Easy Peasy Gluten Free Granola

The health & nutrition world likes to demonize certain foods.

• You can't possibly eat this and expect to lose weight.

• These foods are on the 'red x' list, eat only these foods from the 'green check mark' list. 

• Cut out these 'high sugar belly fat foods'

**Cue eye roll**

I believe everything can be eaten, in moderation, of course. 

Your goals, and timelines to those goals, matter. I find most of my clients aren't looking to be on the cover of Fitness Magazine this season, but simply move & feel better in their skin, likely they want to lose a few pounds along the way, build a bit of muscle so they can.... move & feel better. 

That seems to be commonality I hear all the time, and I don't blame people for wanting that.

My clients are those that want to enjoy life and all that it offers, in a healthy & sustainable way.

Given that, I don't think giving up all nutritional options that have a sliver of enjoyment in your life is the way to go. I mean you can do it, but if you want to stick to something long term you need to find a way to balance health + enjoyment.

Sometimes that can come in small tweaks to your current food choices.

Granola is an item that gets a bad rep as it can be high in calories and sugar. And yes, if you're trying to trim a few pounds, this can be a good thing to swap or remove from your breakfast. 

Or, you could swap it out with a healthier option. One that you make at home with a few ingredients (for a fraction of the price of store bough stuff I might add). You can modify the sugar content to your own taste bud preference. 

Food satisfaction comes not only from flavour and taste, but also from texture, from crunch, from smell and from sight.

For me, a very filling breakfast is a chopped up apple + Greek yogurt (gotta have protein with my first meal), a little granola and some raisins. It's a large bowl volume wise (my brain likes that better than seeing 2 two small hardboiled eggs as my meal, or a small bowl of cereal and milk). It takes me a bit to eat my way through it (which gives my stomach time to send signals to my brain that I'm full. Also eating slowly helps with digestion). The crunch, texture & flavour of the dish satisfies me. The protein keeps me full most of the morning.

I'm sharing an easy granola recipe that I often make, and have made at my Health Retreats. This pumpkin seed granola recipe is gluten free and easily adaptable to what you have in your pantry, or what you'd like to add in it.

Pumpkin Seed Granola

• 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

• 1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut

• 3 Tbsp chia seeds

• 1/4 sunflower seeds

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1 tsp sea salt

• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup

Directions

Preheat oven to 300'F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well. Add in the maple syrup and stir again until it's all coated. It won't look too wet, but this will help the coconut & seeds stick together.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking sheet. Bake at 300'F  for 25 minutes, or until lighted golden (be careful if you use sweetened coconut it will brown more quickly from the sugar on the coconut).

Let granola cool completely. It will firm up as it cools and then you can break it into chunks. Store in an air-tight Tupperware container. It will last a week or so at room temperature, or a month in the fridge (but how you make this delicious granola last a month is beyond me!)

You can add chopped pecans, walnuts, sliced almonds etc to the granola mix. Or try cacao nibs or goji berries. If you add some oats to the mix you'll want to increase the maple syrup a bit to ensure everything gets coated with a bit of syrup glaze.

If you make this recipe and love it as much as I do, let me know!