Hello and welcome to healthyhappysteffi!
I am writing this blog to share my fun, passion and knowledge about healthy food. Based on my own experiences I want to show you how to live healthier and (automatically) happier. In my opinion, it is mainly nutrition and good food that leads to a happy life!
If you want to learn more about me, please read the following Q&A section.
So, have fun reading my blog, step by again and feel free to contribute and ask whatever you want!
Cheers, Steffi
PS: I am also happy to welcome you on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest
How do you describe your lifestyle in a few words?
high spirits – healthy – funny – undogmatic – adventurous – open minded – creative – social – fond of travelling – yummy – esthetic
How did your today’s lifestyle evolve?
I had a pretty healthy childhood. My mom used to cook a lot, we always had salad with our meals, only little meat and sometimes pretty uncommon things like quinoa, amaranth or unripe spelt grain. We even had a list of food additives in our kitchen (in the 80s/90s!). Congrats, mom!
When I moved out, I got more careless. I tried to cook on my own, but I didn’t vary much. Mainly bread, pasta, cheese, dairy, ham and sweets where on my agenda. It had to be quick and cheap!
And then, all of a sudden, in 2006, my body didn’t tolerate certain grains like wheat and ray anymore. I therefore switched to spelt and later on to glutenfree grains, but didn’t change anything else in my diet. And some years later, when I started working, I completely forgot myself. I didn’t take care of my body, ate without fun or even thinking, worked hard, was upset a lot and step by step slipped into a dead end, sitting there, sick, tired and depressed.
To make it short: I experienced some quite hard years with a pancreatitis, a gastritis, an exhaustion depression, a job change that didn’t help and several new intolerances against eggs, casein (that’s the protein in the milk, don’t confuse it with lactose) and almonds to name a few.
And the hardest fact of all: if my body hadn’t stopped me from living like this, I would have carried on with my lifestyle. But luckily, I wasn’t able to. And that was the turning point.
I quit my job and took some time of to figure out what I really wanted from life. During these months, I luckily had a lot of love and support from my great boyfriend, my loving parents and my excellent therapist and 4 really important weeks of travelling alone with my tent through Scandinavia. There, without input or expectations from outside, I remembered, who I really am and what I can do (being creative, social, funny and loving), and what I am NOT (highly efficient, logic, economically thinking, living and working for the wrong cause). What resulted from that trip was my today life: I studied nutrition, got a job at a really beautiful store, started my own business as nutritionist and most important of all: Today, I only do things that I really enjoy! Being: good food (whole, unprocessed, glutenfree, plant-based), sports (almost completely new to me), good, life-loving people around me, arts, travelling,… That’s what makes me a healthyhappySteffi today. How simple (when looking back ;-))!
What’s on your table?
– Veggies (pretty much all kinds (seasonal and local if possible), like carrots, broccoli, avocado, spinach, chard, zucchini (courgette), eggplant, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, leek, potatoes, cucumber, beetroots, radish, tomatoes, bell pepper, sprouts, mushrooms, …)
– Fruits (like apple, pear, banana, all sorts of berries, mango, apricots, nectarines, melon, lemon, …)
– Legumes (my favourites(!!), like lentils, beans (always testing new kinds), chickpeas, peas, …)
– Nuts and seeds (like cashews (!!!), sunflower-, pumpkin and flaxseeds, hemp, Chiaseeds, pecans, walnuts, apricot kernels (as substitute for almonds), brazil nuts, …)
– Dry fruits (like Dates (!!!), raisins, figs, Goji berries, …)
– Glutenfree grains (like buckwheat (-flour), brown rice (-flour), quinoa, millet, teff flour) and glutenfree pasta
– Plant-based milk and cream (made from, rice, cashew and sometimes soy)
– For the sweetness in life: maple sirup, agave sirup, honey, rice sirup, coco suger, dates
– To add a little spice and sour: herbs, pepper, salt, miso, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, cinnamon, cocoa, …
– Fish, seafood and meat almost never. But if I eat it, I need to know where it comes from and really be in the mood (which today is scarce, but if my mom cookes her spätzle with lentils (a swabian dish), there needs to be some smoked meat in it)
What’s NOT on your table?
– milk and dairy
– gluten-containing grains
– industrially processed sugar
– processed food
– fish and meat that is not organic
What kinds of sports do you like?
– Running (twice a week if I have the time)
– Yoga (at home with my trainer YouTube)
– and my new found love ballet (also at home with YouTube)
What are you grateful for?
– my parents
– my mistakes and failures, because they made me what I am today
– my friends
– nature (Sometimes I want to scream out loud, when I am jogging in the green park or when I am sitting near by a lake or the sea! How wonderful and beautiful is nature! J)
– arts, music, movies (They light up and enrich my life and always help to lift my mood on a bad day.)