cooking – Never Give Up PT

Keema Made In The Paella Pan

I make most of my sauces, especially those that demand a spicy bite, in the paella pan these days. I first made an arrabbiata sauce in the paella pan. I found that I could spread the ingredients much easier in the large area of the pan and mix the spices more evenly. I also like to cook and eat with my eyes. The different colours inspire me and I can see them better in a paella pan. It also means that I can batch cook and I am a big fan of batch cooking. It’s one of the changes that I recommended when a client came to me with dietary concerns.

Life can be super stressful at the best of times and after a busy day with work and other errands it is difficult to find time to prepare healthy meals. So I know from past experience that an oven pizza or a takeaway is a convenient way to eat. But if you’ve already got a selection of healthy sauces that you prepared in the freezer then it can be a box ticked off of the stress list. Just cook a bit of rice or pasta and wait for the microwave to ping!

Today I woke up wanting to make an Indian style curry. We don’t have an Indian or Chinese restaurant in Sertá so that itch needs to be scratched occasionally by cooking these meals at home. To be fully authentic and to give a nod to our previous life in England, I would like to put my curry sauce in a tub with a foil lid, place it in a brown paper bag, knock on our front door after an hour and a half and charge £30 for it. But thus far I have refrained from doing so.

Keema, or Qeema in Urdu, is a north Indian and Pakistani dish that literally means ground mince. Today I chose turkey (peru in Portuguese). It’s just what I had in my freezer and it is cheaper meat here, so we often have it available to us at home. It means that with a big jar of passata, a few onions, a couple of garlic cloves, chopped ginger, and a frozen bag of veg, it’s a cost effective meal for the family with the bonus of the batch factor!

My favourite curry is vindaloo or even hotter. I ordered a Phaal in a restaurant once and had the waiters and chefs sniggering by the kitchen door as they watched my head turn bright red as I took my first bite. It was painful and remained so for the next 24 hours, but it was also extremely enjoyable (the first hour, not so much the next 23). I always order vindaloo/phaal, three chapatis and a portion of chips in an Indian restaurant. No shares. Whoever I’m with can’t do any of that sharing half and half shenanigans. It’s mine. I ordered it. Want a chip? Then order some! Every one of my chips has a job to do, especially at the end of the meal when I need to ‘mop up’ the remaining deadly sauce.

But at home I’m a little bit more relaxed with my choices and my sharing habits. I’m fine with making a curry less spicy for my wife and kids and I’m ok with cooking rice. I usually leave out the chips too for a healthier meal, but I do provide wraps or chapatis. It’s still important to mop at the end, right?

So here’s the final result! All plated and ready to eat! Let me know your favourite meals to cook and, importantly, tell me if you’re a sharer in a restaurant or not in the comments.

Artic Roll

We provide the kids with packed lunches each day for school. There are a few reasons for this but the main reason is that Lou and I can inspect their lunch boxes at the end of their school day to make sure they’ve been eating enough.

We usually include a sandwich or wrap, crisps, a pepperami stick and vegetable sticks. They do, in case you were wondering, a very good job of eating it all (apart from the occasional sorry looking carrot stick in at the bottom of the bag).

But this morning our youngest, Finlay (6) asked if he could have a school meal next Wednesday. ‘Of course!’ I replied. ‘What’s so special about Wednesday’s meal?’

‘They do ice cream with sponge around it.’ He said.

The memories of my own childhood came flooding back. I remember eating this ice cream wrapped in sponge while watching Hi-Di-Hi every Saturday. This delicious dessert is the arctic roll. Or artic roll as I called it as a kid and probably did up until my 30’s.

I don’t recall many experiences of eating an arctic roll as an adult, but since Finlay reminded me of it all I’ve wanted all day is to eat one!

I had a sweet tooth as a child but rarely eat sweet puddings these days, but I do know that these old skool dinner puds are still available in UK supermarkets. Puddings such as jam roly poly, spotted dick, rice pudding and apple crumble.

I wonder if anyone has any more of their classic favourites that bring back childhood memories? Let me know in the comments!

Finlay Tries A Snail

It’s been really difficult in the past to get Finlay to try new foods and will usually stick to what he knows and likes, mostly cheddar cheese and milk!

However, we had a breakthrough moment tonight as he tried a snail! In fact he ended up having two and then spat a third one out because it was a bit grainy.

I don’t think we’ll be adding them to the shopping list again though, but at least he attempted something new.

A Cheesy Joke

A big motivation for me to write my blogs was always to dispel the myths surrounding our health and fitness so that we could safely enter a fitness program or nutritional journey without wading through the murky waters that are bogus articles, magic pill advertisements and other fitness professionals giving out misinformation.

A fitness goal should be fun to embark on without unnecessary jargon, untruths and charlatans making it stressful.

And so I feel it necessary to come to the defense of the humble cheese, grilled or not grilled, for my latest findings. As this week, a gym member approached me to ask if it was true that grilled cheese adds more calories to non grilled cheese.

This is a very valid question, especially when you consider that it was a fitness professional who told her. After all, they’re the ones in the know right?!

But after thinking about how this could possibly be, the gym member looked for a second opinion. I must admit, the logic and the simplicity of the answer that I wanted to give (a resounding no it doesn’t!) Couldn’t leave my mouth. It could be that the fitness professional had done their research into this and knew more than me on the subject. So I said that I doubt it, but I’ll do some digging and find out for sure!

Rule number one for any budding Personal Trainers out there…don’t be afraid to say that you aren’t sure but you’ll get back to them with an answer. And even if you do know the answer, say that you don’t know but you’ll get back to them. You want their contact details remember! But it also stops you from being a bit of a know-it-all and, as this post suggests, one day you’ll give a wrong answer without doing your research.

Ok, back to cheese.

My findings were clear and just as I had thought. The calories do not get any higher from grilling it.

However, and this is perhaps where the confusion lies, it becomes easier for the body to digest cooked food therefore the body works less than when digesting raw food resulting in the body burning less calories. But the numbers are small. It’s like having 8p in your piggy bank when you need to save £20,000. It won’t make a huge dent.

Still, this doesn’t apply to grilled cheese. But could there be another reason to believe that grilled cheese is higher in calories than non grilled cheese?

Hmm. There is a theory that we tend to over indulge when we eat cheese on toast or toasties. We might add butter or use oil before applying the cheese perhaps, or maybe choose white bread instead of wholemeal. Yet it doesn’t change the caloric make up of cheese. The issue here is on a person’s food prep habits, not the cheese. It’s like feeling bloated after eating a full strawberry cheesecake and blaming the strawberries.

I love cheese. I’ll eat it in some form almost daily. Although I wouldn’t advise following my addiction to cheese and eating too much of it too often, I would recommend eating a cheese toasty or a cheese on toast occasionally.

It’s even better on cheap white bread, but don’t tell anyone I told you so.

Smoothie Does It!

Like with most kids (and many adults) they can be fussy around certain foods. Textures, tastes and smells can put a kid right off. If only a banana looked like a chicken dipper!

My youngest has started to check his food to the extend of him looking at a slice of melon like Gil Grissom analysing a crime scene.

Finlay examines the black bits on the watermelon

And I must admit, there are foods that I wouldn’t be too fond of eating if they were put on a plate for me. Medjool dates are a prime example. But if I prepare them with lots of other fruit and vegetables into a smoothie then I can enjoy them.

I have found this with my kids, especially if they prepare their own smoothies and experiment with different ingredients then there is a much greater chance of them getting the nutrients and vitamins that they need without the fuss.

This morning they prepared a banana, strawberry, orange juice and spinach smoothie. They hate bananas and spinach and my youngest doesn’t like strawberries, but they enjoyed the process of creating their own smoothie and were pleased with what they had come up with. They felt empowered.

I have a smoothie at least once a day. A zesty citrus ensemble on a morning and usually a banana, milk and protein powder later in the afternoon. I find that smoothies can…

* Stops the hunger pangs and feeling snacky.

*Wake me up on a morning.

* Fit into my calorie and macro goals and I am getting the fibre into my body that I wouldn’t get if I were eating a meal.

Although I would never consider them a meal replacement, I do put ingredients into a smoothie that I would not make into a meal. I know that I wouldn’t eat the recommended daily fruit and veg that I need if I had to prepare it as part of a meal. I enjoy cooking, but sometimes life doesn’t allow us the time to spend on making the perfect balanced meal. This is why the convenience of a smoothie maker works for me and my family.

One of my biggest concerns is for my kids to be getting good nutritious food into them each day. It’s a constant battle. And when I know what they have as school dinners the need to feed them proper food at home is even more important. I’m not looking for clean eating and banning foods for me or my kids, but a balanced approach is a sensible one. And so far it’s working!

Father’s Day

Father’s Day and the whole of the weekend was a nutritional disaster. Well, actually it wasn’t. I bloody loved my low value nutritional feast! What’s disastrous about that? But here’s why I allowed such a diet and why I can look back at a great weekend guilt free…

On Saturday (the day before Father’s Day) I met up with my dad with my family and his friends in a beer garden at Cayton Bay. Firstly I was happy to drive. A few hours drinking in the sun doesn’t appeal to me like it did once upon a time. I have kids, I have an online business that can require my attention at any time and I’m a tight Yorkshireman. Pints were £1.50 the last time I had any interest in drinking all day in a pub beer garden. So me not drinking didn’t have anything to do with my diet which requires me to be in a calorie deficit. I made up with it with the BBQ that the pub had provided.

On the Sunday we travelled to see my in laws. Graham’s famous paella was on offer plus burgers and chips. It was on offer so, of course, I ate it. Over the two days here’s what I had to eat in total…

* 6 scrambled eggs with two slices of tiger bread

* 4 cheese burgers

* 1 wild boar hot dog

* beef curry and fried rice takeaway

* 4 portions of chips

* Seafood salad

* 1 family sized bar of chocolate

* half box of Pringles

My protein is actually quite high from the weekend, but so are my calories! And I don’t care.

There are occasions in the year that we need to give ourselves a break. I’m dedicated to my goals but, because I’m dedicated, I don’t allow my goals to become a chain around my neck. I make sure that I don’t resent my goals or the process. I’m not an athlete. Yes, I’m a Personal Trainer but I’m also a regular person that wants to enjoy family holidays, Christmas, anniversaries and family gatherings. I’m not a footballer going to bed early on Christmas night because of the early kick off on Boxing Day. Pay me a Premier League wage and I’ll do it!

But I am mentally prepared for what these ‘breaks’ within my goals will require. It means that today, the day after my indulgence, I have to become disciplined again. By the end of the week any added calories from the weekend will be balanced out with structure and commitment. I can still enjoy these moments with my family and bring my nutrition, macros and calories back in line without anxiety.

I chose to binge and over indulge at the weekend. I now choose to track calories and my nutrition. I choose to train hard this week and at least make use of all the energy that I put into my body! It is all my choice. Not once did I feel out of control.

I work with some people who are trying to find that balance. One high calorie and low nutrition day can create their eating habits to spiral. One day leads to another. And another. They become frustrated and angry with themselves and they feel like giving in.

But I need to tell them and anyone who will listen that they don’t have to! One, two bad days. Jeez even a week of poor choices doesn’t ruin their hard work. What they do with their next week might and the week after that perhaps. Because that is where habits begin to form. But a few days? No. Not if they remain in control.

We can choose the high calorie and low nutrition foods if we know that we won’t be anxious about it. Enjoy it and move on. But it’s the moving on that is the vital component. We need to move on from poor food choices.

I felt great this morning. I had a lovely weekend celebrating Father’s Day. I ate what I wanted with no regrets and I was ready to focus once again. In many ways I think I needed that weekend. I needed to break the monotony of my structure. As much as I enjoy my structure, I like burgers and Chinese takeaway too!

And Here’s The Icing On The Cake…

The saying “You can’t outrun a bad diet” is true. Because eventually your poor choices will catch up with you and running will become harder anyway. But if you have structure with your meals and in your workouts then you can outrun a poor day, weekend or holiday. And then the only reason it would be poor is if you didn’t enjoy it and you became anxious about the calorie density of each choice. It would only be poor if you allowed yourself to form negative habits around food.

I enjoy food. All food. But I remain in control and look forward to another occasion where I can over indulge again. But until then, I choose to be in control of my diet and enjoy the process and its results.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. See you soon!

Becoming Process Focussed, Not Outcome Focussed

I want to share with you the difference between a Process Focussed attitude and an Outcome Focussed attitude. Because when you can give yourself a little tap on the shoulder and remind yourself of the process then the outcome will eventually happen. I promise.

It All Needs A Process

I am so, so good at this in the gym with myself and my clients. I focus entirely on the process. That is my job. It’s what I am trained and disciplined in. But outside of the gym I have goals that I want now…right this second! And in frustration of not being able to get them right now means that the process gets crumpled up and torn like a handy pocket road map that has been stomped on during my tantrums. Had I kept a level head, the road map would still be intact and it would be easier to follow. The tap on the shoulder from myself, a professional, a partner or a friend can work wonders in working out the process for anything. A career move, a life skill, family life and health and fitness goals. It all needs a process.

Sometimes we just see a 10k run, a dress size, a one rep max or a weight loss target. The finer details of how we are getting there is the real key.

In football, the skill isn’t knowing that you need to score more goals than the opposition, it is how you’re going to do it. You can give any sporting example of this and it remains the same. The process needs to be the focus. The outcome harbours great rewards, but without the process you won’t get there.

Frustrations Of The Outcome Focus

So I’m not getting on my high horse here and telling you that I do everything perfectly and you need to step up. You might be able to help me find my process in other aspects of life with your skills. But I’m here to talk about fitness goals. And I’ve been prompted to give it a mention because the gym is full of outcome focussed people. They press, lift, run and jump without any attention to their process. They just want the results. And this can lead to frustration and in many cases injury.

And when you figure out a process for one thing, other parts of your life can begin to take shape too. Have you ever experienced getting a promotion in your career and found that your relationships in your private life improved? You have followed a process and met deadlines, hit targets, gave your colleagues morale boosts or took them under your wing and you got rewarded in your promotion. This made you feel good in other aspects of your life too.

It’s the same in your fitness goals. Once you begin a process in your fitness goals then you begin to focus on your day to day tasks that make up the little wins. And it’s not just about doing this in a gym. Imagine going for a walk with a friend or a partner away from the daily grind. Here you can discuss your ambitions, your feelings or put the world to rights. You feel great and you’ve managed a few thousand steps as well. Make this a regular exercise and you have started the process for your mental and physical health.

Becoming process focussed takes away the big issue that seems, at times, unobtainable…the outcome. To grow muscle you can’t just lift heavy stuff a lot. To lose weight healthily you can’t just eat less. To get a job promotion you can’t just turn up to an interview. To make a relationship work you can’t just add them as a Facebook friend. You need to work hard at a process that works to get the things that you want.

Small Victories Are Important

Focussing on the outcome will keep us bitter and when we have no way of getting there we give up. In my Coaching App it’s exactly what I do for hundreds of people. I’m the tap on the shoulder that reminds them of the process and enables people to reach their goals without even realising. That’s because they have enjoyed a journey that took them way beyond the anxieties of ‘ needing to lose a couple of stone’. They did that, but also found that they were in control of their life much more than when they had no direction. It became a foundation for their success. Focus and celebrate the small victories. It’s those that become the big ones.

Thank you for reading my article. If you need further advice on where to begin with your fitness process then do get in touch. I might be able to help.

Where’s Mi Cheese?

Cheese is grate, but this is just for the kids dinner.

Allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Shay. I’m a Personal Trainer from Scarborough, UK, who does a really crap Wallace And Gromit impression. My wife, Lou, is from Wensleydale and after hearing just about the whole world shout “Where’s mi cheese Gromit?!” Every time she says where she is from, she can confirm that mine is one of the worst.

Hmmmm. Cheese though. It’s nice.

And in the past few weeks I have limited my cheese eating for the sake of a recent calorie cut. Around May each year I begin to make slight adjustments to my diet and I take my calorie consumption into a deficit. But notice how I say ‘limited’ my cheese consumption. I have reduced the amount that I eat each week so that I am no longer eating stilton and crackers every night.

It also means that instead of drinking the Off License dry I will stick to a few gin and tonics on a weekend.

And if an occasion crops up where others are eating and drinking in celebration then I might partake in a (large) slither of cheese and a (goldfish bowl size) glass of Rioja. This Daddy won’t be hungry or thirsty on Father’s Day!

I will be fairly strict, however, in my day to day nutrition to stick to my deficit. But I won’t be banning anything. I’m not out to punish myself. I don’t want it to make me unhappy. I like food. I like training. I like results. Those three work well together if they are managed sensibly. So there has to be compromises if I want these results and stay happy.

To create my deficit I am not particularly changing my lifestyle in any major way. Sure, I need to change certain habits for it to work. I need to remain mindful of my goals. And most importantly, I must stay focussed on why I want these goals. It’s not just for the aesthetics.

Negative habits can escalate. Before you know it you’ve drunk alcohol ever night this week. The jeans or dress stays in the wardrobe for another year. You won’t be fitting into that anytime soon. It’s depressing. Out comes the huge slab of Cheddar and a pack of Jacobs crackers for comfort again. And then a bar of chocolate to sweeten the palate. The habit grows stronger.

I’m 43 now. I don’t want to be a knackered old dad who can hardly run up and down the park playing Tig with my kids. I don’t want my dad to have to bury me. I don’t want to leave Lou to bring up two kids on her own while she tries to answer their questions of why daddy died.

“He drank every night, didn’t exercise properly and ate crap every day kids.” Isn’t what I want my kids to hear.

“He was hit by a bus”. Sounds much cooler if I’ve really got to leave this mortal realm before full time.

Creating these targets and goals throughout the year keeps me on my toes. It brings me back down to earth. I’ll eat what I like, but I’ll spread the love a little thinner for a while rather than binging on it day after day.

So if you hear me asking “Where’s mi cheese?” In a really bad Wallace voice, then ignore me. Lou does.

Ask to join my app if you would like to try the Balanced Plate Challenge with me and my trainees!

Are Meal Plans Any Good?

I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have moments of sadness, anxiety, general pissed offness or, in many cases, depression. At some level, we all suffer from these emotions.

Out of all of the people that I have ever known to be in either a low mood or in the full depths of depression around 99% of these people will, to some extent, lose control of their eating habits. A busy lifestyle, work, family stuff, bills, illness, body image and the curve ball that everyday life throws at us can all contribute to that.

And this is the one reason why I don’t understand prescribed meal plans created by Personal Trainers to their clients. These meal plans can range from £50 to thousands of pounds in my experience. I’m open to hear from anybody who has had a positive experience with a meal plan that somebody else has created for you. I don’t want to dismiss it completely. I just don’t get it. How can anybody fully comply with a meal plan?! Unless you’re an elite athlete and it is your job, I don’t see how you can.

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Here are my top concerns with meal plans and non compliance…

1. Your friends decide to go out for a meal and invite you. Will the restaurant’s menu include the delightful Baked chicken tenders with five cherry tomatoes, a quarter cup of diced cucumber and one teaspoon of light French dressing which is what your PT has told you to eat tonight? You think not, so you decline their offer.

2. You’ve been to the gym early this morning and worked hard in your job up to lunch time. You’re hungry as you have used up a lot of energy. Yet the one large pear followed by the one large boiled egg worth 210 calories in your lunch box doesn’t really appeal to you. You eat it but your belly is left rumbling for the rest of your shift.

3. You take your fourth Jacket potato of the week out of the oven and think, ‘I just can’t face another one!’ And the tuna with light mayonnaise is becoming a chore too.

Each scenario adds to a little bit more resentment and, ultimately, lack of compliance. You keep crashing. You feel demoralised. You begin to wonder what the point of the whole process is. You’re unhappier than before.

I have found that to reach weight loss goals we have to identify why it is that we think a meal plan needs to be put in place. I haven’t met anybody who is overweight not know that an apple is better for them than a bag of crisps. Or a spinach salad with light dressing is better than a pizza. I believe that we over eat or choose less nutritionally dense foods due to our emotions. The strongest food cravings often hit at our weakest point emotionally. We can find comfort in food several times a day, consciously or sub consciously.

And without doubt the fast food chains and endless promotions on low nutritional food are always on hand to give us a little ‘pick me up’. The temptations are everywhere, but will they go away just because Zoe from TeknoGym wrote you a meal plan? If I’m entirely honest I’d be more inclined to get a pizza slice from Greggs than face another open face waffle sandwich, just to piss Zoe off.

You need to stop labelling foods good, bad, treat or syn. Your relationship with food will only end up being a negative one. And rather than having a fixed meal plan written by someone else, you can start developing a plan that works for you. Batch cook some of your favourite sauces, make a list of the nutritious foods that you should be enjoying often but make sure that you are still allowing yourself the foods that you can enjoy less often. Identify your triggers. If you know that a stressful incident at work or at home is followed by eating a family sized bar of chocolate then replace it from your cupboards or desk drawer with either something sweet but smaller or, if you’re feeling ready, replace it with carrot sticks, fruit, nuts or seeds.

Little changes make a big difference. These little changes are far more effective that one massive overhaul of your diet. You don’t need the perfect diet. You want the one that works for you in the long term.

An Apple A Day…

I wasn’t really encouraged greatly to eat my fruit and veg as a kid. It was often there on my plate but there were never any reason to eat it. The chips and sausages or ice cream for dessert was always much more appealing.

But during the 80’s the information that we received was very different to what we get now. And although we can still get incredibly misleading information these days, one thing that is a fact according to just about every piece of research that has been done on the subject, is that fruit and vegetables are extremely good for us.

And yet a recent survey of England said that just 28% of adults were eating the recommended fruit and veg a day, which is 5 a day in the UK and in many other European countries this has gone up to 8 a day. Even more depressing to me is that the survey came back with just 18% of children aged between 5 and 15 were eating 5 portions a day in England. The survey was done in 2018 by the NHS. With an increase in the cost of living and families struggling to feed their kids in the UK today, I can’t imagine that those figures have improved.

Indeed, with the meals that are on offer at my kids school which, I must add is an otherwise fantastic school, I know that they’re going without one portion of fruit or veg for at least 6 hours of the day on most days. Outside caterers are in charge of this and, like with most privatisation, I don’t have faith in a person centred approach.

But then we can blame school caterers, restaurants, supermarkets, media, the government or whoever else influence ours and our kids diets, but fundamentally it is our choice. Certainly for most families in the UK, despite the increase in the cost of living, we choose whether we eat our 5 a day or not.

If you have read my previous articles you might have gathered that I’m not a regular PT. Or at least I’m not like the influencers that want you to eat chicken and broccoli three times a day ‘for those gainz bruh!’ and I’m not in the gym training myself for hours or weighing out my rice from my Tupperware box.

I like kebabs, Greggs sausage rolls, wine, gin and tonic, takeaways and cheese. I have kids who like crisps, chocolate and chicken dippers. My wife and I enjoy meals out without looking at the calories column before ordering the main course. We are busy getting our kids ready for school while making breakfast, preparing our work schedules and picking up dirty undies and socks to go into the wash before we leave the house. That is real life. I’m lucky if I finish my coffee on a morning.

And that, I expect, is what most of my trainees do in their lives too. Life can be chaotic. Counting how many pieces of fruit and veg you’ve had might not even enter your head. And that was me. For years I didn’t really give it much thought. The token spoonful of peas would gatecrash onto my plate from time to time and I’d eat the odd banana. But being mindful of my diet was not a concern of mine. I trained hard so, in my eyes, what I saw in the mirror was all that mattered.

A few changing points happened to me which made me think very hard about my nutrition. Firstly, I met my wife. She is an excellent cook and cooking together became a part of our evenings. This I would suggest to anybody. Learn to love cooking. We don’t have to be Jamie Oliver. Just spend a bit of time in the kitchen with the food you’re about to eat.

Then I went on my PT course to be a Fitness Instructor and Personal Trainer. The course itself was fairly basic in all honesty, but it gave me a thirst for knowledge. I wanted to know how our bodies moved and what each muscle was called and what it did. I wanted to understand how our bodies function and survive and I studied our bodies need for the right nutrition. I still do. I don’t know it all. I never will. A good PT will sometimes tell you that they don’t know, but will find out when you ask them a question. A poor one will feed you any old shit for them to look clever and gain a new client.

Lastly, I noticed a difference in my performance. Obviously in the gym, where I began lifting heavier and training for longer without having to stop. My PB’s went through the roof at 35 and they’re still going up at 43. But also, outside of the gym my mood was lifted, I became a better person and I had more energy for my kids. My body was feeling fuelled on good food. This alone made me like the foods that I had previously ignored.

But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the foods I liked before. I still like kebabs, Greggs sausage rolls, drink wine and gin and tonic, takeaways and I’m a sucker for stilton on a cream cracker. I have just become more mindful of how much of it I consume. I never banned these foods from my life. Had I done that I suspect that I would have resented the nutritious foods.

My youngest is a fruit and veg dodger. As a toddler we had concerns about his eating and the health visitor suggested that we feed him cake or basically anything that he would eat! His weight was low and we just had to try anything at all for him to get to a reasonable weight. It was a stressful time and even now he is extremely fussy. Our eldest will eat pretty much anything. For our youngest, however, each mealtime is like a bush tucker trial. We keep introducing new fruit and veg along with his favourite cheese wrap and now at almost 6 he is understanding the need to eat vegetables with his meals. He is still a small eater but he is doing much better. As long as he gets his cheese wrap he’s happy to eat the carrot sticks.

You shouldn’t underestimate how important nutritional food is, but that doesn’t mean that you have to ditch the Pringles either! Just find that balance and be more mindful with your food. The positive fuel is almost instant. Imagine what a consistent balanced plate can do for you?

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