Having been vegan for nine years, like everything my tastes and preferences have really evolved.

One of the biggest changes came during the Corona Virus quarantine. Initially I found myself leaning towards comfort foods and baking more than usual. I love cooking and also find it incredibly relaxing. Coupled with the lessening of exercise, within a week or so I felt bloated and my sleep was very hap-hazard and I was becoming incredibly intolerant of any sugar of caffeine - feeling that weird mixture of being both tired and wired at the same time shortly after consuming.

Instinctively I knew I needed a cleanse. I have completed four residential detoxes which you can see >Here< and >Here< and whilst they are tough at the time, I always feel the benefits. Last year was a whirl of work, and a wide swinging pendulum on the emotional scale, and I was too busy to retreat at all. I also didn’t want to.

Quarantine presented us all with challenges but also I saw the perfect opportunity to do a detox that I had put on the long finger. In the absence of social commitments that element was immediately solved. I had embarked on a series of live interviews on my Instagram every evening with a different wellness practitioner but otherwise my work wasn’t as busy as before. Intuitively I knew this was the time.

I began on a Wednesday taking the first two days of the week to prepare myself and embarked on one full week of just green juices and herbal teas. I followed this on with a week of green smoothies bulked out with flax and hemp seeds and frozen avocado.

By the final week my tastebuds had reset completely. I no longer craved sugary foods, was sleeping well and wanted to rebuild my diet in a way that truly nourished me.

When you have lived off greens for two weeks it puts a lot into perspective and I realised that I was eating a lot of things because I felt I should, they happened to be there, it was lunchtime, or that I had read they were important to include and all this lead to my digestive system being overpressure and unsupported. I had lost connection with my body in the process.

During the detox I had a lot of time to think about how I wanted to transition back to food and I had one clear thought in my mind. Every bite had to come from a loving perspective. I wanted to make the loving choice for me, my tastebuds and my body. Naturally eating a plant based diet is also the loving choice for the environment too so it truly is a win:win situation.

My diet now consists of four guidelines:

*Avoid Calorie Counting -

Whilst it’s natural to want to eat in a way that encourages us to look and feel our best most people count calories in order to lose or maintain weight, but that's not safe or beneficial because the way we assimilate nutrients and absorb calories depends on the quality of the food and the makeup of your microbiome.

A study published by Dr. David Ludwig (a professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) and colleagues in The Lancet in 2004 suggested that a poor-quality diet could result in weight gain even when it was low in calories.

Nutrient dense foods are often sacrificed when people focus on calorie counting. Successfully transitioning and embracing a vegan diet has personally involved plenty of healthy fats such as avocados, nuts, seeds, tahini and complex carbohydrate sources such as sweet potato which not only taste delicious but have also allowed me maintain high energy levels as well as a healthy weight consistently.

*Embrace Vegan Protein Sources-

Personally when I first transitioned I ate a diet that was dense in carbohydrate ie - energy balls, pastas, breads and vegan ’treats’. Whilst these were simple and delicious, it was only when I consistently began integrating vegan protein sources such as beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh and nuts that my energy felt balanced. However these need quite a bit of work to make them tasty and satisfying.

Reducing meat consumption and adopting more plant based options has numerous studied benefits that truly are the loving choice to make in terms of your health with countless examples of the healing capacities in relation to type two diabetes and heart disease.

Vegan Mozarella recipe in my Mid-Week Meals recipe bundle available >Here<

*Eat The Rainbow & Create Natural Healthy Microbiome

For optimal health, we need a rainbow of nutrients and colors. In
fact, the variety of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables have enormous healing powers.

Eating a diversity of colorful foods can be an easy way to get a complete range of the vitamins and minerals your body needs to thrive.

One of the most important ways to know you’re getting the full array of vitamins, minerals and essential nutrients. Every color reflects a different set of phytonutrients, so by eating the rainbow, you’re ensuring you’re getting all different types. For instance, red plants like tomatoes, watermelon and strawberries tend to contain phytonutrients like lycopene, Vitamin C and anthocyanin. Yellow produce has beta carotene, Vitamin A and alpha carotene. Green plants contain phytonutrients like chlorophyll, iron, magnesium and Vitamin K. Eating the rainbow is a beautiful, visual reminder that food is medicine. These plant nutrients benefit the body and nourish the beneficial bacteria in your gut.

*A diet rich in healthy fats -

Dr Mark Hyman, M.D. Functional Medicine Doctor, Medical Dir. of the Cleveland Clinic and doctor to the Clintons has been quoted as saying -
'Fat is one of the body’s most basic building blocks. The average person is made up of between 15 and 30 percent fat. Yet for decades, we’ve unfairly demonized dietary fat, diligently followed a low-fat diet that almost always equates into a high-sugar and high-refined carb diet that contributes to insulin resistance, obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and numerous other problems’

Often times at demonstrations I am asked about fat content in foods. Personally I've found using the best quality healthy fats in the forms of nuts, seeds, cold pressed oils and avocados has not only given my skin a glow from within that no moisturiser can compete with, it’s also satiating and a studied essential fuel for your brain.

*Amplified Nutrition-

They say the gut is the second brain, but it’s really the first one... ever heard the expression “listen to your gut”? That’s because a healthy gut is linked to intuition and feeling connected. When we are intuitively connected to that element we can connect 'cravings' to showing where we are nutitionally depleted.

We are all time poor and my aim is to make every meal as nutritionally dense and nourishing as possible. On a vegan diet this is even more important.
Simple things such as vitamin B12 enriched nutritional yeast, spices and live sour elements such as apple cider vinegar enhance the flavours and also give a nutritional boost.

Adaptogens are herbal pharmaceuticals that work to counteract the effects of stress in the body. Stress causes very real physical changes in the body, including harming the neurological, endocrine, and immune systems. Adaptogens have stimulant properties that help counteract those harmful effects. Integrating them into smoothies amplifies the nutrient count.

Treats are actually Treats

Initially I had the feeling that anything vegan was somewhat healthy. Whilst energy balls and snack foods and desserts that are homemade are always better for you than processed versions I have them much more sparingly now. I am also far more conscious of the amount of sugar in foods and reading labels in a way I didn’t before and feeling much better for it. I’ve switched to 100% dark chocolate or when I make my own I keep the amount of sweetener to a minimum and for my plant based milks I look for unsweetened versions too. Coming off sugar and refined carbohydrates made during my detox made me realise just how much I was consuming and I am very mindful now to keep an eye on the amount.