. In those 4 minutes, spinach will cook completely, but broccoli will remain almost raw.

MND Eggs and Greens Eggs n greens

 

Mid-morning I usually snack on a white grapefruit. Sometimes I will also nibble a few almonds during the day if I am hungry.

Lunch.

I’m giving you two lunches from the last week here.

First we have a chicken-and-greens stir fry. Please don’t ask for a recipe, I don’t know, I just throw it all in! Really, no plan, just cook! MND cooking is so simple, and that’s why no two meals ever come out the same.

I soften a teaspoon of dripping in my pan, dice up some chicken and throw it in, brown off the meat, then chop up and throw in as many veggies as I can lay my hands on!

I stir-fry it all around for a few minutes - again, we don’t wanna nuke those veggies, just warm them up, soften the stalks, make it a hot meal for a cold winter’s day, that’s all - and then season with fresh herbs or spices.

It’s all super simple stuff cooking the MND way!

Another day I was short of time and had to go out. I made a smoothie - 2 bananas, 1 whole avocado, some water and an entire bag of spinach. I got this glass full to drink at home, and as much again in a flask which I took out with me for an afternoon snack.

Green smoothieBoom! Tasty and filling without having to find the time to sit and eat a full meal.

 

Skipping meals:

As an aside, there have been a couple of days over the last week when I was just way too busy to eat 3 meals. One day I was too busy for lunch AND out in the evening, so I just had a huge eggs and greens breakfast (I mean huge, we’re talking a whole head of broccoli, cabbage, half a bag of kale, half a bag of spinach, some mushrooms and 7 large free range eggs!) and then snacked throughout the day on 2 apples, 1 grapefruit and a small bag of mixed nuts. That was it, all day.

Another day, I was out running for an hour in the morning and then ran out of time for breakfast, so had a grapefruit and that was it. I had a large lunch of meat and greens, then I was away that evening, travelling and in late meetings, so I skipped dinner and just had an apple mid-evening while driving and a couple of handfuls of mixed nuts late before bed.

When your body is free from the “sugar-insulin-roller-coaster” and you use stored body fat as your primary source of fuel for energy, then you don’t always need 3 set meals per day at set meal times. I just eat when I have time and when I feel hungry, not when my watch (I don’t wear one!) tells me to eat!

 

Dinner!

Finally, here are two dinners for you, from the last week.

We have a real ‘meat feast’ first - I made a chili using pigs livers, pigs kidneys and some prime pork tenderloin, all cooked up with tomatoes, red pepper, mushrooms, chili, cumin, paprika and pepper, and served with lashings of fresh steamed veggies on the side. This meals packs more fresh whole food nutrition than most “normal2 people eat in a week - in one meal!

I have one thing to say about this meal - Boom!!! Have it!

Finally, another evening last week I knocked up a run-of-the-mill chicken and veggies dinner. I roast chicken portions in the oven, steam my veggies, then chop it all up and mix together.

Some times I make this as a stir-fry, sometimes in the oven. If I want my veggies crunchy then I tend to stir fry them quickly…if I want my chicken moist and tender, I tend to over bake it. If I am doing mountains of veg for lots of people, I’ll steam my veggies.

No two days are ever the same!

Get in!

Pack in those nutrients folks! 15 to 20 servings of vegetables and fruit every day, nutrient-dense organ meats, pastured meat, fresh whole food, it’s not hard! Every day, add 2 or 4 litres of water too, that’s the way we MND it!

Get cooking! Enjoy, see you!
Karl x

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 25

1 Comment

Packing in my green veggies!!!

Almost every day, I am asked how I manage to get an average of 17 portions of vegetables and fruit per day into my all-natural, nutrient-dense diet. I eat between 10 and 20 servings of veg EVERY day, averaging out in a typical week to 14 or 15 vegetables per day, plus 2 or 3 pieces of fruit per day.

Look at these meals -

Breakfast:

- eggs and greens, loaded with broccoli, rainbow chard, kale, dandelion greens and spinach. Read more

Jul 30

2 Comments

Eating the MND way every day - 17-a-day average!

Some days, actually pretty much every day, I am asked what I eat.

I eat an EXTREMELY nutritious diet, and this is important.

I have written about this, and it would be WELL WORTH you taking some time to read these links in this post, as this is fundamental to what MND is all about.

See, I don’t want an ‘average’ life, I want an exceptional life, so I don’t want to eat an ‘average’ diet, I want to nourish my body with exceptional nutrition. I don’t want to die at an ‘average’ age, I want to live to an exceptional age. I don’t want ‘average’ levels of energy, I want exceptional levels of energy. I don’t want to have the body of an ‘average’ 45 year old looking back at me in the mirror next year, I want to have an exceptional physique for a 45 year old. I don’t want to ‘show up’ in my career, my relationships or my sports at an ‘average’ level, I want to be freakin’ exceptional in every way that I can be. Maybe I’m an arrogant prick with lofty ideas, but if so, then to hell with it, that’s who I am, follow me or go read some other blog, ‘cos this is who I am and this is what I want and this is what MND is all about - you either ‘get it’ and like it, or you don’t.

I believe that packing my body with super-nutrition will help me achieve my goals…it’s certainly been serving me very well for the last few years. I have written about some of the advantages - as I see them - of this lifestyle, try reading these:

7-a-day offers health benefits and protection from cancer. Eat the MND way and get 17-a-day
- it’s long, I don’t care, it’s bloody good stuff, I urge you to find the time to read it and share it with everyone you care about!

And this - How eating an extremely nutrient rich diet can help you resist the signs of ageing

Another long one, sorry peeps: Are all calories created equal? - you need to read and understand this post, there is NO ROOM for “empty” calories in my diet. I want every gram of food I eat to offer me something, FUEL MY FIRE for LIVING, I don’t have the spare energy to eat crap that slows me down, I’m a man on a mission in life and every scrap I eat has to feed my body to do everything I want it to do - if those calories ain’t packing nourishment, I ain’t eating them!

And finally - It’s not just about weight loss!!! Skinny people die too!

So I thought I would post up just what I eat to pack in that AVERAGE of 17 servings of vegetables (and some fruit) every day.

Breakfast - eggs and greens. That’s 5 eggs, and then there is broccoli, kale, dandelions, spinach - more greens than eggs!

Lunch - turkey (free range) and lashings of veggies (including some deliciously sweet yellow courgette that my big sister grew in her allotment - delicious, thanks Sis, way tastier than supermarket courgettes!) (sorry, no idea why WordPress has put that image up on end like that!)

Dinner - MND home made kidney and steak and veggies. This is a kinda whacky MND version of steak and kidney pie…only we don’t eat pie, so we use veggies as carbs instead of pie casings! Otherwise, it’s just lambs kidneys, some tasty steak, loads of veggies and some herbs.

And if it’s warm weather and I don’t want 3 cooked meals in one day, maybe I’ll have a salad - when I make salad, I forage leaves from my garden, dandelions from up the lane, and my salad looks like art on a plate. I love a big salad!

During the day, I will eat 1 whole white grapefruit, and probably 1 apple.

THAT, is how you get 17 portions of mostly vegetables in you in 1 day, EVERY DAY, and enjoy your food.

If you want to know what a ‘portion’ is, you can download booklets and wallcharts here - http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Portionsizes.aspx

MND is not “just another paleo diet” - if you know my story then you’ll know I was paleo 3 or 4 years ago, but I found the paleo movement getting all bent out of shape by too many people who think it’s just an excuse to eat their own body weight in bacon every day and lift heavy things. When they start making “paleo chocolate muffins” I moved on…caveman didn’t eat bloody chocolate muffins!!!

See my thoughts on the paleo diet here - Paleo-Reality Part 1: What’s right and wrong about paleo diets.

MND - fuel for inspired living.

Who’s with me?

 

May 8

1 Comment

Real world, real workouts, real nutrition - keeping it simple and REAL with MND

As I wrote earlier this week, to help you get through my long posts, from now on I will put bullet points at the start, telling you in brief what the post is about, and in brief, the main conclusions or points that I come to.

This way, if you are short of time, you can read the bullet points, which only takes 30 seconds, and it should tell you the essence of the post – if it sounds interesting, you will find the 5 minutes you need to read the whole thing, but otherwise, the bullet points tell you enough to get the main idea.

I will try to remember to summarize all future posts this way. I hope this is helpful!

What is this post about?

  • We live in a time when we are drowning in information, the Internet offers more health, diet and fitness advice than you could ever read
  • The trouble is, most of it is rubbish!
  • The vast majority of diet and fitness information online, is unnecessarily complicated, usually because someone is trying to sell you something
  • I see far too many people wrapped up in all this time-wasting, complex detail, and yet they don’t have ‘the basics’ covered

Main conclusions:

  • In my opinion, the basics are simple things we can all do - eat real food, stay well hydrated, and demonstrate a solid. basic level of strength and fitness that can be adapted to all sports and fitness programs
  • Be able to run a few miles, do a few push-ups, lift your own bodyweight on a chinning bar - this is simple, basic stuff

Read on to learn more.

The diet and fitness industry online

In recent days, I’ve spent a few hours reading a variety of ‘health and nutrition’ pages on Facebook. I don’t want to put anyone else down, and I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet (well, maybe a bit, MND is the best page on Facebook!!)…but I have to say, there really is a total load of rubbish out there. There are loads of sites promoting supplements, loads focussed on weight loss, loads for body building, there are ‘disease-specific’ support groups, there are ‘tone up your tummy’ type diet pages, but there is an overwhelming amount of noise, with very little practical advice and sales-pitch-free useful information lost in the general hubbub of attention seeking marketing.

I’m not saying MotherNaturesDiet is all things to everyone, but this page is about REAL world stuff. I’m not a personal trainer, fitness model, yoga goddess, body builder or some other health and fitness professional. I’m a ‘normal’ guy, I have young kids, a day job and a busy life. I was fat and unhealthy for 20 years and I smoked and drank and made poor choices. But after 2 decades of making those poor choices, I figured out how to be healthy, and now I am sharing what I know with YOU. Read more

Mar 13

You think my food is boring? Try taking a look at your LIFE!

Someone recently said to me “Oh man I know it’s healthy and all that, but a lot of your food looks really boring, you eat the same thing all the time, eggs and greens, nuts and fruit, meat and veggies, it’s so boring. Don’t you want Chinese take away and pizza and chips and curry and loads of different things every week? Come on mate, you only live once, have some fun! Don’t you get bored?”

Erm, no, I don’t, thanks. Fortunately, I actually have enough going on in my life that I don’t need to look to my evening meal to find something thrilling and exciting in my day. Read more

Mar 1

1 Comment

Getting the macronutrient balance right - the simple way, with MotherNaturesDiet

I was recently asked for my advice on macronutrients in a healthy diet:

  • How much protein should I eat?
  • You seem to advocate a very low-carb diet. Should I eat more carbs, where do you get your energy from?
  • Do you eat lots of good fats?
  • What about saturated fats? Omega-3’s? Oils?
  • 3 meals per day, or 4, or 5, or 6?

I believe that eating has gotten far too complicated, we are all wrapped up in measuring calories, macronutrients and micronutrients, when I believe that if we are eating the right foods, then such ‘scientific detail’ is not really worth worrying about too much, not for most people. Read more

Dec 30

2013 Popular Posts #5: 127 Weight Loss Tips from MotherNaturesDiet

127 Weight Loss Tips from MotherNaturesDiet
– your free eBook

Back in November I published a little book of weight loss tips and this has proved to be the 5th most popular post of 2013.

So many people are looking for good advice to help them lose weight, and they find the ‘diet industry’ awash with rip-off solutions and supplements. Well here is a solution for you, and one that won’t cost you any money, and it doesn’t involve buying supplements, so-called ‘superfoods’ or some new-fangled piece of home workout equipment.

Please download this free book and share it with your friends and family if they are interested in being healthier and losing unwanted excess weight.

https://mothernaturesdiet.me/2013/11/07/127-weight-loss-tips-from-mothernaturesdiet-free-ebook/

As you have probably figured out by now, MotherNaturesDiet is the no-tricks, no-gimmicks, common-sense approach to good health and fitness. That’s all you’ll find in this little book, just lashings of common sense and simple ideas, things you can do to lose weight and feel great.

Enjoy!

Jul 5

Home grown abundance is so yummy!

Best crop ever today - this is JUST today’s pickings from the strawberry patch in our garden. There would have been a 4th bowl, maybe a 5th, but we are a family of 5 and we were all eating them as we picked them!

Breakfast in the morning will be half an avocado, heaps of fresh strawberries, handful of crushed ice, splash of water, fistful of fresh dandelion leaves from the garden…blend that lot up for a yummy breakfast smoothie!

Enjoy the weekend folks.

 

Jul 2

Free greens for breakfast

This week, I’ve been eating dock leaves.

Not only are they great at stopping the itch from stinging nettles, but they go quite well in my scrambled eggs too.

I go out early every morning, at 6 am, either running or walking, and pick fresh young dandelion leaves and dock leaves on my way home.

Start with a drizzle of oil in the pan, thrown in the leaves, soften for a minute or two, then throw in a few free range organic eggs (and a few mushrooms, if you have them).

Breakfast in 4 minutes, nutritious and delicious!

Enjoy!

May 27

2 Comments

Dandelion greens - FREE food from Mother Nature

Enjoy free food from Mother Nature - readily available everywhere in the UK in spring and summer, dandelion greens are nutrient-packed, higher in protein than spinach and they are easy to include in many meals.

Read more

May 26

14 Comments

How does juicing fit into a paleo diet and lifestyle?

Summary of this blog post:

Answering questions from a reader -

Q: Should we take supplements and superfoods?

A: No, we should just drink freshly extracted organic vegetable juice every day.

Q: Juices and sweet fruit smoothies?

A: Yes to the juices, but go easy on the smoothies.

I recently posted a video titled “There is no such thing as superfood”

After watching this, and after some discussion, a friend of mine asked me “Do you disagree that supplementation can help compensate for the difficulty in acquiring all nutrients and anti-oxidants in modern diets? I.E. when not eating full primal?”

I recommended juicing as the only form of “supplement” that I think is worth taking and this friend eats a mostly paleo/primal diet, and as such our subsequent discussion can be broadly defined as looking at ‘is there a place for juicing and supplements in a paleo diet’ – but of course, the discussion is of interest to anyone who cares about living a healthy lifestyle.

Read on for this Q&A discussion in full.

Read more

Apr 1

1 Comment

Sugar-coated Breakfast Cereals

I was looking at this box of Tesco ‘Honey Nut Clusters with Milk Chocolate’ earlier, and I wanted to make sense of the label, to work out what is really inside the box.

Summary of this post –

Often, looking at the Nutrition panel on a product will not tell you the true story. Learn to understand the ingredients list so you really know what’s in your food – or better still, if it has a label, don’t buy it.

This box of cereal is a classic example.
• 55% processed grain
• 26.5% refined sugar
• At least 12% processed fat
• 93% of the contents of this box will not serve your body at all, except to provide ‘empty calories’ of low-grade carbohydrate.

Read more

Feb 15

3 Comments

What to eat for Breakfast

One thing people ask me often is what food I eat on a daily basis – people seem to want more recipes, more actual meal ideas. OK, that’s easy, so let me give you some more ideas by running through a typical week.

Breakfast is difficult for a lot of people – time constraints are often a problem, and a lot of people can’t handle a big breakfast, and other people can’t face cooked food first thing in the morning, preferring something cold and simple. My favourite breakfast is a smoothie, and I start the day with a smoothie several times per week. My other favourite breakfast is eggs, and I have eggs several days per week too.

Sample smoothie ideas...

Read more

Jul 22

Summer Berries Smoothie

Yippeee it looks as though Summer has finally arrived in the UK and I love it!

This morning breakfast is a delicious smoothie of summer fruits (pineapple, raspberries, home-grown strawberries, blueberries from the farm up the road, crushed ice and a handful of raw almonds and a few leaves of mint) and some research reading.

I am re-reading ‘The Vegetarian Myth’ by Lierre Keith, as I am trying to learn more about anaemia in vegetarians. I also just managed to get a copy of Weston Price ‘Nutrition and Physical Degeneration’ which is the grand-daddy of all Paleo nutrition books, so I am keenly getting stuck into that.

Happy Sunday folks 🙂