One Man's Quest for Better Health
This is a super hearty chili that is sure to warm the belly of even the biggest carnivores out there! This is great on its own or served with brown rice or naan bread for dipping.
Make a double batch and freeze some for those days when you just do not have the time to cook from scratch.
Continue reading “Vegan Chili”
It’s wintry, cold and dark outside and I just crave these warming super nutritious stew type dishes to come home to in the evenings.
Grab a bowl, a blanket and curl up in front of the open fire eating this!
A super simple smoothie that provides a good hit of vitamins and minerals with a combo of fruit and super organic kale.
You will need:
I love simple recipes with a few ingredients that when whipped together provide a tasty nourishing experience for our bodies. We are all busy people, we need simple nourishing food!
This is probably why I love smoothies so much and I tend to stick to simple combinations that work well together in the blend. Each week I get an organic veg box delivered to my house that is just full of nourishment. Kale nearly always features in the box so it’s now finding its way into my breakfast smoothies. Try this simple vegan kale smoothie first thing in the morning and take your time drinking it, just as if you were eating it.
Yours in health and happiness,
JP
I just finished my lecture weekends on the Immune system. I thought Digestion was complicated (Its Just One Bite of Food). I thought Biochemistry was mind-blowing. I was amazed at the Liver and all the things it does for us.
However, the immune system is on another level.
Let me give you an example. We have 2 types of immunity in our bodies.
We have “Innate” immunity which we are all born with and provides us with a universal defense mechanism against infection and invading pathogens (the bad guys – viruses, bad bacteria, toxins, parasites). It works in a non-specific way in that it looks for and kills anything that looks even remotely suspect floating around inside of us. This is a super important defense mechanism as when we are born this is the ONLY defense we have for the first 4-7 days of life. Incredible right?
After 4-7 days, a second type of immunity is born.
A new year is finally upon us. This can be a strange time for a lot of people, as it’s a time of change, renewal and hopefully fresh starts. The statisticians tell us that by the third week of January the majority of new years resolutions – those commitments we make to ourselves to better our health, our relationships, our jobs and everything else are all but relegated to the trash.
Why is this? Why do so many of us fail to achieve the goals that we so positively and enthusiastically set for ourselves only a few weeks before? I believe the answer is two-fold.
Continue reading “A Good Start is Half the Battle”
It’s finally here and it seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year but it is the time of year where most of us put on some padding! On average most people put on between 7 and 14 lbs of extra padding at Christmas time and last year I was no exception. I finished the marathon at the end of October and just stopped running, crazy I know but I had had enough at that point! Anyway, what ensued through November and December was a lot of nights out, drinking, hangovers, a lot of evening eating (the biggest culprit) and a real lack of weekly health planning. The result was about a stone of extra weight.
So here are my best tips for surviving this Christmas with your health intact.
I’m not a huge user of Facebook or social media in general but recently I happened to be part of a thread on Facebook where the topic being discussed became very heated, a bit personalized and aggressive.
The conversation started out quite innocently and cleanly but some of the contributors disagreed with each other and the conversation descended into personal attacks and name-calling. I was part of the conversation and to be honest, the whole experience just left me really frustrated, angry, annoyed and stressed as a result.
How do you deal with periods of very low motivation?
Right now, for reasons unknown to myself, I am in a state of Funk. This is my word for a feeling of no motivation, fatigue, tiredness, lack of engagement or interest with things on a daily basis. It’s a bit like an out of body experience in one sense as I do not feel like my usual self. I don’t feel like doing anything and am lacking my usual get up and go and proactivity. I find myself thinking about alternate careers and paying little or no attention to my current one.
I’m sure lots of people experience times like this so I’m curious how do you pull yourself out of this state of being?
I am loving smoothies for breakfast right now. They are so simple to throw together and are a super easy way to get nutrient-rich foods into your body from the start of the day.
I recently fell in love with Spirulina and am using it everywhere I can right now. These packs of milled superfoods tend to be quite expensive here in Ireland but recently Lidl has been doing a line of them which are good value so they are accessible to all kinds of budgets.
Continue reading “Deep Green Sea Smoothie”
Ah ha chocolate I hear you shout – yes indeed it is chocolate but it is real chocolate in the form of cacao powder.
So this Sunday morning, I really wanted to get the kids off to a good start. Smoothies are my secret back door into my kid’s nutrition so whenever I feel they may be lacking in something, smoothies are my go-to as they are kid friendly and they all think the NutriBullet is the coolest thing we own. They are nearly right, the juicer is number one 🙂
You can use any blender or mixer to whizz this together so don’t let the lack of a fancy machine stop you making this.
Add the below to your blender and whizz until smooth.
Our lives are overfull.
There’s not a single one of us who is free of that trap, in my experience. We say yes to invitations and commitments, we answer as many emails and messages as we can, we join courses and groups, buy books and take on new hobbies, get involved in new relationships and buy more stuff.
The result of this tendency to overfill is predictable:
It’s understandable that we overfill our lives — we are usually acting on desires, and not giving full contemplation to what we want in our lives and what we don’t want.
‘You can’t act on your desires alone. You have to contemplate the details of what needs to be removed and what needs to be cultivated.’ ~Chogyam Trungpa
So how do we change that? I’d like to propose paring down your life.
