Zucchini slices are a great way to add more vegetables into your overall diet, especially when served with a side salad. They make for a great lunch, dinner, or snack, and are perfect for your weekly food preps. One of my personal favourites!
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Ingredients:
2 zucchinis
4 eggs
2 spring onions thinly sliced
1 carrot
1 red capsicum
175g packet of short cut bacon
1 cup self raising flour
1 cup grated cheese of your choice (this was mozzarella)
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Side salad: baby spinach, rocket, cherry tomatoes, spring onion, sunflower kernels
Method:
Pre heat oven to 180 degrees. Grease a 20cm x 30cm lamington pan and line the base and 2 long sides with baking paper.
Place the zucchini, carrot, capsicum, spring onion, bacon, cheese and flour in a large bowl and stir to combine. Add the egg, milk and oil and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake for 40 mins or until firm to the touch. Set aside to cool. Cut into squares. Serve with side salad
Step 1: Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the curry paste and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until aromatic. Add the coconut milk and water and bring to the boil.
Step 2: Reduce heat to low. Add the chicken, pumpkin and lime leaves and cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes or until pumpkin is tender. Add the beans, peas, lime juice, sugar and fish sauce and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3-4 minutes or until the beans are bright green and tender crisp.
Step 3: Serve with rice. Top with Thai basil leaves.
After a couple of months of transitioning from one gym to another, JS-PT has officially made the full time move over to Flow2 Gym in Milton (159 Coronation Drive).
If you’ve been following the Instagram and Facebook pages, you would have seen a few photos and videos of all the action that’s been happening. With a wide array of equipment which includes a matrix style fit out, battle ropes, sleds, gymnastic rings, suspension training, kettle bells, and slam ball in conjunction with plenty of traditional free weights; this has made one on one sessions, small group sessions, and boot camps in the gym much more challenging and fun.
To celebrate this, JS-PT is offering newsletter subscribers their first 2 sessions for only $22!So come in, and experience for yourself a workout that takes you to the next level! Email info@js-pt.com.au for more info on how to get started. And whilst memberships to Flow2 are available, JS-PT clients don’t have to pay a membership to receive personal training/small group training (2-4 people).
This was an enjoyable afternoon snack for me last week; vita wheat crackers with cucumber, smoked salmon, cottage cheese with some cracked pepper and Tabasco sauce.
Vita wheat crackers are wholegrain based so provide a good source of fibre and carbohydrates, while the smoked salmon contains B vitamins and minerals such as magnesium and selenium which aid your metabolism. Cottage cheese is not only a complete source of protein, but also is a great source of calcium which is crucial for bone health.
Change your serving size to suit your personal needs and enjoy!
I’m all for people starting small on their health goals, and gradually building to bigger things. Whether they are starting with smaller goals, or starting on smaller day in and day out habits, it all helps. Something is better than nothing right? However, are you someone that has made smaller changes in your exercise and eating patterns in order to lose weight, but still feel like you are going nowhere? This post may be for you.
Let’s start with some common small changes people make to help achieve weight loss goals:
– Drinking low fat milk instead of full cream milk
– Swapping sugar for stevia/sweetener in your coffee
– Eating only wholegrain versions of different foods (i.e. Brown rice, or multigrain bread)
Whilst changing certain habits each day may help, too often people are caught up in the minor changes, and not focusing enough time on the major things that would be most beneficial. This is what I call ‘majoring in the minors’.
Solely changing to low fat milk or eating more wholegrain foods isn’t going to make a difference if you are not eating less calories overall. The energy balance equation is what matters:
If you consume more than your maintenance calories each day (regardless of milk type, or whether wholegrain or not), you will put on weight. If you consume less, you will lose weight. So how do you measure your food intake? Track your food intake with an app like My Fitness Pal (as spoken about on a previous post here).
Needless to say, I still recommend that 80-90% of your food intake comes from whole and minimally refined foods for health reasons, and wholegrain foods are an important component in your diet due to their fiber content. But overeating is overeating regardless of the food type, so remember to keep focused on major changes such as controlling your overall food intake and overall activity level rather than minor changes, and I assure you this will make a bigger difference.
For specific nutrition coaching plans, feel free to email me on james@js-pt.com.au for any enquiries.
Before your holidays you were determined to keep exercising and eating well despite the inevitable blow out days that the end of December and start of January brings.
You’ve returned from your holidays and quite frankly you feel terrible because you did none of the above.
Sounds like you? You’re not alone!
Many of my clients, friends, family members, and fellow gym goers have developed a guilty conscious thinking back of their holidays. Some are doing something about it, some aren’t, but many still feel guilty to a certain extent. But now it’s time to move on. If anything, a break from training and/or food tracking may have given you some much needed time off for you to refresh the batteries. And while you think you may have put on a copious amount of body fat, you really haven’t. It’s only been 2 or 3 weeks, not enough to completely ruin your body! The time spent with family and friends with the enjoyment of different food and drinks is something to cherish, not remembered with guilt over your nutrition choices that day.
Now it’s time to focus on the now and the future. Remember the goals you were working towards, or refocus your mind on some new goals for 2015, and just get started in some way, shape or form. Put behind you whatever guilt you may have. Having your mind right and thinking about the positive rather than the past or the negative is crucial for achievement and fulfilment. Without that, you won’t succeed.
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday, now be the best you can be in 2015!
