As much as I’m very much in favour of healthy eating, I would never suggest you cut out all the fabulously fatty sweet, chocs, and candies without offering you an equally delicious alternative! And that’s what this and future posts will aim to provide – the alternative healthier options! Who knew there were easy ways to be healthy on a daily basis, eh? Well, I now do, and I would love to share what I’m learning with you (as well as sharing details of my failed attempts at keeping on the healthy bandwagon! I’m human after all.). I have the biggest sweet tooth (teeth) out there, and I have had a gazillion fillings, a root canal, and all sorts of other magnificently disastrous dental issues to prove it! Alternative for me is a must. So, trust me when I say I’ve finally found the secret to unlocking healthy and tasty in your life! Whether your goal is to keep all your teeth, reach your ideal figure, lose weight, get more toned, or to feel healthier and happier whilst passing on good eating habits to your friends and family, keep on reading…

Within less than a week of eating right a.k.a. cutting out the sweets and sugars in my diet, I lost a kilo or two and regained my tone! Whoop! The ease of this achievement makes me one happy lady. Only two years ago I remember writing about how difficult it was to lose weight, but now working with a fabulous nutritionist and constantly learning, it is easier than I thought to maintain a healthy lifestyle (though still an everyday challenge for a lass who loves bad sugary food as much as me).

Anyway, this week I tried out a few alternative desserts, as well as trying to figure out how to stay fuller for longer by incorporating more good fats, as they’re termed, into my diet. I failed quite a bit. Here are a few of my bloopers…

Abi’s #Foodieblunders

In my attempt to create a truly healthy (protein-rich & reduced carbohydrates, saturated fat and sugars) dessert alternative, I tried…

Raw carrot cake – Rating: 1/5 – It tasted too much like my homemade breakfast/snack balls, but not as tasty! And there was SO MUCH of it! I ate about 2 slices and gave up. I will not be using this recipe again, but if you’d like to give it a try let me know and I’ll send you the recipe link. I’ll be trying out more ‘healthy’ desserts as the weeks go by. Why? Because I’m not afraid of failure and I really NEED to find a replacement for my Skittles, Kinder Buenos & all other chocs, sweets and cakes I’m in love with.

Verdict: BIN IT!

In my attempt to add a bit of good fats (to feel fuller for longer) to my morning routine, I tried…

Adding milled linseed straight into scrambled eggs – this was the most disgusting, grim, tasteless food experiment ever. I really thought I’d successfully tried and enjoyed this in the past, but clearly I was imagining this or it had scarred me so much the last time round I’d burned it from my mind. Anyway, thankfully I now have this food post to remind me never to do this again. Don’t try this at home, guys! And if you really want to give this a go, I would advise adding milk to your scrambled eggs because the milled linseed really dries out the mixture and it honestly felt like I was eating chalk.

Protein pancakes topped with milled linseed – Again, the dryness is unbelievable. Reflecting on what I wrote in the above review, I don’t know why the next day I thought it would be a good idea to top pancakes with linseed. ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ is the quote that comes to mind in this situation. Sigh. Anyway, it failed. Don’t bother.

Rating: 0.5/5                                       Verdict: BURN IT!

                                                                                                                                                  

Thank God every cloud has a silver lining. Like Thomas Edison, I did not allow failure to deter me. Voila! I present to you a successful good fats, protein-rich alternative dessert.

Honestly, this is pretty primitive. I like easy and simple, but this was taking the biscuit. So for a yummy dessert with substance – it goes beyond what the picture above shows and tastes a whole heap better – is a birchers muesli with yoghurt.

Ingredients & directions: mix together a handful of various chopped nuts (walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts & cashews are my fave), 15g of milled linseed, and ½ a handful of dried fruits with a dash of cinnamon & ½ tsp honey & eat with 1-2 tbsp. of plain or greek yoghurt. I use Alpro because it is lactose-free and plant-based. Enjoy with a spoon and a smile.

You can’t have dessert without dinner. Well, you can (I often do in off-season), but it’s not the best life choice. So, here is a salad I have never made before yesterday, but actually enjoyed so much I had to share…

Spinach & Avocado Salad

Ingredients (2-3 servings): 150-200g of baby leaf spinach (washed and drained), 1 x pepper (any colour, but I used red in this for colour), about a handful of chopped cucumber, 1 x ripe avocado, large handful of walnuts, ½ lemon, 2 x tbsp. olive oil. (Add meat or fish of your choice per serving)

Directions: Add your spinach to a large mixing bowl and mix in the olive oil. Deseed the avocado and mush with a spoon or fork. Add the mushy avocado to the spinach and mix until it is thoroughly dissolved into the mixture. It should look like the second picture. Throw in the rest of the ingredients. Squeeze out the juice from the lemon and mix thoroughly.

I had a chicken drumstick in the fridge that I chopped up and threw on my salad to finish. I genuinely enjoyed this healthy dinner, which always surprises me considering two years ago the only ingredients in that list I would have touched would have been the lemon & olive oil. And the beauty of this is that if you, like me, don’t like avocados, you wouldn’t even know it was in there because the taste is hidden perfectly within this combination of ingredients.

Remember what I said earlier about detesting anything green? Well, athletics has forced me to grow up…

P.S. I’m NOT a nutritionist; I simply love food and like to experiment! Thanks for reading. Please like, comment, share, subscribe! Twitter @airozuru .