The Nourishing Well

Hello again!

It's been a while...

I had to take a step back for a few months to look after my health and also move house. Now I'm back, the sun is shining and The Nourishing Well is open again.

My first client through the virtual clinic doors yesterday is looking to relieve ongoing fatigue and brain fog alongside some ongoing gut issues, which are likely related. I'm looking forward to seeing her thrive in the next 12 weeks.

Nutritional therapy aims to find and aleviate the root cause of symptoms rather than masking those symptoms. If you have a chronic illness, nutritional therapy can help to reverse the underlying problem. It may not 'cure' the illness, especially with autoimmune disease, however it can make life much more livable and enjoyable!

I'll be rounding off this week with a corporate workshop to a sports company as part of their wellness day. Friday's workshop is all about eating for peak energy. I love running workshops and focus on energy and performance for work and home.

I'm also continuing with my own professional development and am part way through a Digestion with Confidence course run by an amazing pharmacist and nutritional therapist. Once accredited, I will be able to work with clients with various digestive issues, typically involving the use of PPIs. I'll be sure to let you know when I'm accredited.

➡️ If you're looking for support and advice personally, and would like to work with me, I'd love to hear from you.

➡️ If you're keen to know how I can tailor a workshop to your specific group needs, then do drop me a note and we can chat.

➡️ You can find out more about me via my professional organisation, BANT here: https://practitioner-search.bant.org.uk/member/46251/anna-gray/
Or via Nutritionist Resource: https://www.nutritionist-resource.org.uk/nutritionists/anna-gray

Anna Gray Have you lost your drive? Suffering from fatigue mid-afternoon and struggle to get out of bed in the morning? Stuck in a rut and want some guidance to find a way forward to be and feel healthier? I can help you find a positive way forward to eating f...

It's been a bit quiet here as I took a step back to focus on my health. As the clinic doors open fully again, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions:

💷 What price do you put on your health?

🏋️‍♀️ You might go to the gym, walk or run, lift weights or do pilates.
💆‍♀️ You might take time for yourself and have massages, facials or reflexology.
👟You might spend your money on the latest equipment and fads to optimise your fitness.

🥦 If you're not eating the right foods for you, then you risk spending time and money chasing optimal health but not achieving it.

If you'd like to change that, get in touch and find out how nutritional therapy can help you reach your personal health goals.

You can message me here, or go to my website:

The Nourishing Well - The Nourishing Well Just another WordPress site

Sleep. My final top 10 tip for the last day of January.

We are saying goodbye to January 2024. For me it’s been a bit of a struggle as I’m receiving intensive treatment meaning multiple weekly hospital visits interrupting my day-to-day pattern. My treatment is given with steroids which has interrupted my sleep patterns no end.

What does health mean and what link does it have to nutrition?

Sleep is connected to long , good and (maybe surprisingly to some) .

The less sleep you have, the more likely leptin (hormone for satiety) levels are to fall and ghrelin (hunger hormone) levels are rise so you're going to battling hunger. Plus the simple fact that being awake for longer leaves you more time to snack during the day or the dreaded late night snacking that doesn’t have time to be digested properly before you sleep.

Sleep is a necessary process for healing. The body uses the time during sleep to remove toxins from our cells - everywhere from our brain to our guts. Damaged and dying cells are removed to be expelled from the body, and growth hormones that help heal damaged cells increase at night and clean our bodies. Lack of sleep leads to inflammation in the body.

You can help improve your sleep by focusing on your sleep health:

🛏️ Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day (yes, even weekends if possible with an hours grace either at night or in the morning - think of changing your bedtime at weekends to giving yourself jetlag)

🥘Try not to eat for 2 hours before bedtime

🚰 If you’re someone who gets up in the night to use the toilet, stop drinking 2 hours before bed too

💡Turn down the lights 2 hours before bed. Use side lamps, not harsh overhead spot lights

📺 Turn off devices or use blue light blocking glasses
Create a peaceful environment - no television, no bright lights

📘 Use a gratitude diary to shift your thoughts to positive each day

🏋🏻 Work out when the best time for you to exercise is as intense exercise in the evening may be detrimental to your sleep

Here’s wishing you a good night’s sleep tonight 🥱 😴

Goodnight January. Hello to the (marginally!) brighter days of February.

Another non-food tip for you today. It's a simple one.

Move every day.

Our bodies are designed to move. As we age, our muscles don’t regenerate as they used to, so do them a favour and move. Choose exercises you're likely to do to keep exercise going.

There is ever more compelling evidence for movement, from moving for as little as 5 minutes after a meal to help aid digestion and blood sugar management to incorporating weights and resistance training to aid muscle retention (yes, muscle retention as we lose up to 10% of muscle mass every decade between 30 and 50, then 15% from then on!).

With less muscle mass, as well as the obvious loss of strength, ability to balance and is a key predictor in how well we'll age, muscle loss also means there is less ability to burn calories.

So, take some tins from the cupboard to use as weights, walk up and down the stairs for 5 minutes after dinner, and start moving every day!



Note: If you are embarking on a weight training programme, seek professional help to ensure you are performing movements correctly

We've nearly made it to the end of January (I know it's felt like a long month!), and my advice today is to rest and enjoy your food.

Take key moments for yourself each day. If you haven’t time to schedule separate time, make sure to sit and be mindful about your meals.

Stressors can be classed as acute or immediate, prolonged or chronic. All have a negative impact on your digestion. The last thing your body is focused on of when you are in a stressful situation is digestion. Who needs to digest the salmon, cream cheese and cucumber bagel when death is imminent?

Yet aside from the external stressors on us that we cannot control, many of us also eat standing up, on the move, eat while multitasking and generally don’t give our digestion the environment or time it requires to do it’s job properly and that can lead to long term digestive issues.

If you’d ever had digestion problems, and come back from holiday thinking “The food was so amazing that I didn’t experience my usual digestive issues!”. It’s likely that the restful time you were having also contributed to the lack of digestive issues you experienced.

What are your daily stressors?
Perhaps it’s constant deadline hitting
Maybe it’s having to be pleasant and nice to people you don’t particularly like (yes, that’s a stressor too)
Or you could literally running yourself into the ground with too much on at work, managing the family and home and 'relaxing' with high intensity exercise (which also puts stress on the body).

The vagus nerve modulates stress response through sympathetic activation so take time to actively support it through engaging with stress-reducing activities.

When we eat is a great time to to this. So for the rest of this week (and beyond), take a moment to sit and be mindful with food. Say a thank you for your food, sit down, relax and appreciate it and focus on your food.

We all need a moment out of our days, so take that time to relax while eating. That email can wait 10 minutes.

Tip number 7 to breeze through to better health in 2024:
Variety is the spice of life.

Eating the same foods every day, or even repeating the same meals every week can lead you to be deficient in nutrients. Plus your microbiome loves variety, especially plant foods, as different beneficial gut bacteria have their favourite foods too!

If you're fed up of rotating the same evening meals or picking up the same sandwich ever day, why not set yourself a challenge to eat 50 plants in one week to boost your microbiome.

Being practical, to try to increase variety in your meals, when you follow recipes be brave, swap some things and be flexible and see what works. I’m doing a tray bake recipe today that calls for squash but I don’t have any! So I’m swapping in some carrots instead along with a red onion to go with the brown one already in the recipe, plus some apples for some extra flavour and texture. Oh, and I'll throw some beans in there too because that's a win for extra fibre too. I'll freeze whatever's left over for a quick mid-week meal.

Can you name 50 different vegetables or fruits that you like?

Why not make it a group challenge with a family quiz. Whoever can name the most plants beginning with each letter of the alphabet is the winner

Try to identify vegetables, fruits, grains, herbs and spices. See how many you can get. Some letters will be more tricky that others!

To help kick off your quiz and give you the upper hand, here’s what I came up with for the first four letters of the alphabet in less than 2 minutes:

Avocado, asparagus, aubergine, allspice, apple, apricot, almonds, arborio rice

Beetroot, broad beans, broccoli, banana, barley, basil, butter beans, bok choi, bean sprouts, Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, borage

Cauliflower, chicory, celeriac, cherries, clementines, cumin, chilli, chickpeas

Dragon fruit, damsons, dandelion leaves, dill

📅 With only 5 days left in January I am planning my work, personal appointments and weekends for February. I'm also planning my food - at least for this week and thinking ahead into the next week.

We regularly plan our work and home lives: meeting in town on Monday (leave on the 07:20 train), Robbie’s swim lesson 6pm Wednesday, monthly report download on Thursday, board meeting then pub on Friday.

➡ How many times have you sat down to plan your breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the week in advance?

And that's today's tip - plan your meals. Escape those evenings when you are tired and lacking inspiration when you open the fridge or cupboard and believe you have nothing to eat. If you struggle to eat breakfast then snack on sweets or chocolate before lunch and want to get out of the habit, plan overnight oats or yoghurt and fruit pots for the week, make them up and have them ready to take out of the fridge and eat straight away.
When it comes to evening meals, think about the meals you usually make (and of course that you like) and draw up a cupboard list of essentials you can keep in the cupboard to make these meals.

My cupboard list includes plenty of extra virgin olive oil, cartons or tins of lentils, butterbeans, chickpeas, quinoa, rice, bouillon for stock, nut butters, oats, honey and plenty of salt, pepper, herbs and spices (everything can be made better with herbs and spices). My fridge and freezer list has to have milk (cows and plant based), plenty of fresh and frozen vegetables and fruit plus some frozen fish and chicken. When all else fails I always have eggs and butter on the side because scrambled eggs or an omelette is always a speedy winner of a dinner for me.

To help get you started, draw up a simple weekly chart for breakfast, lunch and dinner and populate some of the days with meals you know you will have. Each week, a quick check of your current groceries will help you draw up a decent shopping list to complete your plan, and as well as being more prepared for your meals you could also save money and food waste.

My fifth tip to lead you into February and a healthier 2024 is to focus meals meal around protein.

As a rule in the UK, it's not that we don't get enough, but there is an argument that we don't get enough quality protein and increasing good quality protein intake isn't a bad idea for the following reasons.

Eating more protein keeps you feeling fuller for longer as it takes longer to digest and helps control hunger hormone ghrelin. So for anyone wishing to shed a few pounds or maintain, it’s an easy place to start.

At the same time protein is our building block for cells and increases muscle mass, helps bone density and is really important if you have an injury and to support aging.

Protein contains amino acids, which your brian needs to create neurotransmitters, so protein is needed for brain health too.

If you fit into any of the above categories then increasing your protein could prove useful.

When we say good quality protein, what do we mean? Starting your day with yoghurt or eggs is a good start. For lunches and dinners, whole cuts of fish, and meat (legs or breast of chicken, chops or steak for beef, pork and lamb). Try to avoid or reduce intake of processed foods including sausages and bacon and vegetarian or vegan meat alternatives.

Plants contain plenty of protein but you do have to pick and choose more carefully to get higher amounts of protein into a vegetarian diet. Seek out foods like lentils, kidney beans, edamame, chickpeas, soy bean (including tofu), nuts and pure nut butters (try to go for ones that are just the nuts and try out alternatives to peanut).

Try out different things and see what suits you.

Tomorrow's tip is less about the food on the plate and more about our behaviours that lead to success in improving health through nutrition.

January countdown, post number 4:

*Fibre*: feed your microbes. Today's 'quick' health tip is a little long because fibre is essential, but often neglected in our diets.

What are your go-to vegetables? Do you think about their fibre content when you are choosing? Do you remove fibre by peeling vegetables that could be washed instead? Honest answers only please.

It’s a missed opportunity and potentially health limiting to disregard fibre in the way we do, as it’s an essential nutrient to keep us healthy. We should be aiming for about 30g fibre per day.

Our gut microbes love fibre and fibre helps our digestive system function properly. Fibre bulks our food keeping things, as granny would say “regular”. They provide substrate to make short chain fatty acids which are implicated in keeping both out gut and also the rest of our body healthy.

FOS (fructo-oligosaccharides) and GOS (galacto-oligosaccharides) act as prebiotics, in that they pass through our digestive tract undigested, solely for our gut bacteria to feast on.

Other ways fibre aids health and wellbeing is through improved mineral absorption, blood glucose and insulin modulation, and protection against inflammatory diseases and cancers, especially colon cancer.

We can get plenty of fibre through our diet if we choose the right plants to eat. That means we can avoid having to buy supplements to help with the process.

If you don’t usually eat a lot of fibre, start small and build up to help your gut get used to it otherwise you’ll know about it! Once your body is happy with increasing amounts of fibre you can start to add more. Contrarily when you are used to eating fibre it can help with the bloating that it causes when you eat too much too soon! Be patient.

High fibre options to try: Dark leafy greens, artichokes, asparagus, beetroot, fennel, legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils), dried fruit, watermelon, barley, rye, wholewheat, almonds, pistachios, seeds. Also eat whole fruits instead of juice, keep skin on vegetables and fruits, and wash them instead e.g., potatoes, carrots, apples, even kiwi fruit.

Note: if you need to follow a low FODMAP diet do this under guidance from a dietician.

Tip 3 with 8 days left to go in January.

Eat real, whole food.

Our body’s digestive system is complex but it hasn’t evolved to cope with processed foods. When foods are processed, the ‘food matrix’ is disrupted and our digestive system doesn’t recognise it as real food. Additives including preservatives and stabilisers can cause distress and inflammation to our guts.

Don’t fall for the marketing ploys of the big food corporations touting ‘added vitamins’ or jump onto the next detox or weight loss shake. Real food has all its vitamins and minerals encased within.

This tip may be boring, but real, whole, natural vegetables and fruits, raw or cooked to the way you like it will be better than processed.

What does real food look like:
Vegetables and fruits, grains, meat and dairy products in as near to natural form.
Fruits: apples, avocados, apricots, asparagus; grains such as rye, pearl barley or wild rice; dairy including fermented options like yoghurt and kefir; and meat in as near to natural form. Limit intake of processed meats like sausages, burgers, bacon and choose whole cuts: fish fillets, chicken breasts, chops, steaks, mince with nothing added.

If you need a shortcut to save time, then tinned (in water or olive oil) and frozen options (including herbs which are great frozen) are good choices to make.

Hope this helps towards a healthier you this 2024!

With 9 days left in January, this is my number 2 simple tip for helping you towards better health through nutrition. This one is so simple, but most of us neglect to even think about it.

Chew your food!

Chewing and swallowing are the only parts of the digestive process that we actively control. Chewing helps digestion, and also helps stop us overeating.

By breaking down food into smaller particles through chewing, we expose more of the food to saliva. Saliva contains amylase and lipase which help digest starches and fats. Saliva also helps activate the rest of the digestive process to aid digestion of proteins further down.

Chewing your food properly can help ease heartburn, bloating and can help you digest more of the nutrients from your food. By chewing your food properly, you slow down eating which helps you not overeat. And chewing also helps you enjoy your food more. Aim to chew each mouthful at least 20 times.

There are 10 days left in January (I know, January seems to have gone on FOREVER!)

Perhaps you are someone who doesn’t jump on the ‘New Year health kick’ bandwagon, but would like to change a few small things about the way you live your life to feel healthier this year.

I’ve 10 tips to pass on for everyone that are simple to implement and will make a difference to how you feel day-to-day. I'll post one a day to the end of the month.

Number 1: Drink more water

Most of us don’t drink enough water and need to hydrate more. Water makes up nearly 3/4 of the cells in our body, including our brain cells. Want to feel more alert? Drink water!

We can often mistake thirst for hunger, leading to snacking, when what our body actually needs is hydration.

What counts as good hydration? Stick to water for the majority of your intake. Coffee, tea and herbal teas are also good. If you do need some flavour in your water, try flavouring with real food e.g., sliced lemon, orange, ginger, mint etc. Try to avoid squashes which tend to be sugary and contain additives. Also avoid fizzy pop e.g., coke, lemonade. If you prefer fizz, try plain sparkling water, soda water or tonic water with natural flavours added.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
May it being you all the happiness and success you deserve

Merry Christmas 🎄🎁🌟

Wishing you all a peaceful and relaxing Christmas and a Happy New Year

Looking forward to 2024!

Anna x

The path might be clear, even if it isn’t easy.

I’m continuing my recovery from surgery with daily walks. Today’s walk was round one of my regular running routes. It’ll be a while before I’m allowed to run again, so it was good to follow this route.

Getting outside in nature is imperative for my well-being. Exercising the body is an obvious benefit of going out for a walk. Being in daylight and a feeling of being at one with the world is also great for healing and general well-being.

I’m starting back at work this week on a limited, part-time basis. I have slots opening up for new clients over the coming weeks.

While focusing on recovery, between sleeping and physio exercises, I’ve written a new blog. Sneaked it up on the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

If you’ve ever struggled to implement and maintain healthy changes in your life then you might want to read it.

A huge amount of focus is given on the ‘what’ when it comes to changing diet. But we also must consider the ‘why’. Both are personal to you.

Let me know your thoughts and please do share any tips and advice you’d give anyone else starting a process of change x

Head to https://thenourishingwell.co.uk/the-importance-of-goal-setting/ for a read.

The importance of goal setting - The Nourishing Well As I write this I’m at home recovering from a major operation for breast cancer. Ironic given it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month! The second one […]

It’s my first day back home after having major surgery for breast cancer. Ironic given it’s breast cancer awareness month.

It’s my second BC surgery in the space of a year so my body is feeling a little done in. I focused on building strength and fitness in the lead up to the operation which will hopefully help in my recovery.

I have my mum staying to look after me and help in preparing lots of nutritious, healing food.

My pets are taking their comforting role very seriously and Lola has been lying with me this morning. Charlie, my other dog, tried but couldn’t get up onto the bed!

Clinic will open again mid-November and workshops are being booked in from mid-January 2024.

As we are changing seasons and kids are back to school, there are lots more bugs about.

Our gut forms one of our key lines of defence against infection. 70% of our immune cells are in our gut. So it makes sense that if we care for our gut, through the food we eat and how we live our life, we can help prevent sickness.

Things to focus on that will help you now and through to winter are:

- choose whole, natural foods most of the time, and limit the amount of ultra processed foods you consume (fresh, freshly tinned or freshly frozen are all just as good)

- get outdoors and see daylight in the morning - even on a gloomy day in the UK the amount of lux (measure of light) is multiples higher than any artificial light and helps regulate your circadian rhythm

- exercise to increase your endorphins. Caveat: if you do have a cold or feel under the weather, don’t overdo it as it can cause inflammation

- eat loads of variety or colourful plant foods (including legumes, beans, spices and herbs as well as your usual carrots, broccoli etc)

- make sure to eat plenty of fibre as this helps to feed your microbiome, enhancing the likelihood of beneficial gut bacteria wanting to reside in your gut

- eat oily fish. Oily fish helps our body reduce unwanted inflammation. Add avocado, use extra virgin olive oil

- eat protein to support muscle function

- exercise compassion and take time out. Relax. Every day.

- walk each day. While 10,000 steps is an arbitrary number, it’s important to move your body. Walking is an underrated exercise. So everyday you can, go for a walk

- get out in nature. Even if it’s 5 minutes looking up at some trees

If you’d like to talk to me about hosting a workshop for your team or to find out about working with me in clinic, please do message me and we can start the conversation.

I’m back from a wonderful holiday in Australia, visiting friends and running the Sydney marathon.

Wherever I go, and whatever I’m doing there, food is still top of my interest list.

In Australia in both Adelaide and Sydney where I spent the majority of time, the supermarket was literally bursting with the most amazing looking, smelling and tasting fresh vegetables. From gigantic capsicums (peppers) to beautiful beetroots, cabbages, radishes, okra, artichokes, fennel… plus buckets of self serve green leaves, amazing arrays of nuts and tubs of sprouting seeds that in the UK we can only source from health food shops. The only place where the supermarket was struggling to get fresh food on the shelves was at Yulara and given that’s over a thousand miles from most cities you can forgive them! In Alice Springs we still managed to have a breakfast full of greens, salad items and fresh eggs so it can be done!

In the UK we seem to be fighting what at times seems to be a losing battle with our food environment which is led by large corporations selling the promise of easy, nutritious food which is by all accounts not nutritious at all as it is ultra processed with some vitamins shoved in for luck. Our desire for quick is set against prioritising wholesome, natural food which our body prefers and thrives on to maintain health in the long term. More and more is being researched and learned about the impact of diet on our health, however our food environment in the UK remains stubbornly set up counter to the evolving knowledge.

Research into brain and mood disorders stemming from Australia focuses on the detrimental effects of poor diet versus a healthy Mediterranean style diet. Trials show (starting with the SMILES trial Felice Jacka OAM ) that adopting a whole food, modified Mediterranean diet improves mood disorders in Australian adults.

Having seen first hand the supermarket shelves in Australia, I would argue the population in Australia are coming at it from a much better starting position than we are in the UK.

So can you imagine if our food environment was supportive of the majority of the population eating a modified Mediterranean diet and avoiding the ultra processed mush that we have been programmed over the past few decades to choose instead?

Would you be tempted to choose to buy, cook or create and eat more fresh wholesome food if your supermarket aisles looked like this?

Here’s some photos to whet your appetite for some wholesome, fresh food. It’s shouting out from the photos “Choose me!”

Wouldn’t it be nice…. Oh wait! We can.

There are a whole host of diseases that we can improve through the diet we eat and lifestyle we lead. Some we can reverse entirely and we can also improve symptoms and how we feel day to day.

If you’d like help managing a condition or want to optimise your health through your diet and lifestyle, drop me a line.

I’ll be opening my books again for consultations at the end of October.

Contact me now to arrange a half hour chat (free) to learn how nutritional therapy can help you improve your health and performance.

Wouldn't it be great if we had the means to promote health and prevent disease?

One of the major risk factors for many, if not most, of today's chronic conditions such as Type 2 Diabetes mellitus, overweight and obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, fatty liver disease, cancer, mental health and neurodegeneration is DIET.

A balanced diet can help promote health and prevent many of the risk factors for these conditions.

PREVENTION is better than cure.

Find a PSA-accredited BANT nutrition practitioner at bant.org.uk

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I’ve been quiet recently, busy with life and I’m now on my holidays. I’ll do a round up when I’m back.

Today I’m relaxing ahead of running Sydney marathon tomorrow. My tenth marathon distance. Plenty of water being drunk, lots of fresh food being eaten and feet up looking at the view.

Photo was taken last night. It shows the Sydney Opera house and the Friday night fireworks as seen from our balcony.

I've had a few questions recenlty about milk. Specifically which milk is best to drink. There are a few considerations people have including intolerance, nutritional composition, metabolic or cardiovascular disease risk and ethics.

My latest blog 'Milk, milk, glorious milk' draws on a variety of sources and recent data.

Head to the website to take a look: https://thenourishingwell.co.uk/milk-milk-glorious-milk/

While you're there you can sign up to join my mailing list and receive a free booklet on "How to Beat Burnout".

Look forward to sharing it with you soon!