Hey guys ❤

I hope you’re all doing well and that you had a great weekend. My weekend was pretty awesome; I held a nutrition workshop last Saturday which went really well and I thoroughly enjoyed, then I spent a blissful day at home on Sunday.

During Saturday’s workshop, we covered a lot of ground and interesting points which I thought I’d share here for those of you who wanted to be there but couldn’t and for those who attended and asked for the points and recipes.

I started off by giving a few easy tips for improved health that don’t also drive you mad because they’re super simple and easy to implement.

Here are a few of my top tips:

• Stay hydrated
• Variety in your diet is key – this is a super simple way to get a variety of different nutrients.
• Choose veg over fruit – there are no nutrients found in fruit that are not also found in veg
• Add herbs and spices when cooking – they contain a lot of antioxidants
• Increase fibre intake
• Add more plant foods to your diet
• Make easy swaps – switch to wholegrain pasta as opposed to refined white pasta
• Prepare and set out healthy snacks
• Focus on adding more good to your diet rather than removing all the ‘bad’ all at once
• Strive for balance and progress, never prefection

Once we covered the above tips and more in detail and I answered some really interesting questions from the wonderful people who attended, we moved on to munching on some hummus with veggie sticks and some Good Earth healthier gallett.

Here’s the base recipe for hummus (I say ‘base recipe’ because with hummus, you could really add any flavor combination that you like) I share more ideas here https://holisticnutritionninja.blog/2019/01/15/healthy-hummus-in-a-hurry/

Hummus:

2 cans chickpeas – rinsed and draines

2 tablespoons tahini

Juice from half a lemon

2 cloves roasted garlic

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 cup water

Many traditional hummus recipes include far more olive oil instead of water but I personally feel as though you don’t really miss the extra oil here.

Simply blend all the above ingredients in your food processor or high powered blender, add to a bowl and dip away. YUM!

We then moved on to discussing both pre and post workout meals or snacks.

There are three pre workout approaches:

1. Fasted
2. Small snack up to 45 – 60 minutes before workout
3. Balanced meal up to 3 hours prior to workout

Post workout

After your workout, ideally consume a snack or meal that is high in carbohydrates and moderate protein – to replenish glycogen stores and repair muscles.

Here, we stopped to make one of my favorite pre or post workout snacks snacks; chocolate oat balls, here’s how:

1 cup oats

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts

1-2 tablespoons almond milk

1-2 tablespoons raw cacao

Just mix all the above ingredients in a bowl really well then roll into balls. That’s it! We doubled the recipe for the event and it only took 5 minutes to make 🙂

We then moved on to meal and ingredient prep ideas. Here, I shared my fave foods to meal prep over the weekend and the way I like to incorporate them in weekday lunches and dinners. Here are a few of my suggestions for ingredients to prep:

• Dried beans
• lentils
• dips
• salad and veggies
• whole grains
• protein source

I shared a lot of different ideas of how to use these very underrated powerful foods and showcased a large variety at the event of beans, lentils and whole grains which you can find here: https://goodearth.com.mt/

Finally, we ended on a sweet not with some simple chia pudding topped with stewed berries.

For the chia pudding:

Mix 1 cup chia seeds with 3-4 cups almonds milk and 2 tablespoons maple syrup (this makes A LOT of pudding). Allow to sit in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours for the chia seeds to expand and absorb liquid giving this chia pudding a pudding consistency.

For the stewed berries:

Add 2 cups fresh or frozen mixed berries to a pot on medium heat with 2 tablespoons maple syrup. Heat gently for about 10 minutes and that’s it!

That’s it from me for today, I hope you found this helpful and that you can join us for the next one on 11/05/2019 – more details soon, stay tuned!

If you like this, don’t forget to ‘like’ it – it helps let me know what you want to see more of!

If you have any questions or requests for future blog posts, please leave them in the comment section below. Don’t forget to click on the ‘follow’ button below to stay updated on all the content I share here. Also, I do share a TON of recipes over on my facebook and instagram pages

Sarah’s Healthy Eats – @holisticnutritionninja

As always, if you do try them out, please let me know 🙂

Thank you for taking the time to be here and read this ❤

Until my next post, be well xXx