Boost My Energy

Healthy snacks that will keep you satisfied and won’t spike your blood sugar to give you a sugar crash👍
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When you snack, it’s important to remember one rule: snack food is just there to tie your hunger over between your main meals. Poor choices of snack foods (tea & biscuits, for example) will cause your blood sugar to rise❗️which will then lead to you wanting to eat more foods of the same kind soon afterwards. This creates a perpetual cycle 🍪where you overeat due to choosing a wrong type of snack.
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My TOP HEALTHY snacks:
🫐handful of raspberries or blueberries + pecan nuts
🥕vegetable sticks (carrots, cucumbers, peppers) + almond or cashew butter
🍌pot of Greek yogurt + sliced banana + cinnamon
🧀cubes of hard cheese (try Manchego) + yellow pepper strips or sugarsnap peas. Or any veg of your choice.

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I’m off skiing, guys!
It’s time to put those hard-trained glutes to use 😉😅
There’s plenty of snow, love love Austria!

I’ll be off all social media for a week, hope everyone has an awesome week.
Love, Katya 🧡

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When you have IBS, you’re told there is no cure and you should eat more fibre. Not very helpful, indeed. There are different types of fibre, and nearly everyone has a different patchwork-relationship with fibre - you are ok with some veg and some beans, but not ok with fruit, or can tolerate fruit, but can’t eat beans, or you still haven’t figured out which fibre types aggravate your symptoms.
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The reason fibre causes bowel discomfort is because some foods cause bacterial interactions in the gut that create gas which further can lead to pain or discomfort. The physical state of the fibre type has a major impact on gas production by creating different compounds.
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Make sure you include psyllium husks in your diet to help heal IBS. Phyllium husks are a type of soluble fibre which has shown in research to promote the creation of the beneficial bacteria in the gut helping to heal the intestinal lining. Psyllium produces a jelly-like material called mucilage, which forms long-chain sugars - polysaccharides. It is these polysaccharides that lead to the production of beneficial short-chain fatty acids that positively contribute to healing inflamed gut lining.
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Psyllium husks are really easy to incorporate into your daily eating - most often sold in powder form, sprinkle it on top of Greek or natural yogurt, add them to porridge, include them in your protein smoothies. They don’t have any specific taste, so hardly noticeable at all.
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In a recent study where participants received 10g of psyllium per day it was shown the severity of their IBS symptoms were significantly reduced.

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How often do you eat a kiwi? Do you know you could boost your mood by just including a kiwi regularly in your diet?
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Aww... we, in the nutrition world, like it when whole foods get a boost of publicity. Study published in the British Journal of Nutrition showed that eating kiwi can improve mood and vitality better than a vitamin C supplement!
Participants of the study had no mental health issues or reported low mood before the study.
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During the 4-week study participants were either given a Vitamin C tablet, a placebo tablet or kiwis.
Eating 2 kiwis per day was found to improve vitality and mood within just 4 days!
Interestingly, the quantity of vitamin C per kiwi fruit is around 63-65mg, while the vitamin C supplements given to study group was nearly double - at 250mg.

Message to us all? Eat whole foods, for sure!🥝🍒🥥 And also supplement with vitamin C 😉👍 Vitamin C is a super potent antioxidant working to reduce inflammation in the body; it is also needed as a synergetic agent for quite a number of enzymatic and hormonal functions.

Vitamin C supplement is associated with improvements in general wellbeing, mood and lower score in anxiety and depression. While vitamin C deficiency gives a risk of lower brain functions and higher depression rates.

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“If I have gastro issues, must I give up coffee?” I get this question so many times, especially from people with IBS, that I decided to answer in a post.
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☕️In short, coffee itself has very little to do with most of gastrointestinal problems, it is the form of coffee that people take - such as caramel lattes, frappes with whipped cream and syrups, and any other new coffee drink versions.
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Coffee has lots of health benefits as it is a very potent antioxidant.🤩 The polyphenols in coffee like flavanols improve immune function, slow down ageing, improve brain health, improve cardiovascular health and give us HEALTHIER microbiome!
❗️But the things you may add to your coffee - sugar, syrups, plant milk do disrupt the health of the microbiome and can result in worse symptoms of IBS.
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🥛Why did I mention plant milks here? Because if you are drinking your coffee from the high street, most likely the oat, almond and soya milk they use contain various food additives that are inflammatory - artificial sugars, vegetable oils, etc
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Hope this helps! Enjoy your coffee and look ‘elsewhere’ for the real culprits if you have some gastro upsets.

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This used to be the old dogma - we sleep to gain energy for the following day, to do everything we plan for the day ahead. And then rest again at night.
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We couldn’t be farther from the truth that we now know about the function of sleep. While your physical body is resting, your brain is nearly 30% more active during the night than in the day. Repair, restructure, memory formation, processing of emotions, clearing toxins - these are some of the functions that are vital for the body and are designated for when we sleep.
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So please don’t view sleep as a luxury you get to do sometimes or on a weekend. Treat it as a priority for your longterm health.

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