As with almost anything else, it depends. I do recommend dark chocolate (at least 70%) to my clients. I believe, we shouldn’t feel deprived and need to indulge in something gooood from time to time. Hopefully this something gooood is also good for our health. I do always explain and distinguish raw, dark chocolate from the sugar loaded candy ‘chocolate’ bars. It sometimes takes time to train our taste buds but we can fall in love with the good stuff. If we make chocolate at home (so easy!) we can gradually start reducing sweeteners (like honey or a little bit of xylitol) and switch to appreciation of a more bitter taste of dark chocolate and still feel satisfied. There are also good versions available in health food stores nowadays but please always read the ingredients. Not everything bought in health food store, even organic, is indeed healthy. Please read this article by Dr. Mercola to find out about benefits of dark chocolate loaded with polyphenols. 

I believe, that dark chocolate can be very beneficial and I do make it at home or buy for my son as a healthy treat. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me (sight). I do react to chocolate, even the highest quality one, and develop eczema. It’s not an immediate reaction and it took some detective work to figure it out. It just shows that something I regard as superfood could be quite the opposite at times. I never say ‘this is good’. I say ‘this is good for me’ instead. It’s all about experimentation and finding out what is good for us, what nourishes us and what makes us feel and look the best.

I hope you can enjoy chocolate :)
Happy Valentine’s Day!

In response to the needs and questions of my clients I have come up with the healthy weight management program. Please do contact me if you are interested or have any questions.

Who is the program for?
You will like this program if you struggle with weight loss, low energy levels or want to feel great in your own body. This approach will bring you long lasting results. I won’t ask you to ignore your body’s important signals like hunger. Instead, we will work on optimizing your diet so you can nourish your body, have more energy and the optimal weight will follow. Your body likes to be fit, you only need to feed it the right kind of foods.
You will also like my approach if you want to prevent unhealthy patterns and chronic problems occurring later in life and want to optimize your metabolism now.     
 
The program
The healthy body weight program focuses on optimizing your metabolism. It’s not about calorie counting, frankly quite the opposite. Different foods have different effect on metabolism, hormones, and chemical reactions in our bodies, irrespective of the amount of calories they contain. The goal of the program is to work towards new body weight set point, to minimize cravings, optimize energy levels and work in alignment with our body and its needs, not against it. Fighting hunger and exercising more is not the best strategy as it rarely brings lasting results. Instead, you want to listen to your body, eat when you are hungry paying special attention to the quality of food and its effects. This program will help you understand these basic principles, guide you through the process and set you on the path you can follow yourself.
 
What is included?

• Initial consultation, lasting up to 90 min, to assess your health and any underlying causes likely contributing to weight problems, setting up goals and preparing for the next stages.
   
• Three follow up consultations to guide you through the phases of the program.

 

• Information (basic or in depth depending on your expectations) about our metabolism and mechanisms of successful and permanent weight loss. I believe that understanding of why you want to implement changes is the key to greater motivation and better results.

 

• Structured program to guide you through four necessary phases but flexible enough to meet your individual needs, expectations, and your schedule.

 

• Phase 1: General health assessment, your individual needs and health concerns, that will influence the program and dietary recommendations.
   
  
• Phase 2: Working towards healthy metabolism and breaking old, unhealthy patterns.
    
  
• Phase 3: Working towards your optimal weight at the rate appropriate for you.

 

• Phase 4: Optimizing the diet you are happy with and can follow long term.

Unfortunately, according to a recent poll, only 8% of people succeed in accomplishing their New Year’s resolutions. This may be very discouraging and also explain why we make fewer and fewer resolutions as we age. Based on our own experiences we acknowledge it simply doesn’t work.

Regardless the statistics I believe it’s worth to think about our goals and make a decision to change something for better. The intention and goal setting is a beginning of positive change. There are also some strategies that will help us succeed.
 
How to make resolutions?

Keep it on the positive side.
The research shows that we respond better to positive resolutions compared to negative ones. As an example instead of thinking of not eating sweats/sugar we are more likely to succeed if we focus on having healthy snacks and desserts more often. Let’s try to use “do’s” instead of “don’ts” as our brain responds better to positive messages. We can also prime our brain and forming new neuronal pathways, which are required for new healthy habits, by imagining we have already succeeded. This is why sportsmen visualize success before the event, and this actually has been proven to help them win.

Direction, not perfection.
Another problem with resolutions is that we often expect perfection. We all are not perfect and we are going to have minor or major setbacks. In these moments we tend to feel like a failure and give up completely. If we set our intentions towards doing something positive more often instead of expecting perfection, we are more likely to accept the little failures and continue to make positive changes. The most important thing is to move in the right direction, not to be perfect all the time.

Seek support and involve others.
Being prepared, thinking what could go wrong and having good strategies ready, is also a key in my opinion. Let’s also remember about the power of social connections. If we want to make positive changes it is very important to have friends, who can support us and have similar goals. More about that in my previous post ‘If you want to stay lean and healthy’.

Specific and achievable goals.
It’s also helpful to be specific in our intention setting. Instead of thinking about eating healthy, let’s think about what it actually means and break down into smaller, achievable steps. We are more likely to succeed if we focus on fewer, specific goals to start with. We can start with improving one of our meals or decide to have a good portion of vegetables with each meal whenever possible. Once we see we can do it and see positive effects of it, we are more likely to implement more changes.  Trying to do it all at once, often ends in failure and accompanying feeling of guilt, which is shown to make us much less likely to stick to our resolutions.   

They are super healthy and taste great. You can make a bigger batch for the whole week and enjoy in your salads at home or to go. They take only minutes to make.
 
Green Goddess Dressing
This is a rich and creamy dressing and avocados are an excellent source of monounsaturated fats and other nutrients important for healthy skin and hair.
 
Ingredients:
½ small avocado
½ cup water
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 Tbsp. raw apple cider vinegar/freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼ tsp. sea salt
1 small handful fresh parsley
Yield: about ¾ cup
 
Instructions:
Place all the ingredients, except for the parsley, in a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Add the parsley and blend on low speed until combined. Store in the fridge to have on hand for the week. 
 
 
Creamy Garlic-Hemp Seed Dressing
This is creamy, nut-free, dairy-free dressing ideal over your favourite green salad.
 
Ingredients:
½ cup hulled hemp seeds
½ cup water
2 Tbsp. raw apple cider vinegar
1-2 garlic cloves, peeled
½ tsp. kelp granules
¼ tsp. sea salt or Herbamare
Optional:
1 handful fresh cilantro
1 handful fresh parsley
1 handful fresh basil
Yields: about ¾ cup
 
Instructions:
Place all the ingredients in a blender (except the optional additions) and blend until smooth and creamy. Add any optional ingredients and blend again on low speed to incorporate. Store in a glass jar in the fridge for up to a week.
 
 
Creamy Sunflower Seed-Parsley Dressing
Ideal as a creamy dip for carrot sticks or cucumber slices or over salad of organic greens, grated raw beets, grated carrots, and broccoli sprouts.
 
Ingredients:
½ cup raw sunflower seeds
¼ cup water
3 Tbsp. raw apple cider vinegar
1 garlic clove, peeled
½ tsp. sea salt or Herbamare
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 small handful fresh parsley
Yields: about 1 ½ cups
 
Instructions:
Soak the sunflower seeds in a small bowl of filtered water for 6 to 8 hours, or overnight. Drain and rinse the seeds and place them in a blender along with the water, vinegar, garlic, and salt. Blend until super smooth and creamy. Then add the oil and parsley, blend on low speed until combined. Store in a glass jar in the fridge for up to 10 days. 
 
 
Lemon-Garlic Dressing
Use this dressing in your salads or to top a bowl of lightly steamed vegetables.
 
Ingredients:
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 to 2 garlic cloves, crushed
¼ tsp. sea salt
Yields: ½ cup
 
Instructions:
Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together. Store in the fridge for up to a week.


The recipes above come from the book ‘The elimination diet’ by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre.

This is a great recipe for those, who try to increase good fats in their diet –very important for our health! Also great when you need energy kick or extra brain power. Much better than another cup of coffee or sugary snacks. You can replace coconut oil with MCT oil to make it even more powerful.
 
I have omitted lime zest from the original recipe as I prefer milder taste. They turned out great, very light (in spite of all the fat) and refreshing. I’ll work on dairy free version and post in the future.

Please enjoy sensibly :)
 
Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. ghee (clarified butter) or good quality butter (like Kerrygold)
• 2 Tbsp. coconut oil
• 1 lime juiced
• 1 tsp lime zest
• 1 tsp pure vanilla powder
• 1 tsp raw honey (or xylitol/stevia if you avoid sugar completely)
• ½ cup kefir or yoghurt (organic, natural and whole fat)

 
Instructions:

• Blend everything well. It can take some time in cold weather.
• Poor into small ice cubes silicone trays and put into freezer.
• When ready, pop one out and enjoy.

 
This recipe comes from Healthy Gut Girl! youtube channel.

I had a pleasure to attend Chris Kresser’s event in London this month. He specializes in ancestral health, Paleo nutrition and functional and integrative medicine. I especially value his thorough, in-depth research and very honest attitude. He has a great integrity in his approach.
I liked Chris’s short breakdown about functional medicine approach versus conventional health care. It’s not a critique of the standard health care as it can be and often is life-saving. It has some limitations though. In a perfect word, which I believe we are aiming for, we (allopathic and alternative) practitioners would work together delivering the best of both approaches to the clients. Functional medicine seems like a beginning of such a movement.
This is just a short description and my interpretation (not in exact words) of Chris’s explanation. I hope it can be interesting for those, who want to find out more about functional medicine approach, which I follow in my practice.

Functional medicine sees the person as a whole, not just a collection of organs. It doesn’t focus on a disease but on the person instead -with all complex processes to evaluate. Conventional approach is often limited to disease management, especially in chronic conditions so common nowadays. We often leave the doctor with a prescription and no other dietary or lifestyle suggestions.

Why medication shouldn’t be the only strategy towards better health:

• It doesn’t, in most cases, address the root of the problem.
  
• It may supress the symptoms but at same time impairs important functions of the body, often leading to worsening of the condition over time. As an example NSAIDs (Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) used for arthritis reduce blood flow to cartilage making condition worse with prolonged use.
• Often corrects one imbalance but causes another –hence the side effects, which often required another medication to correct and so on.
• Nothing in the body is redundant. What we often think as having purely ‘negative’ impact on the body is usually necessary for proper function of another process. When we suppress it we cause damage somewhere else. Histamine is a good example, causing inflammation and allergic symptoms but needed in the brain where it increases function of the neurons. This is why we feel drowsy on antihistamines.
  

In contrast functional medicine is:

• Investigative, looking for root causes of the symptoms.
• Holistic, whole body (systems) oriented.
• Often safer, producing fewer side effects and complications –achieved by addressing the cause of the disease and incorporating diet and lifestyle advice as well.
• It is patients centred. Treats patients not a disease.
• It empowers and educate patients, who are encouraged to play an active role.
• It is integrative, combines allopathic and alternative approaches.
• It is preventative versus just reactive.
  
  

There is also a new model of thinking of health and disease and its primary driver, which is called EXPOSOME. Disease is no longer thought of as being caused by one single factor like a pathogen (virus, bacteria etc.). Instead all our non-genetic exposure starting from conception are responsible for our health or disease processes. It includes: our diet, water, exercise, pollution, climate we live in, social interactions and personal relationships but also internal factors like metabolism, gut flora and cellular processes. This is very empowering as it shows that we have an active role and our choices are important determinants of our health. As an example it’s estimated that pollution, smoking and our diet compromise as much as 50% of the exposome. We often can’t do much about pollution (at least to some degree) but can fully control the other important factors like the food we eat and smoking and of course we can seek help when it becomes challenging. I believe this knowledge is very important and sets out a good start for changing our bad habits. In contrast, genetics is thought to be the cause of only 10% of diseases, which means, we are not doomed (with some exceptions of course) to get ill. Even genetic susceptibility can often be balanced with healthy lifestyle. More importantly, the choices we make now are going to affect future generations -our children and grandchildren (through epigenetic and gene expression).

The following graphic shows the process of a disease as descried above.

Exposome –all non-genetic exposure.
Pathology –underling mechanism like blood sugar dysregulation created by exposome, genome and epigenome.
Disease –disorder in structure or function that produces symptoms.   
 
 


Conventional medicine usually starts at the symptoms level while functional medicine approach is to intervene at the exposome, genome and epigenome level. This is what is more likely to bring true cure or prevent any symptoms from occurring in the first place.

To find more information and multitude of health related articles, podcasts etc. please go to ChrisKresser.com. I hope you will enjoy Chris’s work as much as I do.

Paleo, Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Sugar-free, Yeast-free, Corn-free, Grain-free, Nut-free, low-carb
 
This is my son’s favourite grain free bread, which is also extremely easy and quick to make..and it tastes great. It’s perfect for toasts, sandwiches, lunch boxes etc.
Below is the original recipe from Healthfulpursuit, which I have adapted slightly. I usually replace avocado/olive oil with melted extra virgin coconut oil –perfect cooking fat. I don’t mind the coconut taste and to be honest I can’t even taste it so much in this recipe, possibly because I’m used to it. It may make the texture less 'fluffy' so please do experiment. I also add one level tablespoon of lavender flowers (not too much as it can be overpowering) to make it even more flavourful.
I’ve just made one and decided to share.
 
Original recipe
Author: Leanne Vogel
Prep time:  10 mins
Cook time:  20 mins
Serves: 12
 
Ingredients

• 2 cups roughly ground flaxseed
• 1 tablespoon gluten-free baking powder
• 1 tablespoon Italian herb mix
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 5 large eggs
• ½ cup water
• ⅓ cup avocado oil or light olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line a 13x9 baking pan with parchment paper draped over the sides. Set aside.

1. Combine flax seed with baking powder, herb mix and sea salt in a large bowl. Whisk to combine fully and set aside.

1. Add eggs, water and oil to the jug of your high-powered blender. Blend on high for 30 seconds, until foamy.

1. Transfer liquid mixture to the bowl with the flaxseed mixture. Stir with a spatula, just until incorporated. The mixture will be very fluffy. Once incorporated, allow to sit for 3 minutes.

1. Drop mixture into prepared baking pan. Smooth with the back of the spatula and transfer the pan to the preheated oven.

1. Bake bread for 20 minutes, until top is golden. Remove from the oven and lift bread (from the parchment paper sides) to a cooling rack. Peel the parchment paper from the bottom of the bread and allow the bread to cool on the cooling rack for an hour.

1. Cut into 12 pieces.

1. Bread can be toasted or frozen. Keeps in the fridge for 3-4 days and in the freezer for up to 3 months.

 
http://www.healthfulpursuit.com/2014/08/flaxseed-focaccia-bread/

If loosing extra pounds is a struggle it is important to check for and address any possible underlying health problems. It could be your underactive thyroid, excessive stress, lack of effective coping strategies, blood sugar imbalances or dysbiosis (an imbalance between beneficial and harmful organisms in your gut) to name just a few.

Is it all just about calories? No, it’s not! The ‘calorie in, calorie out’ model has been proven faulty. Did you know that if you transfer gut flora of an obese mouse to a thin mouse the thin one will get fat and vice versa. If you inject cattle with hormones (unfortunately a common practice today) it will gain weight faster on the same diet. This is just an example that the calorie intake itself does not determine our weight. It turns out that there are good calories and there are bad calories and we don’t have to feel hungry to have a healthy weight and feel great about our body. We can also get rid of our cravings and don’t let them take over our minds so we have more focus and brain power for other important tasks and activities throughout the day. It also explains why exercise is not so effective for many. I am a big proponent of exercise for health reasons but not as the only strategy for weight loss. It’s not just about burning extra calories. Your diet determines how your body responds to exercise so you can burn fat instead of the muscle mass.

There are of course a lot of factors to consider when you struggle with weight loss including your genetics, current health status, emotions, your diet and your lifestyle. When you identify them and address appropriately you will feel better, have more energy and mental clarity. The weight, most optimal for you, will be an extra bonus.
​
Please consult a qualified practitioner before trying any new protocols and make sure your dietary choices are healthy and appropriate for you.

To find out more information I recommend:

'Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health' by Gary Taubes. 

'No Fail Fat Burning for Women' by Skye St. John