Holiday Pumpkin-Spice-Chocolate Bread

I hope you are having a wonderful, safe, healthy and joyous holiday season!

If you are looking for a last-minute healthy offering to give as a gift or take with you to a holiday gathering, look no further! This recipe tends to be a crowd-pleaser so be prepared for everyone to ask you for the recipe. They will NOT believe that this tasty dessert is FAR healthier than your usual holiday bread!

I love working with recipes to upgrade them to be as healthy and nourishing as possible and yet are still deliciously satisfying. Finding combinations of ingredients to create versions of tasty recipes that offer the best nutrition possible is always a fun challenge. Usually I prefer cooking, but I took a stab at baking with this recipe and I think you might enjoy the results!

This tasty treat recipe has been totally upgraded to offer loads of nutrition and plenty of deliciousness. It also happens to be gluten AND dairy free, so it is both paleo and vegan friendly. This recipe also uses just a low amount of all-natural sweetener and includes a veggie, fruit, nuts and seeds as ingredients—and yet still tastes like super pumpkin-spice-chocolatey heaven!!

If you try this recipe, I’d love to know what you think! I hope you enjoy!

Healthy Holiday Pumpkin-Spice-Chocolate Bread

Ingredients:

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

3 tablespoons cashew (or almond) butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup + 3 tablespoons boiling water, divided 

1 can 100% pure pumpkin

1/2 cup coconut sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon chia seeds + a sprinkle for garnish

1 cup cassava flour

½ cup coconut flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon allspice

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup dairy free dark chocolate chips + 1 tablespoon to sprinkle on top before baking

 Directions:

•  Preheat oven to 350 F and lightly grease an 8-inch bread loaf pan with coconut oil

• Boil water in a tea kettle (no need to measure yet)

•  Put applesauce, cashew butter and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl

• In a separate bowl, sift together cassava and coconut flour, spices, baking soda and salt

•  Measure 1/3 cup boiling water and pour into the bowl with the chocolate mixture, mixing quickly to make a smooth chocolate sauce

• Add pumpkin, coconut sugar, vanilla and mix well

•  Incorporate about half of the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture and gently stir just to begin to mix together

•  Measure 2 tablespoons of boiling water, add in and stir 

•  Add the rest of the flour mixture and another tablespoon of boiling water and stir just until smooth (be sure not to over-mix)

• Fold in 1/2 cup chocolate chips and chia seeds

• Spoon the batter into the prepared loaf pan. It will be quite thick—smooth the top with a spatula, add 1 tablespoon chocolate chips and a sprinkle of chia seeds

• Bake for 40-45 minutes. Stick a knife into the center of the loaf to check and see if it is ready—there might be some chocolate from a chocolate chip—but the knife should come out nearly dry

•  Let cool for at least 10 minutes

•  Slice and serve while still warm!

Enjoy!!

Thank you for being a part of the Wholistic Food Therapy Community!

Thank you for reading and I hope to continue to offer articles that help support your personal wellness journey. If there are any topics you’d like see me write about here, please hit reply and let me know!

I am putting together a 7-Day Cravings Challenge for the new year, more information on that to come very soon! I hope you’ll join me!!

With Gratitude,

Sarah

3 Strategies to Eat Mindfully Throughout the Holiday Season

The holidays offer a time for fun and fulfillment, yet they can be stressful, tiring and overwhelming at the same time. Maintaining mindful awareness throughout the season will help you remain connected to yourself, remain healthy and well while keeping any stress or emotional eating manageable and at bay.

During times of increased stress you become more likely to be in a rush and tired, which leads to making choices that are often rushed and favor convenience. This may cause an experience of not being fully present which can cause eating to feel like just one more thing on your to-do list. Rushing, not being present with your food and not choosing nourishment can cause the internal experience of stress to only become worse.

Mindful eating is paying attention to what you are eating while deriving pleasure and nourishment from your food. When you are eating mindfully, you enhance the experience of eating while acknowledging the opportunity to nourish your body and your mind. Mindful eating is paying attention to the sensory experience of your food.

Just the sight of the food you are about to eat begins the process of digestion. Mindful eating begins by taking in the visual elements and aromas of your food, before you even take one single bite! This mindful process enhances the experience of eating and pleasure of tasting your food.

The holiday season can trigger emotional and stress eating simply because of the stressed and rushed nature of the season. Additionally, this time of year more “comfort foods” tend to be always available and just about everywhere which can trigger the desire to eat irrespective of hunger. Cravings can be caused by just seeing or smelling food AND because of stress and emotional distress.

The three following strategies are intended to help maintain mindful eating throughout the holiday season in order to manage emotional and stress based cravings effectively. When you use these strategies you create an opportunity to be present with your food, to be engaged with eating in a mindful, calm and relaxed manner. This creates an opportunity to derive true pleasure and nourishment from your food, while at the same time reducing stress and emotional tension in general.

1.    Practice 1 minute of deep breathing before eating.

When you are breathing deeply and in a state of relaxation you are engaging the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the rest and digest mode, which is the mode we want to live in—unless of course there is a true emergency. Often when we are rushed or stressed during the holidays, we eat more quickly to get to the next thing on the to-do list. Try slowing down, and breathing deeply for one minute before you eat in order to calm your nervous system. This will allow your body to assimilate the nutrients from you food more effectively while also creating a sense of inner calm as you release stress and tension with your breath.

2.    Before you eat, set an intention to eat mindfully.

When you set any intention, you set in motion a powerful force that helps you focus. When you set your intention to eat mindfully before you take your first bite, you will be far more likely to do so. Setting an intention helps you create a sense of ritual and care for the process of eating and the nourishment and pleasure you will derive from your food. Try setting an intention to eat mindfully before you eat and notice how this simple practice can shift your awareness and sense of focus from your to-do list to the present moment.

3.    Practice gratitude before you eat.

After a bit of deep breathing and setting your intention to eat mindfully, offer gratitude for the food you are about to eat. When you express gratitude for your food, you create a space for deriving pleasure from your food in a big way. This can be a powerful practice to reduce stress and emotional eating as gratitude helps to alleviate stress and anxiety. When practicing gratitude for your food before you take a bite, recognize the preparation and the life giving nutrients in your food—as well as the pleasure you will experience by eating it. Be grateful and notice the impact of gratitude on your physical body as well as your mood state.

Try these three mindful strategies to remain present, focused and engaged as you make choices about what you eat and how you eat it this holiday season. Taking time to slow down, breathe, set an intention to eat mindfully and practice gratitude will allow for health and fulfillment throughout the entire holiday season.

Creating Your OWN Personalized Emotional Cravings Protocol

When you are working to heal emotional eating, having a personalized approach is most effective. The three step cravings protocol that I recommend, Pause, Reflect, Release, is helpful for most as a guideline. However, what you do within each phase will help you make it your own. When you have a personalized approach, it feels more authentic and doable and is far more likely to be sustainable.

When you find the tools that work for you, you want to practice them consistently. Awareness builds with effort and consistency. Self-awareness will continue to grow as you become more and more comfortable understanding and accepting your internal emotional world. I emphasize the acceptance process as it is absolutely vital to healing. When you understand the inner workings of your own mind, you create a tremendous capacity to heal, grow and accept yourself and others without judgment.

As you continue to more effectively manage your emotional food cravings, you create a sense of mastery which inevitably increases your experience of internal emotional comfort. When you no longer fear your feelings but instead understand, embrace and deeply accept them, you are essentially understanding, embracing and deeply accepting yourself.

The process of making peace with food is the process of making peace with yourself. With emotional, stress and disordered eating, it is never actually about the food, it is more about a limited acceptance of yourself and a limited ability to connect with yourself in a meaningful way. When you place conditions in order to accept yourself completely, you leave yourself open to creating negative cognitions about yourself such as feeling not good enough, inadequate or as though you have to be perfect.

These negative cognitions are not useful, generally untrue and hold you back from knowing yourself and caring for yourself. When you are not caring for yourself and believing the negative cognitions as if they are true, you will most likely lack motivation. As you become more emotionally aware you build confidence, you are able to believe in yourself and your capability to feel strong and healthy. Releasing the old negative cognitions and subsequent thought patterns is essential.

As you work with your own personal emotional cravings protocol, you will feel empowered in the moment, you get to choose how to manage a specific emotional craving. As you build your determination to use your protocol consistently, you will strengthen your mindset and make the best choice possible in the moment.

When you think about the three specific steps, Pause, Reflect, Release and creating a personalized protocol that works for you, it is helpful to know the specific element of each that you find to be useful.

Within the Pause phase, what helps you Pause? Do you prefer to set a timer for 1-5 minutes in the moment of awareness that you are mindlessly or emotionally eating? What is helpful next? Have a glass of water and wait for the timer to go off? Do a deep breathing exercise? Determining the specifics of your pause that work for you will help you personalize each step into a useful, actionable tool for managing your food cravings. Once you establish the technique that works best for you, use it consistently in order to effectively utilize the Pause phase.

During the Reflection phase, what works most effectively for you to Reflect on your emotional experience? What proactive element can you incorporate to make this Reflection time useful and effective? Is it helpful for you to talk about your emotion? Do you prefer to write in a journal? Does taking a walk and pondering your emotions help? Do you need to take some space away from the emotion first and practice mindfulness or relaxation and then take time to reflect?

Find what reflective process works for you and helps you identify the why behind your emotion. Once you Reflect you can take time to make a choice on how to respond to the specific emotion. If something needs to be done, decide when you will take action on it.

As you move into the Release phase, determine what helps you Release and let go of emotions that are no longer serving you. Does deep breathing help you? You can breathe in and imagine peace and contentment flowing in, and breathe out, imagining all that is not serving you mentally, emotionally and physically releasing. Does journaling support your releasing process? Does mindfulness and/or visualization help?

To visualize the Release, you can imagine your emotions on a cloud—drifting away in the sky—or your emotions releasing with the imagery of leaves floating past you on a river. Whatever helps you internalize the experience of letting go, that is what will be most effective for you to do during this phase of Release.

Take time to write down your process and know it may be different for different emotional experiences. Write down what you will do to create a personalized Pause, Reflect and Release. Have these steps nearby so you can access them in times that it may not initially come naturally for you. The rest is practice and time, time and practice. Practice is the only way to integrate the process and make it work for you within your life.  

Did you come up with a creative Pause Reflect and Release? Let me know! I’d love to hear how you are implementing these tools. How are they working for you? Need support? Know that I am here to help support you along your journey to making peace with food as well as with yourself.