Holistic by Steph

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Holistic by Steph

Holistic Health Coach. Sharing a love for healthy food

29/07/2026

Picked these with yesterday — here’s how they support your health:

🍋 Lemon Basil — Chew a leaf before meals to fire up digestion (agni), or steep it as a delicious tea. Ayurveda uses it for exactly this.
🌱 Parsley — Don’t just garnish, eat it. TCM sees it as a Liver-supporting, blood-building green — great blended into juice or tea.
🌼 Calendula — Steep the petals in hot water for 5 min. Traditionally used as a blood cleanser and to calm gut inflammation and support skin from the inside out.
Simple herbs, real function.

Thankful for local farms like - growing the good stuff. 🤍

GutHealth HealthCoach SupportLocalFarms

28/06/2026

Totally uninspired or unmotivated to cook?

Or are you just in need of some new recipes?

I created easy, no fuss, no complicated ingredients recipes that are mainly plant based - one for each season.

These are recipes I make myself on a daily basis.

Each collection is available on my website to download for a small fee - link in bio.

Happy cooking!

23/06/2026

Every body is different. Every summer asks something different of us.

But underneath all of it — the same truth:
Food doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to be right for you. Right for this season. Right for this body.

That’s not a diet. That’s wisdom your body was born with.
Not sure what your dosha is? Take the free quiz — link in bio. 🌿

Save this for summer. ↑

22/06/2026

While the Pitta women are overheating and the Vata women are unravelling, you’re the one walking calmly through summer wondering what everyone’s complaining about.

If that’s you — you’re almost certainly Kapha dominant.
If I’ve lost you here check my previous posts to understand .

Kapha is the dosha of earth and water. Steady, nourishing, deeply loyal, beautifully grounded. The person everyone leans on. The one who remembers to eat, sleeps well, and genuinely thrives when the world slows down.

Summer’s warmth is actually kind to Kapha. The heat moves your naturally cool, slow constitution. Your digestion tends to be more robust this time of year. Your energy steadier. Your mood more open.

But here’s what’s still worth knowing.
Summer’s humidity can increase Kapha’s natural dampness — creating that heavy, sluggish feeling even in a body that generally functions well. And Kapha’s tendency toward comfort and routine can tip into overeating, especially when the social pace of summer picks up.

In TCM terms, excess dampness in summer slows the Small Intestine’s sorting function — that heaviness after meals, the afternoon fatigue that feels like you’ve eaten a stone.

What supports Kapha in summer:
— Lighter meals
— less dairy, less wheat, less heaviness
— Bitter and pungent foods
— rocket, radish, ginger, mustard greens
— Movement, every day
— Kapha needs to keep moving to stay clear
— Eating less in the evening — the heaviest meal at midday, always
— Resisting the urge to nap after lunch — it increases dampness

You thrive in summer, Kapha. Just stay light enough to enjoy it fully.

If you don’t know your dosha type take my dosha quiz I review each one personally.

19/06/2026

What Vata needs in summer is the opposite of what she wants.
Warm food. Warm drinks. Routine. Meals at the same time every day. Oil — sesame, ghee, coconut — to counter the dryness inside and out. Rest before she thinks she needs it. Stillness, even briefly, every day.
Vata doesn’t need more stimulation this summer. She needs more grounding.

Does this sound like you? Tell me below — and go take the free dosha quiz if you’re not sure where you sit. 👇 (Link in bio)

❤️

18/06/2026

Quick intro if you’re new here: in Ayurveda, every person has a unique constitution made up of three doshas — Vata, Pitta and Kapha.

Most of us have one or two that dominate.

They shape everything from your digestion and energy to your mood and how you respond to the seasons.

Knowing yours changes how you eat, rest and live — especially when the seasons shift, like they’re shifting right now.

Vata is the dosha of air and movement. If you’re Vata dominant, you’re likely light, creative, intuitive — always thinking, always moving, often forgetting to eat entirely.

It’s a beautiful, quick-witted energy. But it’s also the most easily destabilised of the three.

17/06/2026

Roasted tomato & bell pepper sauce, so easy and so Lucious!

Simple roast summer sweet tomatoes, bell pepper, onion and garlic (you can leave the peel on as it comes off easily after roasting).

Sprinkle with some sea salt and a little avo or sesame oil and roast in the oven at 175C for 35-45min until crisp, soft and sticky.

Blend with a little bone broth (or water) add in fresh parsley or basil and you’ve got a winner tomato sauce that you can use as a base for a soup - add some coconut milk or cream or more bone broth, or a delicious pasta sauce or in a lasagne or for shakshuka eggs (add smoked paprika and a bit of cumin).

Tomatoes are in season now and are linked to the summer element in TCM which governs the heart + small intestine - see my last two posts for more on that.

Let me know if you make this & how you used it, any comments of feedback is so welcome and helps keep my motivation for sharing up.

Xx
Steph

16/06/2026

You’re the one who runs hot even in winter. Who gets irritable when you’re hungry. Who pushes harder than anyone in the room and wonders why your body keeps pushing back.
And in summer and in it intensifies.

Ayurveda recognises three constitutional types — doshas. And if summer consistently wrecks you, there’s a very high chance you’re Pitta dominant.

Pitta is the dosha of fire and transformation. It governs digestion, metabolism, ambition, focus and drive. In balance, Pitta women are sharp, capable, warm and magnetic. Out of balance in summer — when the Fire element is already at its peak — they burn.

Here’s what excess Pitta in summer looks like:
— Acid reflux or heartburn that worsens in heat
— Loose stools or urgent digestion after meals
— Skin that flares
— rashes, redness, acne
— Irritability and anger that feels out of proportion
— Feeling overwhelmed, overheated and overstimulated all at once
— Inflammation that shows up everywhere
— joints, gut, skin, mood
— Waking between 1–3am, mind racing

None of this is random. In Ayurveda, Pitta’s seat is the Small Intestine — the very organ TCM identifies as summer’s digestive governor. When summer heat overwhelms an already fire-dominant constitution, the Small Intestine is the first place it shows up.

The answer isn’t to push through. It’s to cool down.
-> Bitter greens, cucumber, coconut, mint, mung beans, coriander. Meals eaten slowly, in the shade, without a screen. Early dinners. Less coffee, less alcohol, less doing.

Summer isn’t asking you to slow down as a punishment. It’s asking because your fire is already high enough.

Are you Pitta? Tell me what summer feels like in your body. 👇

❤️

15/06/2026

Most people chasing better gut health are focused on one thing: what they’re eating.

But in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the when matters just as much.

Summer is ruled by the Fire element. Its organ pair is the Heart and the Small Intestine — and the Small Intestine’s job is discernment. Separating what nourishes you from what needs to be released.

When summer Fire is out of balance, that sorting function breaks down. Bloating that appears from nowhere. Food sensitivities that worsen in the heat. A gut that felt fine in spring and suddenly doesn’t.

These things are connected. They always have been. Western science now calls it the gut-brain axis. TCM mapped it thousands of years ago.

The foods that support you right now are bitter and cooling — rocket, dandelion, mung beans, cucumber, watermelon. And your Small Intestine meridian peaks between 1–3pm, making an unhurried lunch in that window one of the simplest things you can do for your gut this month.

How much this affects you depends entirely on your constitution. Same season, very different bodies, very different needs.

Which symptom on slide 4 surprised you most? Drop it in the comments — I read every one.

13/06/2026

Cutting out foods can feel as thought it helps, temporarily. But here’s what no one told you: A shrinking list of safe foods isn’t your body becoming more sensitive. It’s your body becoming weaker.
And restriction — however well-intentioned — cannot fix that.

There is no tradition in Chinese Medicine of removing entire food groups in the hope that the gut will heal itself. None. Because the premise doesn’t hold.

When your digestive fire — your Spleen qi, your agni — is weak, it cannot properly process food. Any food. The problem isn’t the gluten. It’s that your system no longer has the strength to break things down the way it’s supposed to.

Eliminating gluten doesn’t rebuild that strength. It just removes one thing the fire was struggling with. While the fire continues to weaken. While the list of foods you “can’t tolerate” quietly grows.
Sound familiar?

In TCM, a weakened Spleen is treated by nourishing it — warm foods, gentle movement, reducing the cold and raw that damp it down further, addressing the stress and overwork that drain it in the first place.

Elimination has its place. I won’t pretend otherwise. In the short term, removing an actively inflammatory food while you rebuild can be useful.

But it was never meant to be the destination. It was always meant to be temporary scaffolding — not a permanent way of eating.

If you’ve been eliminating for years and your list of safe foods keeps shrinking, your body is not becoming more sensitive.
It is becoming weaker. And it needs something fundamentally different.

The question worth asking isn’t “what else should I cut out?”
It’s “why can’t my body handle these foods anymore — and what does it actually need to heal?”

That’s root cause. That’s where the real work starts.

If this is you, I’d love to know — how many foods have you eliminated in the last few years? And do you actually feel better?
Tell me honestly below. 👇

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