It’s become an Australia Day tradition that we head to Byron Bay for a long weekend with our beautiful friends. The incredible beach and crystal clear water, the food, the vibe, the coffee, the surrounding nature and the gorgeous people all make this one of our favourite places to visit. There are so many amazing cafes and restaurants to try so here is a list of some of my favourites in Byron.
I wrote this article for the CrossFit Soul Rebel guys on how to prioritise your health in 2017. Rather than focusing on new year resolutions, I disucss a practical way to make small and sustainable changes over the year that will make a huge impact on your health.
My new obsession is 100% buckwheat soba noodles. If you tend to stick to a gluten-free lifestyle but are sick of sweet potato or brown rice every single night, give these Japanese noodles a go!
They are high in essential nutrients such as B vitamins, magnesium and copper; as well as cancer-protecting bound antioxidants like glutothione and superoxide dismutase.
TIP / Check that your soba noodles are 100% buckwheat. Many brands combine wheat flour with the buckwheat. If you can't find them in the supermarket, most health food stores will sell them. I use Spiral Foods.
Here is how I am using them
Satay Stir Fry with Soba Noodles Recipe
Happy New Year! The beginning of the year is a time where many of us will be setting new goals with gusto and creating New Year's Resolutions. Do you feel you need to hit the reset button on your body though, before you launch into your new goals and aspirations for 2017? If you overindulged at Christmas, drank the entire year's worth of alcohol in two weeks or just want to kick start some new healthy habits, this 2 week Body Reset Detox is just the ticket.
STARTS NEXT MONDAY 16TH JANUARY 2017
Experience glowing skin, improved sleep, increased performance and recovery, less stress, a settled gut, increased energy levels and feel more vital than ever. You may also shift those stubborn kilos that you just haven’t been able to budge.
For many of us, Christmas involves feasting on delicious meals and drinking until we are more than merry. Holiday habits of overeating, excess sugar, alcohol and less sleep can, however, impede on the body’s natural abilities to detoxify. This can lead to fatigue, weight gain, puffiness, skin breakouts and just feeling rubbish.
By taking the load off your liver and other detoxification organs, your body will be able to naturally detoxify so you feel rejuvenated and energised after the Chrissy binge.
Here are eight easy tips that you can do anywhere, whether you are at home, still on holiday, staying with family and friends or back at work.
Bulletproof Coffee is all the rage. It’s hugely popular around the world, with a cult-like following of greasy-lipped devotees.
So what’s all the fuss about? Can Bulletproof Coffee really supercharge your health?
I must admit, it has taken me a while to write this article. I love the fact that people are focusing on their health, trying something new and pushing the boundaries. I also hate “following the norm” when it comes to nutrition. I do, however, think we need to consider a number of factors before we undergo extremes with our diet. I also think you have to know the rules (of nutrition) before you start breaking them.
What is it?
Bulletproof coffee is essentially a recipe, created by a guy called Dave Asprey, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, self-proclaimed “bio-hacker” and founder of the The Bulletproof Executive.
It is a combination of coffee, grass-fed butter and medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil.
This is the recipe:
It’s the first week of summer and the beginning of the Silly Season. For many of us, that means a lot of eating and drinking! Christmas parties, work break-up drinks, Christmas lunch, New Years Eve and everything in between.
Let’s face it, we are going to over indulge. That’s ok. It’s what we do EVERY DAY that’s important, not what we do occasionally. So, let’s look at some ways we can minimize the effects of all the celebrating, dodge a few bullets and keep our health relatively on track over this busy period.
Having a morning routine is something I believe is vital for your daily success. It involves creating a ritual with some small habits that will improve your overall life. It’s that piece of calm in your day, where you choose exactly what YOU want to do and puts you in the right mindset to tackle the challenges of a busy day ahead. It might just be just one habit, like drinking warm water with lemon, or a collection of things.
Here is my morning routine. Of course there are days that involve impromptu brekkies with my fiancé and friends or I sneak in some training. This is what my morning usually looks like though.
Whether you're doing the 2 Week Spring Cleanse or you just love a crunchy salad, this is the perfect Spring recipe. I love this salad as it keeps really fresh for days, so you can have it throughout the week for lunches or dinners. Not only is it loaded with a range of different vitamins, minerals and fibre from all the veg, the miso dressing provides some good bacteria for your gut health.
Spring is the perfect time to press the reset button and give your body a break - just before the Summer festivities kick off! With work break-up and Christmas parties, New Year celebrations and Summer holidays ahead, it's important to have your body's natural detoxification systems in tip top shape so you look and feel your best.
I'm starting on the 24th October and would love you to join me for the ride!
Experience glowing skin, improved sleep, less stress, a settled gut, increased energy levels and feel more vital than ever. You may also shift those stubborn kilos that you just haven’t been able to budge.
Do you wake up craving coffee? Have 3:30itis and need a sugary pick-me-up? This cleanse will also help to cut cravings and reset your body so it’s not reliant on sugar and caffeine for energy.
This is a topic of confusion for many people and rightly so. The amount of conflicting information around workout nutrition makes it very difficult for the everyday athlete to know what to do when it comes to getting the most out of their workouts.
Let’s break down some of myths around workout nutrition and see what we actually should be eating before and after our workouts.
NOTE: Requirements are obviously going to be very different for athletes/body builders/fitness competitors training multiple sessions per day and preparing for competition. This article is for people that exercise regularly for health, fitness and to just look and feel better.
I read an article in the Herald Sun on Saturday, debating whether we need supplements to be healthy. A personal trainer argued that we can get all our nutrients from real, whole foods and there is no need for additional supplements. A high profile pharmacist and herbalist, Gerald Quigley argued that supplements play a vital role for optimal health. So who is right?
This is one of my secret weapons for gut health. It's easy to make and everyone loves it!
Raw apples can be problematic for some people with digestive issues or have a sensitive gut. Stewed apples, however, are a very different story as they are much easier to digest and provide essential nutrients for gut healing.
The phenolic compounds in the apples (as well as the cinnamon!) work to decrease inflammation in the gut and fight unwanted pathogens.
The pectin in the apples is a prebiotic, which means it is food for the good bacteria in the colon. The bacteria convert this food to small chain fatty acids (SCFA), which help to maintain the health of the gut bacteria as well as the gut lining.
This recipe is so quick and easy to make! It's refined sugar-free, gluten and dairy free and is the perfect on-the-go snack or healthy after dinner treat.
I feel I’ve been banging on about bone broth lately to my clients, in seminars and on social media. So I thought I might as well sum up what it’s all about in a post.
Bone broth is essentially stock. Not the stock you get out of a box or from a cube but broth made with beef or chicken bones that have been slow cooked over a long period of time, drawing out all the goodness from the bones. We have been consuming this traditional food for centuries but only now is it being fully recognized for all its healing properties.
What’s so good about it?
This is Article number 3 for the CrossFit Soul Rebel blog series. Enjoy!
The liver is the most extraordinary organ. It is the body’s second largest organ after the skin. If you cut a piece of the liver off, it will actually regenerate itself! This simply amazes me.
This incredible organ has so many important functions, such as producing bile for the digestion of fats; assisting the immune system by clearing bacteria as well as storing certain vitamins and minerals. The most widely known function of the liver though is DETOXIFICATION.
Detoxification and elimination is a vital process to get rid of “pollution” from certain foods we eat, pesticides and herbicides, pollution in the air we breathe, chemicals we put on our skin and home care products. All these things in our modern world need to be processed and eliminated by the liver.
This is another post I wrote for the awesome team over at CrossFit Soul Rebel. Knowing the truth about dietary fats is fundamental to your overall knowledge of nutrition, so again, I wanted to share it with everyone. Head on over the CrossFit Soul Rebel blog to have a read.
This week we are talking about fats – the different types, why we need them and how you can add the right ones into your diet.
There has been a lot of controversy around dietary fats and they certainly have been demonized over the last thirty or forty years. Many people are fearful of fat, and I’m not surprised, given that it has been jammed into us to eat a low-fat diet, (particularly saturated fat), and eat more “healthy whole grains” (breads and cereals). But instead of improving the rates of lifestyle-related diseases, the rates of illnesses like obesity and heart disease have skyrocketed. Clearly we have been getting it wrong!
It turns out, fat isn’t our foe after all, but our friend. The health benefits of including natural fats into your diet are not only extremely positive, but absolutely essential.
Here are just some of the reasons why fat is so important in your diet:
I wrote this article for the team at CrossFit Soul Rebel but I think it's important for all of us to know!
Eat. More. Vegetables. Sounds pretty damn simple right? You would be surprised though how many clients I see that just aren’t eating many, if any, vegetables.
There seems to be a big focus, particularly in a gym/CrossFit environment, on “macros” – these are carbohydrates, fats and protein that provide the body with fuel. “Micro’s”, or micronutrients, on the other hand, barely seem to get a mention.
Micronutrients are the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that drive the thousands of biochemical reactions in the body. They also allow your body to “unlock” the energy in food. If our diet is lacking in sufficient micronutrients, energy cannot be produced, leaving us feeling tired and sluggish. It’s really these micronutrients that make our bodies tick and provide us with the energy we need to live an epic life.
The CrossFit Open is upon us! This means its time to focus on your nutrition to optimise your performance. Providing your body with the right type and amount of nutrients is not only crucial for your workout performance, but also for your recovery. Here are some practical tips to ensure you destroy every Open workout for the next six weeks.
We are two weeks in to 2016 and no doubt we’ve all set New Year resolutions, with the best of intentions to stick to them for the rest of the year. Many of us have had a decent binge over Christmas, so often these resolutions are based around never drinking ever, ever again, cutting out sugar for good or starting some form of new, crazy exercise routine. Unfortunately, these resolutions are often unrealistic and end up being broken within weeks, leaving us feeling deflated, guilty and like we have ‘failed’. It really doesn’t have to be this way.
The easiest way to integrate wellness into our lives is to make simple, step-by-step changes each day. I encourage you to ditch the New Year Resolutions and set yourself Daily Non-Negotiables instead.
