Holistic by Steph

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Holistic by Steph

Holistic Health Coach. Sharing a love for healthy food

02/09/2026

What I eat after I’ve been sick and I am feeling on the mend…

A big bowel of home made bolognese made with lots of carrots, onion, garlic, roasted cherry tomatoes, capers and herbs like rosemary, thyme and bay leaf. Served with whole grain durum wheat penne or fusilli pasta.

A good dusting of Parmesan cheese (raw/ non pasteurized preferably).

With a good helping of fresh salad, roasted pumpkin seeds and my gut lovin miso vinaigrette.

And a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, cold pressed and biological.

All of these elements are deeply satisfying - combining both texture and flavour to enhance appetite and thereby digestion, don’t forget digestion is connected to what we see. Even more importantly it’s deeply nourishing. Full of protein, fiber and healthy fats.

I’d love to know, what’s your favorite meal when you’ve recovered from a cold or the flu?

01/09/2026

Mostly I don’t eat at all when I’m sick, allowing time for my system to focus all its energy towards healing. Fasting is an incredible tool for quicker recovery.

While I fast I drink gentle herbal teas such as lemon grass or chamomile. Lemon grass is antimicrobial and chamomile is a gentle digestive soother.

Once I start to feel my body need nourishing I give it warm, easy to digest, simple food. Rice, bone broth with some spring onions and seaweed.

Spring onion helps to move mucus, seaweed is a great source of minerals and helps gently detox. Bone broth (ideally grass fed, organic, in a jelly form when at room temperature) is also a great source of minerals and protein.

The rice is soak for 8 hours or if I lack time I rinse it thoroughly until the water becomes clear and then I cook it in 6 times the amount of water to rice ratio. This helps eliminate arsenic found in rice nowadays.

Simple, deeply nourishing and easy to digest.

25/08/2026

Did you know the air inside your home can be more toxic than the air outside? 🌿

Between synthetic furniture, cleaning products, and poor ventilation, indoor air quality is something most of us never think about — but it plays a bigger role in how we feel than we realize.

In both TCM and Ayurveda, breath is considered the bridge between body and environment — what we breathe shapes our energy just as much as what we eat.

These 14 plants are some of nature’s best air filters, quietly working in the background to support cleaner breathing (and a calmer nervous system) at home.
Save this for your next plant shop trip

🪴 Which one do you already have?

16/08/2026

When was the last time you sat in complete silence — no music, no phone, no background noise — for more than five minutes?

If that felt hard to imagine, you’re not alone. Silence starts to feel uncomfortable, so we rush to cover it — with sound, scrolling, anything.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the mind lives in the Heart, in something called Shen — your sense of being settled inside yourself. It needs quiet to stay rooted. Nonstop input scatters it, which is part of why we end up wired but foggy.

We pass this on, too. We fill our kids’ days the same way — activity after activity, barely a gap — so they never learn what we never learned either: how to just sit with nothing to do.

Some of the discomfort isn’t really about the silence. It’s the itch to be doing something, to have something to show for the time. We’ve tied our worth to output for so long that just being can feel like failure. It isn’t. It’s the rest your nervous system — and your Shen — actually need.

Try this: 5 minutes. No sound, no scroll. Just this.

💪

15/08/2026

As a mother, learning to manage my own stress, worry, need for control and perfectionism has become part of my life’s work — not only for myself, but to model healthy ways of navigating stress for my children.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to feeling more grounded. But one practice I keep coming back to is glimmers — those small, simple moments that bring joy, safety, gratitude and calm.

For me, glimmers might be:
☕️ Sipping a morning coffee
🌿 Enjoying an evening herbal tea
🥕 Wandering through a farmers market with nowhere to rush
🌊 Sitting by the sea while my dog plays in the sand
🤍 Hearing my kids laugh
🍳 Freestyle cooking
🌅 Watching the sunset

In the busyness of life, it’s so easy to move from one thing to the next and completely miss these moments.

And while glimmers aren’t a replacement for deeper practices that support a dysregulated nervous system, they offer something beautifully simple: we don’t always need another “must-do” wellness practice. Sometimes, we simply need to notice what already brings us joy — and give ourselves permission to pause long enough to feel it.

Small moments. Big medicine. ✨ Hope this resonates..X Steph

08/08/2026

I don’t often share personal things in post, as I don’t think they are relevant to the knowledge I want to share with you here.

But because Amsterdam has been such a large chapter of my life and truly shaped who I am today and therefore what I share here, I wanted to give it a small tribute here as this large chapter is now officially closing.

And to wrap it up my husband and I did a foodie tour by bike to some of our favorite spots;

Spanakopita IKARIA Food for Life
Falafel wrap The Lebanese Sajeria
Dinner kamer

Other favorites
Pain Levant🥖🌾
T O K I
cafe binnenvisser
louf
FUKU
And many more.

Thanks Amsterdam, you will always hold a special place in my heart.

And thanks to my husband for getting back on a bike, making me laugh and for accommodating my appetite. Love you.

31/07/2026

You’ve tried the new routine. The reset. The “this time will be different.”

And then... you’re back to the same pattern within a few days, a week or a month.

Breaking patterns requires breaking patterns.
Read that twice.

Sounds like a riddle — but it’s actually why willpower alone never sticks.

Here’s the thing: your body doesn’t know the difference between a thought loop and a habit loop. The same wiring that has you reaching for sugar at 3pm is the same wiring running your stress, your sleep, your default reactions.

Why this matters: those patterns aren’t neutral. Every time you repeat one, you’re reinforcing the exact groove that’s keeping you tired, bloated, anxious, or stuck. Your body isn’t broken — it’s just really good at doing what it’s been trained to do. Which means the good news is: it can be retrained too.

You can’t just think your way out of a pattern that lives in your body. You have to interrupt it physically first — then the mind follows.

So here’s a tiny experiment for tomorrow: Break ONE small pattern before 9am. → Different breakfast. → Different order to your morning. → 5 minutes of stillness before you touch your phone.

Small disruption. Big signal to your nervous system that change is safe — and possible.

Your gut and your habits are more connected than you think.

👇 What’s one pattern (big or small) you’re ready to interrupt? Please share if love to know 🙏💛

Hashtag suggestions: 

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. ↑

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