Our Healthy Kickstart starts today, so if you are not signed up, please zoom over to waterfrontwellness.bm and let’s get going! This two-week programme is free for everyone in the community and gives you two weeks of delicious recipes and healthy living tips.

You’ll have an optional daily email to keep you motivated and there’s a lively WhatsApp chat to share pics of your recipes and to swap intel on who found what ingredients and where.

We do have everything in stock at Miles at the moment, but you know how shopping in Bermuda goes – sometimes, it’s a multi-store operation!

The nice thing about the kickstart is that you can do as much or as little as you like. Just want the recipes? No problem. Want emails but no WhatsApp? Gotcha.

Want absolutely everything including the part where Christina and I move into your house and cook for you for free?

Yeah, no … not yet … but maybe next year. You never know! (Wouldn’t it be nice to have a live-in chef? I’ve always thought that people who marry chefs are very smart!)

If you just want the recipes you can pick up the digital version of the Kickstart magazine at miles.bm.

We will have some physical copies in store, but they are likely to go very quickly.

At the beginning of the magazine, you’ll see a few pages outlining our 6 Essential Healthy Habits, one of which (in the blood sugar section) focuses on eating non-starchy vegetables at meal time, before you eat any carbs.

The idea is that the fibre from the vegetables helps to slow the release of sugars from the carbs that you eat.

A slow release is a good thing – you have more chance of using the energy up as you go along and less chance of excess being stored as fat.

In addition, a slower release means less stress on the pancreas and less of an insulin spike. That’s all good news for diabetes prevention.

The bad news is that some people really don’t like vegetables. Whenever adults tell me this, I’m tempted to give them a little shake and remind them that they’re a grown up – they just need to eat them! But … that’s not exactly productive.

And to be fair, some people have been scarred by years of overcooked, boiled veg … it took me a long time to discover my love of broccoli, after school dinners!

Roasting vegetables and tossing them in a healthy dressing is a very easily solution to this. We have a great veggie traybake recipe in the Healthy Kickstart magazine.

We also have the most amazing Zesty Avocado Dressing which I have included for you below. You could use this as a dip for raw veg or as a dressing on a bowl of simple green leaves.

I promise it’s so delicious you really won’t hate eating a bowl of leaves, even if you are not a leaf-lover!

Of course it’s healthy too – good fats from the avocado and olive oil, vitamin E from the avocado, vitamin C from the lime, prebiotics from the apple cider vinegar and importantly, no genetically modified, inflammatory oils.

So if you pick one new healthy habit this year, why not make it to eat a bowl of vegetables, or to have a salad before you eat dinner every night?

This one step can have a huge impact cumulatively (just think of all those antioxidants and all that fibre zipping round your body doing good things!) This recipe will help you to do just that. Enjoy!

Zesty Avocado Dressing/Dip

(Vegan, dairy free, gluten free)

Ingredients (makes approximately 10 fl oz):

1 perfectly ripe avocado

2 large limes, juiced

2 tbsps apple cider vinegar (PR)

4 tbsps extra virgin olive oil

3 tbsps maple syrup

1 small clove garlic, pressed

4 tbsps water

Salt & pepper, to taste

Method:

Place everything in a bullet or small blender and blend well. If it’s too thick, add a little more water. We use approximately ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper, but adjust to your taste.

Substitutions

You could use avocado oil instead of extra virgin olive oil. You could replace the maple syrup with agave to make this lower GI. This is very zesty! If you think you might like less lime, start with the juice of 1 and then add more, but I love lots of lime!

• The advice given in this article is not intended to replace medical advice, but to complement it. Always consult your GP if you have any health concerns. Catherine Burns BA Hons, Dip ION, BNTA is a fully qualified Nutritional Therapist trained by the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in the UK She works at Waterfront Wellness in Bermuda. Join Catherine on Facebook: www.facebook.com/nutrifitandnaturalnutritionbermuda or instagram @naturalbda