how to quit sugar in the New Year

Posted on December 31st, 2012

Perhaps you’re playing with the idea of quitting sugar for 2013. To get well. And bright. And happy. Yes?

Diptic

Some of the treats I invite you to eat when you quit sugar. Clockwise from top left: bacon and egg cupcakes, avocado and coconut water popsicles, almond butter bark, crunchy nut cheesecake, berry pie, coco nutty granola.

Look, I’m not one to to sell in things with fanfare. I will simply say: quitting sugar works. And then I will gently invite you: to try it for yourself. How does it work? What will it take? How do you do it?

1. Eat fat. And wine.

Yes, my I Quit Sugar program requires you to eat more haloumi cheese and meat (if you’re not vegan or vego), macadamia nuts, homemade chocolate, coconut, and avocado popsicles. And, yes, you can still drink wine and beer and some spirits (in case you’re worried).

2. Don’t diet.

I hate diets. Quitting sugar is not a diet. It’s not miserable, you eat more, you eat without guilt. And it’s not a fad; I don’t do fads either.

It’s about cutting out processed food and eating like our grandmother’s used to. Simple. Non-faddish.

3. Know that you will lose weight.

Some people lose 2kg. Some lose 55kg. By eating more. Weight loss is not the focus, though. Because watching your weight Read more

Merry Christmas my friends!

Posted on December 24th, 2012

Just a little note. To say Merry Christmas to you all. And to share some thoughts that bubbled forth while I was driving from Sydney to Canberra yesterday, through two massive hail storms and with temperatures bouncing from 37C to 14C and everywhere in between. It was Big Stuff. I watched as lightening struck and, then, ten minutes later, fires bloomed along the horizon.

Image by Sarah Illenberger

And this is what I think about Christmas. It’s a very emotionally charged time of year. You’ve probably heard about Emoto’s experiments with water that show how our emotions can affect water molecules (bad human moods destroy the structure, good ones make them as perfectly pretty as snowflakes).

Well, let’s have a think about what happens when A LOT – LIKE BILLIONS – of humans around the world charge up their emotions on the same day? That’s a lot of energy buzzing about, shifting water molecules around the planet. Creating spot fires. Tears. Bigness.

Christmas is a whole heap of build up. The period becomes highly charged. Loaded. All that heightened expectation, yearning, need for connection, loneliness, sadness, reminders of past hurt and love…it’s heavy stuff.

I feel it. Every year I find myself crying at Christmas. Not from sadness, but from  A LOT OF FRIGGEN EMOTION. It all feels very big. I’m not sure if you’re the same.
It’s a good thing, if you can just acknowledge it with a smile.

Anyway, I raise a glass to you all and wish you a wonderfully EMOTIONAL and BIG festive period and hope you can let the expectation, yearning, reminders and sadness just wash on past. And that you can smile and know we’re all in this together!

PS The team will be mostly offline until January 7, but I might post some musings during the period, if it strikes me.

I love food, hate waste: silo by joost

Posted on December 20th, 2012

I’ve been doing a bit of a series of posts on eliminating as much food waste as possible. You can catch up here and here. Today I’m sharing an interview I did with Joost Bakker, an anti-waste dynamo who owns the cafe Silo by Joost in Melbourne. I’d read a bit about the guy: he’s built a fire-proof straw bale house made entirely of recycled stuff in the Yarra Valley, and launched a piss-powered pop-up restaurant (yes, powered by urine). I loved the sound of him. In a gorgeous moment of serendipity I ran into him during a photo shoot my mate Marija was doing at her studios of Melbourne’s Top 100, um, Melbourne people for Melbourne Magazine. I went in to his cafe the next day to learn more about how he does his thing and shot this bodgy video. I thought you might find it inspiring…

YouTube Preview Image

In the video you can learn about:

* the best way to eat oats….so that they’re actually nutritious and retain their protein and can help depression (it’s all to do with restoring the health of our guts).

* how there’s no need to buy organic oats. They’re naturally pesticide free. There you go!

* another great argument against bottled water: water is a living thing and is best taken when flowing from a tap.

Feel free to share with me any anti-food wastage initiatives you know of…I’m going to keep spreading the good word…

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