Hey guys ❤️

I hope you’re all having a great week – as usual, time seems to be flying by and I’m only now getting around to posting my workshop recap – ah well! Better late than never, right?

As promised, here’s a recap of the topics we discussed and the recipes for the treats we enjoyed at last Saturday’s workshop 😊🙃

The topics discussed during the most recent workshop included the following:

Food and Mood

Hormones and Food

Plant Based Eating

Juicing and Smoothies

We started the session off with a fresh cucumber, carrot, apple and ginger juice while discussing the many benefits of juicing and when would be the ideal time to use them. Tips: Make sure you try to add more vegetables than fruit in your juice, do not use it as a meal replacement and eat something high fibre and high protein with it. This juice is actually super sweet – the carrots and the apples give it s a really nice sweet flavor and the ginger gives it a nice kick. I know juiced veggies may not sound delicious, but this combination really is nice! Promise!

Food and mood are definitely very intertwined and our attitude, perspective, current situation and pressures will have a lot to do with the food choices we make. Stress is a huge component of emotional eating and several studies have shown that not only to we consume more food when we’re stressed, we also tend to consume the ‘wrong’ food AND we burn a lot less calories simply because we are stressed.

Emotional eating is an issue for many of us – but the truth is that it doesn’t have to be. We are biologically designed to find food intrinsically pleasurable. There’s no shame it that, for the vast majority of us, its inevitable! The fact is that food literally makes us feel better and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This becomes a problem if and when the situation gets out of control and emotional eating turns into mindless or uncontrollable emotional eating. Emotional eating does have a place, but it can’t be our only coping mechanism.

I personally believe that this happens when we try to have an all or nothing attitude; ‘I’ve already ruined my diet with this chocolate, so now I might as well eat a pizza, some bread and everything in the pantry‘ – sound familiar? I used to do this so often! Every time I would over eat I’d start a new incredibly strict diet that I could not possible follow because I’m human and I also love food far too much. Then, without fail, when I would break my ridiculous diet, I’d go overboard because I had the wrong attitude and I was constantly feeling deprived and restricted.

Diets and restrictive eating do not work long term. I’m going to say that again DIETS AND RESTRICTIVE EATING DO NOT WORK LONG TERM!

Hormones are also very linked to the gut and the entire digestive system really – our happy hormones are made in the gut primarily and the digestive system itself could be considered an endocrine organ; the largest one in fact. This is because the digestive system is very much controlled by hormones, namely insulin and glucagon which control the amounts of sugar in our blood and the amount stored at any given time. Long story short: Making sure we take care of our gut is so incredibly important for practically all metabolic functioning.

We stopped for some snacks – this time, I had made most of them ahead of time. Here’s what I made.

Here’s a link to the pink hummus recipe: https://holisticnutritionninja.blog/2019/01/15/healthy-hummus-in-a-hurry/

And here’s the link to the Baba Ganoush: https://holisticnutritionninja.blog/2019/05/14/baba-ganoush-recipe-%f0%9f%8d%86/

You can click on the link above to view or alternatively, you can go to the homepage on the blog, click on recipes and scroll down to the very end where you will find a search bar you can use to find any of my recipes you’re after 🙂

The recipe for the energy bites will be published tomorrow morning – STAY TUNED; THEY’RE DELICIOUS!

We then moved on to discussing coping mechanisms and ways we could stack the cards in our favor when dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, being far too busy, mindless eating and so on. It’s so interesting to see that despite all being so different and all of us having very different lives and problems, that we’re all so linked and we all deal with a lot of the same things. When I studied these issues and when I researched these topics and studies in greater detail, I could personally relate to many of them. Upon discussing these studies with the group on Saturday, the overwhelming response was ‘ME TOO’

Moral of the story: We all struggle, we all know pain – some more than others, granted – but just remember, if you’re having a bad day or going through a difficult period in your life, you’re certainly not the only one. Reach out, you’d be surprised how many people will reach back! These workshops are about nutrition but they’re also about connection. The world can be a cruel place, but it can also be really beautiful- helping each other, connecting with one another and showing kindness will leave everyone feeling better off ❤️

Finally, we ended the session by making a green smoothie which we made together using Maca power – an amazing medicinal root, organic hemp protein, peanut butter powder, banana, rice milk and tons of baby spinach. It may not sound delicious, but it was!

The next workshop is going to be held on Saturday 25th May at 4pm – if you’re interested in joining, contact me here or on my instagram or facebook page! Everyone is more than welcome.

I’d like to end this by thanking everyone who joined for last week’s workshop – thank you for coming, for joining in, for sharing and simply for supporting my mission to make better nutrition easier and more accessibly. And to those of you who’ve been to every single workshop – Thank you thank you thank you thank you – it means the world to me ❤

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