Let’s talk breakfast…some women love it, many skip it. Many women don’t feel like breakfast…or they learn to skip it to reduce overall calories or have a shorter eating window, such as with intermittent fasting.

No problem skipping breakfast…unless you are a woman with any of these issues:

Ordinary table sugar is made up of a glucose and a fructose molecule. Its GI is 65+. Honey is 61+. When eaten along with proteins and fats- such as with milk, or in a dessert- these are slowed down even further.

So, I decided a few months back now to start eating sugar again. To stop with the stevia. To moderate the starches, although not avoid them altogether. To allow myself honey in my tea, and to eat homemade ice cream, orange juice, and to let go of guilt around sugar.

I feel good. I feel well fed. I feel sweetness has been fully allowed back in my life. I feel nourished and nurtured.

For many years, I stayed away from sugar and from fruit juices. While I was reared in Australian suburbia with always having orange juice in the fridge, it was something I rejected many years ago as being less than healthy because of its lack of fibre, its sugar content. And while I did buy juice sometimes for my own kids, since I figured it was a lot better than drinking soda full of sugar or aspartane, it still felt like a compromise.

Orange juice, not from concentrate, 100% with no added anything, is now one of my favourite foods! I absolutely love it, and enjoy it at least twice a day. I buy the Nudie pulp free…..

Eating dairy has been a significant part of many cultures traditionally. Whether cow, sheep, goat, buffalo, donkey or camel, humans have adapted to the highly nutritious milk of whatever mammals were available to us to domesticate. Cohabiting with animals has a long history. We have learned to store it, process it into butter, cream, yoghurt, cheese and other delicious and nutritious foods…..

Dairy is a good, possibly the best source of calcium, and calcium is a vitally important mineral.

There was information floating around years ago that said that dairy was the cause of osteoporosis in western societies compared to cultures who didn’t eat dairy. This has been disproven. Dairy does help create strong bones with its bioavailable calcium, and is also good for the thyroid and metabolism and is associated with a healthy weight. A high muscle meat diet may be more implicated in osteoporosis, amongst other things.

A large part of our digestion happens in our stomach, and we need to have a very acidic pH in there for this to occur well. Hydrochloric acid helps to keep the pH low, and helps to break down protein into smaller molecules. Hydrochloric acid also helps to kill off bacteria and other pathogens.

Other enzymes and hormones and electrolytes are also excreted…..

It doesn’t matter what age we are, whether a baby, toddler, child, teen, young or older adult…we all need to eat regularly to keep our blood sugar balanced.

Some lucky people can go for many hours without eating or suffering from blood sugar imbalances. 3 meals a day work for them, and they dont think about food in between, or suffer from hypoglycemic symptoms.

However, for most of us….

I am becoming amazed at how many young women are living on chronically low calories, or cycling between very low and either sufficient or more than sufficient. Not only can you not get enough nutrition, you also will not have energy. There is a link between how many calories you eat, or let’s say how much good quality nourishing food you eat consistently…and how much energy you have……

There is evidence that fruit can be very beneficial to osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthiritis.

Fruit is really an essential, highly beneficial part of anyone’s diet. But for those….

Have you been converted to plant based milks?

No problem, dairy doesn’t suit everyone…but many plant based milks have multiple ingredients which are not exactly ideal. Vegetable gums and emulsifiers are pretty common. Carageen is common, and has been shown to damage the gut.

How many ingredients do you think they add to good quality Australian cow’s milk?…..

There are 6 tastes we ideally need in our daily diet, according to Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine systems. Each of these tastes contributes to the health of our physiology, as well as mental, emotional and spiritual health. As all of us are unique, we might benefit from different amounts of these tastes, but we all benefit from all of them in some amount.

With many people going on a plant-based/vegan or vegetarian diet, it is important to consider possible deficiencies, and iron is a common one, especially for menstruating women. Not everyone has a tendency to low iron, but some do, and plant-iron can be harder to absorb than iron from meat.

It helps to know what sort of plants are higher in iron, such as in the picture.

Is going gluten free healthier? Its become very popular, that’s for sure. Even, shall we say, fashionable. Many people have jumped on the bandwagon….but without necessarily knowing anything more than “gluten is bad” because they read it somewhere, or someone told them.

If you are a vegan, or mostly vegan, there are some nutrients you should keep an eye on.

The internalised messages of needing to be in a particular sized body are very strong in our culture. And extremely damaging to women's mental health and wellbeing.

Something my clients hear me say a lot is to eat more vegetables, fruit and legumes because hardly anyone eats as much as is optimal. I don't advocate any one diet for clients (I am not vegetarian although some of my clients are and I support that), but hardly anyone eats even the government recommended 2 fruit and 5 veg servings a day. And I would say if you need to heal from chronic health issues, that would be an absolutely bare minimum.

It can be a difficult time of year for many people who are learning to make better food choices, want to lose weight, (or just maintain weight), or who react to many foods. It can also be a challenging time for those of us who prefer healthier foods and eat really well most of the time, but when confronted with different choices and outside of the normal routine, find ourselves eating things we normally wouldn’t even be tempted by!

From now into the New Year, its pretty common to overindulge in alcohol and sweet, fatty foods. Its Christmas, afterall, and work events and Christmas parties are not renowned for their healthy eating options. However, here are some ways to look after your liver, (which looks after you), so that you can enter 2019 feeling light and ready for the New Year.

There is plenty of evidence, both traditional and modern, for these kitchen remedies we can easily access or already have at home. 

At this time of year many people are starting holidays and often that leads to drinking too much alcohol and snacking on unhealthy foods. It doesn’t have to be that way, and it can also be a time of rest, nourishment, sunshine and swimming, connection with family and friends, and looking after your health in ways you may not have had time for over the year.