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

How to Identify the Emotions Driving Your Food Cravings

When emotions are the driving force that cause your food cravings, it is vital to develop emotional awareness. If you have been avoiding emotions through emotional eating—or any other mindless form of numbing them out—this can feel like an overwhelming (and emotional) mountain to climb.

As humans, we tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain. While pleasure is an important part of life, generally, life cannot exist without both, and at times, this includes experiencing discomfort and pain. If you spend your life avoiding pain, you limit your ability to truly experience the pleasures in your life to their fullest.

While emotional eating can be triggered by any emotion, it is generally driven by a desire to avoid or numb out uncomfortable emotions. Discomfort is not experienced as pleasure and we tend to want it to just stop. Food can temporarily trigger the pleasure center in the brain causing a temporary suppression of the uncomfortable emotion. However, it does not just go away! It comes back, along with all of the other emotions you have been avoiding with food.

Learning to identify emotions and understand why you are experiencing them in the first place is essential. While it can feel daunting, knowing you have been avoiding the feelings for a reason, being able to create a more peaceful relationship with food, as well as with yourself is worth the effort. Know that this is a process, it takes time and indeed a good bit of effort. 

To get started, it is helpful to have a feelings/emotions journal. If you have no idea where to start with identifying, much less feeling your feelings, you can download a feelings wheel like this one here. Giving yourself dedicated time to building your emotional awareness muscle is important.

If you wanted to strengthen your biceps, you wouldn’t do just one bicep curl and expect to create the strength you desire and be done for life! You have to do many repetitions—and in order to maintain the strength you create, you must be consistent. You will most likely have to feel a little sore in order for growth to happen.

When you check in, you are identifying and exploring your emotions, this helps you build your emotional awareness muscles. You can continue to develop your emotional awareness by preparing yourself, having a plan, and committing to check in emotionally with yourself consistently.

Choose a time to give yourself space with your journal and emotions wheel and check in with how you are feeling right now. Ask yourself if there have been any emotions you experienced throughout the day today or even the day before that want to be recognized.

Once you acknowledge that a feeling is there, check in with how that particular emotion impacts your physical body. What’s occurring internally as you bring up or allow yourself to feel this emotion? Again, try not to judge your experience but witness it, be present with it, and if it’s uncomfortable try not to run from it—if it is comfortable, try not to cling to it.

Spend time observing this feeling and engage with it from the perspective of witnessing it. Become a silent observer of your emotions.

Now allow yourself to discover the why. Ask yourself, “why did I experience that emotion?” “What happened to create that specific emotion?” Try not to judge, just be curious. Name the feeling, observe it, and now understand the why. This is powerful information about your internal response to—and experience of your life. Emotions are valuable information about your experience of your life and allow you to make choices based on your internal experience.

Do you need to take action on the feeling? When you understand the why behind the feeling, you can decide if there is anything you need to do. If you are anxious, is there something you need to do? If you are angry, is there something you need to say? If you are bored, is there something constructive you could do? How can you take action in a way that is healthy and allows you to feel empowered and in control.

Now you have the opportunity to let it go! If you have allowed yourself to authentically feel your emotion, be non-judgmentally aware of it and derive the important information from it, you can make a choice about whether or not you need to take action. Now it is time to let it go. Releasing emotions comes with time and practice, practice and time.

Allow yourself to consistently show up for your emotions—all of your emotions—and you will find them to be less scary. Additionally, you will begin to feel more and more emotionally empowered. There are no “bad” feelings, just some that may be more comfortable than others, however, they are all vitally important to be aware of in order to make a choice about how to respond. Every emotion has a purpose and is a valuable element of being a human and of being alive.

As you begin to feel more comfortable experiencing your emotions, you can specifically apply these concepts and practices to eating. When you are experiencing a craving, you can ask yourself what you are actually hungry for in the moment. You may find more often than not, it is not actually food! Then you have an opportunity to make a choice.

You create the opportunity to make empowered decisions regarding how to respond to your emotions and how to choose the foods you truly want to eat—not because of an attempt to temporarily numb an emotion, but to enjoy the taste and experience of eating that particular food.

When you consistently practice emotional awareness, you will end the cycle of escaping your emotions with food. If you find you could benefit from support in this area, reach out, find support and begin to grow your emotional awareness. This creates an opportunity to make peace with food by making peace with yourself.

Becoming a Food Cravings Whisperer: How to Tune In and Listen to Your Body

Becoming a Food Cravings Whisperer:

How to Tune In and Listen to Your Body

Food cravings can be difficult to manage, understand and cope with effectively. Learning to listen to your body and integrating mindful and intuitive eating practices will help you become a food cravings whisperer. Mindless eating distracts your attention away from the present moment, while mindful eating is being fully present with your food and its impact on your mind and body. When you eat mindfully, you are able to fully savor your food as well as the present moment.

Intuitive eating is learning to listen to your body and requires the ability to tune in to the messages from your body, respect it and care for it. Many of us live in a space of being disconnected from our body. Judging our bodies and perceiving judgements from others creates and perpetuates the disconnection and negative feelings. We can harp on wanting to change this or that physical feature which creates a sense of internal and external discontent and is not a useful way to be with yourself.

Learning to be both intuitive and mindful with food, your body and the present moment in an integrative manner allows you to understand the messages that your body sends you through food cravings. If your current perspective on food cravings is that they are a problem, try to reframe it in this way: the specific food craving is powerful message from your body about what your body needs.

When you think about it, your body is truly amazing, it is always there for you. Your heart never skips a beat, your organs of digestion do their best to digest whatever food you eat, your lungs continue to breathe. Your body is working hard at all times to maintain homeostasis, to keep you in a state of health, balance, wellness and ease.

When we give our bodies half a chance it will heal itself and remain in balance. So, is there something wrong with your body if you experience a craving for chocolate, pizza or ice cream? Try viewing these cravings not as problems, but as information, messages from your body-mind about what it needs.

A craving for something sweet could mean that you are dehydrated, you need more protein, that you need more exercise, that you ate sugar recently and it is a blood sugar balance concern. Sugar cravings may also indicate that you really need more sweetness—not from food but from pleasure and connection—in your life. The key to managing the craving for something sweet is to allow yourself to truly tune into your body-mind and understand what you really need. This requires both listening to your intuition while being mindfully engaged with the present moment.

When you are eating a significant amount of refined foods, sugar, caffeine, alcohol or foods with little to no nutritional value, you are essentially confusing your body. Our bodies are designed to thrive on whole foods and it knows how to assimilate the nutrients from whole foods quite efficiently.

These other addictive or non-food foods (like soft drinks, candy and highly processed foods) throw your body out of balance and create cravings. If you just ate, your body anticipates that it will digest that food and receive nutrients to build cells that make up all aspects of your physical body including your muscles, bones, tissues and organs. If you feed your body foods lacking in nutrients it is confusing to your body.

The more that your food is whole and healthy, the more your body will remain in balance. This essentially offers you a healthier, happier life. Your choices are a reflection of what is occurring internally. Use this information to reflect on how you feel about yourself and how you can truly nourish yourself, your mind and body in a healthy manner.

Cultivating a healthy relationship with your body is key. If you have been making negative comments about your body, judging your body and disconnecting from your body, this may be a challenge. However, it is a challenge worth accepting! Of all the relationships in your life, your relationship with yourself and your body is most important, it is your foundational relationship. Just like any healthy relationship, it takes communication, dedication, compassion, respect and time to create and maintain.

The next time you have a food craving, treat it like a message from your body. Tune into your body, listen, evaluate the what and the why of this valuable message from your body. Ask yourself these questions to help hone your intuition:

-What happened in your life just before this craving?

-Is there a nutrient you’ve been lacking in your daily meals (fiber, vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates, fat)?

-How many vegetables and fruits have you eaten today?

-How much water have you had today?

-Have you been restricting certain foods?

-Have you been having negative thoughts or feelings about yourself or your body?

-Why do you want this particular food?

-Are you hungry?

-Are you bored?

-Are you lonely?

-Are you tired?

-How is your energy?

-Have you been isolating yourself?

Asking yourself these questions allows you to have greater self-awareness and will help you create self-compassion and gain a deeper understanding of each of your specific and individual cravings. The more in-tune you are with your body, the more aware you are of your emotions, the more you will trust your intuition.

When you engage in intuitive eating, you create a deep sense of awareness of your body. When you engage in mindful eating, you have a deep sense of pleasure derived from food as well as your hunger and full cues. When you practice both intuitive and mindful eating together you create freedom and peace within your own personal mind-body experience.

When you learn to tune into your body, your life and ask—and then listen, you will feel your relationship with yourself improve. When you feel more in-tune with yourself and your body, you will develop this deeper understanding of your cravings and what you truly need. Try listening, be patient for the answers and notice the impact on your choices around food as well as within your life.