5 Steps for a Healthy Diet Change! (Chocolate Avocado Bread Recipe Inside!)

The vast amount of nutrition information that is out there can make even the most health informed consumers overwhelmed. There’s a lot out there to explore. You may even feel that our aisles at Nature’s Emporium have so much selection that you don’t know where to start. If you haven’t heard it before, let me be the one to tell you to commit to changing your diet one small step at a time.

Each step should feel right and be sustainable for your lifestyle.

Here are my 5 steps to making a healthy dietary shift.

Step 1: Honour where you are. Be grateful your body gets you up in the morning, takes you through your day and is able to recharge at night.  Your body is powerful and even the smallest of changes can have a dramatic positive impact for long term health.

Step 2: Take a survey of the foods you enjoy the most. List your top 10 favourite foods.

Step 3: Take that list and highlight the top three that may not be serving your body best.  If you get stuck here pay attention over the next while how your body feels when you eat these loved foods. How is your energy? Does your digestive system feel bothered? Headaches? Skin eruptions? When you eat something your body won’t lie, the key is paying attention to what it’s telling you.

Step 4: Explore healthy swaps for these foods. For example, my 9 year old’s favourite food is lasagna. Conventional lasagna is made with white processed flour noodles, a heavy amount of cow’s cheese and other diary depending on the kind of lasagna, a variety of assorted ground meats. Now, let’s take this conventional recipe and spin it into a healthier direction: Brown rice lasagna noodles, goat cheese or cashew cheese and either a grass fed ground beef or make it vegetarian/vegan and add in some layered grilled vegetables.

Step 5: Repeat Step 4 as many times as it takes to create a new version of your favourite foods with a healthy twist.

Sometimes it comes down to just switching it up. Maybe you’ve got some really great healthy recipes that you rotate between but you need something new in your repertoire.  

This happened to me recently. I made my chocolate banana bread maybe a few too many times for my boys, so they’ve grown tired of it. I decided to bring in the mighty avocado to replace the banana from a Chocolate Banana Bread to a Chocolate Avocado Bread (see recipe below). It’s a simple swap out, but it brought a brand new taste and texture to an old favourite.

Chocolate Avocado Bread

(gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free)

Ingredients:

1  ripe Avocado (even a bit of brown is okay for this recipe)

1 cup Nature’s Path Organic Quick Oats

1/2 cup Lakanto Monk Fruit Sweetener

2 Nature’s Emporium Free Run Eggs

1 cup Lily’s Stevia Sweetened Chocolate Chips

1 tsp Purest Baking Soda

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Carefully cut avocado and smash in a medium sized bowl until it’s free of lumps
3. Add to the bowl oats, monk fruit, eggs and baking soda and stir to combine
4. Add chocolate chips and stir until evenly distributed
5. Add a piece of unbleached parchment paper to a loaf pan
6. Pour contents into pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick is dry when inserted in the middle.
7. Let cool and enjoy!

Miranda Malisani, Holistic Nutritionist, Spokesperson and Director of Health & Wellness