If you or anyone you know would like some guidance with the following areas of nutrition please reach out:
• Female and male sports nutrition
• Pre-conception nutrition
• Nutrition & the menstrual cycle & female hormones
• Overall well-being & general nutrition goals

I am available in person at Evado Studios Hawthorn or online via zoom. To book in with me for a one on one consultation please either email me at bec@becstone.com.au or contact your local Evado Studios reception.

For sports nutrition presentations please contact me via email.

I look forward to working with you soon 🙂

Trimester 1 involved a little more nausea (and food not staying down) than I hoped for, but it really wasn’t that bad. Below are a few suggestions I have for anyone who needs them while feeling a bit green in trimester 1, fingers crossed they work for you or your loved one.

Tips to help you deal with nausea in trimester one:

• Have a snack on your bedside table to eat 1st thing in the morning. This helps to stabilise your blood sugar levels before you get up – it really helped ease my morning nausea. I snacked on nuts, bliss/protein balls, dates stuffed with nuts or homemade frozen yoghurt bites which really hit the spot as they were cold – see recipe below!
• If your prenatal supplement smells too strong and sets you off, store it in the fridge, this really helps reduce the strong smell.
• Avoid getting hungry. The more hungry I was, the worse I felt! I always carried mixed nuts, bliss balls, True protein bars, Mary’s Gone Crackers & carrot sticks in my handbag as a back-ups to eat when I felt myself getting hungry and nauseous.
• Breakfast was hard to stomach, so I became obsessed with smoothie bowls and smoothies for breaky- cold things were so much easier to get down. I loaded them with beetroot, berries, kale, spinach, mango, fresh ginger, yoghurt & INCA organic’s protein powder – do whatever works best for you!
• I wore Sea-Bands – they help with sea sickness and I found they really helped with my nausea. You can find them at chemists.
• If you can stomach it, try and get some protein and good fats coming into your main meals instead of just carbs. Getting some protein and good fats coming in helps stabilise your blood glucose levels much better which helps reduces nausea. Meat, fish and eggs are good sources of protein, but if you’re like me and found these hard to keep down focus on getting a good quality protein powder coming in like INCA organic’s natural whey protein powder, Greek yoghurt, cheese, legumes (lentils, beans, chickpeas, and pastas made of legumes too). I ate lots of nuts and seeds and raw nut butters, Made by Cow full cream milk, quinoa cooked in organic chicken broth. When I could stomach it, I got grass-fed mince meat coming in too.
• When I was craving chocolate cake I made home made chocolate muffins loaded with raw cacao powder, mashed banana, oat flour, maple syrup, coconut oil, eggs and dark chocolate chips.

Nutrition is something I love, so I really focused on both mine & Mitch’s preconception nutrition before we started trying. This is not everyone’s jam & I totally respect that, but if you’ve been thinking about adding to the fam & want to make sure both you and your partner are brimming with nutrients please reach out!

Homemade Frozen Yoghurt Bites:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup of Plain Greek yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon of coconut oil or grass fed ghee
• 1 tablespoon of collagen powder
• 1/4 of a cup of strawberry chia jam – check out this simple online recipe
• 1/4 cup of pumpkin seeds or home-made granola

Method:

• Mix melted coconut oil/ghee and collagen powder into the yoghurt
• Use a mini muffin tray (silicon trays are easiest to use) and scoop 2 heaped teaspoons of yoghurt mix followed by 1 teaspoon of strawberry chia jam and a sprinkle or pumpkin seeds or granola into each muffin cup
• Freeze for 2 hours and keep stored in the freezer until eating
• In the AM get your partner or housemate to grab you out a frozen chia yoghurt bite to eat while in bed to help ease your nausea
• Enjoy 🙂

I think good quality protein powders can be beneficial for a lot of people’s diets, but it’s not a necessary supplement for everyone.

For example, a good quality protein powder can really help athletes or avid gym goers, vegetarians or vegans, busy people who struggle to get time for proper meals, and people who are immune compromised.

However the quality of protein powder is paramount! There are a ton of poor quality, highly processed, and artificially-sweetened powders out there that you want to be avoiding! If you’re adding a protein powder into your diet, you want to make sure that it is actually going to be beneficial – you want to ensure it is made up of real, nutritionally-dense ingredients, and is minimally processed.

I have had the pleasure of working with the owner of INCA Organics protein powders and I can hands-down say that INCA Organics is the purest protein powder I can find on the market. It is packed full of nutrients from real food, contains absolutely nothing artificial, and is very minimally processed.

My  favourite is the Organic Natural Whey protein powder – it is just 100% organic whey protein concentrate – absolutely nothing else. Plus it blends really well into my favourite post-run berry smoothie (see below).

The only thing to note is that if you are a drug tested athlete, INCA Organics protein powders are not yet ASADA approved. One of the best ASADA approved protein powders currently on the market is ISOWHEY Sports Refuel and Rebuild – best straight after training.

If you’d like to know more about why we need protein and when and why it could be appropriate to have a good quality protein powder in your diet, then check out my blog post on the INCA Organics website about protein and protein powders.

Post-run Berry Smoothie:

• 1 – 1.5 cups of Nutty Bruce un-sweetened almond milk
• 1 cup of frozen organic mixed berries
• 2-3 heaped tablespoons of traditional rolled oats
• 1 scoop (30g) of INCA Organics Natural Whey Protein Powder
• 3 heaped tablespoons or organic plain Greek yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon of prebiotic fibre (feeds your good gut bacteria)

Blend all the ingredients together, and enjoy cold! If you’re running longer than 10km, then I also add in a banana to this recipe too.

For prebiotic fibre, I recommend Natural Evolution – Green Banana Resistant Starch.

However most hot cross buns are loaded with many types of sugars, poor quality vegetable oil, white flour, preservatives and food additives! They are generally highly processed and are no good for your good gut bacteria, blood sugar levels, energy levels and waistline. The majority of the time they are not very filling, so you find yourself reaching for a second one!

So should you eat hot cross buns at Easter time?

Of course you can! BUT make sure you choose good quality hot cross bun brands that have no added sugars, preservatives or food additives and use good quality flour such as sourdough or spelt, and good quality oils like olive oil or coconut oil.

What to look for when buying good quality hot cross buns:

A great brand of hot cross buns to buy is the Ancient Grains organic wholegrain spelt hot cross buns. You can get these from most health food stores or organic food stores, some local greengrocers, and some IGAs, and online at SunnyBrook Health Store.

I know a hot cross bun with no sugar in it sounds like it won’t be tasty, but trust me if you get a good quality hot cross bun and have it toasted with some grass fed butter and a cup of tea it will be delicious and filling!

My afternoon Easter treat is:

• 1 Ancient Grains organic spelt hot cross bun toasted
• Spread with some organic grass fed butter – the easiest organic grass fed butter brand to find is New Zealand Mainland Organic Grass fed butter
• A cup of organic match green tea – which has lots of polypehnols (a type of antioxidant) in it to feed my good gut bacteria 🙂

Try it out and enjoy how delicious and filling a real hot cross bun is!