You can have your turkey and eat it, without piling on the pounds. For those of you dreading the effect all that Christmas fayre will have on your waistlines - fear not, help is at hand in the form of Barbara Nash. The nutritional therapist, from Holton, near Wheatley, is writing a healthy cookbook and has let us in on her secrets just in time for the festive season.

And she has even come up with numerous healthy ways to eat the turkey left-overs.

The great part is that all her recipes aim to be as tasty as they are good for you, which is probably why they were snapped up for the WHSmith website before the book has even been published. Barbara, 36, got into healthy eating when she fell ill a few years ago. She was suffering from PMS, irritable bowel syndrome, back pain, swollen joints and migraines and was allergic to anti-biotics, so was in a lot of pain.

"I wanted to take control of things so I went to the library and got some books out on food. I have always been interested in nutrition and wanted to get my health back.

"The more I read the more horrified I was by what we are eating. I suddenly realised I wasn't eating real food at all so decided to create my own recipes.

"It changed my life and all my symptoms disappeared. After that I started a three-year nutritional therapy course.

"The old saying 'you are what you eat' is completely right. If you eat properly you are energetic, calm and relaxed." The mother-of-two is glowing with good health, a fantastic example of practising what she preaches.

"The healthier the food we eat, the stronger our immunity becomes," says Barbara, who claims to have cured numerous patients of their various illnesses by changing their diet.

"People are certainly starting to ask more questions about the food we eat and are getting worried about it.

"They are getting more information about what's going into our food and realising that's it's not for our health or benefit but for the food industry's profit.

"And we pay way over the odds compared with the rest of Europe for our food." She advises people to eat less salt, drink more water and stick to wholemeal or gluten-free flour, use extra virgin olive oil, and consume lots of organic local produce.

"Ideally people should grow their own fruit and vegetables, but if that's impossible they could consider an allotment. Otherwise buy organic," she says.

As for Christmas, she has devised these recipes to ensure that people still have a good time but feel good afterwards. "Christmas is a bad time for health because people overeat and drink.

"They also eat all the wrong foods - peanuts and chocolate, lots of meat and fatty puddings and alcohol.

"All these foods dehydrate the body so try to drink water as much as possible," Barbara advises.

Story date: Wednesday 22 December

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