Nutrition

The chefs at Divani Apollon Palace & Thalasso spoil you with creative, delicious meals, all intended to make you feel satisfied and healthy on the inside. This dish makes for a fantastic high-protein breakfast, and combined with good, plant-based fat sources from the avocado, it will fuel your muscles and help maintain your energy levels throughout the day.  Interestingly, avocado has a high content of the essential nutrient potassium, helping to reduce blood pressure, and lowers the risk of heart disease and kidney failure. More importantly; it tastes delicious!

Suzie Walker

Suzie is a nutritionist and founder of The Primal Pantry. She transitioned to a paleo lifestyle 6 years ago, and decided to set up The Primal Pantry in 2014 after struggling to find healthy, on-the-go snacks that support a paleo diet. Suzie is on a mission to challenge the packaged food industry by forging a real food revolution.

Suzie Walker, nutritionist & founder of The Primal Pantry

Suzie is a nutritionist and founder of The Primal Pantry. She transitioned to a paleo lifestyle 6 years ago, and decided to set up The Primal Pantry in 2014 after struggling to find healthy, on-the-go snacks that support a paleo diet. Suzie is on a mission to challenge the packaged food industry by forging a real food revolution.

Forget the classic tomato soup, The Farm at San Benito have created the perfect blend of vitamin-rich vegetables including flavoursome and vibrant beet juice to make this tasty Cream of Beetroot soup. The green blend of apples, onion and cabbage give the soup an earthy yet refreshing taste, until the sweet kick from the carrot and beet juice create the wholesome, creamy texture that will tantalise your taste buds.

With every summer comes the sudden realisation that a winter spent gorging on comfort foods has its price. However, panicking and embarking on a crash diet can lead to future weight-gain and serious health issues. Here some leading health experts share some tips on how to look amazing in your bikini in 7 days without risking your health.

It’s time to get to know the quadruplets of happiness: Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin and Endorphin. Gain control of this fun foursome and you’ll gain control of your own happiness. Here, we look at how each one of them works and recommend a way to catalyse them into action on a wellness holiday to boost your happy hormones.

Short of time? Try this superfood Chia Pudding recipe from Aro Ha Wellness Retreat in New Zealand, which you can whip up in no time. This indulgent pudding will fulfil sweet cravings, as the flavourful combination of coconut and spices tantalizes your taste buds. It’s also gluten-free, refined sugar-free and vegan, so makes for the perfect guilt-free sweet treat, and is ideal for breakfast, a post-workout snack, or a delicious dessert.

If you and your partner are beginning the process or have already started trying for a baby, then our 5 fertility wellness holidays are a great excuse to escape on a couples healthy holiday whilst maximising your chances of conceiving. Whilst falling pregnant may happen faster for some couples than others, regardless of how long it takes, being mentally strong and healthy will steer you in good stead for the future when trying to conceive. From the stunning Portuguese coast to the beauty of the Himalayas, take time to de-stress and boost your chances of success at one of these wellness retreats ideal for a conceptionmoon.

The cuisine at Marbella Club focuses on nutritious, healthy meals that are perfectly light for a warm summer’s day on Spain’s south coast. This delicious ‘pasta’ dish does not contain any gluten or refined grains, thanks to the ‘courgetti’, making it suitable for those with a gluten intolerance or following a low carb diet. This completely vegan dish is bursting with nutrients, thanks to the raw courgettes, nuts, and plant-based parmesan alternative. This recipe is perfect for a fresh summer lunch and offers a great alternative to traditional pasta dishes.

Try this decadent Crispy Potato Napoleon from The Farm at San Benito, featuring crunchy, fresh vegetables and rich flavours. This healthy, nutrient-dense dish provides a combination of textures, thanks to the crispy potatoes and creamy, flavourful aubergine atop a bed of greens. All of this is topped with a fine pumpkin ginger sauce, beneficial in reducing inflammation in the body. A delicious vegan recipe, perfect for when you want to reward yourself with a warming, hearty meal full of nutrients.

Innovative cuisine by SHA Wellness Clinic, this refreshing and vibrant dish is perfect for a light lunch or summer side salad. Not simply is it pleasing on the palette, the ingredients are carefully selected for their impressive array of health benefits. Cucumbers keep you hydrated, aid weight-loss and help flush out toxins, whereas wakame helps with mineral transport in the body and the production of proteins. So, sit back, tuck in, and enjoy.

Give yourself a much-needed cleanse on a detox holiday as you soak up the Mediterranean sun. Receive a specialised detox programme and enjoy dining on the fresh and healthy cuisine associated with this side of Europe. Whether you want to venture to Spain, Turkey or Greece, experience a variety of luxury spa treatments tailored to your health requirements. With full access to the fantastic spa facilities and group classes, you can further your detox holiday and unleash a healthier, brighter glow. After your stay, return home feeling renewed with a greater sense of body awareness and the knowledge to maintain a clean and healthier lifestyle.

The world has a way of periodically and dramatically shifting from ‘life as we know it’ into disorder and uncertainty – but most of us have never experienced as profound and widespread a shift as the one precipitated by covid-19. The constant state of uncertainty about who is infected, when social distancing will be lifted, when the pandemic will peak – all of that creates special challenges for us, especially when we are living in voluntary isolation. Foremost among those challenges is how to avoid sliding into spirals of anxiety, and cultivate a sense of ease in our lives.

Sean Carey

Sean Carey is the Fitness and Lifestyle trainer at Absolute Sanctuary in Koh Samui, Thailand. Sean, originally from the UK is not only a certified Fitness trainer but also a Yoga and Pilates teacher. He believes that exercise training all comes down to body awareness regardless of what our goals may be. Once we understand what is entailed to achieve results then the probability of the goal being achieved is greatly increased. Sean says one method of exercise might be right for the one person but a different method may be required for another, and this can only be realised through body awareness.

The one diet this pharmacist recommends, here is what you need to know.

By Holly Louise Fitness, Pharmacist and expert for Body Science

We are constantly being told to “eat well” and stay away from “bad foods”, especially if we want to lose weight. However, experience has shown that when you place yourself into a restrictive diet which labels food as “good” or “bad” or even eliminates whole food groups, you become more susceptible to binge eating. This in turn creates feelings of guilt and generates negative emotions, resulting in a very unhealthy relationship with food and body image. In order to have a healthy relationship with food and with ourselves, we need to change this mentality and become aware of how our bodies actually respond to food.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that what you eat will largely impact your quality of life. Far too often, however, the emphasis is placed on the purported physical benefits of good nutrition; rarely is focus drawn to the effect of our feeding habits on our cognition and emotional health. Whilst not at the forefront of popular magazines or media outlets, behind-the-scenes science is developing rapidly, and studies have shown that specific foods can provide a plethora of psychological benefits, including developments in brain health, function and mental well-being. Here, we shed light on a few potential brain-boosting bites and revolutionary healthy recipe ideas that might just give you the mental makeover you require.

More than just a fad diet, eating gluten free is in fact vital to individuals suffering from a condition called coeliac disease. A lifelong autoimmune disease in which the small intestine reacts with hypersensitivity to gluten, this reaction leads to difficulty in digesting food. According to Coeliac.org.uk, this disease is affecting approximately 1 in 100 people with over 80% of this number remaining undiagnosed. With an increasing demand for nutrition friendly retreats offering gluten free cuisine we share our top 5 gluten free healthy foodie holidays, opening the doors even wider to a world of gastronomic globetrotters.

by Steve Halsall

A Celebrity Personal Trainer

The whole subject of a healthy gut is one of opinion and counter opinion. It is a complex subject that whole departments in hospitals are designated to. Huge amounts of money is spent on research and even more on remedies and tablets to try and quell the feeling of heartburn and gut ache. My understanding is that the two are very separate conditions. Heartburn and indigestion, which 40 percent of Americans suffer from, often occurs after eating when the acid secreted from the gut to break down food travels back up the lower throat which gives the feeling of heartburn.

by Maureen Cromey

An Acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine Expert

Let’s look at our good gut feeling through the eyes of Chinese Medicine. Gut problems are awful. They can be painful, embarrassing, cause terrible bloating, ruin your confidence and worse. Severe problems cause great deterioration in health and can be life threatening.  When the digestive system is upset we are unable to absorb vital nutrients and become weak and vulnerable to further imbalances and illnesses.

by Matthew Powell

A Body Aware Specialist

From the moment food is swallowed it begins a 25-30 foot journey of breakdown, release, absorption, addition, and removal. The processing of this food uses a staggering 9 times the amount of nerves than are present in the brain AND spinal cord. For this reason, scientists dub this Enteric Nervous System (ENS) the body’s “Second Brain”.