Nutrition to Flourish

Nourish to Flourish

Nourishing your body with good, wholesome, natural foods is essential for postnatal recovery and your health long term. It is absolutely key to your core and pelvic floor function long term.

For your body to flourish and function at it’s best you need to nourish it well.

Sleep deprivation and stress leave you grabbing sugary foods, white carbs and caffeine. They just mess with your gut health, blood sugar levels, hormones and make us sluggish and cranky. (take a look at my blog on Leptin and Ghrelin on this)

Nourishing your body with good nutrition is not the same as dieting for weight loss. As a result you probably will lose weight but good nutrition is one key element alongside sleep habits, stress management and exercise etc. Your body needs you to not go on a diet!! It’s needs nourishment!!

Nourishing with good nutrition will set you up to feel healthier, more energized and able to implement other key changes to improve sleep, reduce stress and commit to the right exercise.

Some Key Foundations to Get You Started:

Hydrate: Drink enough water, 1.5 to 2L a day. (reducing caffeine, alcohol and squash)

Rainbow veg: Getting a variety of veg into your diet, all the colours of the rainbow. Covering all your essential vitamins and minerals. Add to every meal and chop up ready for snacks.

Protein: At every meal, especially breakfast. These are the building blocks of collagen production and muscle repair. Fuel for your body to sustain you and keep you from snacking too.

Healthy Fats: You need healthy, full fat foods such as Greek yoghurt and avocado’s, salmon. Know your good and bad fats.

Reduce processed foods and sugars: They really effect our gut health, blood sugar levels, mood swings, hormone imbalances, energy levels and immunity in a negative way. Set a realistic goal to start reducing these or totally cutting them out. Think of yummy, healthy alternatives you can have ready to grab.

Top tips in our home:

Roasted veg. Chop up any veg of various colours. Pop in a pan with garlic infused oil and herbs, shoogle about. Pop in the oven for 20 min and add to any meal. You can freeze it in portions too to add to meals.

Mixed berries in yoghurt with seeds sprinkled on top.

I love oatcakes with cottage cheese and avocado and copped up peppers with cucumber, baby leaf salad and mixed peppers for my lunch. Always really handy using left over chicken etc from dinners to stir into your lunch. I stir spinach into anything and everything too.

Soups packed with veg and made with broth/stock are great for lunch too. You can freeze it in portions.

Egg and banana pancakes topped with blueberries, rasberries, cinnamon and yoghurt. (whisk up mashed banana, egg, flaxseed, almond flour, oats and pumpkin seeds. Pour into a pancake pan, when the edges turn golden remove and pop under the grill to cook the top)

Poached egg on wholegrain toast.

Oats porridge with chia seeds, berries and cinnamon.

(cinnamon is sweet and replaces the craving for adding sugar or syrup and has lots of benefits too)

Can you tell I love my breakfast! Have way more ideas I get excited to share about breakfast than any other meal 😊.

Why not take a look at some of my other blogs on healthy fats and nutrition for recovery with more recipes.