Try my Sweet Potato Cakes Recipe

400g (14oz) sweet potato, peeled
1 egg
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

1. Grate the sweet potato
2. Whisk the egg, then add the sweet potato, turmeric and salt, and a grinding of pepper
3. Split the mixture into 4 and form patties using your hands
4. Heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the patties for 2-3 minutes until they start to brown. Flip and fry for another 1-2 minutes.

Image: Jessica O'Dwyer

Analysing your food diary

After keeping a food diary for a while you’ll hopefully start to see patterns form. For example, you always get a headache around 3pm on a Wednesday following a work meeting on Tuesday lunchtime where sandwiches are served. If that’s the only day you eat bread, then perhaps something in bread is a trigger food for you. Similarly, you get a runny nose on a Sunday morning- and Friday night is always white wine night. Things can be a little harder when it’s foods you eat every day that are causing your problems as your symptoms are more or less constant. In that case it’s when the problems don’t appear that might give you a clue to their cause; what didn’t you eat in the preceding days? If you are getting stuck identifying any clear patterns, then seeking professional advice might help you spot things you can’t see. Or, you might want to try IgG testing to find your answer.

How to keep a good food diary

Trying to spot a food intolerance isn’t always easy. While some, such as lactose intolerance, make themselves known quite quickly (sufferers usually need to rush to the bathroom soon after eating dairy), most intolerances hide very well and you’ll need to tease out the signs that show you what’s behind them. Keeping a good food diary is therefore very important.

Remember to:

Fill it as you go so you don’t forget anything;
Write down everything you consume, including chewing gums, vitamins, bites of your partner’s food etc.
For processed food, write down the brand name & ingredients (or photograph the label and keep it on your phone). It might be a single preservative that causes problems, which you’ll only spot if you know exactly what is in each food.
Don’t forget drinks - you can be intolerant to them too.

Don’t tell your body it’s getting old

Sighing as you sit down, grunting as you stand up as if it’s a big effort, or blaming the fact that you can’t find your car keys on your age, rather than the fact that you were talking on the phone when you came home and threw them somewhere different, tells your body you are expecting it to underperform with age. Your brain likes to please you in life - if it thinks you’re expecting your body to slow down, the brain will make that happen. Again, our proof comes from Yale: in a trial published in the journal ‘Psychology and Aging’, seniors reading words such as “forgetful” responded worse on memory tests than those given more positive words to read, such as “wise”. Tell your body it’s aging well, and it will.

Is your face older than you are?

Some of you will have read my previous few blog posts and felt a little hopeless. We live in a society now where it’s being seen as normal to iron out every sign of aging and, as such, reading about the above might fill some of you with dread. But remember: all of us age and we can’t, and shouldn’t, erase every aspect of that; features such as laughter lines and smile lines are a sign that you’ve lived a little, and that your life was filled with love, fun and happiness - you should be proud to show them off. You shouldn’t want to fill or freeze every line on your face, but nor do you want your face filled with other lines not reflective of all those good times.
To know if you’re aging naturally or experiencing the accelerated aging we can’t to fight, you need to know what to expect as you age.

What to expect as you age: 55+

By now the bone structure of the face has also changed, which adds to all of the above problems. The brows droop and the lips start to thin. Pigmentation cells can also start to behave erratically, which can trigger blotchy skin and the appearance of age spots.

What to expect as you age: 45-55

Fat levels continue to fall, but as you approach and then pass menopause it’s the drop in hormone levels that cause the majority of changes. The skin becomes considerably drier, and this alone makes it more likely to crease and wrinkle. As collagen loss speeds up, this accentuates the laxity that begins in your early 40s and jowls can appear as the face starts to sag. You could also notice your skin start to look a little more sallow as circulation becomes less effective.