Plant-based power

Love life, stay strong and be happy! I am a vegan health and nutritian coach, and i want to help people feel amazing and doing it in a cruelty free way.

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Top 5 tips on how to Eat Well on a Budget

One of the things i hear often is, 'but isn't it expensive to be vegan?' and to that I can only say, oh hell no!!!

Like with all types of diets, it's only as expensive, as you will it to be.

One of my missions in life, is to show you, and the world, how truly amazing a vegan diet can be. We are so lucky in this day and age, that we have so many vegetable options, and can buy veggies in all of the colors of the rainbow.

In this blog post I want to share with you, some of my top tips, on how to keep the cost down, while having a healthy vegan diet.

1. Plan you meals minimum 1 week at the time. I plan a whole month at the time, that way, I know what kind of foods I will have in my kitchen, so I can use everything I have, and dont waste any food. This also means, you will get a more organized kitchen!

It could be one day potatos and the next day, a beautiful salad with the rest of the leftover potatos from dinner, also called repurposing leftovers.

2. Make big portions/prep meals ahead. You can make huge portions, that way you can freeze it and eat it during the month. I like to make big portions of things everyone in the family like, for instance potato curry and soups. This is not only super cheap, but you can really safe a lot of time, doing this.

3. Get foods that are in season. Normally foods in season, are really cheap, at this time veggies like cellery, and roots in general, are in season now here in Denmark, and I can get them really cheap. But also kale in every form is in season too, and you can make beautiful dishes with those. When that is said, frozen veggies are really good too. Normally they are frozen, when they are just right, so often when you buy frozen veggies, you get the good stuff too. Oh, and frozen foods are often really cheap!

4. Get your Beans on. Beans and grains are really cheap, and can be used for a ton of different things, like bean burgers, in salad, hummus, and so on. the trick is to cook them yourself, buy big volumes, cook them and then freeze it. You can also do this with rice. Like the last one, it can really safe you some time too! look into indian and mexican cusine, they often use beans, grains and lentils, and are often made with inexpensive ingredience, like a curry or tortillia.

5. Buy from ethnic shops. Looking for good deals in your grocery store, is a given, but where I save a lot of money, is to buy in ethnic grocery stores and shops. Not only can you get the cheapest beans and grains, but often there are really yummy, and interesting stuff there too, like ricepaper. There are so many options with ricepaper, for instance it is awesome to use with some of the lefterovers from the day before. You can make fakon (vegan bacon) or chips (I will post this in one of my recipes later, because it is really damn good!!!).

This was properly more than just 5 tips, and I  hope it helps. Let me know, what you do to keep your budget, while on a healthy vegan diet.

If you want to learn more, I am currently making a course on 'how to vegan food and meal prep', it will come out soon, so stay tuned or sign up for my news letter.

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Veggie Wonderland

I had so much fun today, cooking with my kids! We made super colorful food, and made it exciting by giving it funny names, like the breakfast I did today, I called it 'vegans in wonderland'. It was so colorful, green, pink, purple, fruits, nuts and veggies.

I have found that 2 things have a major impact on getting my kids to eat almost anything, even foods they don't like, and I want to talk about that in this blog post.

I am a firm believer that vegan food should be easy and delicious every time. I mean just look at all the veggies you can get, in all the colors of the rainbow, it can be so beautiful and powerful!

(vegans in wonderland breakfast, if you want the recipe for the popeye pancakes, you can find it here)

As I said in the begining, it's my experience that there are 2 things I can do, to improve my kids intake of the veggies they don't really like, but are super healthy for them.

What is even more amazing is that, like the food above, it makes ME and my family happy just to look at it, because it's super yummy looking and tasty too.

1. Trick - making it look amazeballs!!!!

Color makes a lot of things even more interesting, and remember the eyes are a powerful tool to sell your food.

Beets can make a beautiful pink color, add it in smoothies, hummus, bread, pancakes etc. You can call it princess rolls, pink powered smoothie or unicorn pancakes. Make it interesting and fun for the kids, and yourself!

Lemons and lime are awesome to bring out color in different foods, if you add lemon juice to purple/red kale, you will make it really pop in color, oh and most important, it inhibits certain foods from oxidating aka turning brown....

Spinach and kale, holy green goddess!!! Especially spinach is a really good veg, to use, because it blends really well and doesn't have a powerful taste, like some kale can have. Look at the popeye pancakes above, how beautiful green they are! I call them popeye pancakes or hulk pancakes depending on, what kind of mood my son is in, lol.

You can use it in muffins or bread and call it ninja turtles rolls or the green goblin muffin.

Turmeric is the color yellow!!! oh, and it is so damn healthy! add to foods you want to get a yellow color to or, give it an extra yellow pump, like in your carrotsoup, or add it in bread and smoothies.

It's basically all about how you sell it, and color and names can go a long, long way! And seriously don't you like to eat beautiful, colorful food? I know, I do. It makes me super happy, and feel amazing!

2. Trick - Make cooking, a family thing!

Cooking together is something I do with my kids and hubby often, and in my experience 2 things happens; Kids gets to see food like it is, they get to experince how a carrot looks and taste, or any other food for that matter. I have found with my own kids, and in teaching kids to cook, that involving them makes them want to try more things and they get a bigger appreciation for food in general. Because what happens is, that you remove the mystification of what they are eating, so they actually don't have to guess what it is!

Second you get to experiment with food, and so many crazy yummy things happens, like just today, my 5 year old son, made the best tasting pumpkin cake I have ever had! Seriously guys, cooking food should be fun!!!

BUT most important, you get to spend time with your loved-ones!

Now lets go make some amazeballs food, with love, laughter and a punch of color!

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Sleep and weightloss

You have probably heard it before, but maybe never really understood why sleep is so important, especially if your goal is weightloss. If so, you might want to keep on reading. Because why is sleep so important if we want to lose weight? And what can we do to improve it?

Too many of us don’t sleep as well as we need, or we don’t get enough sleep at all. For the most part people need between 7-9 hours each night, or we can get sleep deprived.Insufficient sleep decreases your immune system, so you are more receptive to infections and in a recent report from Denmark, shows that there is a relationship between insufficient sleep and an increase change in getting stress, overweight, type 2 diabetic, cardiovascular disease and early death, and can have an overall impact on our mindset and cognitive abilities.

Our decision making and insufficient sleep

Insufficient sleep can be united with health complications as written above, but also bad decision making, like lack of exercise, too much fat and sugar in your diet. In a report from the American journal of clinical nutrition, show that sleep deprived people, have a bigger tendency to snacking and reach out for the things we shouldn’t eat. Both reports show that we have a tendency to choose sugary and high fat foods when we are sleep deprived.  Where we normally can control our food cravings, a sleep deprived brain has a harder time saying no! If this was to happen a couple of times a year, it would not be a problem, but if it keeps on going, it can really turn into a huge problem, which it already is for many people.

The Hunger Hormones

Insufficient sleep has a big impact on our hormones, among those are the hunger hormones.One of them is called Leptin and is telling our brain to stop eating, but that hormone is overshadowed but the hormone Ghrelin, which is produced in the stomach and sends signals to the brain that it is time to eat. When you are sleep deprived the body produce more Ghrelin.But let us not forget the hormone Cortisol! Cortisol is not a bad hormone, and we often hear about it united with stress, but when we are sleep deprived, cortisol spikes and sends signals to your body to store energy, in other words you are more likely to hang on to fat. In my own experience, I can almost eat anything, be strict on a diet, and still not lose weight, if I am insufficient in sleep or stressed.

What about the almighty Insulin?

Insulin is also a hormone that gets affected when you don’t get enough sleep. The Danish report shows that insufficient sleep over a couple of nights can influence the insulin sensitivity, and the longer it goes on, the more your blodsugar will ‘swing’. Insulin is a hormone that is needed to change our carbs and other food, into energy. If that doesn’t work properly, it ends up getting stored as fat.

That is the reasons why sleep is so super important for when you want to lose weight. This does not mean that sleep will get you to lose weight, but it can hinder your metabolism working 100% and can add in weight gain.

So, what can I do?

You have maybe heard of foods that you can eat to help sleep along, but there is not enough evidence to say if it helps or not. Some people find that dark chocolate can aid in sleep, but also foods like bananas, almonds and dates, because of the tryptophan. The Danish report shows that a versatile diet rich on fruits, veggies, whole grains that have tryptophan can help in improvement of your sleep. But remember dark chocolate also contains caffeine, that can have the opposite effect, so maybe a banana is a better choice. We do know that caffeine can have a negative effect on sleep. Caffeine prolong the time it takes to fall asleep. This is of course different from person to person. Caffeine spikes 1-1,5 hour after consumption and can stay in your system for 5-6 hours. I am not just talking about Coffey, but this also applies to cola and some tea.   

What you can do is

Turn off all electronics at least an hour before you go to bed.

Make a bedtime ritual, like writing a journal, do meditation, write down what you are grateful for, or if you have a lot on your mind, write that down on paper, so you can let it go.

Don’t eat a

big meal right before bed, try to have your last meal a couple of hours before bedtime, or at least try to avoid calorie dense, high carb foods right before bedtime.

Turn off all lights, Darkness helps produce melatonin, a natural sleep hormone.

Our total life style have a connection to how we sleep, that means a healthy diet, exercise, no alcohol and no smoking can improve our sleep.