Nutrition and Lifestyle

Modern life is great

We have never had so many choices and possibilities, or gadgets and gizmos at our disposal as we do now, but life in the modern world can be time consuming and energy-sapping.

Juggling work, play and family life can leave us too little time to think about a nutritious menu plan, so we over-rely on convenience foods and ready meals. Whilst this approach gets us through the next few days, this lifestyle will have a lasting effect on your future health and wellbeing.

With a little planning and nutritional insight, you can still lead that busy life but have more energy, more time and most importantly, a healthier future.

Plan for a healthy week

Plan your meals for the week ahead making sure you build in plenty of healthy options. Plan to ‘cook from scratch’ when you have the time and only rely on convenience foods when you know you are going to be short of time. 

Create a shopping list from your meal plan, and stick to it, to make sure you buy what you need - you will almost certainly buy fewer snacks and ready meals. Most people find they save money by shopping this way.

It is relatively easy to cook up a nutritious and tasty meal in 30 mins, so cooking from scratch needn’t be a chore. 

Look out for some low cost, low calories, time-saving recipes in my blog.

Gain some nutritional insight

Processed food contains lots of additives - added preservatives so that the food has a long shelf life and added salt and sugar so that the food tastes OK. Preservatives like these are implicated in many of the chronic diseases we see today in the UK – diabetes, high blood pressure, intestinal disorders, cancer, tooth decay, allergy… the list goes on.

Eliminating as many food additives as possible from our diet will reduce our chances of developing these diseases.

A quick look at the labels on the food in our cupboards can be very revealing; you may be surprised at how many additives there are - even in foods that are promoted as being ‘healthy’. 

Cooking your own food, from scratch, is the surest way to cut additives from your diet but that’s not to say that all ready meals and snacks are off limits. Learn how to read the nutritional information on food packets and make an informed choice as to what you put in your body.

Look out for my blog on how to read food labels and get new insights into what you’re eating.