Sweet potato toast topped with courgette hummus and avocado
Sweet potatoes sliced, toasted and topped. It’s as simple as that. If you’re aiming to add more wholesome foods into your diet simply, this is one way to do it. Using sweet potato is super easy meal to change up your breakfast, lunch or brunch!
Sweet potato toast is also a brilliant choice for anyone who looking for a gluten-free option.
Sweet potatoes are full of nourishment and support the regulation of blood sugar levels. They’re low on the glycemic index which makes them a good option for anyone who is reviewing how they fuel their body effectively. They’re a strong source of vitamin E which supports the health of our skin as well as potassium which regulates our fluids and helps us to prevent water retention in our body.
How to make sweet potato toast
Peel the skin of the potato or scrub it in water. Sweet potato skin can be treated with wax or chemicals so make sure you remove any nasties before eating.
Wash the potato before slicing the potato length-ways, you want the toast to be long and thin. They should look like rectangles with a rounded edge and have a thickness of around 0.5cm – just under 1cm.
Dry the potato, patting it with kitchen towel before popping it in the toaster.
Everyone’s toaster is different so the first time you make sweet potato toast make sure you keep an eye on it. I pop it down on a medium to high heat and repeat a couple of times. It’s ready when it starts to caramelize and brown slightly.
Watch for the edges so they don’t burn.
Top with your favourite flavours.
I love zesty food for breakfast so I’ve topped mine here with avocado smash (mashed avocados with fresh lemon juice) and homemade courgette hummus, with cherry tomatoes and walnut. This tasted like the most delicious bruschetta.
Anything goes, try any nut butter with banana, a favourite pesto with fresh spinach leaves and pepper, fresh hummus with chargrilled artichokes, a salsa topped with tofu. Anything goes!
“Your perspective is always limited by how much you know. Expand your knowledge and you will transform your mind.” Bruce Lipton
And your body……….
If you think you don’t, or that you won’t ever have a flexible body, there is a strong chance that you never will.
I grew up remembering my gymnastics teacher telling me I’d never be strong or flexible enough and from that day on I always classed a good day from being able to touch my toes. Believe me, that didn’t happen very often.
I was very young when my gymnastics teacher seeded that belief that would become my truth. What she did unknowingly was plant a seed of disbelief in what I thought my body could ever be capable of. This weed continued to grow within my subconscious throughout my childhood and into my adult life. I remember stretching, trying to get into better habits by attempting to stretch every day, but it never lasted long. Deep down, I thought it was all pointless, that my effort would never amount to anything because I didn’t have the right type of body.
If only I had known, what I know now. That gym teacher literally cast a spell over me that day with her words. It was all lies.
Here’s why.
All of us have a flexible body, all of us have the potential to move and shape our body in the way that we desire. You’re now probably wondering how you make that change?
What we have to do first is unravel the belief that is keeping us stuck and then mindfully start working on ourselves. I use EFT to tap on myself regularly about the way I feel about my flexibility. This helps me to bring negative beliefs and emotions to the surface which I can then work through. I have gone from not being able to get my nose on my knees to standing comfortably in forward fold with my nose in-between my knees after 45 minutes of tapping with no yoga or warm up.
“Since everything is a reflection of our minds…. everything can be changed by our minds.” Buddha
The key issue is the conflict between our conscious and subconscious mind. This occurs when our subconscious mind plays the belief in our mind which says “you’ll never be flexible, you’re not strong enough, this isn’t safe”. Even though there are times when we feel positive and optimistic about our ability, our hugely powerful subconscious is thinking “nah, never, there is no chance I’m letting you go there” and we experience conflict.
We then have a battle on our hands because our subconscious mind processes 40 million bits of data per second whereas our conscious mind which is our minute-by-minute brain only processes 40 bits in comparison. Our subconscious runs the show and is responsible for 90-95% of our behaviour and physical processes all day, everyday.
Our muscles respond to our subconscious, they’re not being stubborn or difficult, they’re taking orders and they’re keeping us safe. If you want to get your muscles on your side, you have to listen to the internal dialogue coming from your subconscious and you have to discover the belief that is holding you back. Then you have to work on it.
Muscle memory is vital. If you want to become better at any physical activity, creating patterns of movement to embed new physiological blueprints is essential. Training your brain creates new connections to your nervous system and muscle fibres and as training continues the muscle movement becomes automatic. As the body becomes more comfortable with this movement it will start to respond in the way you want it to whether that’s flexibility, strength, speed or all of them. Eventually your subconscious will also begin to clock the similarity in movements and will learn from the correlated emotions whether you are feeling good or bad. How far you progress will depend on the level of positive emotional intensity.
I believe that smiling when practicing yoga will make you bendier. Put too much pressure on yourself and everything will seize up.
I can make heaven or hell of my yoga mat, it can be the most frustrating and painful place or the most enlightening, magical and empowering space. I have to literally kick my ego of my yoga mat sometimes, and tune in to how I am feeling and breathe. I use this time to reset and evolve the way I have thought wrongly about my body for twenty-six years.
So how has realising all of this benefited me and how can it benefit you?
I have been practicing my yoga regularly now for just over a year and what I learn time and time again, is that to grow we can’t just absent-mindlessly reach for our toes and hope for the best. We have to be in the moment, during every moment, breathe through the stretch and notice the sounds, tensions and space that we feel in every part of our body. It’s only when we really connect to ourselves that something magical begins to happen and physically, emotionally and spiritually we begin to evolve.
Bird in my back garden pose
Here’s me in Bird of Paradise pose a month ago. It’s a yoga pose that requires strength, flexibility and stamina in the hamstrings, hips and shoulders. This was my first attempt at the pose following an hour-long yoga class.
I lovingly called my attempt “Bird in my Back Garden”. What should be happening is my leg should be completely extended and my foot beside my ear, a variation of standing splits. Though I laughed at myself, I felt proud of my attempt, just securing a bind with my hands underneath my thigh felt like a brilliant achievement.
Three weeks later during my Friday lunch break I popped over to Bend Fit Mend for a 45 minute stretch class. We would be focusing on our hips only, which would mean we would practice and breathe through five or six positions to thoroughly warm up and open our hips.
Stretching correctly is everything
What I value is the knowledge of knowing how to stretch right and how and what we are activating and what it should feel like. This has fueled my progress in ways I didn’t think would ever be possible.
Find a yoga teacher who knows their stuff
In my experience, finding a yoga teacher who is obsessed with anatomy and how our body moves and flows is the best thing you could ever do.
During the session we focused on the complete internal functionality of the hip, how it moves, and noticing where it doesn’t normally move past. We then spent time warming the back and front of the area around the hips before moving into warming the deeper muscles.
The result from just a few stretches was a much fuller movement ability and a deeper understanding of how the legs rotated in the hip socket while stimulating fresh blood flow.
Bird of Paradise after 45 minutes of focused stretching
At the end of the class I asked Amanda if we could try out Bird of Paradise. Although I hadn’t given the pose another go since the first time, I had been continuing to practice my yoga and at that point my hips felt warm enough to take a deep breath and go for it.
Forty-five minutes later and here I am. Leg extended and for a brief moment, long and entirely straight.
The benefit of practicing very few moves with a real expert is that you can just breathe into the area and create space. You also have time to mindfully make adjustments based on their 1-2-1 coaching. This gives you more time to experience the big differences from making a small change in the positioning and what this can mean for your body.
These are my eight tips for you and your fitness journey:
Do you believe that your body is capable of what you want to achieve?
What other beliefs do you have about how successful you will be at achieving your goal?
Do you enjoy working towards your goal?
When you work out or practice, what emotion(s) are you experiencing and what might that be doing for your body?
Do you feel that the way you move is correct and making optimal use of your energy?
How do you know if you’re engaging the right muscles?
How do you usually feel after a session – happy, content, wanting more or glad it’s over?
Where are you noticing progress in your body and where are you not.
If you have any questions or comments, post them below 🙂
Who invited the damp, drizzle and mist to the January party? I miss the cold already, the frost, the light fresh air, the bright blue sky and the song birds dancing in the garden, feasting on the fresh bird feed under the gentle morning rays of sun…..
Bah! There was only one thing for it this morning, to eat beautiful, which meant creating a rainbow plate.
Making rainbow toast is super easy and you can toast any bread you like. Today I had slices of Biona’s raspberry and coconut rye bread which is gluten-free. But a traditional seeded loaf will also taste delicious. One slice was loaded with fresh avocado smash, one small avocado mashed with juice of one lemon topped with blueberries and blackberries. The other slice was layered with Meridan organic crunch peanut butter (smooth is a crime!) which is purely peanuts, no sugar and most importantly, no palm oil. Topped with one sliced kiwi and a handful of goji berries and scattered grated coconut. Simple, beautiful and delicious with a cup of matcha green tea.
After breakfast I started prepping for this evening’s dinner, making my vegan chorizo and roasted squash sauce . After peeling and dicing the butternut squash I removed all the seeds and placed them on a baking tray with a drizzle of rapeseed oil and salt and pepper and baked in the oven for 20 minutes on 180. Nutty, fibrous, full of protein and heart boosting fats these little babies should never be thrown away. They are little power houses of nutrition and so easy to prepare and can be added to your breakfast muesli, porridge, soup, pasta or eaten as a snack. I’ve hidden mine because they are too yummy and I have zero willpower. Instead I’ll sprinkle them on my creamy zoodles topped with chorizo tonight; they will be the stars of the show.
In a world where goal setting is rife it can be become easy to lose sight of what actually matters and why we have set out to do something in the first place.
Image from positivemed.com
Goal setting is everywhere, at work, at the gym, how much fruit and veg we should consume in a day, how many friends we must try and see in a month to maintain our relationships, not to mention how many times the happiest couples have sex and how many times you should aim to do it in a week. Just taking a moment to consider all the goals we must manage across multiple time-frames can feel utterly overwhelming and impossible.
Today I’ve been feeling a little bit off balance, for a number of reasons. I did my usual Body Balance yoga class at 7am this morning and my muscles felt so tight. It felt as though the flexibility I have been working so hard to achieve over the last ten months had started to go backwards.
I didn’t feel great about my body, considering the regularity of workouts and yoga I felt as though I wasn’t as toned as I should be. I was just having one of those moments. It’s quite hard to share this because I feel quite embarrassed to confess that I felt that way about my body; over the last year I have showed it so much more respect than that.
I wanted to eat everything! I had a few to many glasses of wine on Saturday night and as a result I have been insatiable ever since. I opted for a breakfast bagel with a veggie sausage and a hashbrown after the gym and I got busted by my colleague. He said:
“Han, is everything ok?”
“Yes, why?”
“Well you haven’t spoken much this morning and you’re eating a stuffed bagel”
Even he knew I was out of sync with myself! It couldn’t be more obvious that I was eating my feelings.
Realising my ego had taken over
I was talking to my husband tonight about how I was feeling about things and all of a sudden I realised that I had been thinking from a totally ego-centered way. All of the things I was telling myself in my head throughout the day had nothing to do with what I had ever set out to achieve.
Reconnecting with my lifestyle choices
I made the decision to practice yoga regularly to nurture my physical body and build a meaningful relationship with it, supporting my body to move by strengthening my muscles and improving my flexibility.
I made the decision to eat a plant-based vegan diet to nourish my body not to get a six-pack! I made the promise to myself that 90% of what I ate would always play a role in fueling my body and mind. It was never about losing weight or trying to eat less calories.
Do you really need to set a goal?
With my yoga and my diet I never set a goal. Instead I made the choice to keep my body and mind well. To thrive through movement, play and nourishment every day.
Diets don’t generally work because by following one you have to either cut out certain foods or cut calories and by doing that you may be stopping doing something you love. Deep down you might have an emotional connection to that food. That in itself can make it pretty impossible to just give up which means that your goal is going to be really hard to achieve.
The same goes with exercising (I prefer to use the term ‘moving’). Focusing on a weight or how you want to look can make you feel like things aren’t happening fast enough. If nothing is changing at the rate you want it to, it’s unlikely you’ll carry on. Do you actually feel more connected to your body through exercising? Are you listening to what it needs, do you know when it feels fatigued? Or are you just going through the motions?
By thinking about our food choices and moving as a way to optimize our health we can start to emotionally connect with our lifestyle choices which strengthen our commitment to ourselves and our bodies. We start to build a deeper connection with what our bodies need, how they react to the way we think and we start to understand how we can look after ourselves better.
Say out loud what is troubling you
When these kinds of nonconstructive thoughts fill your mind it is easy for you to ruminate over them. They just seem to create so much noise and it can be hard to make them stop.
In the same way that reading out loud helps me spot spelling and grammatical errors in my writing, saying what is affecting my mind out loud allows me to observe myself.
As humans we have the gift of personal observation. We can take a step back and review our behaviour and our thoughts. By saying out loud what you are thinking you can observe what you are saying.
Today this helped me realise that I wasn’t acting from a heart-centered place, instead I was being overly critical of myself and using my ego to bully me to make some changes to my lifestyle i.e. workout more, eat less. By taking a step back I realised what I was doing and said ‘no’.
Don’t beat yourself up for not realising sooner
Instead reframe it to yourself – realise that you’ve got to know yourself on a deeper level and as a result you will be better placed to make personal choices that suit your chosen way of living. Sometimes we just have to be reminded of what we have set out to do. Be kind to yourself and realise that as adults with multiple responsibilities it can be hard to stay on track every day.
Appreciate where you are right now
Say out loud the three things that you are grateful for.
Recognise where you’re at and why you’re proud of that.
Smile to yourself.
Take some deep tummy breaths over a couple of minutes to activate your body’s natural relaxation mechanism and reboot.
Being mindful of who you are and what is important to you will bring you back to the present moment which will stop any further over-thinking and rumination.
Go to bed happy
So it might not have been the easiest of days but you have just managed your problem successfully and reconnected with what is important to you. Having put your ego back in its box and tuned back in with your heart you’ll be set for a brilliant day the following morning.
Having thought I had nothing to write about this evening, I realised I had a lot to say!
As always I hope my experience and my tips help you live a happier life.
“All you have to do is count up to ten, and you’ll find that whatever’s frightening you isn’t so quite so frightening after all”… the Tramp’s advice to Mr Jelly
Roger Hargreaves
Having had a hectic few weeks at work my colleague presented me with a book, Mr Jelly, from the Mr Men series. It felt like I had forever been chasing my tail with clashing deadlines, like so many of us are, and upon giving it to me, he said “my daughter says you just have to learn to breathe like Mr Jelly, she said you can borrow her book”. Curiously I had a quick read and discovered that I had forgotten what I had read as a child and the relaxation tips that I share with my clients. This book’s key message is that by counting and breathing we can create a sense of calm which is key to managing stress.
In the book. Mr Jelly begins to count each time he panics or feels scared. Every time this happens he begins to use his new counting technique. As he does, he realises that by taking the time to focus through counting, he no longer feels frightened of what he originally perceived to be a threat.
In our everyday lives it is easy to feel overwhelmed, managing multiple responsibilities at home and work, being contacted via various social media channels as well as by traditional phone and email, cooking the right food and doing enough exercise. Sometimes it can feel like our minds just don’t have any more spare capacity to deal with all these demands and we start to feel understandably anxious and on edge.
Breathing for health
We can use breathing techniques to calm our minds but they’re actually really good for keeping our bodies well. When we feel stressed and anxious we activate our stress response (also known as fight or flight), which hijacks our nervous system, flooding it with cortisol – the stress hormone. The problem with this is that all of our key organs and systems within our body are managed by our nervous system. The usual functioning of our bodies stop when we activate the stress response because the body is going on stand-by and switching to its survival mechanism; all the blood rushes away from your organs to your muscles to help you fight or flight even though this isn’t actually required. This is ok now and then, but frequent activation of this kind of response can lead to chronic health issues overtime.
Breathing to balance the body
In our body we have the sympathetic function and the parasympathetic function. The sympathetic function is responsible for the stress response which fires up when our brain thinks we need to take action urgently. To turn this off we have to learn to activate the parasympathetic function which enables us to relax. We can kick-start the relaxation response through deep breathing from our tummies and taking long breaths in and out.
7/ 11 breathing
Its not the nicotine that relaxers a smoker, it’s the breath. If you watch a smoker, you’ll notice that their exhale is always longer than their inhale and through doing so they are activating their relaxation response. How often have you heard a smoker say, “I feel so much better now” or “I feel so much calmer for having that cigarette” – now you know why.
The inhale exhale technique that smokers use is the same as 7/11 breathing. I learned this during my training to be a hypnotherapist to help my clients relax and soothingly transition into a relaxing trance state.
This is how you breathe to bring about a sense of calm and space:
Breathe in for 7
Breathe out for 11
As you do, focus on breathing in from your belly and exhaling all the way out
Focus on your breath by imagining it has a colour to it, I like to use a golden, warming sunshine yellow or sometimes a cooling blue colour with my clients.
Alternatively you can imagine a picturesque scene, maybe a beautiful place you’ve visited, and just imagine relaxing there.
After 3-4 minutes you should really notice the difference in yourself and how much calmer and clear headed you feel.
If the count of 7/11 feels too long you can shorten it, just make sure the out breath is longer than the inhale i.e 5/9.
Heart Math
Place your hand on your heart and focus your attention on your heart and the area around it.
Start to take deep belly breaths for 5 to 6 seconds both on the inhale and exhale and eventually you’ll find your heart’s natural rhythm.
After a few rounds start to visualise something happy like a fond memory of family and friends. Focus on breathing that memory into your heart and back out again into the world or to the people you are thinking of.
Focus on breathing that love in to your heart and back out again.
Continue to breath in this way for 5-6 minutes. Notice how much happier and positive you feel afterwards.
This kind of breathing not only activates the relaxation response, it also sends powerful signals to our brain that we are ok and helps us to feel happy. Getting to know our own heart rhythm by regularly practicing Heart Math breathing can support our brain to function more efficiently, improving our creativity, intuition and decision making skills.
If there is one thing we were all born to do – it’s breathe. It’s the body’s built in healing mechanism and these two techniques are really simple and very effective. The bonus is that you can use them pretty much anywhere whether it’s on public transport, in the office or at home.
I choose to eat vibrantly. The more colour on the plate, the happier I am. If there is anything I have learned over the last ten months; it’s that you eat with your eyes first. This dish is beautiful on the eye, with citrus-coloured noodles topped with a golden cream sauce which is set off perfectly with a deep pink plant-powered ‘chorizo’.
I created and cooked this for my friends last night who are all fans of meat chorizo and they loved it. I hope you love it too.
This serves four people.
Ingredients
‘Chorizo’
120g sweet red pepper
120g sun dried tomatoes (rinsed)
100g walnuts
50g oats
0.5 tbsp paprika
0.5 tsp ground cumin
0.5 tsp mild chilli powder
0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
0.5g ground garlic
Cream sauce
600g squash
Drizzle of rapeseed or olive oil
150 cashews (soaked for in cold water for two hours)
half cup of nutritional yeast
300ml plant milk (i.e. almond, oat, soya)
150ml water
Noodles
2 standard courgette
2 standard sweet potato
tsp coconut oil (or rapeseed or olive oil)
Equipment
I use a Nutribullet to blend the sauce, a Magimix 3200 food processor to make the chorizo and a spiralizer to make the noodles. If you don’t have a spiralizer you can use pasta or gnocchi.
Method
Set your oven to 200 degrees.
Peel the squash and cut it into bite-size cubes. Place it in a bowl and drizzle a little rapeseed or olive oil. Top with salt and pepper. Use your hands to move the squash around the bowl to ensure it is well seasoned and covered with a little oil.
Spread the squash out evenly on a baking tray and cook for 50 minutes at 200 degrees. My fan oven is a little old – if you have a healthier, happier oven 180 degrees may be more appropriate.
De-seed the red pepper, rinse the sun dried tomatoes (if kept in a jar with oil) and pop them in the food processor along with the walnuts, oats and spices. Pulse the mixture until comes together. Although it should be relatively smooth it should still have some texture.
Roll the chorizo mix into sausages, place on grease-proof
paper and pop in the fridge for 40 minutes or so to chill.
Once the squash is cooked let it cool on the tray before blending. It should be soft, but hard enough to still hold it’s shape and not mushy.
Blend half of the squash, cashew nuts nutritional yeast and 200ml of the plant milk until smooth. Gradually add more of the squash, milk and water. Add salt and pepper to taste. When all blended together this will be quite thick, if you want it to be thinner, add more plant milk or water when you come to heat it later.
Peel the sweet potatoes and spiralizer. Wash the skin of the courgette and then spiralize, place in a wok with the coconut oil and gently heat. When you serve the noodles they should still be firm and a little warm – the bonus of eating these relatively raw is that they retain so many more nutrients.
Remove the chorizo from the freezer and slice into rounds. It should be firm but still easy to cut.
Warm a frying pan with half a tsp of coconut oil and place the chorizo in. Cook at a medium heat for a couple of minutes on each side. When you turn it you should notice that that it has darkened and looks a little grilled.
In the meantime pour the cream sauce in to a saucepan and heat, continually stirring at a medium heat to ensure it doesn’t stick or burn.
Serve up the noodles and top with the cream and chorizo.
This chorizo is a lot softer than the mean version but the use of paprika and other traditional chorizo spices give it that very familiar smell which wins over everyone who is doubtful that the plant-based version will ever compare. If you like your chorizo hot, add more chilli powder and if you love the smokiness of paprika load it up.
Overall this meal is surprisingly fulfilling and you may be surprised at how comfortably full you feel relatively quickly. If you want to add in even more veggies, try stir-fying the noodles with sliced chestnut mushrooms and peas.
Nourish
The nuts in this meal are well-known for their heart boosting powers, strengthening our bodies against cardiovascular disease as well as cancer. Walnuts are rich in anti-oxidants and omega-3, while cashews are rich in zinc and iron which supports a healthy immune system.
Sweet potatoes are high in nutrients but low on the glycemic index which helps stabilise our blood sugar levels, keeping any cravings and hunger at bay. They also support our bodies to lower bad cholesterol and are also high in anti-oxidants and vitamin E.
🌟
I really hope you enjoy this recipe this Autumn and do let me know what you think.
In the same way that reading out loud helps me spot spelling and grammatical errors in my writing, saying what is affecting my mind out loud allows me to observe myself.
the star beyond 