Ditch the coffee and get a natural high with this ginger beer-esque, wake-me-up concoction! Probiotics are an important part of a healthy diet. 

Lactobacillus bacteria form a significant part of the natural intestinal flora. Large populations of this and other lactic acid-producing bacteria regulate the levels of friendly or “good” bacteria and reduce the levels of toxic pathogens.

The potential benefits of having more fermented probiotic foods in our diet include improved immune function, better digestion (leading to better energy), reduced bloating and reduced personal contributions to the greenhouse effect.

Read more about probiotic foods here, or just make the juice and feel the effects for yourself!

Juice the following in a cold-press juicer or any other kind of juicer you have:

• 1 bunch of kale
• 2 organic carrots
• 1 lime
• A thumb of ginger
• A tiny bit of fresh turmeric (if you’re feeling adventurous)
• 1 apple

Dilute the green juice with 1/2 cup water, add stevia to sweeten, then throw in a shot of grain-fermented probiotic – I like Grainfield’s Lemon & Ginger – to stabilise gut flora. This is the ultimate “health nut” drink that tastes like ginger beer and gives your body tonnes of fabulous enzymes, good bacteria and overall zest! You could also add probiotic liquids to smoothies - you don;t have to do juice if you hate the stuff :)

If not dieting, then what? - Dr. Rick Kausman

This is the book that stopped me in my raw vegan, juice-fasting til 4pm tracks and lovingly encouraged me to start facing the fact that my relationship with food and my body had become disordered. I devoured most of this book in one day, and was forever changed. This book literally turned me in the HAES, non-dieting and body-positive direction, a trajectory I humbly continue to travel to this day.

Dr Rick Kausman is a general practitioner and the founding father of the non-diet approach in Australia. Years later I met Dr Rick in person at one of his if not dieting health professional trainings, and can confirm that he is an incredibly compassionate and sweet man who walks his talk. If you're sick of dieting and want to discover that there is an alternative to restriction and body hatred, this easy to read book will get you started. It feels like Dr Rick is talking to you in person.

Health at Every Size: The surprising truth about your weight - Dr. Linda Bacon

A little more data and research-heavy than If not dieting, this book presents the argument for shifting our focus well and truly away from weight and towards actual health. I've been lucky enough to meet from Dr Linda Bacon and she too is a quietly-spoken woman with a refreshingly calm demeanour who is passionate about her work. If you're still a skeptic about the whole HAES thing and want cold hard well-researched evidence as to not only why diets don't work, but why they actually contribute to weight and body image problems - then this is the book for you.

​
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works - Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Written by two dietitians who really GET IT and have spent decades in the field, this is an experiential book with heaps of practical suggestions and activities, as well as patient stories to inspire and demonstrate the effectiveness of this work. I find myself coming back to this classic again and again because I've found that learning intuitive eating is a must when it comes to healing one's relationship with food and their body. The authors break the concept of intuitive eating down into 10 manageable chunks such as, "how to reject diet mentality forever, "how to find satisfaction in your eating", and "how to feel your feelings without using food".

This book basically explains how to stop dieting and start listening to your body. It's not the be all and end all to healing relationship with food, since a huge chunk of that involves extensive body image work. But learning intuitive eating is a vital starting point.

Continued from my previous blog, lessons from yoga, lessons from sea turtles.

As people often do when they first embark on a journey of health-improvement, my appetite for nutrition and health information grew insatiable. From my first year as a university (undergraduate veterinary science) student, I read everything I could on nutrition to the point of obsession!

In addition to studying the nutrition of various animals including primates in captivity and Moreton Bay's sea turtles, I dabbled in multiple nutritional experiments on myself throughout my time as a recreational triathlete and student, with the primary goal of enhancing my energy levels for the high volume of training and study I was undertaking. I added sustainablity and ethics to the mix when I first discovered yoga.

A riddle in an enigma
Soon I discovered that “improving your diet” is not as straightforward as I first imagined! There are diets based on religion, ethics, medical systems, anthropology, cleansing, the seasons, blood types.

You can choose to be vegetarian, vegan, even a fruitarian; you can adopt a macrobiotic diet, a live foods diet, a Paleolithic diet; you can minimise fats, or carbohydrates, or proteins; you can base your diet on Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine. I experimented on myself and scoured books on each of these, with varied fascinating and often undesired results!

The problem is, most of these systems contradict each other. One book might tout the wonders of soy, another will warn us of its dangers. One book might advocate a diet consisting primarily of raw foods, rich in enzyme vitality; another advises to limit intake of raw foods, so as not to dampen the digestive fire. One book will champion honey as a super-food; another says honey is just as harmful as any other sugar. Ayurveda says milk is a healing nutritious food, modern naturopathy often recommends steering away from dairy as it’s phlegm –forming and allergenic.

Many mainstream scientific journals on nutrition advise us to limit intake of fat, especially saturated fat; an increasingly prominent minority of professionals contend that actually, traditional animal fats are good for you, or that coconut oil, a saturated plant fat, is a cleansing weight-loss food. Some authorities say that supplements are essential; others say they just give you “expensive urine.”

Some diets may be supported by the full weight of scientific opinion (CSIRO diet) yet felt completely wrong to me when I personally experimented with them. Others relied on my sense of environmental, social or moral obligations and these also felt unnatural and burdensome.

The examples are endless. How do we find the diet that’s right for us, if there is one? Maybe they all have elements of truth, despite their blatant contradictions. Or maybe none of them are right.


Inner wisdom
My chosen "healthy" diet, strict veganism, was not working for me. Faced with this dilemma and armed with the tools of a yoga practice, I decided to try something different. Instead of trusting any outside authority, I would trust my own body – no matter what it lead me to. I also tapped into my inner animal, so to say.

As a vet and wildlife researcher I was always fascinated by chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.4% of our DNA. I was intrigued by their non-scheduled, uninhibited, intuitive way of eating – their tendency towards simplicity, ease and necessity struck a chord with me.

So I began to combine the heightened sense of body awareness I was slowly harvesting through yoga, with my knowledge of these amazing animals, our evolutionary cousins. For the first time, I began to freely enjoy the uninhibited pleasure of food accompanied by a growing wellness and physical vitality.

Nowadays, I still read and learn as much about nutrition as I can, be it the latest esteemed journal article or the blog of a freegan living in New York. I've dumpster-dived in Brisbane, survived as a vegan in Thailand for months on end, and finally discovered and embraced non-diet approaches as my core health philosophy.

I've educated newly-arrived refugees on how to eat healthily in Australia where the diet is often less wholesome than their traditional ways of eating. I've stuck my arm up cows' bottoms and come face to face with the detrimental effects of the refined diet we feed these animals, not only on them but on ourselves. After years of academic and personal study, yoga, and plenty of self-experimentation I have learnt one thing that now guides all my dietary choices:

The only reliable authority, in the end, is your own body.

As a starting point, know that the simple tool of fully enjoying each bite of food has the power to resolve any questions about food choices and diet. This awareness of eating is the foundation of my nutrition practice. From here I work with clients to explore any dietary approaches they are interested in or that feel most attuned to them, keeping in mind sensibility and practicality.

It has been a long and windy journey, one that still continues to this day. I’ve spent the last decade developing my philosophy within every area of the food and nutrition field – from working as a veterinarian in our modern food systems, and researching the eating habits of domestic and wild animals, to working as a nutritionist consulting with chronically ill and hospitalised patients whose health reveals the results of such food systems.

On the surface level, I educate people on how to improve their nutrition (and sometimes prescribe medical nutrition therapy in certain disease states) - but as I've discovered there's much more to healthy eating than this. The process of getting to know yourself, your body and what foods it thrives on involves time and patience. I'm deeply honoured to be able to facilitate this journey with my clients as it's such a beautiful and exciting one.

Thanks for reading my personal story, I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Simply click here to send me a private message or question.

An elegant, chocolatey treat that invokes childhood memories of candied orange peel and jaffa lollies! 

Makes 1 pie, serves 8-12 (or 6-8 eager chocolate pie beavers!)

The crust:

½ cup almonds
½ cup walnuts
½ cup cashews – you can use any kind of nuts to replace any of those here, such as pecans, macadamias, and brazil nuts
2 teaspoons powdered chai spices (mix of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom)
1 cup pitted dates, pre-soaked in warm water for 15 mins
A few tablespoons date-soak water

The filling:

2 large ripe avocados
3 tablespoons raw honey or maple syrup
30g raw cacao nibs or broken pieces of 70%+ dark chocolate – ay carumba!
2 heaped tablespoons raw cacao powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tsp finely zested organic orange peel

1. Combine crust ingredients in a food processor and mix together thoroughly to form a dough. Add a little more water, if required, to form a damp mass.
2. Press dough into a pie dish to form a base.
3. Combine avocado flesh, cacao, dark chocolate nibs, cinnamon, orange zest and honey in a food processor and mix until a thick, smooth consistency is reached. Add more cacao powder if you have especially green avocados and the mixture still looks and tastes a bit “avocado-ey!”
4. Place chocolate filling into pie crust evenly. Place pie aside in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
5. Slice pie into 8-12 pieces. Serve each piece decorated with thinly sliced orange or candied orange peel, and say hello to heaven!

Delicious, flavoursome comfort food that's packed full of veggies!
Serves 2 as a main, or 4 as a side dish.

Ingredients

• 8 small desiree potatoes
  
• 3 carrots
  
• 3 red onions
  
• 1 head Garlic
  
• 1 bunch kale
  
• 1/2 bch dill
  
• 1/2 bch parsley
  
• juice from 1/2 a lemon
  
• 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  
• 3 tsp paprika
  
• 1 1/2 tbsp rice bran oil
  
• white pepper and celery salt to taste *

What to do
Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Separate garlic cloves leaving the skins on.

Wash and cut potatoes into wedges. Wash carrots (peel if you want, we don’t – there is too much goodness in the skin!) and cut into pieces the same size as the cut potatoes.

Peel onions and cut into wedges leaving the core intact to keep it together during cooking.

Place all ingredients into a baking tray and add oil, paprika, nutmeg, salt, white pepper and mix softly.

Hint – Sit the potatoes on their skins during baking to stop them from sticking. It gives them more colour.

Roast vegetables for 30 mins or until cooked depending on what size your vegetables are cut.

Meanwhile, remove stalks from your kale (they’re a bit tough) and cut or break into large pieces. Chop parsley and dill roughly.

Once veg is cooked mix everything together gently while still warm and add the lemon juice.

* Celery salt is made by drying celery leaves in the oven at 100 degrees C for about 20 mins then crushing with natural rock salt or himalayan salt in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder. It’s an amazing and natural seasoning for anything. My favourite application is using the salt sprinkled on sprouted essence toast smeared with avocado… heaven!

Cook with love, chew your food fully and experience the wonderful tastes and grounding properties of the root vegetables.

The "perfect" diet...
In an ideal world, there would be no need for someone to tell us what and how to eat. Like animals in the wild, prehistoric humans, and some traditional peoples who are very in touch with their bodies, we would naturally be drawn to eating a vibrant, constantly changing, delicious, satisfying diet, free of deprivation; a diet perfect for our individual needs.

We would also know when we are comfortably full, and when not to eat. Without fad diets and "what she eats" pieces on actresses and models in terrible women's magazines influencing us.

We would eat intuitively, based on the naturally fluctuating needs of our bodies through our changing external and internal environments – weather, season, our physical and mental state, demands put on our bodies, and so on. Our bodies would be highly sensitive to even the smallest changes in our environment.

As a result of our being in touch with the Earth’s natural cycles, our digestion would work pretty harmoniously. As a result of eating intuitively and in harmony with the cycles of nature, our energy levels would be optimal, our libidos healthy, our minds sharp.


Get your nose out of Anastacia, we’re in the 21st century!
Does this sound like a fantasy? If you’ve read the book Anastacia by Vladimir Megre describing a reportedly true encounter with a woman brought up in the Russian woods, you’ll know the lifestyle I’m describing! In our modern world, living this way seems like a far-off fairy tale.

From the day we are born and even before then, we are over-fed a steady stream of chronic stress, environmental pollutants, questionable diets and diet trends leading to binges on easily sourced fast food, and chemical stimulants. We have been taught not to trust our innate cravings and tastes, instead turning to coworkers, scientists, celebrities, the media and fad diets to tell us what and what not to eat, never mind how, when and why we are eating.

If there is a perfect diet for humans, an "intuitive diet" would be it. Deep down, we know what’s best for us, just as a bird, a wolf or a child does. But it’s hard to eat intuitively when we’re mentally fatigued by our stressful lifestyles, and we’re confused by the enormous amount of often conflicting information about food that lies out there.


Over-stuffed on dietary information
Be careful about reading health books – you may die of a misprint! – Mark Twain

For anyone who has decided to improve their diet, it soon becomes apparent that healthy eating is not as straightforward as first imagined.

There are diets based on religion, ethics, medical systems, anthropology, the seasons, blood types. You can choose to be vegetarian, vegan, even a fruitarian; you can adopt a macrobiotic diet, a raw foods diet, a Paleo diet, a ketogenic diet; you can minimise fats, or carbohydrates, or proteins; you can base your diet on Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine.

The problem is most of these systems contradict each other. One book might tout the wonders of soy, another will warn us of its dangers. One book might advocate a diet consisting primarily of raw foods, rich in enzyme vitality; another advises to limit intake of raw foods, so as not to dampen the digestive fire. One book will champion honey as a super-food; another says honey is just as harmful as any other sugar.

Most mainstream books on nutrition advise us to limit intake of fat, especially saturated fat; an increasingly prominent minority contends that actually, traditional animal fats are good for you, or that coconut oil, a saturated plant fat, is a cleansing weight-loss food. Some authorities say that supplements are essential; others say they just give you “expensive urine.”

The examples are endless. We ask ourselves, how do we find the diet that’s right for us, if there is one? Maybe they all have elements of truth, despite their blatant contradictions. Or maybe none of them are right.

To our detriment, we have confused ourselves with mountains of conflicting dietary information. Despite our persistent focus on diet and all the research that goes into it, we have ended up more sick, depressed and confused than ever. We have lost our natural way of eating and knowing.

Return to intuitive eating
Eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, sleep when you are tired. - Taoist adage.

The only reliable authority, in the end, is your own body. We need to learn how to trust our bodies again, and how to listen to the messages it is sending us about diet. The simple tools of tuning into our bodies and fully experiencing each bite of food have the power to resolve any questions about food choices and diet.

This doesn’t mean we should go out and fully experience every bite of a large bucket of KFC if you don;t actually you feel like it! After a life time of ignoring your body, getting back in touch with it can take a little bit of work and a lot of patience.

It’s hard to listen to the body when a symphony of opposing authorities on diet are shouting their new findings and guaranteed weight loss methods from the rooftops. 

Somehow, we need to restore our sense of body trust if we are to start feeding ourselves properly. This is where it can be helpful to have a nutritional therapist with an understanding of non-diet approaches such as Health at Every Size or Mindful Eating. Someone who can balance healthy eating with sane eating!

What I do
As a non-diet dietitian, I empower people to start eating in the way that’s most beneficial and intuitive to them. I show them how to get back to basics and re-learn how - not necessarily what - they really need to eat for optimal health.

To qualify me to help you, I’ve spent the last decade developing my philosophy within every area of the food and nutrition field – from working as a veterinarian in our modern food systems, and researching the eating habits of animals, to working as a nutritionist consulting with chronically ill and hospitalised patients, to working as a non-diet dietitian with people suffering from eating disorders and in the throes of "clean eating" and fitness junkie recovery.

I’ve done the work for you in sifting through and integrating into my practice evidence-based dietetic and naturopathic science, and wisdom from more traditional schools of thought such as Chinese Nutritional Medicine, Ayurveda and Yoga. My goal is to provide a truly holistic, deeply personal and highly effective service for people with health, eating and body image problems, people who just want to maintain their health, and people who struggle with dietary fads and conventional dieting.

In a one-on-one consultation, we explore simple new ways of eating that will markedly increase your enjoyment of food without disease, BUT ALSO without guilt. We investigate your behaviours and conditioning around food and how we ignore vital messages from our bodies.

We address habits like food "addiction", under- and over-eating. We discuss the role of yoga, meditation and other mind-body practices that have been scientifically proven to help us get in touch with our intuitive way of eating and being.

Want to find out more? Check out what a private consultation with me looks like.

When it comes to diet, I advise people to select foods from the bounty of nature rather than eat out of packets. But drinks are important, too! But how about the yoga of drinking? We hear so much about diet and food that often we forget about drinks, which can make up a significant proportion of our diet and therefore have a huge impact on our overall health.

A cold beer (or 4) on a Saturday afternoon, a warm chai tea on a Winter night, or a mouthful of fresh water scooped up from a rapid-flowing northern NSW creek, all elicit different sensations, emotions and memories.

On a more physical level, they can also be significant contributors to our overall nutritional state, especially if they are a regular part of our diet.

Soft drink - a "sometimes" drink
I’m sometimes asked, “What drinks in particular should I avoid at all costs? What’s the worst possible thing I could drink, and what’s the healthiest?” When we eat intuitively, remember that whatever the beverage, the only authority is your own body.

And there are no inherently good or bad foods - or drinks! However as your body will tell you if you tune in enough, there are "everyday" drinks, and there are "sometimes" drinks.

Enjoy exploring the flavours and effects of a whole range of drinks, but keep in mind that besides rainwater, truly "healthy" drinks are not easily available in our day and age, or need to be made at home i.e. they take time.

If I had to say one drink that we should minimise as much as we humanly can, it wouldn’t be beer, coffee or even hard liquor – it’s soft drink. Why? The high refined sugar content, questionable colourings & flavourings, and mechanised carbonation process create a highly synthetic drink that I personally can’t handle more than a few sips of.

Ironically, modern soft drink is made in imitation of traditional beverages like root beers and ginger ales, which were not necessarily alcoholic. These were fermented from natural sugars and herbs and were very healthy beverages, chock-full of enzymes, vitamins, “good” micro-organisms, and electrolytes.

So, a stubby a day…?
I’m not suggesting you start a drinking x amount of VB a day for your health! (Or Coopers, or Cascade.) Modern beer uses hops, a fairly potent medicinal herb, which is a sedative and sexual depressant that many people don’t handle all that well. Traditionally, dozens of different herbs were used in beer aside from hops, all with different tonic, flavouring, healing or psychotropic properties.

Home-brewed beer is probably better than store-bought, as it’s likely to have higher levels of the good bacteria and all the other goodies that stimulate digestion. The appreciation and exploration of the ways of fermentation is both an art and a yoga. Bottoms up!

Water – the primary thirst quencher?
Many traditional cultures rarely drank water. In China, even to this day, you never see water served with meals – the beverages are soup, tea, or a fermented drink such as beer.

Warm beverages are said to be much gentler on the digestion than cold ones, while some soups and fermented beverages actually aid digestion. Unfortunately, most of these super-healthy drinks have disappeared from the Australian culinary scene.

Good Gut Grubs
By eating a standard western diet we are missing out on a lot of the foods and drinks that traditionally long-living cultures thrived off. The most prominently missing foods in my opinion, are probiotics. 

Over the past ten years we’ve all heard that Lactobacillus bacteria form a significant part of the natural intestinal flora. Large populations of this and other lactic acid-producing bacteria regulate the levels of friendly or “good” bacteria and reduce the levels of toxic pathogens.

The potential benefits of having more fermented probiotic foods in our diet include better digestion (leading to better energy), reduced bloating and reduced personal contributions to the greenhouse effect. Who doesn’t want that?

Although you can make fermented grain drinks at home, for the average 9-5 worker this can be overwhelming, at least at first. If you’d like to get more of this bacteria into your diet immediately, I recommend trying a ready-made probiotic liquid, fermented naturally using organic and/or biodynamic ingredients. 

Examples include: Kombucha, kefir (water or coconut-based), organic ginger beer, and home-brewed beer.

A number of Australian and international compaines make these kinds of drinks, which are surprisingly affordable. You can dilute them with water, freshly squeezed juices, add to recipes, use in smoothies, juices and salad dressings or just drink neat.