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In this month in review show I have some recipes wins to share from the recent 3 Day Easy Vegan Plan.

I’m also covering:

When THE Brain Tries To Hijack Your Mind. 

I’ll chat a little exercise and I’ll share what’s been rockin this past month and what’s been a tad more struggle street. Above all, my intention is to make this content applicable to YOU and creating and keeping a fit, healthy plant strong body.

Let’s get rolling…

First up, FOOD… so this weekend I was lucky enough to get to Noosa to visit my family. It was a perfect opportunity to try out some new recipes and generally they were a success. I did gain some further insights about my tolerance for cooking though. I’m really pretty intolerant! Exact measures and temperatures are just not my thing! 

Basically my preferred method of cooking is to throw together foods I like – ensure there’s adequate plant based protein and micronutrients, cook till it looks cooked at a temperature I guess and that’s really it.

As a result my tofu scramble and sushi bowl were simple and delicious and my egg-free omelette (also made with a base of tofu) was tediously #tastybutugly. The omelette certainly has potential so I’ll simplify it and share the result when it’s worthy of sharing.

So far as a good tofu scramble, true to my cooking preferences… anything goes. 

I started with a sauce mix straight from the greatist.com including:

• 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast (they said a teaspoon however… anything goes!)
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin 
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika 
• 1 tablespoon of water
• pinch of sea salt and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper.

I then sautéd an iron packed mix of veg in little olive oil, onion and garlic. In this case:

• 4 cubes frozen kale (defrosted)
• 1/2 a portobello mushroom
• 5 olives 

Next step, crumble in:

• 100 grams of firm tofu.

Finally add sauce mix. Stir and heat through. I served this with some avocado and fresh tomato. 

Of course it’d rock on toast however I’d already happily demolished 8 slices of my mums home baked bread in the past couple of days and a least that much of her roasted potato, parsnip, pumpkin and beetroot so I wasn’t feeling the need to carb up my weekend any more!

For that sushi bowl:

For the main event – the tofu – I sliced around 100 grams of firm tofu into rectangles and then shook it till coated in a bag with whatever flavours I could find. That happened to be:

• 1/2 a tablespoon of nutritional yeast
• 1 tablespoon of tamari 
• a pinch of chili 
• a pinch of paprika

I then baked the tofu (at around 200 degrees C) on baking paper for 20-30 minutes. For the last 10-15 minutes I added 50 grams of edamame coated in olive oil and sea salt. 

The bowl also featured: a sliced portobello mushroom, a 1/2 bunch of asparagus and a bunch of bok choy lightly cooked in a fry pan with oil (macadamia as I couldn’t find sesame) plus chili, garlic and fried shallots (because I excitedly foraged them from the pantry).

To serve I added: sliced avocado and dulse (red seaweed) leaf.

For more tofu recipes I super recommend checking out tofu_fit_girl on Instagram.

Let’s move onto EXERCISE and this week, if you’re not there yet I want to encourage you to hunt down your LOVE for exercise. It’s sounds overly simplistic however all too often the ability, the freedom, the health, the means to exercise can be taken for granted until they are taken away.

Here are 8 reasons to find the LOVE for exercise:

1. It’ll make it easier on YOU exercise consistently if you focus on what you value not than the reverse.
2. See exercise as precious YOU time. One of the only things many of us do selfishly-NOT-selfishly just for ourselves and our personally improvement.
3. Recognise exercise is as beneficial for your mind as your body.It’s a stress release and for many of us has a calming effect.
4. Appreciate the positive impact on your eating choices regular exercise tends to have.Generally flagging exercise means you’re more likely to flag great food choices and thankfully the reverse is true too.
5. Appreciate the positive people you get to spend time with as you build the exercising habit andjust as importantly acknowledge the positive influence you can be on those you love.
6. LOVE the results you’re working towards.
7. LOVE the fact that each day you exercise you keep an important commitment to yourself andin doing so build your reputation / your credibility with YOU.
8. LOVE that there are limitless ways to exercise andit’s absolutely within your control to hunt around until you find the way that is fun for you.

Moving on to what’s been a little struggle-street this month and this is where I’m going to cover the concept: When THE Brain Tries To Hijack Your Mind.

I heard Tony Robbins discuss this recently and the emphasis is on THE brain. Not my brain. Not your brain. Rather, that old lizard, comfort seeking and fear avoiding brain that is all too eager to hijack your mind.

You could also describe this as a very human and very detrimental ability we have to reason ourselves out of results! 

I’d like you to remember a time you had a hugely compelling and exciting Goal, Dream or Aspiration. Something that when achieved would truely have a massive positive impact on your life and happiness. Perhaps it relates to health? To business? To financial freedom for you and your loved ones or even to having a significant positive impact on the entire world.

I know you’ve had and hopefully still have these goals and dreams.

If you’re anything like me that gorgeously intoxicating vision for the future is likely also very vulnerable to sabotage in the form of fear. Safety seeking. Status quo. An inclination (at even the slightest hint of a hiccup) to resort the path of least resistance or the predictability of your most familiar and worn old routine.

It can all too easily be shattered by the hateful, hurtful comments and critics of others who are not daring to strive for any big exciting goal or dream. Heck, when my mind is back in control of THE brain I can easily recognise these others likely are not even striving for tiny goals… because no one who has time to hate has time to DO!

So what to do when When THE Brain Tries To Hijack Your Mind?

I’ve been double Robbins’ing (!) with my solution by utilising the 5 second rule made popular by Mel Robbins (no relation to Tony). Like a rocket launching, the 5 second rule is a chance to just take 5-4-3-2-1 and then launch straight into a preferred action or thought.

So if the alarm goes off and your brain (combined with your warm cosy bed) tells you: “Why bother getting up to exercise” you have just 5-4-3-2-1 to launch yourself straight out of bed.

Thought based solutions will take a little fore-thought… whatever in the past has tried to throw you back into soul sucking safely and dream destroying status quo I recommend coming up with an alternative way to think about it.

So if a negative comment is nagging at you, you have just 5-4-3-2-1 to switch your thinking to: “Thank you brain for trying to keep me safe however I’m committed to doing whatever it takes. I won’t be swayed by the opinions of people I don’t like or respect and all I need to focus on right now is the number one next most important action to take.”

My recommendation this week is episode #353 of the Rich Roll Podcast titled: Zach Bush, M.D. on GMO’s, Glyphosate and Healing The Gut. 

This conversation both terrified and fascinated me. Rich calls Dr Zach Bush, “one of the most compelling medical minds currently working to improve our understanding of human health” and I could not agree more. This show is certainly worth a double listen in my mind.

To get actionable today, is there an action or thought you could apply the 5 second rule to?

That brings us to the end of todays show.

Is there anything you’d love me to cover in an up coming show? Please let me know. I’d love to hear from you via the show notes or even better via an iTunes review. Those little reviews absolutely 100% make my day.

Thanks so very much for hanging with me today. I appreciate it. Till next week, happy training and remember… Creating a body and life you love is Freedom. (If this ex-carb queen, NON-genetically gifted, naturally uncoordinated VEGAN chick can do it – so can YOU!!!)

If you liked ‘When THE Brain Tries To Hijack Your Mind‘ you’ll also like: That Boring, Repetitive Pessimist In Your Head!

If you’re yet to share the Healthification love – just click here to zip over to iTunes and leave an honest rating and review. It’d help me out big time. With gratitude, Kate.