 Hello, YouTube. Finally, I am back. I'm sorry. I know it's been a long time, and if you're new, welcome to the channel. But most of you original followers of mine know that I am often live on TikTok. Here's my TikTok. I go live a lot when I get ready for the day, and I take people through various products that I love as they ask me for them on TikTok. And so, I thought I would do a YouTube video about my favorite things that I often show daily on TikTok so that it's all in one place that I can refer you to for keeping your gut health in check, keeping your weight loss maintenance effortlessly, or helping you get to that weight loss goal to begin with. It is not as hard as it seems. There are certain things I do recommend you avoid to get there faster, and a few things that are excellent replacements for things you might know and love, but that are not serving your health or goals. So, let's get into this. First, let's talk about bigger ingredients and things. For instance, baking. Now, I deal a lot with reversing auto immune diseases like type 2 diabetes, helping people recover from MS, fibromyalgia, all of those awful autoimmune diseases, and your blood sugar is going to play a big part. Firstly, in helping to keep your gut in check. Secondly, reaching your weight loss goals. And thirdly, just overall optimal health. You want to avoid a lot of sweeteners that are going to trigger an imbalance of blood sugar and that are going to contribute to an overgrowth of Candida in the gut. More than 90% of the population above the age of 10 in North America is being shown to have an overgrowth of Candida in the gut. This causes all kinds of nasty symptoms, digestive issues, bloating, gas, skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, even acne, mood disorders like irritability, otherwise brain fog. So it's important to be able to replace certain sweeteners with ones that are not going to affect your blood sugar balance or your gut bacteria. My favorites are as follows. Stevia. This is pure Stevia. Please note that Stevia is about a thousand times sweeter than sugar. So it is a little bit more difficult to work with. I like to use Stevia for lightly sprinkling on top of things like yogurt or other things I want to light sprinkle of sugar on. For baking, I like to use xylitol. It has a one to one ratio with sugar. So it's very easy to work with. The thing with xylitol is it is going to be very toxic to dogs and cats. So I do recommend swapping out the xylitol for monk fruit. Monk fruit also has a one to one ratio with sugar and won't cause nasty symptoms like nausea or diarrhea that can come from too much xylitol. So I like to use xylitol or monk fruit in baking. But in terms of putting a spoonful of sugar in your coffee or tea or something like that, I would recommend using monk fruit. Moving a little bit away from ingredients at this point, let's talk about collagen. Collagen is an excellent thing to be taking. Bovine collagen is great for helping the inside of your body. So muscles, joints, tendons, bones, ligaments, organs, and then marine collagen is going to be great for everything on the outside of your body, your hair, your skin, your nails. Vital proteins is currently the best type of collagen on the market. So I like to use vital proteins. I love the vanilla one. It is excellent for mixing into your coffee in the morning or into your tea. It's awesome. Another one that I really like is organica collagen because this has all types of collagen in it. The vital proteins, I can't find one that has both types of collagen. Organica does. The only thing about the organica collagen is it is bone broth flavored. Now I don't want my coffee to be flavored like bone broth, but I will use this one in things like oatmeal or even just in hot water as a warm drink. Moving on, I'm going to talk about certain supplements. Now I always, always recommend upping your vitamin D and your B12, but what most people don't know is that both vitamin D and B12 should be taken sublingually, which means under the tongue. I prefer to take droppers over tablets because tablets often have ingredients in them to flavor them so that they're more enjoyable under your tongue, but I don't like the texture and some of those ingredients are going to affect the gut bacteria in ways that we don't want. So my two favorite brands, the B12 I take is from Purely Natural. It says active B12 sublingual drops. You only take one dropper a day. It's great for energy and most people are not getting enough B12 otherwise. Next, I like to use Can Prev vitamin D3. I recommend taking at least 2,000 milligrams in a day, 1,000 in the morning, 1,000 in the evening. That'll do you pretty well. Okay, moving on to some snacks, some baked goods and other goodies. This is an excellent paleo gut friendly and blood sugar friendly brownie mix. This only has almond flour, arrowroot, cocoa, baking soda, and sea salt in there. It does ask that you add to it either eggs or vegan egg replacement flax seeds. You can add maple syrup, honey, or a sweetener of your choice. So in this case, I would recommend a more gut friendly sweetener like the ones I spoke about previously. Half a cup of any nut butter. I do recommend staying away from peanut or cashew butter because peanuts and cashews can tend to grow a type of mold in between the nut and the shell that can contribute to an overgrowth of bad gut bacteria. This will also be able to handle one cup of grated zucchini to make them extra healthy. 10 out of 10 recommend. Another thing is the hold the carb brand. This brand makes a pizza crust dough as well as this fantastic muffin mix. I'm not sure of other products by this brand because I use predominantly the pizza crust and the muffin mix. Awesome for gut health. Awesome for blood sugar. Awesome for weight loss and easy, effortless weight loss maintenance. Super easy to make. All you do is pour it in a bowl, add a couple eggs, egg whites, or vegan equivalents of those. A third cup of ice dairy free milk of your choice. Baking cocoa, semi sweet chocolate chips, blueberries. The options are endless and it's so, so healthy. An excellent go to snack. A drink that I tend to love is this adaptogen milk latte coconut milk with organic mushrooms and herbs. Adaptogens are excellent for you. This is caffeine free, convenient. It's dairy free. It's from the brand Organica, which again is a brand that I absolutely love. Recharge your body and mind with adaptogen milk latte featuring an adaptogen rich blend of organic mushrooms and herbs traditionally used in Ayurveda to help increase energy and resistance to stress. This is 100% plant based as I mentioned caffeine free. It's got prebiotic fiber in every serving. Prebiotics are the food that your good gut bacteria lives on and thrives with. It feeds the good probiotics in your gut. It is delicious, convenient, and an all around treat for when you want to get things done. Simply mixed with hot water and adapt. Excellent. All right, hemp hearts. These are an ingredient I like to add to yogurts. I like to add them to oatmeal. These are awesome for adding to many things. What a lot of people don't know about hemp hearts is that they are in themselves, much like pumpkin seeds, a complete protein. I have linked a video below about why complete protein is unbelievably important. So there are a lot of people that will say, well, a lot of foods contain protein. Broccoli has a lot of protein. That's true, but it's not complete. So it's a good idea to know the difference, know what a complete protein is, how do food combine to get enough complete protein? And again, a video is linked below for why that's important. But hemp hearts are delicious. You can add them to virtually anything. They're a complete protein. They've got tons of healthy fats. So, so, so good. One of my staples. These are more for treats. These are peanut. So I only have these as treats and they are powdered nut butters. They are sugar free, or at least the regular is sugar free. You can also get no sugar added of the chocolate kind. You can find it in almond powder. I've found that at home since winners, marshals, and especially always Amazon. But these work great if you're trying to restrict calories a little bit. There are reasons why a calorie is not a calorie. That's a more archaic way of thinking of things. But these are going to be great to save on excess calories where you don't need them. The reason why I wouldn't use powdered nut butters all the time is because they are removing the healthy fats from it to powder it down and to remove those excess calories. Healthy fats are going to save you from eating extra calories later because they're so satiating and so essential for us. So these are just a nice treat to add to smoothies, sprinkling them on something else like yogurt. And you can bake with these very easily. Okay, gum. It is very dangerous for your health to chew gum that contains aspartame. This gum does not contain any sugar that will affect your blood sugar balance and will not affect your gut bacteria. So this is the gum that I decide to choose when I'm doing a gut cleanse that I do about once or twice a year. This contains no GMOs, no nuts. It is peanut free, soy free, sugar free, no aspartame. All it is is a xylitol gum base. So much, much better for you. Again, very toxic to dogs and cats. So keep them away from this. Okay, my favorite bars. I've got a few bars that I love. But for a healthy gut and for blood sugar balance, I'm going to recommend good to go bars. I enjoy these when I am on my gut cleanse. And otherwise, they're super healthy. I like them because they're chewy. They've got a brownie like texture so they're not hard on your teeth. And they are a delightful treat in place of a bad for you treat. If you're not on a gut cleanse, I recommend our X bars. Our X bars are much harder to chew. They're more dense. They're very chewy, but they are excellent. It has all of the ingredients on the front of the wrapper. So all it's got are egg whites, almonds, cashews, dates, no BS. This is the chocolate sea salt flavor. It comes in some awesome flavors. Highly recommend. You can find these at Costco as well as Amazon. Now my favorite protein is called iron vegan. I recommend staying away from whey protein. I have linked a video below about why I don't like whey protein, why I think you should stay away from it. Iron vegan is an excellent brand. It is a sprouted brown rice. This bar is unbelievably filling. Not too chewy, delicious. Again, very, very filling. This is the protein powder from iron vegan. Highly recommend. There's also an athlete's blend if you're trying to pack muscle on that I would have, but this is just organic sprouted brown rice protein, organic cocoa, sprouted quinoa, sprouted amaranth, sprouted millet, sprouted pumpkin seeds, apple pectin, sea salt, organic flavor, xanthan gum, and organic steady leaf extract. So this is fantastic to take. It's full of healthy fats as well. Won't cause any nasty inflammation or water retention, which none of us want. All right. My favorite granola is chunky muesli. This is delicious. This comes in a cleanse friendly version for optimal gut health. This one contains dried fruit. So otherwise it's very healthy, but I do not recommend ingesting dried fruits if you're on a gut cleanse. All right. My favorite pancake mix known to man is Pamela's pancake mix. This is not going to be totally gut cleanse friendly because it does contain potato starch. Otherwise excellent for you. It's so good for making muffins, making waffles, making crepes, and pancakes. Amy's soup. My favorite gut friendly soup that is not going to affect your blood sugar balance either. This is awesome. And note that yellow split peas are a complete protein. Rice paper wraps. These are awesome for making things like this, which are what I call veggie roll ups. Otherwise known as rice paper veggie spring rolls. I don't deep fry mine. I just soak these in a little bit of water, wrap some veggies up in them, and dip them in a healthy sauce. It is a fantastic snack. Very quick to make. You can add protein in the form of shrimp if you like. Don't have shrimp on a gut cleanse or shellfish, but you can add protein to these if you want. I just like them as a quick veggie snack. You can put avocado in there for healthy fats. So, so good and so easy. All right. Keeping with the wraps, we've got coconut tortillas. If you're trying to stay away from bread or you're dying for it during a gut cleanse, I do recommend coconut tortillas full of healthy fats. Absolutely delicious. They do come in turmeric flavor as well. Turmeric is an excellent anti-inflammatory spice. What I would recommend though is to take black pepper with turmeric because black pepper is needed to activate the anti-inflammatory properties in turmeric. Pasta. This is lentil and brown rice. You can also find chickpea pasta, pasta made with beans. It's got some good protein. It won't inflame you like wheat will. It won't speak to the gut bacteria and it's a lot more beefed up than a simple brown rice pasta. For brown rice pasta though, my favorite brand has got to be Tinkyada. This is unbelievably delicious. They aren't kidding. When they say pasta joy on this package, it comes in every shape. I have tricked so many people with this pasta that did not care about necessarily eating gluten free or being healthy. You would never tell the difference. It tastes, looks, smells, everything exactly like the regular pasta that we all know and love. Next, jackfruit. Jackfruit does not contain a lot of protein, but it's awesome in a snack. It's got way less fat and calories than other things. This is a fantastic brand of jackfruit. You can get plain jackfruit if you want to sauce it up yourself with a cleanse friendly sauce or a sauce that's not sweetened. This one does contain coconut sap and coconut sugar. Otherwise, completely healthy, awesome spices in here. Absolutely delicious. Next, cauliflower rice. Gonna be so much better for you than regular rice. I do enjoy regular rice. It is cleanse friendly. It's great for the gut. It's great for balancing blood sugar. I do not recommend any rice that has additives. So I wouldn't use like a microwavable packet of rice that's got other ingredients in it. Use normal whole grain rice. It's going to be the best for you. Otherwise, one of the best tips and hacks for losing weight more efficiently and maintaining your weight loss effortlessly is going to be to swap out certain grain items with the veggie version. So lettuce buns, zucchini noodles, sweet potato noodles, any spiralized vegetable in place of a noodle or cauliflower rice in place of rice. Now I did put a post on my Instagram the other day about how I'm not somebody that likes to swap the veggie version in place of the grain versions I know and love, but I'll use healthier versions of those things like the brown rice pasta, for example. But one thing that I am known to do that is healthier for you is to use half the veggie version, half the brown rice. So I will use half brown rice, half cauliflower rice and a meal, easy ways to lose weight quicker and maintain that effortlessly. Next and last for today is this cereal. I love cereal. I could eat an entire box of cereal, especially the super bad for us children's kind to myself in one sitting. That is how much I love cereal. This is something I found when I was on the gut cleanse. It's unbelievably healthy for you. It won't affect your gut bacteria. It won't affect your blood sugar balance. Do add protein and healthy fats to it, though if you're going to have cereal as a meal, you want to make sure every single main meal of your day contains complete protein, healthy fats and healthy carbs. Again, I have a video linked below of what is a complete protein and why that's important. But this cereal you can find on Amazon. I found it at the Low Carb Grocery, which you can order online from if you're near the Toronto area. But this is organic coconut crunch grain free cereal. The ingredients are organic coconut water, organic coconut meat, organic palm starch. It's basically just coconut. It is delicious. This has got tons of healthy fats in it itself, but I would add some healthy carbs and some complete protein to this. So there you have it. That's a quick video today of my favorite things. These are all staples. I didn't go out and get these just for the video. These are all things that I always have in my cupboards to eat. And if you have any questions or would like any more information, please comment below and let me know. I'm happy to show you anything that I know and love. If you're looking for other supplements or other snack ideas, other recipes, let me know. Always happy to share. And until next time, have super amounts of fun in your life. Have super amounts of fun being optimally healthy and maintaining your goals as effortlessly as possible. And I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.