Top things to love about Autumn? Colourful scenery, candles, cashmere jumpers, welly boots, warming stews, curry and good red wine. Love it! Unfortunately Autumn is also a time when flu’s, colds and Noro viruses sets in. What to do? Build up your armory to combat the bad stuff head on so you can enjoy the good stuff.

•  Juice

Now more than ever is the time you need to build up your nutritional armory and what better way than to juice green, leafy vegetables. There are tons of greens about, cabbages, broccoli, kale, spinach, Swiss chard and the list goes on. Juice it all to benefit from the anti-oxidants present in nature. Add ginger and lemons, perhaps an apple or two if you want it a bit sweeter, and drink daily. If you don’t like juicing yourself then get juice delivered to your home (if you are living in SW see if we deliver to your area) . This is a top way of ensuring you stay on top of your nutritional intake.

•  Get your fat on

Fat is needed to ensure most functions in our bodies happen smoothly. They grease our system and are essential for optimal health. Choose healthy fats such as olive oil, cold pressed rapeseed oils, coconut oil and eat fatty foods like avocado, nuts and seeds. Finish off with oily fish like salmon, sardines and mackerel.

• Eat colourful veggies

Green, yellow, orange and red – it really doesn’t matter as all contain nutrients essential for our well being. Try to vary your grocery shopping – do you always buy carrots and broccoli? Then play around with varieties of cabbage, beans, courgettes, sweet potatoes and aubergine. Try new recipes and be adventurous. Many food gurus out there can give you top tips, like Jamie Oliver’s Superfoods,cook book, Deliciously Ella’s wonderful vegan recipes, Tara Stiles’s Make your own rules diet

• Choose whole grains

Go as unprocessed as you possibly can. If you are gluten free then quinoa, brown rice, buckwheat, gluten free oats and millet are some of the varieties available to you. It keeps our digestion in check and our sugar levels low. Changing from white rice to brown or choosing porridge instead of processed and sugary wheat cereal is just a matter of habit.

• Ban the sugar

So this is a big deal for many of us as sugar resides in so many of our daily sources and is highly addictive. Breads, baked beans, booze, cereal, biscuits, ketchup, cereal, ready meals for example are full of the stuff. It is an ingredient that bulks our food and is therefore used deliberately in many of our everyday staple items. Just try to make more informed choices and stick to the 80/20 rule. If you love cakes then have it sometimes but not every day – make it a treat. Have a drink on the weekend and not every day and so on. You don’t have to stop eating/drinking the things you love but as we are adaptable individuals we can swap habits which do not serve us most of the time.

• Rest and meditate

We are so busy planning, doing, worrying and being active physically that it sometimes feels wrong to tune out and do nothing. Often, however, that is exactly what is needed. Lay on the sofa and read a book when the time is there. Mediate instead of filling your diary with more stuff. Simply be and enjoy the moment from time to time. Stress is a major contributor to poor health and in these times of instant access on a million different platforms it is hard to switch off. Go out of the house without a phone and see how easy it is – not very..

Enjoy and happy Monday! x