Health and Sleep

Wellness is a multi-faceted concept and many different factors impact our overall health and wellness. Although nutrition plays a huge role, sleep and rest is another factor that can have a big role in your health.
Here at Metabolic Balance, finding time for rest and relaxation is an important part of the jigsaw of good health. Make it a habit to take breaks throughout the day and maintain a regular sleep schedule. Tired of being a slave to your hormones? Discover how to Reset Your Body and rediscover wellness. Let’s chat to discover if Metabolic Balance is right for you.

Cucumber

The humble cucumber is a popular vegetable found in many different varieties around the world. This popular vegetable is crunchy, refreshing, and absolutely delicious. It is perfect in a salad, as a pickle, great in sauces such as tzatziki, or soups such as gazpacho. In addition to being a versatile ingredient, cucumbers are also great for your health as they contain antioxidants, promote hydration, and contain important vitamins and minerals.
The next time you have a few cucumbers lying around consider trying a new recipe with this great ingredient.

Photo: Unsplash

Watermelon

The beginning of summer means that is finally watermelon season! The beautiful green fruits with a juicy interior, are the perfect treat on a hot summer day. Watermelons are 92% water, great for for improving hydration in the summer! Around the world there are over 300 different varieties of watermelon that are cultivated which include seedless, mini, and yellow watermelons. From a health perspective, watermelons are great as they contain lycopene which is an antioxidant and are hydrating as they have such a high water content. In the kitchen, watermelons are super versatile as you can use the entire fruit in both sweet and savory dishes. A refreshing watermelon salad with basil and feta is the perfect appetizer while the rind can be pickled for a delicious condiment or side dish. What is your favorite way to eat watermelon in the summer? Let us know in the comments!

Fun and Healthy Choices

Between home, work and family commitments, time is often limited. But balanced nutrition is crucial and healthy living is achievable Metabolic Balance.

Celebrating the family experience is important in ensuring everyone can enjoy it eating healthy. You can involve the whole family by planning meals, grocery shopping, and cooking together!

Our personalized nutrition program provides inspiration tailored to your personal needs and will tickle the taste palate of all your family members as well.

Healthy Grocery Shopping

Healthy grocery shopping and meal planning can be beneficial for maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet. Still, it can be challenging to create meal plans that are both healthy and delicious, especially if you have a busy lifestyle. 

With the right approach to grocery shopping, you can transform your health and wellness from the inside out.

Our program and the Metabolic Balance app, which you can find on The App Store and Google Play Store, allow our clients to have their own personal shopping assistant, cooking course instructor, food list, and more.

Help is there every step of the way!

Healthy Meal Prep

Looking for ways to make healthy meal prep easier for work, holidays, and every day? Here are five tips to help make healthy meal prep easy, convenient, and delicious!

  1. Plan ahead: Spend a few minutes each week planning your meals and creating a grocery list to ensure you have all the ingredients you need to prepare healthy meals.
  2. Batch cooking: Consider cooking large batches of food at once, so you can store leftovers in the fridge or freezer for quick and easy later meals – saving time and waste.
  3. Keep it simple: Stick to simple recipes that use few ingredients, and focus on incorporating lots of veggies, proteins, and fats.
  4. Have healthy snacks: Stock up on nuts, seeds, fruit, and veggies to keep you fuelled throughout the day.
  5. Get creative: Don’t be afraid to try new recipes and experiment with different flavours and ingredients!

Hopefully, you’ll find these tips useful when preparing healthy meals while you’re on the go. Remember to tag us in your food photos, we love healthy meal inspiration!

Red Cabbage

Red cabbage is available all year round and a delicious addition to your weekly menu planning. It is usually eaten as a classic side dish to game, roast duck and goose – but it is also often used in more modern creations. Its red color is due to a pigment called anthocyanin which is also present in red berries and red wine and has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The anti-cancer and cholesterol-lowering effect of this flavonoid has also been scientifically proven. Red cabbage is very rich in vitamins and fiber and is therefore an important source of nutrients. It contains the vitamins C, B6, and E and is deservedly called a “domestic superfood”.

Vitamins-Molecules for Life

There are 13 essential vitamins, and each of these vitamins are critical for maintaining our health and wellness. Our body needs these substances for numerous metabolic processes. Vitamins are indispensable for building cells, for blood formation and for the stability of bones and teeth.

In this article, Silvia Bürkle, from a scientific point of view, sheds light on how to ensure an optimal supply of vitamins and whether a supply of dietary supplements is necessary.

Vitamins – the word itself contains vitality. “Vita” stands for life and “Amin” stands for nitrogenous organic compounds. No marketing expert could have thought up a more appropriate name.

Each of the 13 vitamins known today are considered essential for human life. Our body needs these substances for numerous metabolic processes. Vitamins are indispensable for building cells, for blood formation and for the stability of bones and teeth. In addition, they strengthen the immune system, inhibit inflammation, ensure firm hair, nails and healthy skin. At the same time, they positively influence hormonal balance, the nervous system and mental wellness.

In order to stay healthy, we need to ingest these vitamins with our food, because the body, with a few exceptions, cannot produce the vitamins by itself. Some vitamins, such as vitamin K, biotin or vitamin B12, can be synthesized in small quantities in the intestine if the intestinal flora is intact, while others are absorbed as provitamins. These vitamin precursors such as beta-carotene or cholecalciferol are then converted in the body into the actual vitamin A or D, respectively. Vitamin D is a special case, as it can be formed in the skin with the help of sunlight (UV-B radiation) and cholesterol. Due to its chemical structure, it rather belongs to the steroid hormones.

But how can we know whether a normal diet is sufficient to provide us with an optimal supply of vitamins? Because in most cases we can neither see nor taste the valuable substances. So it is no wonder that many people fear that they might be deficient in one of these vitamins. Especially since it is often said that fruits and vegetables now contain fewer nutrients than they used to.

Scientists in various countries have explored the question of whether our foods today actually contain fewer valuable ingredients than they did 50 or 100 years ago. The results were quite different; while Germany, Denmark and Australia found hardly any significant differences, the data from researchers at the University of Texas showed significant changes.

However, such comparative studies are controversial, as soil quality and weather often have a strong impact on how a plant grows and thrives, and thus on the composition of its fruit. This is because depending on whether, for example, a zucchini grows in a warm or cold summer, on loamy or sandy soil, in a dry or wet area, its vitamin content can vary considerably.

In addition, the storage and transport of fruits and vegetables also impact their vitamin content. In general, the following applies: The more time that passes between harvest and consumption, the more vitamins are lost. Most of these vitamins are extremely sensitive to light and oxygen and gradually degrade. In most cases, between 10 and 40 percent of the micronutrients are also lost through storage and preparation.

But what do these findings mean for our health? Can long storage and improper preparation actually cause us to be deficient in essential vitamins?

Of course, there are various causes that can lead to increased vitamin requirements, such as stress, smoking, increased alcohol consumption, gastrointestinal disorders, growth, competitive sports or medication intake. In addition, reduced vitamin intake may be present in diets and unbalanced nutrition, especially frequent consumption of processed foods and reheated meals, in vegans and seniors. Young women with a desire to have children, pregnant women and nursing mothers also have an increased need that must be met.

In any case, this is the conclusion reached by the scientists who have analyzed eating habits and needs in various studies. In particular, it was found that some vitamins and minerals in particular were in short supply, such as vitamin D, folic acid, calcium, iron, iodine and fluorine. In view of such surveys, one gets the impression that it is almost impossible to cover nutrient requirements through meals – and that people therefore have to resort to dietary supplements.

Vitamins? Yes, please! Dietary supplements? No, thanks!

A hot dog with fries and then a vitamin pill to ease your conscience? That doesn’t work! Only the vitamins in fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, eggs and whole grains are easily broken down and absorbed by the body. Vitamin pills and other dietary supplements, on the other hand, are highly dosed, but often have a low bioavailability and can do more harm than good. Natural foods provide not only vitamins, but hundreds of other, sometimes still unknown substances that work together with the vitamins in a highly complex way in the body and supply the organism with all the building blocks of life it really needs.

Conclusion:

Nobody has to fear a vitamin deficiency if they eat a healthy and varied diet, unless they belong to a risk group. However, this requires reaching for fresh fruits and vegetables daily, eating fish once or twice a week, using cold-pressed vegetable oils, and including legumes and nuts in the diet more often. Highly processed foods that are enriched with fat and sugar should not be the first choice. They provide mainly energy, but hardly any micronutrients.

The foods of a Metabolic Balance nutrition plan are selected and compiled in such a way that you can compensate for deficiencies and nutrient fluctuations of the individual foods hardly matter.

Personalized Nutrition Plans

Creating personal nutrition plans for clients is time-consuming and, most of all extremely challenging. We help busy coaches and practitioners by providing highly personalized nutrition plans for their clients.

What does this mean for you as a coach or practitioner? It not only makes things simpler and saves you valuable time, but it also helps you get better and measurable results with your clients. In the development of the nutrition plan, Metabolic Balance® considers your client’s lab values, current health problems, medications and overall lifestyle, including their food aversions and allergies, to find the best foods for each client.

Are you ready to give yourself a competitive edge by integrating this successful meal planning program into your practice?

Visit our website to learn how you can become a Metabolic Balance coach and help guide your clients on their nutrition journey.

Apple and Cinnamon Oatmeal

Breakfast is an essential meal that helps to set the tone of your day! This classic combination of apples and cinnamon with oatmeal is perfect to help get your day started on the right note.


Ingredients:
1/2 cup of oats
1 cup of water or milk of choice
1/4 tsp of cinnamon
Pinch of ginger
Pinch of nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 apple, chopped into small pieces
Walnuts

Preparation:
In a pot over medium heat, add the oats, milk or water, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. Add in the apples and cook for 10-15 minutes or until the apples and oats are cooked. Remove from the heat and garnish with walnuts. Enjoy!