Elemental Nutrition, Unit 1, 1 Moomba Street, Sunshine Coast (2026)

24/03/2022

an update from me to my followers regarding what I am up to, my current studies, passions, offerings and style of practice.

18/10/2021

In my last IGTV video, I mentioned the addition of collagen a few times, mainly to sweeter breakfast options that aren’t naturally rich in protein.

Collagen is a form of protein, my favourite is marine collagen sourced from wild caught Alaskan cod fish. This type of collagen is a type 1 collagen, the most abundant protein in the human body and is crucial for healthy skin, muscles, joints, tendons and bones. It is the substance that holds our bodies together, providing strength and structure. Marine collagen is abundant in the amino acid proline, the main component of keratin, the protein that makes up hair skin and nails.

As it is a naturally sourced supplement, it is highly bioavailable with 90% absorption, meaning the body can utilise the nourishment. The brand I use is , it is sourced exclusively from sustainably sourced fish and it is tasteless and odourless, making it an easy addition to a variety of meals.

I thought I would share how I used this collagen this morning to increase the nutrient profile of my smoothie.

1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 frozen banana
1 TBS cacao
1 TBS tahini
2 TBS marine collagen
1 TSP 12 mushroom tonic
1 TBS coconut cream
1/2 cup filtered water

I blended this all up until it was thick and smooth, and then I topped with bee pollen for a whole food source of B vitamins.

This recipe made more than what is pictured in the glass, I was just so excited to drink it that I didn’t think to use it for social media until half way through! 😆

14/10/2021

It’s been a busy few weeks in the Elemental Nutrition world, as I have been working on bringing one of my passion projects to life. I have found over the last few years that the biggest challenge for my clients with healthy eating practices was not having the time to prepare their food, leading them to making poorer food choices when eating takeaway food.

I also have got a passion for food, yeah it’s pretty typical to think that to have studied a health science degree in nutritional medicine, that there would need to be an underlying interest in food, right?! Well, for me, I studied nutrition with the intention of opening a health food cafe at the end and serve nourishing food to my community. I didn’t quite make it there as I loved clinical practice so much that I went straight into setting up Elemental Nutrition and supporting many clients towards better health.

The salad bar concept of Dandelion Wild came through a conscious connected breath work practice. I got the pen and paper out and started brand developing pretty quickly, the sparks of excitement in my heart and the sleepless nights from the adrenaline have been pretty clear signs to me to flow with this passion.

I’d love for you to join me over on as I share the journey towards the first market set up. I feel this business has a lot of potential and I can’t wait for it to be a part of the local, health conscious community.

14/10/2021

As a part of being a health practitioner, I always take time to reflect on the health outcomes of clients on their journey with me.

The reality is that I am only part of the picture, I am an external resource for my clients. I can see and hear their story, their lifestyle and what they are experiencing, then I move on the analyse, systemise and identify patterns in their health. With this information, I then proceed to breaking down in to basic steps the best way to regain balance, in a manageable and sustainable way, meeting them where they are at. I like to figure out what language to use that will resonate with the client, so that when I explain what is going on and why it is important to make the changes, they hear it in a way they understand. This is through identifying their passions, what makes them feel happy, excited and fulfilled.

By taking the time to understand where the client is coming from, delivering the information in way that they engage with, empowers them to take control of their health and action the treatment plan. Really, I am a vessel for them to better understand themselves and give them a bit of a manual as to how to best nourish their body.

Essentially, it is the client that does the work. I hold space and facilitate the process of them better understanding their body, it is up to the client to take action.

Whilst I am transitioning my practice to be whole food supplement based, with a focus on mineral balancing, I am also putting a lot of emphasis on food therapeutics. As you will know, I do believe in supplementation, although the truest foundation to health is the food we eat. No matter how many supplements you take, if your food is not nourishing for your mind, body and soul, then you might be facing a life of progressive health decline. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food - Hippocrates.

12/10/2021

Wow, so I feel that I am getting towards the end of the Nutrition Foundation series. There is nothing more foundational to nutrition than the actual meals of the day, specifically breakfast.

Break-fast is by far the most important meal of the day as the name suggests, it is the meal that breaks the over night fasting period. There are a lot of trends with fasting, if you know me by now, I try to stay either ahead or away from trends.

Breakfast sets our body up for the day. Having a sufficient and nutritious meal of a morning is the ideal way to establish healthy eating patterns throughout the day. The key nutrient that I see is often missed at breakfast is protein. A breakfast enriched with protein will provide a long burning log on your metabolic fire for the day, this means that your satiety will be sustained with three wholesome meals and energy slumps, sweet cravings and binge eating can all be swayed.

Ensuring that you are eating breakfast before 10am reduces your bodies shift in to a state of physical stress, where the liver starts to generate glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates. This process is called gluconeogenesis, it is a survival mechanism the body has adopted over our ancestral years of hunting and gathering. This isn’t a process we want to put our bodies through daily. Even when intermittent fasting, ensuring that the fast is broken no later to reduce the inflammatory effects of this process.

I understand how busy mornings and life can be that breakfast is often overlooked or undernourishing, so will do a video on breakfast and some ideas that could inspire you to kick start your day, the best way you can for sustained healthy eating practices.

16/09/2021

The beautiful part of being a nutritionist is hearing how well a client feels after implementing the treatment plan recommendations.

Do you feel off track with your health? Not sure where to start? Seeing a nutritionist is one of many great natural health options.

I truly believe that nutrition is the foundation for health, what we fuel our bodies with will have a direct impact on how our life is fuelled.

Yes, nutrition is physical, scientific and analytical. I also see it is emotional, vibrational and spiritual. It is also a subconscious routine that our days are structured around, it is a practice and it is a lifestyle. There is so much more to nutrition than just eating. There are philosophies, beliefs, energetics, ethics, values, seasons. There is also traditions, either with preparation styles, recipes and cultures. It is an intimate interaction between the outside world and our internal world.

In appreciation of how much depth there is to nutrition, the advantage of seeing a nutritionist is that we can help to work out what is best for your body given your current state of health. We can put it in order of where to start, where you are going and be there to educate and empower you along the way.

If this resonates with you, send me a DM and we can find a time for you to come in and develop an individualised plan to get you feeling better.

14/09/2021

Have you ever wondered what does refined sugar free (RSF) mean? As a part of Nutrition Foundations, I wanted to go through what this means and what the differences are.

RSF means that the sweet ingredients in the product are not refined. Is refined sugar any different to natural sugar? Yes in some ways, no in others.

Sugar, in all forms is a simple carbohydrate, the body utilises the sugar and converts it to glucose for the body to use as energy. How the body metabolises refined vs. natural sugars is different depending on its source. Natural sugars such as fruit/milk sugars when consumed as a whole food (apple / milk) contain fibre/fat, the absorption of these sugars in the small intestine is slowed down. Refined sugars (white / brown ) are straight up sugar molecules that have been processed, these are absorbed rapidly in the small intestine.

The matter of similarity between both natural and refined is that once absorbed through the intestine, the body does not know the difference, it all stimulates insulin to be released to absorb the glucose in to the cell.

If you have a lot of sugar, whether its natural / refined, your blood glucose regulation may be under the pump and not functioning the way it should. This can lead to increased sugar cravings and energy slumps soon after eating.

What about natural sugars such as maple syrup, honey and coconut sugars? These are all simple sugars, containing no fibre or fat, so they are absorbed quickly. The difference between these and regular refined sugars are that these contain vitamins, minerals and active constituents that can benefit health when consumed in moderation.

Natural sugars can be an ally to your health if consumed as a special treat or in moderation as a part of a balanced nutritional intake. Choosing refined sugar free sweet treats are better choices than regular sweet treats, although I would recommend choosing sweetness that is closest to nature such as fruit. I love chocolate as my special treat and I always go for Green & Blacks, 70% or 85% as it has minimal coconut sugar in it or if I am baking I use maple syrup.

Questions? Comment below for us to explore and learn.

26/08/2021

What is your relationship with vegetables like? Do you like them, do you eat enough, do you get a variety of them in each day?

I want to chat about vegetables as a part of Nutrition Foundations as they are essential for human health. The Australian Dietary Guidelines suggests five servings of vegetables per day, what is one serving you ask?

One serving of vegetables equates to:
- one cup of raw vegetables
- half cup of cooked vegetables

So what is classified as a vegetable? A vegetable is the edible part of a plant. There are sub-classifications of vegetables:

- leaves (kale, watercress, cabbage, spinach)
- roots (radish, beetroot, carrot)
- tubers (potato, cassava, sweet potato)
- fruit (avocado, tomato, eggplant)
- flowers (broccoli, cauliflower, artichoke)
- stems (celery, asparagus, leek)
- seeds (peas, beans, legumes)
- bulbs (onion, garlic, fennel)
- fungi (mushrooms)

Vegetables are rich in fibre, a nutrient that offers food sources for our gut bacteria. Having a variety of vegetables in your daily food consumption helps to maintain a happy and healthy bacterial environment.

I encourage you to witness how many vegetables you are consuming currently and if you are close to your five servings. If you do, yay, that’s amazing. If you don’t, now we know and have a great goal to work towards.

It’s interesting that mushrooms are classified as a vegetables although they are not classified as plants, they are a part of the fungi kingdom.

26/08/2021

What is your relationship with vegetables like? Do you like them, do you eat enough, do you get a variety of them in each day?

As a part of the Nutrition Foundations series I thought that I’d chat vegetables as vegetable intake is an important aspect of health. The Australian Dietary Guidelines suggests five servings of vegetables per day, what is one serving you ask?

One serving of vegetables equates to:
- one cup of raw vegetables
- half cup of cooked vegetables

So what is classified as a vegetable? A vegetable is the edible part of a plant. There are sub-classifications of vegetables:

- leaves (kale, watercress, cabbage, spinach)
- roots (radish, beetroot, carrot)
- tubers (potato, cassava, sweet potato)
- fruit (avocado, tomato, eggplant)
- flowers (broccoli, cauliflower, artichoke)
- stems (celery, asparagus, leek)
- seeds (peas, beans, legumes)
- bulbs (onion, garlic, fennel)
- fungi (mushrooms)

Vegetables are rich in fibre, a nutrient that offers food sources for our gut bacteria. Having a variety of vegetables in your daily food consumption helps to maintain a happy and healthy bacterial environment.

I encourage you to witness how many vegetables you are consuming currently and if you are close to your five servings. If you do, yay, that’s amazing. If you don’t, now we know and have a great goal to work towards.

17/08/2021

Do you hear the terms processed, refined and whole food a lot amongst food banter? I definitely use these words a lot and I thought they fall under the umbrella of Nutrition Foundations.

Processed food is a very broad term as there are many processes that food can undergo to become the final, consumable item. Basically, processing is altering the food from its natural state. This can be done at home using a very basic whisk / food processor, it can also be done on mass scale using machines, chemicals and heat. The latter is the more concerning as using these processing tools, alters the chemical structure of the food and therefore it alters the way in which this food interacts with our body and our bacteria.

Refined food is generally good that has gone through multiple stages of processing such as hulling the shell off a wheat grain, then grinding the wheat grain and bleaching it to end up with white flour. This depth of processing completely alters the natural constitution of the wheat grain and actually takes away any nutritional value of the wheat and ends up making it quite harmful on the body.

Whole foods are foods in their natural state, unadulterated, containing all the nutrients that it was grown with- fibre, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants. Some whole foods, such as chickpeas, need to go through a processing phase in order to be edible, soaking and boiling, this removes anti-nutrients the chickpea has to survive the growth phase in nature, and makes them easier on digestion by softening and absorbing the water.

Processing really is part of food preparation, it is not detrimental at all stages, it is just to what extent is a good processed before it starts becoming refined.

Take home message is to avoid highly processed, refined foods wherever possible to ensure the food you are consuming is working with you, not against you. These foods include refined oils, standard white bread, fast food,flavoured items such as BBQ chips, twisties, shapes, lollies, a lot of chocolates, sauces. These items can be sometimes foods if you really love them, although I think there are better alternatives to try.

Cucumbers can be naturally processed into pickles.

11/08/2021

The last macronutrient to cover for the series is protein, do you think you are getting enough protein in a day?

Macronutrients (macro = large, nutrients = food constitution classification) are the major sources of fuel in the diet. Protein is the building block of the body and is required for cellular structure and function. It is the most common nutrient deficiency I see in clinic, especially amongst women.

Protein profiles vary across animal and plant based sources. Animal sources are complete proteins, this means that they come with a profile of amino acids (smaller protein units) that the body can utilise directly. Plant sources are incomplete, this means that the amino acid profile is not complete, for the body to utilise the proteins, it needs to make them from different sources of proteins from the diet. Amazing the body can do this, although it does mean that a variety of protein sources need to be consumed to provide the amino acids and also for the body to make the profile complete, it uses more nutrients such as zinc and B vitamins, so there is a greater demand on those body.

Animal sources of protein include red meat, poultry, eggs, fish, chicken broth, dairy products including cheese, yogurt, milk.

Plant sources include lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, grains, tofu, tempeh, pseudograins including buckwheat, quinoa.

A general guide for protein intake is to have a source with all main meals and snacks. Having protein enriched meals helps to maintain energy throughout the day and avoid binging at the end of the day.

08/08/2021

Okay, so what about carbohydrates? Such a trivial topic with trends of ketogenic diets and low carbohydrate diets, do healthy carbohydrates fall within Nutrition Foundations? Absolutely.

Carbohydrates come in many forms, refined sugars and refined grains are processed carbohydrates that due to the process of refining them, have lost most of their nutritional value such as fibre, vitamins and minerals. Typically, food types include white bread, breakfast cereals, lollies, desert foods, white pasta.

Whereas whole food sources of carbohydrates offer a lot more nutritional value, including whole grains, lentils, legumes, fruits and vegetables. These foods contain fibre, vitamins and minerals that all contribute to health. Due to the fibre contents, blood sugar levels do not spike and detoxification is supported by keeping bowels regular and a feeling of fullness is experienced.

Having a variety of whole food carbohydrates throughout the day, with main meals or snacks is ideal for most people. Main meal ideas are pesto pulse pasta (lentil based pasta) or a side of root vegetables with dinner. Snack ideas are hummus with carrot sticks or a handful of berries.

If you can work towards removing refined, processed carbohydrates that can be your first step towards improving your diet.

Ketogenic and low carbohydrate diets are therapeutic for certain individuals and you should work with a natural healthcare provider to work out of this is right for you.

Elemental Nutrition

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