Each ordinary day, are you doing what satisfies you. Or….?

We are odd creatures. We often engage in what torments us. Witness the hours we spend toggling on social media. And we chase the future (fretting, planning) and pause in the past (lamenting and being angry), when we know that being present is what brings us joy. And, then, to get even further away from what brings us joy, we distract ourselves even more. Yep, odd.

Image via Buzzfeed
Image via Buzzfeed

I read about an article in a science journal recently co-written by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. The scientists surveyed a bunch of women to look at how many of their daily activities brought them satisfaction. Oddly, the stuff they chose to do for hours at a time every, single day, as leisure – namely, watching TV – didn’t bring them satisfaction. Instead, connecting with the present did – via prayer and meditation.

This is madness. What stops us doing what we know brings us satiation and peace? Especially when it doesn’t involve large wads of cash or adjustments to our lives? Why do we toggle and distract ourselves away from it? Worth asking, right?

The antidote, of course, is to consciously commit to prioritising the stuff that does satisfy. If it’s merely

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My supercharged coconut cream

Love my Whipped Coconut Frosting from Simplicious? Wait til you try this trick. Today’s bonus recipe takes whipped cream to another level.

41d28d3711b8cae0b2730f7e8d1f1c36 e1453171886168 My supercharged coconut cream
Image via The Foodie Dietitian

Adding gelatin to your coconut cream gives it a super smooth texture perfectly mimicking whipped cream. Plus it gives you all the great health effect of the stuff.

Supercharged Coconut Cream

  • One 400ml can of full fat coconut milk, chilled
  • 2 tablespoons grass-fed gelatin

Using a stab mixer, blend coconut milk and add the gelatin in a slow and steady stream.

Continue mixing until soft supercharged peak form.

Use immediately (for example alongside your sugar-free dessert or on top of your smoothie) or store in the fridge and use within 4-5 days.

Bonus tip: add it to your coffee

Bloom a tablespoon of the mixture in your cup with some milk. Smoosh with a fork then add black coffee

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Want to become part of my IQS 8-Week Program partner network?

Dear Friends – Personal Trainers, Health coaches, Nutritionists, Bloggers and Dietitians With Clients Who Want to Quit Sugar,

I hope this finds you well. Given you’re on the same page and given so many of you have asked for me to do this, the I Quit Sugar Team and I have put together a partner network program that helps you to refer people in your orbit to the I Quit Sugar 8-Week Program.

By joining this partner network you can make a bit of coin for every client who signs up to the 8-Week Program via your exclusive partner link.

IQS Partner Network

What?! Tell me what that could look like!

* Run a gym? Bootcamp? Yoga classes? Tell your group about the 8-Week Program (and get them to do the February round together, en masse), and if they sign up via your link, you’ll receive AU$20 (£10) for each class member who joins.

* You’re a dietitian or nutritionist or health coach who recommends your clients cut back on the white stuff? Direct them to break their sugar addiction with our 8-Week Program and earn AU$20 (£10) for each Program membership you drive.

*You’re a personal trainer who also gives dietary advice? Well, you get the gist…

How does it work?

You sign up to my partner network, your client/friend/cousin joins the 8-Week Program through the link we provide you with, and you get AU$20 (£10).

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A mindful review: M Train by Patti Smith

Here’s another book review. I liked this one. I was totally absorbed. Patti Smith, is of course the New York punk-rock legend from the eighties who has now written multiple award-winning books.

M Train Pattie Smith book revieew Sarah Wilson
M Train, Patti Smith

Background: I don’t know why I picked up this book. When I did a quick flick through it at the bookstore, it immediately sucked me in. Part-memoir, part-Beat prose, set in New York and woven together with a thread of pure whimsy (witness Smith’s love of sitting in a daggy café drinking black coffee and eating brown toast with olive oil) it ticked many boxes for me.

The gist: Smith meanders without rule or self-consciousness, tracing all the things she misses, including time itself. It reads like the diary entries that she writes on paper napkins and scraps of paper in the daggy café. Probably because that’s how the book was written. It’s a real time journey

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My elevator guide to the microbiome

I don’t endeavour here to do a huge in-depth piece on what is a really complex topic that I’ve been studying for three years now (frankly, I don’t have the time). But since gut health is becoming more and more of a “big deal”, I’ve put together an elevator guide to the microbiome, a bunch of facts you need to know, nicely packaged in bite-sized form to tell your mates, Gran, postman or hairdresser.

Image via nytimes.com
Image via nytimes.com

1. News just in: The microbiome is responsible for most contemporary illness.

2. The microbiome is the bacteria living inside you and on your skin – bacteria, viruses, archaea, eukaryotes and fungi included.

3. 95 per cent of microbiota sits in your gut – home to approximately 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) micro organisms. That’s 10 times more than the number of cells in the human body.

4. Your gut microbiome comprises 80 per cent of your immune system. 

5. You don’t get your bacteria until after you’re born. We acquire most of our microbiome by the age of three.

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How to find your place

Are you a young person wondering what the hell you’re meant to be doing? Trying to find your place? Are you a parent with a beloved young person in your life who is struggling with their place?

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Image via fourtears.tumblr.com

My suggestion: read famous creatives’ graduation speeches. They are truly inspiring frothings in which said famous creative confesses they, too, had no idea when they were young as to their allotted groove, with tricks on how to “settle” into it.

Journalist Pamela Druckerman recently shared this piece of writing when she was struggling to draft a commencement speech for her students at a Paris Arts College. This is the part that struck me most.

Pay attention to what you’re doing on the side.

“I started my writing career as a financial journalist. On the side, I took samba-dancing lessons, and eventually wrote a first-person article about this experience. It was the first piece I’d written that lit me up inside. Though it took years before I got to write that way for a living, I had found my place, the tiny hole in the universe shaped like me,” she shared.

Same with me. I was studying law and politics and waitressed for fun (and survival). My love of food saw me explore further in this realm. I did work experience at a magazine and offered to redesign the food pages over the weekend…because my love of food steered me to this. Monday morning I got the gig as the

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The 15 types who need to be eating gelatin

Let me introduce to you: Gelatin. My new obsession and wonder weapon for gut health. In fact I believe in the power of gelatin so much I’ve produced my own.

IQS-15101511496
Gut Lovin’ Gelatin, available at IQuitSugar.com

I’ve banged on about just how good this stuff is for you before. If you ask me, everyone can benefit from a little Gut Lovin’ – but if any of the symptoms below sound familiar to you, look no further. Gelatin is your new best friend.

1. If you’ve got acne

Gelatin contains the essential amino acid proline, which is used by the body to repair connective tissues, produce collagen and improve the texture of skin.

2. If you’ve got reflux 

Gelatin reduces heartburn, ulcers and acid reflux by binding gut acids with the foods.

3. If you’re an insomniac

Reasearch has shown that the amino acid glycine contained in gelatin can actually enhance sleep quality,

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This is what my writing desk looks like (not pretty!)

I work in chaos. Plus, I’m very visual and I need to see ALL my bits of notes and ideas and outlines in one bird’s-eye grasp. So I scatter them around me at my desk, or the floor, or (as is often the case) the cafe bench where I’ve set up shop for the morning.

My writing desk in my office
My writing desk in my office at IQS HQ

Also, my eyes and brain respond better to handwritten and hardcopy things. (My advice to young writers is to handwrite their story outline first.) Whether it’s the supermarket receipt with my scrawl-of-a-thought or the serviette from the cafe where I got my great intro paragraph idea for my next book, these messy, tangible things trigger my best creative thinking.

I’m in good company, apparently.

Albert Einstein had a desk that “looked like a spiteful ex-girlfriend had a mission to destroy (my) workspace.” Which, apart from anything else, is a fabulously evocative bit of descriptor.

Einstein would also say, in defense of his chaos:

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?”

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Bonus recipe! Gym Go-er Choc Spice Energy Bars

A while back I shared a few extra images from readers who helped me test recipes for my latest book, I Quit Sugar: SimpliciousI promised I’d share more details of Lana’s recipe for the Gym Go-er Choc Spice Energy Bars. These bars didn’t make it into the book. My publisher couldn’t fit any more in, so I guess you could call it a bonus recipe.

Lana Jankovic's creation -Gym Go-er Choc Spice Energy Bars
Lana Jankovic’s recreation – Gym Go-er Choc Spice Energy Bars

These little chocolatey flavour bombs are already packed with protein from black beans and tahini. But if you want to boost the protein content, swap the oat flour for protein powder. Lana‘s verdict after testing? “They turned out delicious – almost like a fudgey brownie!”

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