Sweet protein yogurt

This mouthwatering beauty is probably what many of you have already tried, but I think it still deserves a moment in a spotlight. It's simple, delicious and good choice to go for when you get a craving for something sweet! The consistency is lovely and soft, feels like eating something creamy!

Tonight I had it with simple natural yogurt I grabbed in store. I usually make it with greek yogurt. I think is great with greek, russian and basic natural yogurt. I haven't yet tried with turkish or bulgarian, which are a bit more sour. I personally love it with vanilla casein powder, but you can go for whatever you would like and it doesn't have to be casein. You can also skip adding honey and instead go with fruits or berries.

300g yogurt

30g(1 scoop) protein

1 tbsp honey

Mix it all and enjoy. 

Breakfast smoothie

Every morning lately I been having smoothies for breakfast. I even use same recipe just change the fruits, lettuces and berries or add different "spice". So it's never same but always nutrious and hydrates my body while giving my body everything else it needs. Also I can make it before I leave home while getting ready and have it on my way or a bit later at work if I'm fasting.

This one that I'm having in picture on my way was really delicious and easy to make!

2 nectarines (or 1 banana)

100g kale

1 tbsp coconut oil

200g blackcurrants

1 scoop of vanilla protein (you can try with chocolate too!)

1 tsp spirulina (optional)

Pinch of salt(seasalt, himalayan etc)

Add water till you reach consistency you like.

Just blend it all up and you are ready to go! 

Best part with this smoothie is that most ingredients you can change. You don't like coconut oil, use avocado instead! Instead spirulina you can add some honey or cinnamon. I just listed options in recipe of combinations I have tried. This smoothie gives you carbs, protrin, fat, vitamins and minerals so you won't need coffee to get energy. 

It has 495 kcal, 17.4g fat, 69.3g carbs, 6.3g fiber and 26.6g protein.

Also contains potassium,  vitamin a, vitamin c, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and many more. 

What's your favourite smoothie recipe?

Vegetable couscous wok with chicken.

Kuva, jonka @rawrkarina julkaisi Tammi 1, 2015 at 3:36 PST

 This meal was soooooo delicious! I loved it! So decided to share it here. It's easy to prepare and it's healthy. Definately one of my favourites from now on.

All you need for this meal:

- Chicken
- Soy sauce
- Sesame/peanut/coconut oil
- Vegetable or chicken stock or bouillon cube
- Couscous
- Carrot
- Broccoli
- Green beans
- Bell pepper
- Onion
- Garlic
- Scallions
- Additional veggies: chickpeas, other beans, asparagus, corn, peas, cauliflower, bamboo shoot, eggplant, radish, lentil. zucchini etc.
- Additional possible adds: Mint, lime, lemon, curry, parsley, cumin, coriander, tomato sauce, pesto, sesame seeds, sesame paste(tahini), other seeds, nuts, cashews, ginger root, salt, sugar, brown sugar, honey, rice wine vinegar etc
- You can replace chicken with tofu.

1. Prepare couscous or use already prepared one.
So use same amount of water as much you got couscous so 1dl couscous needs 1dl water. Dissolve bouillon cube in water or use stock instead of water to add flavor to couscous then add it to couscous in a bowl and leave it to absorb all of the liquid in it.
2. Spray wok or pan with oil and add soysauce then place on medium heat. Add chicken.
3. When chicken starts to look ready, add the rest to the pan and let them stir 5-10 minutes while moving them around to prevent sticking.
4. Mix in with couscous.

Optional: you can always marinade the chicken ahead. So mix soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic and chili then add chicken and keep it in fridge for 15 minutes or more. Step 2 will then mean adding chicken and marinade to oiled wok.

Quick and easy! Tasty aswell. :)

Christmas calendar that helps you make a change

Everyone is familiar with Christmas calendars that give daily treats or gifts, but there are many other kind of calendars. Most commonly you can find calendars that make you complete tasks every day of a month. How about having such instead of Christmas calendar? Best part of having such that you can make the tasks yourself and then complete them daily with your family, friend or your sweetheart. Thought you have to make daily a small change but why not view it as a treat? Afterall it will reward you with feeling great for accomplising it and eventually maybe by changing your bad habits for good ones. You can also think of it as daily gift for you body and mind to feel better. It's all about how you view it. This is your chance to make a change for better and then celebrate your success with Christmas.

Try a new freshie month. Make a meal including the daily freshie. You might learn new recipies, find new favourite meals and you can do this with your family! This is a great way to start eating healthier. Instead of having a donut or sweets for daily treat, you could have peach pie with your family! Peach pie in my opinion tastes absolutely amazing and it's definately one of my favourite pies. On day 22 you could make homemade lasagne with spinach in it to give it a nice different flavor. Cantaloupe is something I use to loathe because of icecream I had as a kid. I have ever since then reacted to its smell as if it's poisonous to me. Few months ago I forced myself to eat it. I bought one big cantaloupe and said to myself that there must be a way of me to eat it. First few days I stared at it from distance waiting for it to poison me. After that I cut it and tried a slice, it was disgusting because the old memories came back to haunt me. Then I thought that I might actually add little bit of it to smoothie and day by day I added more of it till I eventually was able to eat a slice of it without blending it's taste with something else.

Wellness calendar. Learn to find happiness in your daily life. I must admit, life sucks but it won't change till you make a change. Somethings you can't change but that's okay. Find something else that will replace the things you can't change. If all you do is think about how much it all sucks, you just end up into negativity loop. Instead how about you try this calendar? Learn to enjoy the simple little things that could make you smile. It might seem silly at times but complete every day of it and say it didn't work even tiny bit.

These kind of you can often find on instagram. Usually they are workouts for abs or booty. These are good in my opinion for complete beginner. With these you can get slight kick to do some workout daily. Afterall you can do squats and lunges at home without any equipment. It's still better than doing nothing at all. These ofcourse won't get you the body you wish for but in my opinion these teach you to understand that you can always find time to workout. Also seeing that you can complete more and more daily works as great motivator to involve working out into your days even after Christmas.

This one in my opinion is better idea to follow incomparison to one above. This one challenges your diet aswell by cutting out grains and dairy. At the same time it makes you work on your full body and you can still do this at home. You might need some dumbbells to make it more intense. Resistance bands work well too. Sure this means you must do more and it will consume more time but nothing worth it comes easy. This one will also have the same effect on you as above, but more likely you'll see results from this one than the above one.

Or why not try something like this? This one helps you to adapt healthy lifestyle. Once again this is again more challenging than some of the earlier ones but once you have done your daily task you have eaten well or worked out and you notice it didn't actually take that much time as you feared it might. I would say all of these tasks won't take more than 30-60 minutes a day. It isn't much but having it as a task helps you to actually make the change instead of daily thinking what could change to get healthier.

Anyways internet is full of these all kind of calendars. There's even yoga calendars. So if you and your friend are wishing to lose some weight, why not accept fitness challenge calendar to follow together so you can support each other to get it done! Always wanted to make change into your diet? Well why not try to daily challenge yourself to make a healthy meal? Afterall you can make yourself a calendar to fit your goals. What's better Christmas present than finally quitting a bad sugar addiction? Completing daily small goals is easier than making a huge change and for some this works perfectly. So give it a try!

If you are interested in more of these monthly challenge calendars, check out Sparkpeople's challenges.

Eating healthy but using supplements

This post is partially rant and my own view so feel free to disagree with me.

I had couple days ago chat with a person who contacted me and we talked about nutrition when bodybuilding. I know that person but he didn't know before that I was into lifting weights and eating healthy. So eventually we ended up disagreeing with each others views.

I mainly eat healthy. I don't follow restrictive diet so if I want a chocolate, I'll have it. I keep my treats in low quantities but bad days may happen and what happens then isn't so pretty to look at. The point still remains that my diet is 95% healthy with little sins to keep me sane. A cup of coffee every day keeps me jolly thought it contains sugar. Many may disagree on my view of healthy eating. Many say I restrict myself too much and my diet is quite plain. This basically happens at school during lunch. Others take more rice, potatoes, sauces and creamy things, while my plate consists of 70% salad without vinegar, oils or dressing and rest on the plate is meat with possible 1 potato or few tbsp of rice. Instead of oils or dressings on salad I just add lots of seeds. Well truth behind my choice there is because I dislike taste of oils and vinegar. I add seeds to get fats to my diet. I rather eat more of salad than potatoes or rice because I like it more tastewise. Reason why I take so little meat at school is because it's always in creamy sauce. I balance out the low amount of protein on my plate with drinking 2 cups of buttermilk.

Here's one example of school meal. Salads that day weren't that tempting so I had only one of them, that's why there's less of it on plate. As you can see meat is kebab sauce if I remember correctly. I had more than usually rice and had some cottage cheese with pineapple to have more protein in my meal.

At home I eat more meat and less salads. Instead at home I eat eggs, porridges, few vegetables and mainly fruits. Occassionally I ofcourse eat berries, yogurts and much more. Unfortunately at home I'm more restricted with my diet, partially because of student budget but partially because I only eat tuna, pollock, turkey and chicken. I dislike taste of red meat. Beef is okayish. Unfortunately if the choice is to eat meat I enjoy greatly or something I rather keep in fridge for days till I'm in the mood for it, the choice is obviously skipping beef. Once a week I visit my family, where I eat whatever they have. Even if they are offering the worst red meat aka pork. I believe in constantly having ready meals, all meals calculated and never eating anything else is mentally unhealthy. If you have such huge fear to eat out with your boyfriend at times without calculating every little spoonfuls nutrional value, you need help. It's not normal! Make better treat choices and make them rare. So in conclusion I think my diet isn't that bad.

Meal of my choice at parents. Bowlful of strawberries, other bowl has oatmeal made with milk topped with peaches and a pear. Those chicken thighs in picture aren't part of the meal.

I have tried many different kind of diets in my life and I believe this what I'm currently following is the one for me. I eat more than anyone else I hangout with but my calories are never too high because I eat so much low calorie foods. Incomparison to rice (1 cup = 110 kcal) my big lettuce pile (1 cup = 15 kcal) is quite small caloriewise thought it looks massive. So my meals often look bigger than most mens meals. I eat more than my boyfriend who is very tall and almost twice heavier than me. Afterall I'm not big and I'm often told when met in real life that I'm actually quite tiny. Apparently I look on pictures like big strong amazons warrior. No idea what pictures of me they been looking at? My mealsizes to me don't matter because I feel good with my meals and that's all what matters. I also get more musclemass and my bodyfat remains the same so I must be doing something right. I believe in IIFYM like thinking that aslong as you get all nutrients your body needs, it really doesn't matter what you need. I eat some days more and some less, completly depending on how my body feels. Some days I eat even 400 calories more than I should. Some other days I eat 200 less. For me aslong its 100 kcal more or less to goal.

I try my best as much as possible to avoid eating supplements and get instead all necessary from my diet. I get daily all necessary vitamins without any worries but some I can't get.

• Fiber I often lack because I don't eat much of high in fiber foods. I get 60-70% daily from food and rest of it I get from supplement. Having that extra 5g of fiber daily makes a big difference in my body. It works better and I feel better. 
• Creatine I lack because I don't eat red meat and fish that often. Mainly because of heavy training having creatine would help nicely.
• Omega 3 and 6 again because of my own preferances. For example salmon I can't stand at all. Fish I eat approx once or twice a week. Sometimes less than that.
• Calcium. I almost reach daily calcium but it would be nice to have more of it to get full 100%. I do believe thought that I calculate something wrong in this case. Maybe forgot to enter calcium amount to some of my daily food.
• BCAA's. I do get quite a lot of my daily BCAA's in my meals but not enough incomparison to my workouts.
• Glutamine has same issue as above one. 
• Probiotics. I barely eat any yogurts or anything fermented so I don't really get these. 

I don't eat all of the supplements I lack. For example when my skin gets dry and I been eating too little fish, I start eating omega's again. D-vitamins I consume during winter every few days if I feel tiredish. Calcium I never take as supplement, I just eat more high on calcium foods and believe in it being enough. So far been eating fiber and probiotics daily at times because I have noticed that they make a big difference in how my body works. Extra biotin I been eating at times when my hair badly suffered from bad diet and stress, but mainly I do get enough of it from my diet. So far I been only consuming omegas, biotin, fiber and probiotics as supplements occassionally.

The reason why I lack so much in my body is all because of what I prefer to eat. If I were to add all the missing things into my diet, I think eating would become too complicated and I wouldn't enjoy it anymore. In other words it kills the meaning of eating well to feel well when all you do is stress if you get everything daily in your diet.

Back to the disagreeing part I had. Lately I have hit plateau in my workouts. I simply can't progress and I believe that now is a good time for first time ever to try eating creatine, glutamine and bcaa's to improve my working out. Working out while feeling too sore often causes more harm than good. I noticed my posture suffers then and instead of focus being on my back it switches to forearm which can't handle such heavy load. In his opinion having any kind of supplements is comparable to steroids. In other words he claims that if I take something I won't get any better and I'll end up just filling my body with unnecassary crap. I on other hand believe that having something that I lack in my diet is only good myself. He believes in eating well is all you need to be healthy and strong. I disagree that his diet is so healthy aswell because it lacks important nutrients. My view is that eating as well as you can is important but there's no such thing as eating so well that there's never anything you can improve on.

What's your thoughts on eating well and still using supplements? How's your diet and do you take any extra supplements?

PS. Boyfriend read this and asked me to add that he infact does eat less than me, more like his eating reminds a little anorectic girls daily eating. Thought he doesn't look like one.

Why working out and eating wrong won't get you results? part 2

This is post is part 2 for Why working out and eating wrong won't get you results? part 1

Also giving in to this kind of thinking will make you more likely to continue doing so. This your own minds lie that tricks you into just having quick boost of energy. I know the temptation to have a quick energyboost is sometimes hard to resist. This is why it's good carry your meals with you or have a fruit after workout for a boost till you get home. Most carry with them fitbars or workout shakes, which are way better way to replenish your energy after a workout. But not all of those are nutrionally good so make sure you check what they contain. Some are actually quite high on sugar and fat. So don't let the word fit/healthy/sports on them fool you. Sure it is told to eat every 2-3 hrs but I believe in rather eat every 5 hrs than make bad meal choices. Your body will thank you for that choice. Every 2-3 hrs is basically just so you don't feel hungry and give in to temptations. Many may argue about this but I didn't state that you should always eat every 5 hrs but incase you are in a hurry then rather have a quick snack in form of a fruit or skip a meal if your only options are unhealthy. I would still recommend having healthy little snack rather.

The most common mistake our mind does to us is miscalculation of calories. This is slightly related to what I told in earlier post when I mentioned that I been often told by some that they don't want to eat healthy or healthier because it doesn't remove hunger. Well this is all caused by often switching to healthier meals with smaller portion size which doesn't work just like above picture tells. Oil, beef and vegetables all equal 400 calories but which one you can eat more to actually make you feel full? Instead of switching portion sizes when you start eating healthy, stick to the old portion size and fill it with more vegetables. Below is picture that visually explains it better. Now you can see more clearly what happens when you switch from full plate of burgers into smaller plate with salad, a huge difference in calories. Let's say you used to eat 2500 calories a day of unhealthy foods and then you change to smaller amount of healthy, it can drop to 1500 calories a day which no wonder will make you feel hungry. So with constant miscalculation that workout which burned 500 calories and that small burger equal of 500 calories you had after workout won't get your body any closer to your goals.

Unhealthy meals affect your progress a lot. Not seeing results after working out hard disappoints you. Constant disappointment will lead to losing motivation. Why bother working out if past months you spend working out hasn't made any difference? Worst is that, this all can be changed with little change in diet. I hate using word diet. Diet is often related to eating too little and for short period to get quick weightloss that won't last for long. Basically just having little focus on what you eat, you can get healthier, fitter and look better.

Addiction. The picture itself explains a lot, but let's get to the point. The more you give into the addiction the harder it will be for you to get rid of it. Your rare treats after workout will become a habit and that habit will not let you progress. Not saying to fully quit sugar, fat and salt. Salt and sugar can be consumed in moderation. Eat good fats such as nuts, avocado etc are and also in moderation. Moderation is the key in all related to eating. Like I mentioned in very beginning of the post that unhealthy foods are usually high on sugar, fat and salt, here you see reason why avoiding unhealthy choices is so important and why they often make you overeat. Your addiction will make you feel more hungry, a fake hunger and to end it you must eat. Unfortunately not many understand that sometimes hunger can be a fake and not real need for extra energy, so you end up eating extra calories.

Insulin spikes are your enemies when it comes to getting fit and losing weight. As we see in above when you eat unhealthy fats you get fat. That's commonly known, but we often forget that there are 2 types of carbohydrates, good(natural) and bad(refined) ones.
Carbs consist of sugar and fiber, so if:

•  it's high on fiber it makes you feel fuller for longer
•  it's high on sugar it will give you insulin spikes, also known as quick energy boost

Easy way to remember which is which, is that good carbs are plant based and bad ones are sugars and refined "white" bread, pasta and rice.
Eating carbs basically works like this: you eat carbs that makes blood glucose that splits into producing energy and insulin. This is why often many quit eating carbs, but isn't the best option. It's all about carbs GI (glycemic index). High GI foods are the bad carbs and they cause a rapid rise of glucose. That's why you get fast energy boost but you also lose it fast. Insulins job is to stop burning fat and store it. Rapid rise of glucose means insulin spikes which means you will drop them faster aswell which means you need replenish sooner.

In conclusion eat well and workout! Stop wasting your time doing only one of them.

Why working out and eating wrong won't get you results? part 1

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It's quite common for people to think that if they workout they can eat anything. I'm not talking about occassional treats or daily cookie. But replacing daily a meal or few meals with unhealthy option. Sometimes it can be something you consider healthy but it really isn't. That's why I believe into making all meals myself right from the beginning. I barely ever buy anything ready made or already flavored. Those things are often packed with hidden calories which is often extra fat, sodium or sugar. Afterall for example salad dressings are quite easy to make and if you make them yourself you choose what it contains!

Replacing healthy meal with unhealthy one means you end up eating most likely more calories, fat, sugars and sodium daily than you should. This leads to gaining weight or stopping your progress. You will most likely lack the necessary amount of nutrients for the day aswell. Sure skipping on some vitamins daily doesn't seem like a problem, because you can always replace the missing nutrients with supplements. But it is a problem. No supplement can ever replace getting same nutrient from food. More about it on another post. 

Many have also complained to me how healthy eating keeps them hungry. That means you should check out what you are doing wrong. Some don't consume enough calories, some lack fiber but some eat too little of protein, carbs and fats. So most likely you are doing something wrong. Eating unhealthy meals keep you feeling full because you tend to overeat! Unhealthy meals are high on fat and sugar just so they give us quick boost of energy but quick energy is literally quick. You will feel hungry faster and most likely you will feel tired aswell. A picture on right may explain my point better.

Eating healthy replenished your body better after workout. You will notice this in many ways. A day after workout you have energy and strenght to workout again. You will have more strenght and you will feel way better both mentally and physically. Feeling good mentally is also a key to successful weightloss and getting fit. So eating something that brings your mood down onto ground is completly pointless. You won't get any closer to your goal so rewarding yourself after good workout with unhealthy meal is like erasing the workout you just had. Working out increases the loss of nutrients so that's why it is important to eat well. Your muscles and brains need specific vitamins to perform well. So if you feel you lack strenght and the mood for working out, the reason is on your plate. Sure stress and not sleeping well causes you to feel like that aswell. But even those are fixeable with eating well.

This post continues as Why working out and eating wrong won't get you results? part 2