The Nutrition Coach Blog London Nutritionist The Nutrition Coach offers advice on healthy living, nutrition and diet issues such as IBS, bloating, gluten intolerance and more.

I have also fallen prey to the bright lights and perfectly line shelves of Marks and Spencer’s food hall, however I will smugly admit that I walk past the pre-cooked, microwave meals and straight to the fresh fish and vegetable section. It is all too convenient to grab a lasagne or chicken Kiev after a long day’s work and if the trains are delayed too…well, last thing you want to do is cook.

Why not try this for a change?

I bought some mixed stir fry veggies and fresh salmon. At home I stir fried the veggies (as is) with some Tamari Soya sauce and I always have some garlic lying around. This takes about two minutes, and then I placed the salmon fillets on top of the veggies, covered it with a lid and allowed to steam for seven minutes. I squeezed some lemon on to my fish and, checked for seasoning and my dinner was ready in less than 10 minutes.

It was quite late so I didn’t need a heavy meal, the green veggies and protein went down a treat, it was light, filling and tasty and most importantly….convenient.

But the best was that I had some leftovers for my lunch the next day, which always makes me happy. This meal is of course also great for your detox, it’s gluten and dairy free and a great balance of protein, fibre and healthy fats. Even more to smile about!

Soba noodles are a type of Japanese noodle made from buckwheat.  Despite its name, buckwheat is not related to wheat and it contains no gluten, making it very gentle on the digestive system.  It is high in the antioxidant rutin which helps strengthen blood vessels and improve circulation, and contains good levels of iron, zinc and selenium compared with other grains. 

Buckwheat can be bought in health food shops, and comes in a variety of forms including flour, groats, flakes and noodles, making it a versatile grain for a gluten-free diet.

Try this delicious recipe to experiment with buckwheat noodles as a great alternative to wheat pasta.

Serves 4

200g dried soba noodles

1 tsp cold-pressed pumpkinseed oil

150g mangetout, trimmed, halved diagonally

200g pre-marinated tofu, thinly sliced

½ cucumber, halved and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons pickled ginger, thinly sliced

100g baby spinach leaves

½ cup coriander leaves

1 avocado, diced and lemon squeezed over

3 spring onions, trimmed and sliced diagonally

45g cashew nuts, roughly chopped

Dressing

3 tablespoons cold-pressed pumpkinseed oil

 2 tablespoons tamari

1 dessertspoon honey

1. Mix all the dressing ingredients together and set aside.
2. Boil the soba noodles gently for 7-9minutes until al dente, then rinse under cold water.  Add 1 tsp of pumpkin seed oil and set aside.
3. Steam or briefly boil the mangetout until just tender.
4. Place the cooked noodles, mangetout, tofu, cucumber, ginger, spinach and coriander in a bowl.  Add the dressing and toss well.  Divide the salad among the plates and top with avocado, spring onions and cashews before serving.
5. Enjoy!

Julia

It still makes me smile when I talk to my many clients who have successfully lost weight through the Metabolic Balance diet programme.  They are delighted with the results, find it exciting to notice changes not only in their weight, but their body shape.  I don’t know many other diets that address the usual problem areas of hips and tummies so well.

The main concern of many of my clients after reaching their target weight is whether they’ll put the weight back on as soon as they have some treats.  It’s great to be able to reassure everyone that with Metabolic Balance, this rarely is the case.

The reason why Metabolic Balance creates sustainable weight loss is that it creates a shift in your metabolism.  Unlike many other diets which rely purely on calorie restriction, Metabolic Balance addresses the underlying biochemistry of your body and makes it easy to maintain your weight.

If you’d like to find out more, please get in touch and book in for your free initial consultation.

As part of the Nutrition Coach we regularly attend corporate health awareness days and Friday the 19^th February was a very successful evening indeed.

Burdy organised Friday’s beauty event with her usual passion and boundless energy. I am always impressed with the passion and drive with which Burdy and her colleagues pull out all the stops for the employees. Everyone I met spoke very highly of the company; most have been working there for no less than five years and some for 30 – unheard of these days. They truly have the employee’s best interest at heart when it comes to promoting health awareness and Inmarsat employees are always keen to learn more. I have had many success stories with some losing weight, others reducing blood pressure and cholesterol and increased energy levels as well as better productivity which is definitely a win-win situation all round.

Why don’t you get The Nutrition Coach to inspire your staff with health tips which can change their lives today?

With the clocks going forward on 28^th March, we can officially say good bye to the winter blues and look forward to the start of British Summer Time.  Getting outside and making the most of the extra hour of daylight is a wonderful way to top-up your vitamin D levels, which are likely to have fallen during the dark winter months.  Vitamin D is essential for good health and is particularly important for healthy bones, heart and a strong immune system.  To give your vitamin D levels a boost:

• Spend at least 20 minutes outside every day with your forearms, hands and face exposed to the daylight;
• Eat oily fish three times per week and experiment with different varieties including anchovies, sardines, mackerel, herring and salmon.  Tuna is also a good oily fish, but limit consumption to once per week as there is a risk of high levels of pollutants such as mercury.

To help you spring clean your diet and get your health back on track, contact us or book an appointment at one of our London clinics.

Julia

Is it different from selling a product? YES!

How important is it that your services are easy to sell? Wouldn’t it be even better if they were easy to buy?

Why is selling a service so different from selling a product? In some ways, the principles should be the same. The objective is to get the prospect to agree that the way to solve their problem is to use your product or service.

• The element of trust: It’s never possible to know exactly what will be received until the service has been given
• The sales person as part of the service: The product sales person can never be part of his or her product. The product has its own dimensions and specifications which are self contained and unique. But a sales person selling a service is often part of the ‘package’ – especially if it is you, selling your own service.
• A service can’t be stored: You can’t make it in advance and stock it for selling later. And each time you deliver a service, it’s going to be slightly different.

So, how can you make the process of selling a service that much more effective? Here are a few quick ideas for you to experiment with, adapt and adopt

1. Make the Intangible Tangible: Services are intangible–you can’t see them, touch them, take them out of the box or demonstrate them. Yet this is exactly what you need to do to make them easier for your customers to buy them. So how do you accomplish this?

The answer is to “productize” your service. Make it tangible. Think like a product manager. Here are four different techniques you can use to package your service to act more like a product:

• Turn your service into a product.
• Package your different service levels.
• Combine your services and create a new offering.
• Package your process.

Each of these techniques will help you create a distinct (tangible) advantage over other service providers and make your services easier to buy.

2. Use testimonials: These can be concrete evidence that your service has worked for other people. And if your existing satisfied customers don’t volunteer testimonials, ask for them. You’ll seldom get a refusal.

3. Make your service offering  different: Product manufacturers try to make their products different from their competitors. It’s even more important to show how your service offers something different. And make sure that the differences are ones which are important to the prospect.

4. Don’t sell your time: If you are selling a time-based service, try not to sell it on the basis of so many hours worked. Sell it on so much per solution or project. This way, you remove the fear barrier that you might be trying to spin the project out  and you’ll be offering a firm outcome for a fixed price.

What all these techniques have in common is the opportunity for you to present all the value you deliver. Often, we make assumptions that our customers understand everything we do for them. But this just isn’t the case: You need to pull out every piece of value you provide over the course of a project and present that to the client in order for them to completely understand what a terrific job you’re doing for them.

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