For many of us breakfast is the most looked forward to meal of the day, but it’s especially significant in the Ayurvedic philosophy because a properly prepared breakfast that works with your unique dosha has the potential to set you up for a day of ease- physically, mentally and emotionally.

What we eat definitely impacts our moods, the way our body will function throughout the day, and therefore it will directly have an influence on our capacity to outwork our purposes for the day, whether that is wrangling children, studying, taking care of your home, or working.

If you fit into the Kapha dosha, you'll be the most robust of all the other Ayurvedic types, with thick skin, a well built frame, and strong immune system. However because you are governed by the element of earth, you are cold, heavy and static- so if you're living a lifestyle that is cold, heavy and static such as a sit down desk job during the cooler months, you will find that your will become unbalanced- which can bring on sluggishness, weight gain and even depression.

These imbalances can sabotage your personality linked giftings of peace-making, nurturing, your ability to help others, your level of tolerance and your strong relationships.

Other than living a lifestyle of plenty of exercise and movement, a varied routine, and avoiding too much sleep and lying around the house; Kaphas can choose light meals and foods that help “bring you out of the ground” so to speak.

Using pungent spices in your cooking will help to achieve this, as well as avoiding dairy and heavy foods in the morning.

These cumin scrambled eggs with greens are from my book Eat Right For your Shape, and are the ultimate Kapha start to the day.

It's a light and satisfying bowl of scrambled eggs with loads of stimulating spices and nourishing greens that will help to see heavy kaphas brought into balance through lightness in their emotional life and also a physical lightness through weight normalisation.

Enjoy!

The warm and sweet nature of pumpkin makes it one of the most delightful comfort foods to be enjoyed roasted, steamed and smeared with butter, or blended into soups in the cooler months.

This large trailing plant with yellow, bell-shaped flowers, will take up a lot of room in the garden, and if you've ever grown pumpkins you may have memories of them wildly overrunning the backyard at quite a remarkable pace.

There are many varieties of pumpkin. Butternut produces small to medium pear-shaped fruit with deep orange flesh. Buttercup are small to medium round pumpkins with dark green skin.

There are a number of large pumpkins, some round and flattish - good for storage and eating - others will produce the "Cinderella coach" type giant round fruit which are not as lovely for eating.

Like most fruits and vegetables, pumpkin comes in a number of varieties, all of which are both hugely beneficial for your health and absolutely delicious on your plate. Some different types of pumpkin to consider are:

Queensland Blue Pumpkin: as the name suggests this Australian grown variety of pumpkin has a bluish-green skin with classic orange flesh. This variety tends to grow to around 3-5 kg and can be grown all year long in tropical climates.

Butternut Pumpkin: sometimes referred to as Butternut Squash, this variety tends to have an oblong bell like shape, with yellowish skin and an orange flesh. It tends to have a slightly sweeter and nuttier flavour compared to other pumpkins and has an average size of around 2 kg.

Jap Pumpkin: also known as Kent Pumpkin has green skin mottled with yellow and brown patches, with orange flesh. This nutty variety has an average weight of 4 kg, with a longer maturation process.

These are the most common types of pumpkins grown in Australia however there are so many amazing varieties out there to investigate, like Atlantic Giant Pumpkins and Golden-nugget pumpkins, just to name a few!  In other parts of the world they come in all shapes and sizes from small to jumbo varieties, and favourites include, Jack-o-Lantern, Baby Bear and even a Spooktacular.

Background: The word pumpkin originates from the Greek word Pepõn which means “large melon”.  The word then gradually morphed by the French, English and then Americans into the word "pumpkin." Pumpkins and squash are believed to have originated in the ancient Americas, however these early pumpkins were not the traditional round orange upright Jack-O-Lantern fruit we think of today. Pumpkin pie is a traditional part of Thanksgiving meals in Canada and the United States, and in these countries they are frequently carved as jack-o'-lanterns for decoration around Halloween.  I have my own healthy version of a raspberry studded pumpkin pie you might like to try the recipe here.

Interesting fact: Early Native Americans first prepared pumpkin by cooking it in strips over campfires and they used the sweet flesh in numerous ways: roasted, baked, parched, boiled and dried. They also ate pumpkin seeds and also used them as a medicine. The blossoms were added to stews. Dried pumpkin was also stored and ground into flour!

In season: The general pumpkin harvesting season is autumn in Australia. However pumpkins grow exceptionally well in weather around 20-35 degrees, making it the perfect plant to grow in more tropical climates of Australia all year round. In the US they are planted in July as a warm weather crop but can be grown all year round. In the UK they are harvested between October and December perfect timing for Halloween.

Health benefits: Pumpkins are an antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory food; helping with joint health, organ health, stress relief and soft tissue injuries! They can also help protect the eyes from cataracts and degeneration with their significant Vitamin A content.

The high levels of Vitamin C in pumpkins help to boost the immune system and encourage collagen production for the skin to maintain its beautiful glow and elasticity. They're also a great source of fiber to help maintain the health and detoxification of your digestive tract which helps keep your body running smoothly.

What to look for: Always inspect the pumpkin to see if it has any cuts, bruises or strange discolouration on its skin. If the pumpkin doesn’t look 100% on the outside, chances are it won’t be very nice once you take it home and cut it open. If you find a pumpkin that visually seems to meet the grade, hold it up to your ear and give it a firm knock. A beautiful healthy pumpkin will produce a solid woody sound, similar to a knock on a door or a wooden table.

Storing: Keep your pumpkins in a cool, dry and well-ventilated spot in your kitchen. Too much heat will cause your pumpkin to age and decompose quickly. You can also segment your pumpkin, wrap it in cling wrap and store it in the fridge. However this is more likely to cause the pumpkin to decline in flavour and quality more rapidly, but it’s a good option is

Preparation: Delicious in scones, soup, curries and puddings, the sweet, creamy texture of pumpkin also makes it a favourite in vegetarian curries and other dishes. To enjoy it simply, chop it into large chunks, drizzle with coconut oil and roast for 40 minutes at 180 degrees. I also love to incorporate it into mashed cauliflower, create a pumpkin and brown rice seeded salad grate it into omelettes, steam it, make a pumpkin soup with coconut milk and even add it sliced thinly into stir fries and curries. However the ultimate way to enjoy it is in your morning porridge!

Amaranth, Walnut and Pumpkin Porridge

Serves 2

I’m such a fan of kitchen organisation. I really believe that just about anyone can live out a healthy lifestyle full of vibrant, nourishing meals made from quality ingredients. You don’t have to outsource your food preparation, no matter how time poor you are. It’s all about priorities and time management.

One of my favourite ways to ensure I’m set up to thrive with beautiful food in a chaotic week is to batch cook. I cover this in my eBook The Renewable Table which is a loaves and fishes” philosophy and centres around the concept of ‘continuum cooking’, a resourceful and environmentally friendly way to cook that reimagines your original meals into two, three or even four more, delicious dishes.  You can read more about the eBook here.

There are so many different ways to incorporate batch cooking into your life that will free up time and energy in the kitchen so you can focus on other priorities. Rather than cooking dinner every night, you might like to make two dinners that will give you the next night off. Or you may like to go hard and cook up an entire weeks’ worth of meals in one day.

Here are some tips to help you take up this liberating system in your home.

Equipment and storage

Firstly you’ll need a freezer with enough room to store the amount of meals you want to make. If you have a deep freezer you’ll be able to batch cook for more meals; potentially a month or even more! A deep freezer is also a great investment for buying bulk organic foods like meat, dairy, nuts and grains.

A freezer section of your fridge is also fine but you will just have to work with the space you have. I often clean my freezer out regularly to make space for more meals.

You’ll also need all of your regular cooking equipment, but if you have two saucepans instead of one, you’ll be able to have more meals cooking at once.

Lastly you'll need storage containers of your preferred size. If you’re just feeding yourself you'll need smaller potions, or larger containers for family meals. I often use glass jars in the freezer too. Just remember not to fill them too high or you'll break the glass!

Build a menu

Plan the period of meals you'd like to cook for. Is it just dinner? Or lunches too? Do you want to have snacks on hand for yourself or the kids? I often eat leftovers for lunch the next day so focus on making large dinners and I also throw a few snack, dip and smoothie recipes in the mix.

Look at your schedule and get out some recipe books or blog recipes that you love. Meals with some liquid in it; soups, stews, casseroles, lentil dishes and curries are my favourites to freeze. Muffins, cakes and slices can also freeze well.

List the recipes you’ll be cooking including the page numbers or website and remember to double or triple recipe quantities if needed. Write a corresponding shopping list for everything you need.

Have a cooking day

Here’s the fun part. Choose a free day in your week, tie your hair back, get your kitchen ready, and put on some music—it’s time to party! Cook all your meals, as many as you can cook at once.

I like to do all my food prep first- all the organisation of ingredients including the peeling and chopping. Then get cooking. You might have a stew in the slow cooker, one casserole in the oven, a curry plus a soup on the stovetop, and while they’re bubbling away you might be making almond milk, smoothies, pesto or other staples in your blender.

Preparation Tips

If preparation is where you feel most challenged, clear off the counter tops and get ready for some fun and interesting meal preparation ideas.

Chop up or spiralize raw vegetables such as carrots, celery, zucchini and capsicum into strips, batons and sticks and store in the refrigerator.  Then all you need to do is whip up a quick dip for a healthy snack. For recipes that use garlic and onion, you can use ready-made spices to save time and effort and make preparation easy. By preparing your meals beforehand, you can ensure that you have healthy options readily available when life gets busy.

When roasting batches of vegetables on high heat to bring out the sweetness, find perfect partners with the same cooking times. Fast cooking vegetables are asparagus, capsicum, broccoli, leeks, mushrooms, tomatoes and zucchini and slow roasting vegetables include celeriac, parsnips, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, rutabaga, daikon, butternut squash and onions.  If you require a mixture of fast and slow, cook slower vegetables on the stovetop first and then add to the baking dish.

Smoothies can be made in advance and placed in muffin trays in the freezer. When morning comes, take three out and simply place them into blender to whizz and refresh.

Cook up skewered kebabs and save some for ready meals for the oncoming days.

When cooking a renewable dish such as chicken, cook two at the same time but with a couple of different variations, one could be lemon and rose- mary and the other could be Moroccan spices with yoghurt.

Eggs can be hard boiled in muffin pans in the oven allowing you to cook a few batches of twelve at a time.  Just preheat oven to 350°F (175°C), place the egg in the muffin pan and bake for 30 minutes.

Make a tray of frittatas in muffin tins, which can be stored in the fridge for up to five days. You wont lose interest if you make them in different flavours.

Preassemble glass jars of soup ingredients, salads or layered gluten free oatmeal, buckwheat, coconut milk and berries. Using glass jars help the ingredients from getting tarnished, carry dressings separately or place at the bottom of the jar, layering sturdier vegetables such as capsicum and carrots then top with leafy greens. Use a section of paper towel at the top, this will absorb moisture and enable you to store your soups and salad jars for 3-5 days.

Snap frozen vegetables such as peas and green beans are easy to use and convenient if you don’t have fresh, they're great added to soups and stews.

Label and store

I’m a self-confessed label nerd. Your day will be so much easier when you can look in the freezer and see exactly what meals are in there.

Buy some stickers, write your meals on them and place them on your containers of food so you are never stuck rummaging through the freezer trying to work out what mystery meals you have before you.

Remember when freezing leftovers, be sure to freeze appropriate portions that you’ll know you’ll eat when it’s time to re-heat. For example, don’t freeze a whole tray of lasagne; rather split it into portions you know you want to eat – or even more importantly, you know are good for you to eat. This provides fantastic support for portion control.

Enjoy the bliss of free time, and knowing that you're looking after yourself through busy seasons.

I've come out of hibernation to share a recipe from one of my  favourite health coaches Madeleine Shaw.  

This recipe is from her new book Ready Steady Glow which is full of show stopping recipes that are bursting with flavour and goodness.   

This gorgeous recipe not only tastes delicious but is perfect for those Autumn days when it's still warm outside but the evenings are starting to feel a little chilly on the extremities. 

Nothing quite compares to a warming stew. It’s no secret that I have an ongoing love affair with slow cooking; I just love the way this style of cooking transforms even less-popular cuts of meat into restaurant-worthy meals that continue to improve with age.

You can switch it up to and if you fancy a change, this recipe works just as well with lamb.

Designed to be shared, it serves 2–3 people

Ingredients

1 tbsp coconut oil or butter
2 red onions, finely sliced
3 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp cayenne
4 garlic cloves, crushed
½ tsp turmeric
500ml beef stock or chicken stock
400g stewing beef or lamb, cut into inch cubes
2 carrots, cut lengthways into 5cm chunks
100g green beans
grated zest of 1 lemon
50g toasted pine nuts

Spiced tahini yoghurt

3 tbsp tahini
150g Greek yogurt
juice of ½ lemon (2 tbsp)
1 garlic clove, crushed
½ tsp chilli flakes
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint leaves, plus extra for serving
salt, to taste

Method

Heat the oil or butter in a pan, add the onions and cook for 5 minutes. Add in the cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cayenne, garlic and turmeric and a few tablespoons of the stock – to prevent the spices burning. Stir well for 30 seconds until fragrant, then add in the meat and brown it for 30 seconds. Throw in the carrots and pour in the remaining stock, bring to a boil then reduce to a low simmer and cook with the lid on for 1½ hours. After this time, add in the green beans and cook for a further 10 minutes.

To make the tahini yogurt, mix the ingredients together well with a pinch of salt. Finish off the beef by sprinkling it with the lemon zest and pine nuts and serve with a dollop of tahini yogurt and some extra fresh mint leaves.

Happy Hibernating!

Lee x

The next round of my four week Heal Your Gut program starts on Monday 8th August, 2016.

You still have time to register for this transformational experience.

Just go here to join up and look forward to increased energy levels, better immune health and relief from gastro-intestinal symptoms.

See you on Monday 🙂

Lee x

‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’ is often referred to when it comes to diet and health. But this old saying may not be as relevant to some people due to our modern heavily sugar supplemented diet. 

Throughout history we’ve only ever consumed a small amount of sugar. Seasonal ripe fruit rich in fructose picked straight from the tree was the desired amount.

Our ancestors waved goodbye to the sugary desserts and overly sweet treats and thrived from starchy vegetables bursting in energy releasing glucose. 

It’s funny how the tables have turned in the twenty-first century. It’s like we’ve become addicted to the hit of sugar and fruit juicing.

What is fructose?

Let’s get down to the basics, fructose is a simple sugar found in many plants, tree and vine fruits, flowers, honey, berries and most root vegetables. Fructose is easily confused with glucose, also a naturally occurring simple sugar, found in starchy vegetables.  Glucose is  produced by the body and essential to the body and many of it's important functions. This simple sugar provides the energy needed to perform specialized processes such as digestion and cellular respiration.

The difference between fructose and glucose is in its metabolism within our bodies. Whilst glucose is easily metabolised and used for energy throughout the entire body, fructose is harder to metabolise and can only be done within our liver.

With an abundance of fructose passing through our lips in the form of an over abundance of fruit juices this can put a strain on our hard working livers and result in fructose metabolising into fat. 

Although this fat replenishes our glycogen and triglyceride stores, the primary store is stored as fat in the body. Because sugar is in everything, even natural and healthy foods, it’s hard to understand the ramifications of eating too much. 

We all want to be healthy, and often by doing this we up our intake of fruit. It’s wonderful to enjoy a sweet juicy peach in season but many mass produced fruit juices could potentially be doing damage to our precious livers when taken in excess. Fruits are glorious and packed full of nutrients, minerals, vitamins and fibre so they shouldn't be avoided, but they can be detrimental in large quantities such as over juicing.

What does too much fructose do in our bodies?

When too much fructose enters the liver it kicks off a series of complex chemical transformations, tiny fat droplets begin to accumulate in the liver cells, a process called lipogenesis. This buildup of fat causes fatty liver disease. 

Before the production of High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the 1960’s, a commonly produced sweetener which has been stripped of all nutrients, fatty liver disease derived from fructose was barely known. Now it affects up to 30% of adults in the United States and other developmental countries, and between 70% and 90% of those are obese or have diabetes. 

Are you consuming too much fructose? 

That is the question is on many lips.  

One thing we do know is that fructose intolerance is on the rise. With so much sugar passing through our blood stream it’s easy to for our bodies to suffer, even if you’re slim, fit and healthy.

Another problem is sport drinks.  When swapping over from soda to sports drinks, these little switches could be further adding to a fructose problem.  With the average energy drink containing 50 grams of fructose per 1000ml, you’re quickly increasing your intake. 

What is fructose malabsorption?

Fructose malabsorption is a common digestive disorder in which absorption of fructose (or other sugars like lactose or sorbitol) in the small intestine is impaired.

I can rear it’s ugly head in a few ways, from bloating, abdominal cramps and pains, diarrhoea, constipation, increased intestinal sounds and gas production, acid reflux, nausea or vomiting. 

Unfortunately, if you suffer from Irritable Bowel Symptom (IBS), then you’re even more likely to recognise these symptoms. With a staggering 70% of IBS patients suffering with an intolerance to fructose. 

Did you know that studies suggest that depression can be more common in adults with fructose malabsorption?

What’s the next step?

If this is all sounding far too familiar then it’s time to take a little inspired action.

With such a huge focus on being healthy in the media what actually constitutes the recommended amount of fruit per day? Eat For Health.gov.au recommends two servings a day which is sufficient to retain the vital dose of nutrients.

If you do suffer from fructose intolerance or fructose malabsorption, and want to keep the bloating at bay you might want to reduce this to one piece of fruit a day. Remember, vegetables such as cucumber, spinach and zucchini are significantly lower in fructose than fruit. Including these refreshing green vegetables into your diet is a great way to ensure you’re still getting a good range of nutrients. 

Here’s a tip for you, it’s been shown that if you have a small portion of fruit after a meal your body can tolerate the fructose a lot better than a single dose on an empty stomach.

So if going cold turkey on the mangoes is too much, then enjoy some after lunch for a satisfying hit of sweetness! 

Reducing short chain carbohydrates is also a way forward. Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols (FODMAPS) are sugars found in these short-chain carbohydrates which are poorly absorbed in the small intestine and reach the large intestine where they produce gas and attract water.

This useful list of foods you should try and reduce will soon become your bible! You can also read my blog post about what is FODMAPS? here.

You may want to sign up to my Heal Your Gut four-week online program. You can find out more about it here. The next course starts on Monday 8th August, 2016 and bookings are open now.

Creating the right balance 

The right balance is to eat everything in moderation, but with the combination of a reduction in FODMAPS and fructose you’re well on your way to fructose-intolerance free life a life free of pain and a distended belly!