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Salted Peanut Butter Protein Soft Serve Ice cream

By News

Women spend a huge amount of their lives working on their appearance. To be exact we spend an average of 6.5 hours a week which is 335 hours a year. That’s an average so if your a fitness junkie that number will likely double or triple.

It is SO important to take care of your body and care about your appearance. It is healthy to exercise and want to eat well to improve your appearance and nourish your body. Although there is a fine line between caring about your appearance and obsessing over your appearance. It becomes an obsession when a person begins to judge their self worth on their body image.

This is unhealthy for the mind and body and can lead to mental health issues.

Over 50% of women have negative thoughts about their bodies every day. Just under 80% of teenage girls!! It is shocking that society puts this much pressure on women and girls to get the ‘perfect body‘. What the hell is the perfect body?? We are extreme self critics, and pile a huge amount of pressure on our selves to look a certain way.

75% of women have behavior issues and unhealthy thoughts or feelings related to food or their bodies.

Your self worth should not be determined on how flat your stomach is or how big your boobs are! Your body may be your temple but it defiantly is not who you are. You are not a bad person because you carry an extra few centimeters of fat around your waist!

Being negative about your body will not improve anything. It will not make you loose weight or tone up. The only way to make change is with a positive mind.TRUST ME. I lost 10kgs of body fat with a negative, body hating mind and still at 10% body fat I hated my body. In my mind I was never good enough.

I never took the time to love and appreciate my progress and was constantly beating my self up about how I looked. Slaving away in the gym for hours, for what? To still hate my body and have an unhealthy mind!

To change your body you must love and accept your body. Positive things happen to positive people!

Im not saying its okay to be fat. There are a lot of people who will happily sit on their arse all day and watch TV while consuming their body weight in junk food. This is not okay!! Do not fill your body with shit food. RESPECT YOURSELF.. Focus on health. Create a healthy body internally and externally. Create a healthy mind through positive thoughts.

BE HAPPY 😀

Salted Peanut Butter Protein Soft Serve Ice cream

serves 1

Ingredients

  •  500ml water
  • 1x flat tbsp xantham gum
  • 50g yogurt (I use total 0% fat)
  • 1x scoop (25g) vanilla protein powder (I use http://www.theproteinworks.com/products/protein-shakes/naked-whey-protein-80.html use code CF180303 for free protein powder at the checkout)
  • 10g low fat peanut flour
  • a large pinch of pink Himalayan salt
  • 20x ice cubes

Directions

Add all ingredients to a high watt blender (like a nutribullet) and blend until smooth. If its too thick add a little more water. Too liquid and add a teeny bit more of xantham gum 😀 If you don’t have a nutribullet you can use a hand puree blender 😀

Notes: I like to add cinnamon and maca powder for a super-food kick. Try topping with bee pollen, nut butters or seeds

 

White Chocolate Protein Coconut Bars

By News

I don’t like chocolate. I LOVE IT! It is the hardest food for me to stay clear of in my diet. I’m obsessed!

If you look on an ingredients list of your average chocolate bar, there are tones of ingredients which are pure chemical shit and are so awful for your body. Chemically produced and unnatural ingredients are alien to your body and cause inflammation and stress to the system while putting your body in an acidic state. That’s why for general internal and external health, it is so important for us to fuel our bodies with healthy, natural foods.

Raw cacao is one of the best beauty foods. It is packed with anti oxidants and has contains powerful phytochemicals which prevent winkle formation. Raw cacao helps to prevent the skin for UV damage, while boosting skin hydration and reducing redness. It helps with circulation to increase blood flow, nutrients and oxygen supply to the skin. Raw cacao is one of the best natural magnesium containing foods to add to your diet to help calm the central nervous system and regulate heart rate which helps with recovery after a hard training session :D. Raw cacao contains the beauty mineral sulfur which is essential for strong hair and nails and beautiful skin. It is also a feel-good food which raises serotonin and endorphins in the brain which increases happiness and libido.

So if you want healthy hair, beautiful skin, strong nails and good sex then get on the raw cacao 😀

White Chocolate Protein Coconut Bars

serves 12

Ingredients:

For the white chocolate coconut center:

  • 100g raw cacao butter
  • 80g un-sweetned desiccated coconut
  • 50g vanilla casein
  • 10 drops of coconut extract

For the dark chocolate coating:

  • 100g raw cacao butter
  • 50g raw cacao powder
  • 30g vanilla or chocolate casein

Directions:

Melt the raw cacao butter in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water over heat. While you wait for the cacao butter to melt, combine the coconut, coconut extract, and casein in a big bowl. When the raw cacao butter is melted, add to the other ingredients and stir until all ingredients are combined. Pour the mixture into bar shaped silicon molds (or if you don’t have the molds use a shallow, square/rectangle glass dish) and place into the freezer to harden.

Melt the raw cacao cutter in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water over heat. While you wait for the cacao butter to melt, combine the raw cacao powder and the casein in a bowl. When the raw cacao butter has melted, mix it into the raw cacao powder and casein mix. Keep stirring until you reach a smooth consistency. Once the coconut white chocolate has hardened, remove from the silicon molds or the glass dish and cut to the size you want each bar. Place each bar individually into the dark chocolate coating making sure it is completely covered then place on a tray covered with baking paper or tin foil. Once each bar is completely coated with chocolate, place back into the freezer until the chocolate layer has hardened. Once the outer chocolate has hardened. Remove the bars from the freezer and do a second coat of chocolate around each bar with the remaining dark chocolate mixture (if you need to reheat the chocolate mix, put it in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water until it has melted again). Place the bars back into the freezer until the final coat has hardened. Any left over chocolate can be drizzled over the top for decoration. Best kept in the freezer in a container.

Notes:

While the outer layer of chocolate is still soft, try adding other super foods for decoration. Try bee pollen, gojji berries or pumpkin seeds 😀

 

The Importance of Yoga for Gym Junkies!

By News

I have to admit. Yoga use to be a purely physical activity for me to increase flexibility and core strength. I didn’t understand any of the other stuff. During the Pranayama breathing I would usually be looking around the room checking out other girls gym gear, while in Savasana I was asleep or thinking about food. And god! The chanting!!!! I had no time for that crap. I just wanted to get bendy.

I thought the yogic lifestyle was some crazy religion! I didn’t understand the mental benefits of yoga and had zero appreciation for any of it. However, I was totally noticing a change in my head space. Even though I wasn’t actually concentrating through the majority of the classes. I was becoming much less stressed with work, and finding myself feeling more content with life in general! Not only that I was getting stronger in the gym. My range of movement was increasing massively and I wasn’t getting so sore post workout.

I wanted to learn more about yoga. I wanted to find appreciation for the other elements of yoga not just the physical postures, and learn how it can benefit my life!

When arriving in India I was in for a shock. On my first day a fire ceremony was organised to welcome the new students to the course. This consisted of a lot of chanting, prayers and singing around a fire. Coconuts were burnt to represent heads to release negative energy and we were called up one by one to throw rice and ghee on the fire. I sat in shock thinking ‘what the hell is this crazy cult I have come into…’.

After a few days I totally settled in and learnt to embrace this new lifestyle. Meditation was always a struggle though. It was scheduled just before breakfast every morning. By this time you have been up since 6am, done 2 hours of yoga and 30 minutes of pranayama. I was fucking starving. Meditation for me consisted of day dreams about crazy breakfast. Bacon pancake stacks and PROATS!!  This did improve over time and I think I actually managed to have no thoughts (even if it was for about 30 seconds at a time)

After about 6 weeks I started noticing a real difference in myself. I was so calm. And not only that I was getting super bendy. Totally seeing a real improvement in body internally and externally. My core strength was insane!! My muscle definition was great (even though I was only doing resistance band and sand bag weight training) I was totally shocked with my progress.

From 9 weeks of yoga training in Patnem my whole outlook of health, fitness and training has changed. I have learnt the absolute importance of flexibility and range of movement for optimum health and function of the body. Not only that I have learnt that everyone needs to concur their mind before any real changes can happen in the body. If you HATE your body and drag yourself to the gym to train like it’s a punishment. This will not work! If you have zero confidence and worry too much about what other people think of you. You will spend your whole life trying to look how everyone else wants you to look.

We must learn that everything is impermanent and we should not find happiness externally in numbers or achievements because the same thing which causes you happiness one day will cause you sadness the next. I used to be the worst for it.. ‘When I can squat 80kg I will be happy’…. Then when I squatted 80kg it was still not good enough. I was looking for the next best thing. ‘When I lose 3kgs I will be happy’. Then I when I lost 3kg I was still not happy. This was still not good enough… ‘when I have those Nike’s I will be happy’.. Got those Nike’s, appreciated them for about 3 days and now they are muddy. The key point to remember is you can’t be happy with anything in the WORLD until you’re happy with yourself 🙂

So why should gym junkies practice yoga, on a regular basis to supplement their training??

  1. It improves range of movement meaning you can go deeper in your squats and lower in your deadlifts.
  2. Yoga increases core strength which supports big lifting exercises and gives you killer abs!
  3. It calms and balances the nervous system which is often put under stress or damaged with heavy lifting.
  4. It improves circulation helping your muscles to be fueled correctly for recovery and GROWTH.
  5. Yoga improves body awareness and mind/body connection, boosting self-esteem.
  6. Yoga increases the ability to be in the present moment and concentrate, which gives you insane focus during workouts in the gym as well as on the mat!
  7. Through practicing yoga you can achieve a calm mind and reduced stress. This can help with optimum body function, resulting in muscle gains and fat loss, due to a reduction of the hormone called cortisol in our bodies.
  8. Yoga decreases body fat.
  9. It teaches you funky arm balances and inversions which are always fun.
  10. It puts you in a much happier and content state of mind allowing you to enjoy life to the fullest!!!

Happy Bending 🙂

Low Fat Hummus Recipe

By News

Firstly.. HAPPY EASTER! So everyone has hopefully had a fun filled,chocolate fueled weekend. I have a mega food baby and cannot wait to get my diet back on track! It’s all about balance in life. You must give your self time to cheat on your diet and have a blow out every now and again. I would literally drive my self mad if I couldn’t have chocolate. I personally allow my self one cheat meal a week which allows me to indulge in the foods I am craving while keeping on track. Cheats must be planned, not spontaneous. This way you can plan a cheat for when you deserve it and maybe on a convenient day. For me this is Saturday night as we always go out for meals. This will also prevent you from feeling guilty if you know you are having a treat because you really deserve it. The guilt will come when you have a random binge, mid week when you know you shouldn’t. This causes stress which is scientifically proven to make your body hold onto body fat…. DON’T STRESS!!!

So my tips for cheat meals are….

  1. Plan a time and day convenient for you to have a cheat meal
  2. Decide what you want to eat or where you want to go for a meal depending on what your craving. This will stop you eating everything you come across
  3. Don’t feel guilty! If it was planned and you ate what you craved then got back on track after the cheat then you cannot feel guilty. Remember stress causes you to hold fat!
  4. Don’t try and make your cheat healthy. If your craving something which is healthy.. Happy days 🙂 Go for it. But if you want cheese, go ahead and have cheese because that craving will not disappear until you satisfy it!
  5. Don’t go wild.. Its not a game of eat as much as you physically can. You will probably throw up!

So after we have all eaten too much chocolate you will be pleased to go wild with this savory recipe..WOOO SAVORY. This is my first savory post on the blog so I hope you like it! Most shop brought hummus is full of oil which makes it very high in fat and calories. It is also super expensive so why not make your own?

Ingredients:

  • 240g chickpeas
  • 50g peanut butter
  • 100g 0% fat greek yoghurt
  • Juice of one lemon
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1/2 tsp paprika
  • 1/2 tsp cumin
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.. Easy. Store in the fridge.

Notes:

There are many great variations to this recipe. Try using different nut butters for different flavors. Add roasted aubergine or red pepper?