Good morning and welcome to day one of your Healthy Eating for Fertility Challenge.
How delicious was your blueberry smoothie for breakfast? So quick to make, so filling and so easy to clean up after.
Many of us make the wrong breakfast choices, thinking ready-to-eat cereals or banana breads are a good way to start the day. It might surprise you, but a slice of banana bread contains half your daily calories and will only sustain your energy for an hour or two after eating it! Many of the available breakfast cereals are also high in sugar, high in fat and low in protein.
The breakfast recommendations I have made are all examples of easy breakfast options that are low in sugar, high in protein, contain good quality fats and in some cases low GI, high fibre carbohydrates.
Remember – if you’re someone who has trouble setting goals and sticking to them (let’s face it who doesn’t?), I’m only a phone call away to help you and we can do them together. It’s never too late to take charge of the challenge and get the best out of it for YOU.
You should also visit genea.com.au/challenge throughout the week for more helpful tips to help keep you on track. Some of the topics we will cover this week are:
- What your BMI may mean for your fertility
- Tips to deal with sugar cravings
- How to navigate those take away menus
- Trans Fatty Acids and their effect on your fertility
- And we’ll also bust those fitness myths!
Enjoy your day, stay on top of your recipes and try to get an early night tonight.
Senior Nutrition and Lifestyle Consultant
1300 133 094
Tip of the day
Stress less
Remember to breathe. Controlling stress results in improved mental and physical well-being.
Exercise and practice of relaxation methods are two of the best ways to keep chronic stress in check, but it isn’t realistic to take a jog or a meditation break every time you’re faced with a stressful situation.
You can, however, practice techniques like stress release breathing exercises when you feel your stress levels starting to increase. The following breathing exercise can be done for as little as three to five minutes and is an effective way to halt escalating feelings of anger, irritability and anxiety.
Try this
Stress release breathing exercise from Genea Holistic’s yoga and meditation instructor:
- Sit upright in a comfortable position. You may wish to close your eyes.
- Bring your awareness to the area inside and beneath the nostrils and to your natural breathing pattern.
- Compare your in-breath and your out-breath. For example: the in-breath may last for 2 counts, and the out-breath may last for 3 counts.
- You are now ready to extend your exhale by one count for 6 breaths, keeping the inhale natural.
- Finally you can extend your exhale by one more count, for 6 more breaths.
- Resume to natural breathing once again, for 3-5 minutes, noticing the changes that occurred to your natural breathing pattern.
For your personalised relaxation program contact us on 1300 367 198.
Meal plan tips
Organisation is the key to succeeding in any healthy eating challenge. It is important to make sure you have the ingredients you need to prepare your meals otherwise you will be tempted to stray from the menu plan.
If you didn’t get a chance to pick up all of the ingredients you need for your energy salad take the recipe to a salad bar and have them try and match it as best as they can. Just remember to only dress the salad with balsamic vinegar.
Download the 7 Day Meal Planner
Featured recipe
Salmon Patties
- 250 gms fresh skinless and boneless salmon fillet, chopped
- 1 spring onion sliced
- 1 tbsp of parsley, chopped
- Zest from half a lemon
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup of almond meal
- ½ a lemon
- Salt and pepper
Place the raw salmon, spring onion, parsley, lemon zest and egg into your food processor. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Process until just combined. Remove salmon and shape into 2 burgers. Coat lightly in almond meal and rest in fridge for 5 minutes to help them set. Cook in a pan over a low to medium heat with a little olive oil until crisp and golden.
Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Serve with salad and a drizzle of lemon juice.
Click to view other dinner recipes
Fitness myths
Doing sit-ups or some other form of abdominal exercise will trim unwanted pounds from your waist.
FALSE
There is no such thing as spot weight reduction. Doing abdominal exercises only strengthens the abdominals; it doesn't make fat magically disappear. The only way to trim unwanted kilos from your waist (or any other part of your body) is to expend more calories per day through activity than you consume through food.
Fitness tips
Peter Valabek, one of Genea Holistic's personal trainers recommends including some physical activity into your daily life as an important part of leading a healthy lifestyle. Here’s some exercises you might want to try this week.
- Split squat on stair (or yellow pages) 8x each leg
- Hamstring raise single leg 8x
- Hold squat position against the wall for 30sec
- Knee or bench push ups 8x
- Cross crunches 8x each side
- 1min step up & down on stair (or yellow pages)
Do you need some help in setting and meeting your weight goals? Genea Holistic offers a 12-week Fertility Fit® program which includes a tailored fitness and diet program.
Contact us today for a consultation.
1300 367 198
Spotlight on Genea Holistic services
Yoga for fertility
Fertility problems often lead to a time of great uncertainty. You may find yourself worrying, having difficulty sleeping and finding it hard to relax.
When trying to conceive, it is very important that you optimise your chance of conception by improving your general wellbeing, taking good care of yourself and getting the right level of support.
Yoga and meditation can help you relax and provide you with the skills to nurture yourself and successfully manage feelings of stress, tension and anxiety.
Genea Holistic will carefully guide you through a variety of relaxation techniques and provide you with many valuable tools to manage stress and help you maintain a positive outlook despite what may be a difficult time.
