Chocolate Brownies - Low Sugar and Grain Free

One of the reframes around food I did in my head when I started taking my health seriously was to ditch counting calories and instead decide if a food built health in my body or if it tore health down.

I was exhausted at 46 years old, my body felt like it was falling apart and changing hormones meant that I did not feel like myself.

With the beauty of hindsight and with my qualification from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition under my belt I realize I was prioritizing dense nutrition to support my beautiful midlife body through its second natural hormonal change.

This is important. Life in the patriarchy, under the male gaze, conditions us to prioritize skinny over vital, energized and healthy to achieve acceptance and win the game of being a woman.

At 46 years old, I was depleted after having my three kids within three years and being constantly on the run from the consequences, from multiple moves as a family, two internationally, from over eating to suppress my emotions within this whirlwind of family life AND from constantly prioritizing the restriction of food from my body since I was 15 years old.

My daily regime of skipping breakfast with a venti Latte replacement left me spiralling downhill as soon as I hormonal change. I was pre-diabetic and shaking between meals, I could not lose a pound as my body clung to every calorie, my hormones were a mess with my anxiety through the roof and my sleep gone. I was too exhausted to get out of bed in the morning and tired but wired, rushing round the house to get housework done at 10pm in the evening. All the joy was sucked out of my life as my feelings of overwhelm were real.

When our hormones start to change in our forties, the worse advice we can receive is to eat less and exercise more.

During our second natural hormonal change, our bodies need the full support of dense nutrition, good sleep and active stress management to reduce the symptoms we feel on a daily basis. Our thinking needs to shift from diet and restriction to nurture and nourish if we want to be like that one woman we know who annoying sails through menopause symptom free.

When we balance our blood sugar eating a breakfast rich in protein and health fats to start the day, we can more easily maintain our ideal weight through midlife and banish our mood swings.

When we create healthy boundaries for ourselves to ditch alcohol and caffeine for the duration of our hormonal change, we are better able to absorb minerals for healthy bones, we protect our sleep and we support our bodies by keeping cortisol, our anxiety and hot-flash inducing, sleep-busting stress hormone, nice and low.

When we remove our bodies from a stressed state of fight or flight by eliminating starvation and eating dense nutrition, embracing healthy fats and actively engaging in therapy or mindset work, we hold onto our libido through into menopause, protect our brain health and work towards the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

We have the power on our plate to decide what hormonal change is going to feel like and when we work to educate ourselves, become self-responsible and seek out support we can become that one annoying symptom-free woman for ourselves.

We are not victims of our hormones at midlife but empowered women with choices about how we nurture our bodies and show up for ourselves at midlife. Friends, Pick your player!

Does this mean we cannot eat foods we love? The answer is no and I offer you the Low Sugar Grain Free Chocolate Brownie as proof!

When you make your sweet treats at home, you have the choice to use a sweetener that comes with its own slow release mechanism in the form of FIBRE. This ensures you do not flood the blood stream with glucose and trigger a hot flash, but the sweetness of life is released into the body in a manageable way…a trickle and not a flood.

Medjool dates are one of natures natural sweeteners that are packed with fibre and nutrition.

This is a sweetener that contains so much fibre, it can be used to relieve constipation!
Fibre is a midlife womans best friend as any excess hormone amplifying our uncomfortable symptoms of menopause is removed from the body with fibre in our daily detox or poop. Adding fibre to your diet at midlife changes your experience of menopause.

Dates are packed with iron and the B group of vitamins to help you to feel energized daily. Iron is a vital co-factor for efficient thyroid function. Our thyroid gland manages our menstrual cycle, metabolism and circadian rhythm. It comes under stress when we move into hormonal change and deserves all of the nutrition it needs to function.

Dates also contain easily absorbed calcium to build up bone strength as we stride into the next chapter . Remember, you can build health at midlife or tear it down. Our bones are an area where we really need to take care to build health as we are in the natural process of losing the bone protective presence of estrogen.

Dates are also high in both phosphorous and magnesium which in combination with their rich source of calcium helps optimize bone-strengthening benefits. Think of dates as both a sweetener and an addition to your calcium/magnesium supplement; in the form of food

This is a Brownie, a sweet treat that builds health in the body providing dense nutrition that nurtures you through hormonal change. Is it also delicious, you bet it is because during your break-up with diet culture, you also deserve the pleasure of good food.

Ingredients

Chocolate Brownies (Sugar-free, Grain-free)

1 ½ cups Medjool dates, pitted

1 cup Fair Trade Dark Chocolate Chips, or 2x100g bars broken into pieces

½ tsp baking soda

3 eggs

¼ cup coconut oil

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp sea salt

1 handful of raw walnuts and 1 handful of frozen cherries defrosted (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F.  Lightly oil an 8"x8" square cake pan and line with parchment paper.

Place the broken chocolate or chocolate chips and baking soda into a blender.  Blend until they have a rubbly, sand-like consistency.

Add the pitted dates, eggs, coconut oil and vanilla extract.  Blend all the ingredients until they form a frothy batter consistency.

Pour the batter into the cake pan.

I pressed raw walnuts and defrosted frozen cherries into the raw batter before it went into the oven to make this treat nurturing for heart health with its added vitamin E and antioxidants.

Bake for 30 minutes. the top should be soft to the touch when cooked


Want more ideas to include added fibre in your diet to tame excess midlife hormones whilst boosting your immunity in the Winter? Click here to try my recipe for Red Cabbage and Apple Sauerkraut (New research links a healthy microbiome to increased immune health AND reduced symptoms of menopause with increased protection against breast cancer!)

Brain Protective Chocolate and Apricot Energy Balls

November is Alzheimers Awareness Month and a perfect time to focus on lifestyle and nutrition practices, recipes and information that empowers to support our optimal brain health.

You might wonder why eating to support brain health should be a priority in your thirties, forties fifties and sixties woman and in return I would ask you; 

Do you have stress?

Do you sleep like a baby for 8 hours a night?

Have you ever experienced brain fog, anxiety or the blues?

Be real with me here sister! All of the symptoms mentioned above are ones we talk about when we meet for coffee and joke about being part and parcel of the midlife female experience.

Between 2000 and 2017 death’s in North America due to Alzheimers increased by 145% and two thirds of all sufferers of Alzheimers are women.

For many years we have lived with the rationalization that because women live longer than men, they are by default going to make up a greater percentage of Alzheimers patients but as the women live on average only 5 years longer than men and the onset of Alzheimers from commencement to diagnosis averages 10 year…this math did not make sense.

Finally more research into women experience of Alzheimers is being carried out and there is currently an ongoing re-think around the female pathway into dementia as it differs significantly from that of men.

And, so, opinions are changing and science is learning that

1.     Womens’ brains may need more ‘protection’ than male brains, from stress and poor eating habits.

2.     That women with Alzheimers are not being detected under current testing regimes with tests designed by and for men. Women universally have greater verbal skills (shout out to the chat, the gossip, verbal connection and talkiness that defines the beauty of women!) and so pass verbal testing despite having early onset Alzheimers.     

3.     That women have more divergent thinking patterns than men and that this contributes to the unhealthy protein that lays down plaque in the brain as part of Alzheimers disease to be more widely spread throughout different centers of the brain.

4.     That moving through menopause pre-disposes a womans brain to dementia because of the loss of the neuro-protective properties of estrogen. Studies are not claiming causation for menopause and Alzheimers BUT that if you are predisposed to Alzheimers then menopause can act as a trigger.

All of this information brings us back to point one and the only message we really need to receive… Womens brains need more protection than mens from the onset of Alzheimers and dementia.

Easy to make in only 15 minutes, below is a recipe that will help you to balance your blood sugar levels and fuel your brain on a daily basis. Make a batch of 12 of these Chocolate, Apricot Energy Balls to keep in your refrigerator and know that when you reach for a snack, you are also deeply protecting your future cognitive function!

If brain health is your priority, you need to check out my recipe for Omega 3 Rich Sardine Pate. Click here for a recipe.

Brain Protective Chocolate, Apricot Energy Balls

Ingredients

                          11/2 cups unsulphured dried apricots

                          1 cup shredded coconut

                          1/4 cup cacao paste or organic cocoa powder

                          1tbsp coconut oil

                          zest of 1 orange

                          1/4tsp sea salt

Instructions

·      In a food processor pulse the dried apricots until they form a paste.

·      Pulse in the cacao paste or cocoa and orange zest to combine.

·      In a large bowl plug the shredded coconut, sea salt and spirulina and combine.

·      Add the apricot/chocolate paste and coconut oil and combine all ingredients with the hands.

·      Form into balls and roll in additional shredded coconut if desired.

Store in the refrigerator.