Adults need more vegetables than they tend to consume. Many people feel that as long as they include some with dinner, they have eaten their vegetable portions for the day. In reality, they should be included with each meal. Yes, that means eating vegetables with breakfast!

Vegetables and fruits are not interchangeable. Fruits contain much more sugar than vegetables do. While it is natural sugar, it’s enough to mess with your blood sugar levels. This means more cravings throughout the day, a slower metabolism, and more energy crashes.

At first, this may seem difficult to do. You just have to get creative! Read on to discover a few ways to eat more vegetables with breakfast.

1. Omelettes, frittatas, and hashes

Adding vegetables to foods like omelettes, frittatas, and breakfast hashes seems necessary. They add great flavour and texture to your meal. Vegetables that work well for these types of meals include broccoli, asparagus, onions, spinach, kale, mushrooms, and bell peppers.

2. Add them to smoothies

I’m sure you’ve heard of green smoothies before. Not sure how to tackle them? Use this green smoothie recipe template. You don’t need to stick to leafy greens in your smoothies, if you don’t digest them well. You can try zucchini, cooked squash, cucumber, or carrots with your smoothies without affecting the flavour too much.

3. Make it an English breakfast

If you like the bacon and eggs breakfast, turn it into an English breakfast! Add some fried tomatoes to your plate. Try The Curious Coconut‘s Fried Green Tomato recipe. I also enjoy chopping up some onions, and frying them with tomatoes sliced in half in a skillet.

4. Eat dinner for breakfast

There’s always that weird person who suggests eating dinner for breakfast. I happen to be one of those people. It’s actually one of my favourite breakfasts. A nice full dinner meal keeps me going longer than most breakfasts do. And of course, any dinner I make will contain vegetables.

5. Make it sweet

There are all kinds of ways to incorporate vegetables into sweet foods. Let’s be clear on one thing. Sweet doesn’t have to mean sugary. Stevia, when used properly, is a great replacement for sugar, and is healthy. Pro tip: add some acidity to Stevia sweetened foods to get rid of that unpleasant aftertaste.

Think of those zucchini loaves you like. Or that pumpkin spice smoothie you crave. You can also incorporate sweet potato mash into your pancake recipes, and sprinkle some cinnamon on there instead of syrup.

How do you eat vegetables with your breakfast? Tell us in the comments!

You may have heard of Meal Prep Sundays before. It’s that one day per week when you prepare healthy meals for the rest of the week. It doesn’t have to happen on Sunday if you’re on a different schedule.

There are many advantages to preparing your meals for the week in one shot. There’s the obvious one of not having to cook on busy evenings. But on top of that, it’s a great way to ensure that you’re not reaching for take-out that will wreak havoc on your health.

It’s also a money saver, since you’ll only need to do groceries once a week. This means that you’ll be less tempted to buy that amazing smelling baguette you got a whiff of while walking by the store’s bakery.

This is my favourite advantage of Sunday Meal Prep: you really only need to do the dishes once a week. I wash all the pots and pans once I’m done cooking. Then, I only need to wash cutlery and 3 food containers on a daily basis.

Meal prep how-to

Start by picking out a few recipes for the week. Factor in how many servings each recipe makes and how many meals you need to cover. Save the recipes you find so that you can make them again somewhere down the road.

Next, make a list of the ingredients you need. This will be your grocery list. If you stick to your list, it’s a great way to make sure that you don’t forget anything you need. It’s an even better way to make sure that you don’t buy anything you don’t need. I know you want to buy those cookies, but be strong!

I like to choose a recipe that gets cooked in the oven, one on the stove, and one that doesn’t need any cooking. It’s the easiest way for me to make everything all at once to reduce the amount of time I spend in the kitchen.

My favourite meal planning tool

Because I’m really busy (who isn’t?), I like to take shortcuts where I can. I recently found a great tool called Meal Garden that does a lot of the work for me.

Meal Garden allows you to search recipes by meal type (breakfast, appetizer, etc.), ingredient, cooking time, or health need (gluten free, paleo, etc.). You can also add your own recipes if you already have some you love.

An added bonus of using this great tool is that it breaks down the nutritional value of each recipe you find and gives you a health rating. This allows you to make sure that each meal you put together is healthy.

Once you’ve found your recipes, you can schedule them into a weekly planner. You can decide how many servings you want to make with each recipe, and Meal Garden will adjust the recipes for you. Then, it will actually create your grocery list for you!

Join Meal Garden!

What are your favourite meals to prepare ahead?

There was a time when fats were demonized. Food companies tried to come up with as many fat free products as possible. It was an unhealthy trend because extra sugar was added in foods to compensate. But on top of that, it became unhealthy because healthy fats were avoided for a long period of time.

Avoiding an entire important food group can have devastating effects on health. The importance of healthy fats for reducing PMS and getting back to having healthy cycles is often forgotten. These benefits also extend out to PCOS, endometriosis, and infertility.

An overview on fats

Sadly, the low fat trend created a fear of all fats. Dieters are under the false impression that eating fats will make them fat. So, here’s a science lesson in a few sentences.

Healthy fats have a ton of functions in the body. This includes reduction of inflammation, quick recovery, production of some of the components of our blood, being a building block for hormones, boosting our metabolism, and cancer prevention. They are also important for the health of cells, skin, and the brain.

Unhealthy fats, on the other hand (like trans fats), don’t have as many roles in the body. Both healthy fats and unhealthy ones can be stored in the body to be broken down as energy. However, because the healthy ones have so many other roles to fill, the body doesn’t tend to store them in our fat cells.

In simple terms, unhealthy fats are the ones you should avoid, such as fried foods. Missing out on the healthy ones, on the other hand, leads to a host of issues.

Healthy fats and PMS

Anytime we consume food products that contain shelf-stable vegetable oils (like crackers, or peanut butter that looks uniform), or meats that have not been raised organically, we take in unhealthy fats.

These unhealthy fats encourage the body to produce inflammatory molecules in the body. Let’s call these molecules PG2 (short for prostaglandin 2). Healthy fats, on the other hand, produce two categories of molecules in the same family. They produce PG1, which is an anti-inflammatory molecule. They also produce PG3, which has the purpose of blocking PG2.

Let’s put this in hockey terms. PG1 is the forward or the centre on your team. It does what you need in order to “win” or feel better. PG2 is the other team, who tries to score against you, or create inflammation. PG3 is the goalie on your team, who focuses on not letting the bad guys score, or blocking PG2.

PMS is the result of inflammation in the body. It’s usually a symptom of other health concerns like digestive issues and/or adrenal fatigue. So, reducing inflammation in the body by providing it with an important nutrient is a crucial part of helping PMS.

Healthy fats are also needed to produce our sex hormones. These are the hormones that tend to be out of whack in people who experience PMS (read more about these hormones here). An increase in infertility has been observed over the last few decades, coinciding with the low fat trend.

When we don’t provide the body with the building blocks that it needs to carry out its functions, said functions begin to falter. As mentioned earlier, PMS is symptom of other health issues. It’s the body’s way of saying that something isn’t working right.

Eating more healthy fats

Great sources of healthy fats include olives, coconuts, and avocados. Nuts and pure nut butters are also loaded with fatty goodness. The same goes for seeds and seed butters. Animal sourced fats can also be healthy, when sourced organically. This includes meats, eggs, and oily fish.

Do you struggle with menstrual issues? Click the button below to join the FREE Nutrition for PMS, PCOS, and endometriosis group on Facebook.

Most of the posts I publish weekly are inspired by problems I keep seeing in my practice, or questions I often receive. This post is no exception. Because I focus on food sensitivities and digestive health as a nutritionist, I see a lot of clients with IBS, short for Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Since it’s something I’ve dealt with myself, this topic is especially dear to me.

What is IBS?

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), which includes both Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, shows actual structural changes in the bowel. On the other hand, IBS does not. It is often a label that is slapped onto people who have digestive issues outside of IBD. It is seen as an issue that affects the colon.

People are often grouped into sub-categories of IBS based on their symptoms. Those who see mainly constipation as a result of their digestive issues may be given the label of IBS-C. IBS-D is a label given to those with more diarrhea. Some experience both, and are labeled as IBS-M (for mixed).

Symptoms may include gas, bloating, cramping, and mucus in stools.

What’s really hiding behind IBS?

The issue I have with the label of IBS is that it is a bit of a “catch-all” term. It is given to anyone whose digestive problems cannot be helped with drugs. People are then told that they’re stuck with their condition.

While I can’t speak to the experience in other countries, the healthcare system in Canada makes it difficult for those with IBS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m forever grateful for covered healthcare! But most MD’s simply don’t have the time to spend with each patient to bring them back to health.

The truth is that there is often something hiding behind Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Bowels don’t just defect for no reason. Thankfully, more and more doctors are advising their patients to test for Celiac Disease, which can cause many of the same symptoms.

But what to do when your symptoms aren’t a result of Celiac Disease either? The investigation is actually not over! Some people with symptoms similar to Irritable Bowel Syndrome are actually dealing with an issue in the small intestine called Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth, or SIBO for short. A Naturopathic Doctor may be able to diagnose you in that case.

But what I most commonly see show up as Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a combo of two factors: food sensitivities, and something called “dysbiosis”. This strange term means that there is an excess of undesired organisms in your gut, compared to the good ones. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click here for more information.)

How to manage your symptoms

Many people see their symptoms improve by making some dietary changes. For some, it may be as easy as switching from raw vegetables to only steamed vegetables. Unfortunately, most people need to do a bit more work.

For some, a complete diet change can do the trick to relieve their symptoms short term. Some diets which have seemed to work include the FODMAP diet, the GAPS Diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and the Paleo Diet.

One thing to keep in mind is that most diets will manage symptoms without getting to the root cause of the issue. Taking care of your gut health is crucial to saying goodbye to IBS for good.

Sandwiches and wraps tend to be popular lunch foods because they’re so convenient. But what to do when you don’t eat gluten? Luckily, you have plenty of options for gluten free wrap alternatives.

1. Nori rolls

Nori rolls are one of my absolute favourite gluten free wrap options. They’re loaded with nutrients like iodine, magnesium, and potassium, among others, which are fantastic for thyroid health. If you love sushi, you’ll enjoy having this umami wrap with other meals.

As a bonus, nori needs a bit of humidity to stick together. You can prepare your wraps ahead of time without having to worry about them turning soggy. Just grab your lunch and go in the morning! Buy them here.

2. Lettuce rolls

If you’re looking for a cost effective method of making your wraps, lettuce rolls are a great idea. You’ll want to use iceberg lettuce to take advantage of its large leaves and smaller ribs. Don’t forget to add other vegetables to your wraps, since iceberg lettuce isn’t very nutrient dense.

3. Collards

Using collards as a gluten free wrap is a similar concept to lettuce rolls, but much more nutrient dense. Collards are part of the cruciferous vegetable family (which includes kale and broccoli). These vegetables contain a ton of B vitamins for energy, and are great liver-supporting foods. To learn how to prepare these wraps, click here to watch Plant-Powered Kitchen‘s video.

4. Brown rice tortillas

Food For Life makes great brown rice tortillas that can substitute for any wheat wraps you would be tempted to use. They pair really nicely with hummus and grilled vegetables, or they can bring your dreams of steak fajitas with guacamole back to life.

I also like to cut up these wraps into triangles and toast them in the oven for a few minutes to make tasty corn-free tortilla chips.

5. White rice spring roll wraps

Spring roll wraps are another convenient and quick option. These wraps can be found at Asian supermarkets, most grocery stores, or here. Dip them in a bit of water, fill them, and roll them. Easy peasy!

6. Coconut wraps

If you’re looking for a grain free and fuss-free gluten free wrap alternative, give coconut wraps a try. They contain nothing other than coconut and a bit of salt. Load them up with all your favourite ingredients to give them flavour. Buy them here.

For many, life can move at a very fast pace. It’s easy to get caught up in everything that’s constantly going on. Before you become overwhelmed, try one of these easy strategies to destress.

 

1. Do a breathing exercise

Breathing exercises are convenient because you can do them pretty much anywhere. When you feel that tension is rising, try this simple 4-7-8 exercise.

Close your eyes and take a deep breath in through your nose for 4 counts. Then, hold that breath for 7 counts. Finally, exhale fully over 8 counts. You can repeat this exercise throughout the day as needed.

2. Fake smile

Fake smiling when you’re stressed or in a bad mood can turn your day around. Simply holding that fake smile for 30 seconds can change your mood. Your brain notices that your muscles are positioned to smile, and catches up to it chemically.

3. Fake laugh

Let’s be honest. You can’t fake laugh without eventually laughing at yourself. Give a try. I dare you! Once that fake laugh turns into real laughter, you’re set to destress. Laughing increases oxygen intake and produces endorphins, those feel-good chemicals.

4. Take a silly selfie

Along the same lines as fake laughing, you’ll be able to destress by pulling out your phone, making a funny face, and snapping a picture of it. Remember when you were a child and you would make funny faces? You probably couldn’t stop yourself from giggling (until your parents told you your face would get stuck that way).

As a bonus, you can upload it on social media so that you and your friends can continue to share a laugh over it throughout the day.

5. Gratitude

When you’re stressed, it can be hard to remember the good things and see past the stressful events. Get in the habit of naming 3 things you’re grateful for when that happens. It will help temporarily distract you from what’s stressing you out. It will also help you keep an overall positive outlook to help you better deal with stressful situations.

Which methods do you use to destress? Tell us about it in the comments.

Menstrual problems are far too common these days. There is a widespread misconception that PMS is normal and just sort of happens if you have unlucky genes. In reality, PMS is your body’s way of telling you that there is an imbalance somewhere.

Imbalances tend to become clearer with issues like PCOS, endometriosis, and infertility. These three issues and PMS all have many things in common. They’re women’s health issues, they’re hormonal problems, and very importantly, they are often connected to the state of digestion.

Your gut flora

In a previous post, I went into detail about the organisms found in the gut. This is important to understand for pretty much any health concern.

Simply put, you have friendly organisms in your gut that produce some of your nutrients, help you digest, heal your gut lining from wear and tear, and keep unfriendly organisms under control. The unfriendly guys, on the other hand, produce waste matter which is toxic to us.

In a healthy gut, there aren’t enough of the bad guys to allow them to have enough of an effect on overall health. This ideal scenario is unfortunately quite rare in North America, and most likely in many other places in the world.

Factors like pesticides, sugar intake, antibiotics, chlorine in water, and low stomach acid all throw off the ratio of friendly organisms to unfriendly ones. Because these are all common factors in many societies, gut issues have been on the rise.

The downward spiral of digestion

Once the bad organisms start to take over, it becomes harder to reestablish balance. Their waste irritates the gut. The pores that naturally exist in the gut lining (normally only large enough to allow digested food into the bloodstream) become larger. At this point, undigested food can get into the bloodstream.

Since the immune system doesn’t recognize these large particles, it launches an attack on what it sees as an outside bug. It keeps a memory of this so-called threat in an attempt to prevent it from hurting the body in the future. This is how food sensitivities begin.

One other major issue that comes with an excess of bad organisms is the burden caused on the liver. One of the hundreds of functions of the liver involves turning toxins into a form that the body can flush out. The liver finds itself working overtime simply trying to break down the waste and gas produced by the bad guys.

How troubled digestion affects hormones

The function of hormones is to carry a message to specific cells. When they’ve completed their duty, they are ready to be broken down. The liver breaks them down into inactive compounds so that they can be flushed out through bowel movements.

When the liver is burdened, it struggles to carry out some of its functions. Some of the hormones that should be broken down may keep on circulating in the body, repeating their outdated message. This can wreak havoc on the body.

Everyone has a bit of yeast in their gut. When kept under control, it’s nothing bad. However, yeast jumps at the chance to take over when that organism imbalance starts to happen. Yeast is capable of all kinds of bad things. It can take those hormones that your poor tired liver worked so hard to inactivate and send them back around your body in their active form.

Estrogen dominance leads to menstrual problems

Estrogen is a female sexual hormone. Males also have estrogen, but less than women do. Estrogen works against progesterone, another female hormone, to stay in balance (think of an arm wrestle).

Estrogen dominance happens in one of two possible scenarios. In the first, there is simply too much estrogen in the body. In the second, progesterone levels are too low, allowing estrogen to win the metaphoric arm wrestle.

A burdened liver can struggle to remove excess estrogen, while the yeast sends it back in circulation. To make matters worse, yeast and some other bad organisms can produce a substance that looks a lot like estrogen.

Estrogen dominance can be responsible for symptoms like mood swings, fatigue, headaches, acne, menstrual cramps, back aches, and low libido. In other words: PMS. Sadly, this is just a shortlist of symptoms.

Excess estrogen can also lead to other menstrual problems like PCOS, endometriosis, and eventually infertility.

Why menstrual problems often come with digestive issues

In my practice, I’ve noticed that those who come and see me for PMS related concerns have underlying digestive issues. Food sensitivities are also fairly common in PMS cases.

The factors that lead to menstrual problems are similar to the ones that lead to food sensitivities and other digestive concerns. In both cases, the liver and the gut flora need some TLC. Additionally, once inflammation begins in the body, it is common to see a variety of health issues develop.

When you get those killer cramps during your period, what do you do? If you answered “I pop a pill- DUH!” here’s what you should know. NSAIDs, a category of drugs (which includes Midol, Advil/Ibuprofen, and Naproxen) has been linked to increased gut permeability. They can worsen inflammation in the gut lining and make those pores bigger.

In other words, the drugs you’re taking, while helpful in that moment, could be increasing your suffering in the long run. While you may be nervous to take the leap into more natural methods, I do highly recommend considering it.

Do you struggle with menstrual issues? Click the button below to join the FREE Nutrition for PMS, PCOS, and endometriosis group on Facebook.