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Healthy Snack Recipes

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Vitamix Recipes

Healthy snack recipe inspiration needed? Look no further! We’re in season — bikini season, bikini body, healthy body ready all year round. HERE’S THE REAL STORY: consuming nutrient rich snack foods doesn’t always rely on Vitamix recipes.

Nutribullet recipes make things like healthy smoothies and raw food recipes easy. So a vitamix blender and a nutribullet are handy. But here’s the best part!…

They’re not for everyone.
Susannah, nutrition expert, shares some lesser known nutritious and delicious foods to eat. better still, you can eat healthy on the go. Nutrient dense foods fill you and keep blood sugar levels stable in between meals.

Healthy Snacks

Activated nuts – how? Why should we eat activated nuts? If we’ve got unsalted nuts, they can be great to top up on good fats and minerals like zinc. Zinc is an amazing blood sugar stabiliser. It’s really hard to get zinc in our day-to-day modern lifestyle and diets. Selenium, magnesium and calcium, antioxidants and gluten free and wheat free fiber or fibre.
We can activate our own nuts…

Why does this matter — here’s the deal:

Healthy Snack Recipes

Why would we activate nuts if they’re so nutritious?  Nuts are healthy. Healthy snack recipes made with nuts are numerous! So let’s start with this awesome improvement on the nut ingredient itself. Nuts can contain phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors. Enzyme inhibitors act by binding to enzymes and decrease and/or block their actions. The enzyme inhibitors are beneficial to nuts, as they prevent the nuts from prematurely sprouting. However these same enzyme inhibitors also act on our body’s digestive enzymes, preventing proper digestion and absorption of all the nutty goodness of nuts.
Activated Seeds
Seeds also contain small amount of phytic acid, which our digestive system is also unable to break down. Eating large amounts of raw nuts or raw seeds can therefore sometimes lead to feeling ‘heavy’ or with a discomforting fullness, even nausea.
Recipe to Activate Nuts

OK, so it’s not a recipe as such. But here are the steps to follow to activate half a cup of nuts.
Dissolve half a teaspoon of salt in enough water to cover the amount of nuts or seeds activating. For seeds add another half teaspoon of salt.
In a large bowl place the nut or seed of choice for activating and cover this with the salt water solution.
Soak for the required 6-7 hours.
Strain and rinse the nuts and seeds
Spread over a dehydrator rack, or baking tray.
Dry the nuts in the dehydrator for around 6-12 hours. 4-8 hours for seeds.
If drying in the oven, set the oven at the lowest temperature possible, preferably no more than 65C. Stir or turn them occasionally, for the required drying time.
The nuts and seeds should be crunchy. they should be tasty and now they’re bio-available nuts and seeds.

activated nuts

activated nuts

Healthy hummus recipe

Blend in Nutribullet or Vitamix blender the following. Serve with crudites of choice.
Chickpeas softened with Pinch Himalayan sea salt
Small section crushed garlic clove (optional)
Two Tablespoon Olive oil or Rapeseed oil
Juice of Half lemon, 2 capfuls apple cider vinegar
Sumac and Cumin to taste – Refrigerate

healthy hummus recipe

healthy hummus recipe

 

Healthy Smoothie recipe

Blend in Nutribullet or Vitamix blender the following.
One small cup coconut yoghurt or regular full fat plan unsweetened yoghurt
Add handful of berries of choice
Add coconut water
Add chopped peeled small cucumber
Add tablepoon maple syrup
Add half small ripe avocado — see * how to ripen avocados

Blend and enjoy.
How to Ripen Avocados
Place in a fruit bowl as fruit ripens efficiently next to other fruit.

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Gut Bacteria and Weight Loss

Gut microbiota

1. Thin people and obese people tend to have different types of microbes living in their gut. SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?  Weight loss and specifically when obese people lose weight, their microbiota change accordingly.


There’s a strong positive relationship between healthy gut bacteria and weight loss

Obesity is highly heritable and it probably involves genes that pass from parent to child. Body weight is clearly impacted by diet. So the environment and personal habits also play a role.

Gut bacteria and weight loss: Several studies have also turned up evidence linking obesity to the microbiome:

Gut bacteria and weight loss

Gut bacteria and weight loss

2.  A diet high in fat, sugar, and simple carbs is bad for the “healthy” gut microbes that keep us thin. It also encourages the growth of “unhealthy” microbes that make us obese. Obese individuals harbor microbes that are better at extracting energy from food, as well as microbes that signal the body to store energy as fat.

3. The microbiome is changeable.

The relationship among genetics, the environment, and the microbiome as it relates to obesity is certainly complex. But while the genome is fixed and habits are hard to change, the microbiome is changeable. That is why PHASE ONE in the FOUR PHASES of weight loss examines the role of gut bacteria and weight loss for every individual. Find out more about the gut microbiome here.


Fast fact! Our gut is as unique as our DNA so no one nutritional plan, lifestyle or diet tips or advice can work as effectively for you as it will for somebody else. Let that sink in…..


4. Our body can be malnourished even though we’re eating enough. Malnutrition is not simply a matter of lacking calories and nutrients. Some people eat enough nutrients but cannot absorb them properly. So the body produces symptoms of malnourishment because of nutrient malabsorption. The role of microbes can be described when looking at identical twins: one twin undernourished and the other one not. The twins have the same genes, and they eat the same food—but they have different gut microbiota.


There’s no point building on a foundation that’s anything but solid.
This is why personalised nutrition IN THE FOUR PHASES  is key. Each phase is the building block to reinforce the next building block. Every small change made impacts hugely, within the right margins created at PHASE 1.

Taking ownership of our health means making choices about what we EAT DRINK TAKE MAKE. These choices we are making are feeding ‘good’ bacteria in our gut or they are feeding ‘bad’ bacteria in our gut that can than lead to SIBO, for example.


Safe, clinical, practical and effective.


Call  020 7060 3181