BLOG HAS MOVED!

Hey all

Just to let you know I am no longer updating this blog - all new posts will be at one of the following:

http://www.perfectfitforlife.com/blog
http://www.outdoorfitforlife.com/blog-2/
http://www.kettlebellebody.com/blog

Or you can join the member site FREE:  http://carolineradway.ning.com

Leigh Peele Launching Groundbreaking 'Body By Eats'

HOOOORRRAYYYYYY!

Fat loss LEGEND Leigh Peele, author of the seminal 'Fat Loss Troubleshoot' is soon to launch the eagerly awaited 'Body By Eats'

Leigh is nothing if not original and groundbreaking with her work and she really has delivered on this one. Tons of information about fat loss, food safety, organics, pesticides, and food.

Did I mention the food? The recipes amazing!  She's even including cauliflower cake, so she has taste!

She's also created an audiobook version so you can listen on your Ipod or in the car - unfortunately my Ipod has broken and my van has a rubbish cassette player only so I'm reading all the way, but hopefully you're in a better listening position than I!

If you want to hear a preview of the book you can check it out here, it's not on sale till 23rd October, but this will whet your appetite (click the image):

Gluten Free Nut Free Low Carb & Cal Bread Recipe!

So, the cake has been going down pretty well! Even a few have been tricked into thinking it was 'normal' cake so all good!

The bread recipe is pretty similar:

700 g cauliflower
175g unflavoured protein powder (I used Reflex Instant Whey)
2 eggs,
Tsp baking powder
Spices to taste: Celtic sea salt and ground black pepper plus others as you like - first batch I used garam masala and lots of cumin, another batch I used rosemary. Could also add nuts, dried fruit - whatever! Let me know what you try!


Steam then puree the cauliflower while the oven is heating up to 150 degrees centigrade (whatever that is in crazy F...).
Stir in the egg (ideally let the cauliflower cool a bit so it doesn't scramble on contact!) and the protein powder and spices.
Add the tsp baking powder.

Pour into large, flat flan tins, greased lightly with coconut oil for best results (I tried with cake / loaf tins but ended up a bit too moist for convincing bread).

Place into the oven (150 degrees C) for about 30 mins, or until the colour has changed to golden brown. You can adjust cooking time to come out with a moister or drier bread to suit.

Leave to cool, or eat some straight away with butter and marmite if you have a yearning for such a thing (something from my childhood I miss without bread in my diet, so was the first thing I did, straight out of the oven, yum!)

I cut each large, flatbread into 4 quarters, then keep some in the fridge and freeze the rest individually. Then just toast on low to defrost and re-heat as you want them.

For a pizza base, you would just take the full bread out, add toppings as you like then return to the oven on 'grill'.

NUTRITIONAL INFO:

Whole recipe:

1015 cals, 47.7 carb of which 24.5 fibre, 20.4 fat, 166.4 protein.

If you split into 10 slices, therefore, its 101 cals per slice, with 4.7 carbs, 2.45 fibre, 2 g fat and 16.4 protein - a result!

Lush served with low fat goats cheese and tomato, or mushrooms sauteed in coconut oil (with a poached egg and tomato) or whatever you desire!!!

Finally, a bread alternative that isn't just bread in disguise nutritional-breakdown-wise!

Enjoy and let me know how you go with it!

Gluten and Sugar Free Cake Recipe - also low in calories and fat, and high in fibre!

So, I've been playing with the recipes for my cake (and bread / pizza base) and think I've managed to nail it!

NICE AND SPICEY CHOC PUMPKIN NO-GUILT CAKE:

600g cauliflower
16 oz / 425g tin of pureed pumpkin
2 med / large eggs
200 g chocolate protein powder of choice
1 tsp baking powder
Spices such as cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice to taste.

1. Steam the cauliflower for 5-10 mins till soft enough to puree
2. Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees C and lightly grease 2 - 3 loaf tins with coconut oil
3. Puree the cauliflower till it's smooth
4. Stir in the canned pumpkin and 2 eggs (not the shells of course...)
5. Stir in the protein powder and spices
6. Add a tsp of baking powder and stir thoroughly
7. Divide into 3 loaf tins, you want it to be about 3-4 cm high ideally so it cooks evenly
8. Place in the oven and bake for between 40 and 60 mins, till browned on the top. This does depend on how thick you fill the tins, so you may need to experiment. Also you may prefer a drier cake or a more moist cake, so this is your call!
9. Remove from the oven (be careful, its hot!) and leave to call for a few mins, then turn out onto cooling racks to completely cool.
10. Divide each loaf up as you want to! 10 pieces in total means each piece has 125 cals, 19 g protein, 2.3 g fat, 8.2g carb of which 4g is fibre. Not a bad outcome for chocolate cake, hey?

NUTRITIONAL BREAKDOWN FOR WHOLE RECIPE (using Reflex Instant Whey):

1227 cals
23.4 g fat
81.6g carb of which 40.2 g is FIBRE!
191g protein

You can of course use this as a base and play with it as you like - add nuts, seeds, fruit or whatever!

Try it out and let me know how it goes!

First, Cauliflower Pizza, then Cauliflower Chocolate Spice Cake!

OK, so the fact that cauliflower was soooo successful as a pizza base got me thinking.... How about cake??!!

I've been making homemade protein bars with protein powder, nuts and seeds, but these end up being pretty calorific, and even when I eat 100% 'clean' I still need to watch overall cals (as most people do) as its sooo easy to splish a little extra olive oil here and chomp a few extra nuts here, that can easily take us out of calorie deficit!

In fact, since trying to wean myself off Calorie King, my weight had gone up a few lb, and its only going back to careful tracking and keeping my intake under control that I've easily lost those annoying lb and feel so much more in control, as I know where I'm at...

So, the cauliflower thought combined with the fact that I'm away next weekend, climbing Snowdon and staying in a B&B with healthy sounding but of course not remotely healthy 'continental breakfast' and I decided to get baking!

And, to my surprise, it worked!!!

So, check out my own invented recipe: CAULICHOCOSPICE CAKE!

1 head of cauliflower (about 700g)
Splash low carb almond milk (I get this stuff: http://www.bevital.co.uk/acatalog/Milk_Substitutes.html)
1 tin pureed pumpkin (I get Libby's - those in the UK need to order and avoid getting tempted by 'candy' while shopping: CANNED PUMPKIN, or you can just steam pumpkin or butternut squash)
1-2 tsp ground ginger
1-2 tsp mixed spice
3 large eggs
100g chocolate protein powder (I used Reflex Instant Whey for this)
Tsp baking powder (I added this, not sure if it was necessary)
Coconut oil to grease tray

Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C.
Steam the cauliflower and puree it with a hand blender (add a splash of almond milk if you like)
Mix with pumpkin, spices, eggs, protein.
Grease 2 cake tins with coconut oil.
Split mixture into the cake tins (you may want to use 1 larger one, or could try cookie / muffin trays, up to you!)
Place in the oven and bake for 30 ish minutes (again, you'll need to experiment a bit depending on the thickness of the cake - could have done mine for longer but was nice and moist)

Leave to cool then split into 8 servings...

NUTRITIONAL INFO (based on the protein I used personally so if you use different you'll need to adjust):

Per recipe (1/8th would be a snack at around 120 cals and 15 g protein)

969 cals
25g fat
123g protein
83g carbs, of which 40g fibre.

Wisdom Tooth Extraction Leads to DELICIOUS Ice Cream Discovery!

So, I had an impromptu wisdom tooth removal this morning, which led to a wonderful discovery - a new 'ice cream' recipe!

This would be perfect as dessert after the following 'pizza' (see the forum for these and more: http://carolineradway.ning.com/forum/topics/healthy-recipes). Who needs cheat meals when you have recipes like these, huh?

CAULI-PIZZA-LICIOUS:

1 cup cooked, pureed cauliflower
1 egg
Mixed herbs / celtic sea salt / black pepper to taste...

TOPPING: Up to you: Tomato puree, more herbs, slices of tomato, slices of mushroom, spinach and feta all would be good! A great (excuse the auditory pun, ha ha) topping would be a small amount of parmesan, as a little goes a long way.

As this is just veg I would definitely reccomend either topping with some fish or lean meat or having a small piece along side - there is an egg but you ideally want a bit more protein than that....

HOW TO:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C
Spray a cake tin with non-stick spray or lightly coat with coconut oil.
In a medium bowl, combine cauliflower, egg and herbs. Press evenly on the pan.
Bake for 20-30 minutes (more if you double the recipe).

Remove the pan from the oven. Add toppings.
Place under a grill or back in the oven to heat the toppings.

YUMMMMMMM.........

Follow with the following AWESOME ice cream:

75 g frozen blueberries
10-15g whey protein (choc or vanilla is good, I use Reflex Instant whey or SunWarrior Rice Protein from Mike Mahler)
Tsp mixed spice, tsp ground ginger
50ml low carb almond milk
(Optional, some frozen spinach - ha ha, I did just make it with this and you'd never know!)

Works best in a Magic Bullet in my view, as you can eat it out of the pot you blend it in, but any blender should do the trick.

Place all the ingredients in the blender. Blend as much or as little as you want - hardly blended makes it feel more fruity, just now I did it till the thing was smooth, as was trying to get the frozen spinach blended in...

DE-LISH-US!!!

Oh yeah, and the ratios above make it 75-90 cals, depending on the protein, 10-12 g protein and 8-10g carb... Double winner. And easy to eat when you've just had a tooth out - no excuses for ice cream!

Holiday Workout

I just gave a client a bodyweight workout to do on her imminent vacation and thought that I would share it with all of you, it being holiday season and all!

So, if you need something to do at home in between Outdoor Fit for Life Group Training sessions, or if you want to boost energy and vitality while on holiday (or make up for some over-indulgences!) then give this a go....

5 mins dynamic warm up, stretch as necessary.

Bodyweight Squats with hands behind head, prisoner style x 15
Kneeling press ups x 15
Single leg deadlift x 10 each leg
Triceps Dips x 12
Side lunges 15 each side
Dragon lunge walks 10 steps each leg
Dolphin x 12

Perform the circuit 1 - 3 times with minimal rest between exercises and a minute between circuits. You can alteratively super-set the exercises, pairing upper and lower body and repeating that superset 3 times then moving on to the next.

Follow with 10 mins of skipping, 30 s on, 15-30 s off (or try stair running, run up and walk back down). You can also add skipping in between exercises, supersets or circuits to up the cardio intensity throughout the workout.

CORE WORK:

Windmill x 8 each side
Bird Dog x 8 each side (hold 3 s)
Knee drop x 10 each side
Reverse curls x 15
Side plank 15 - 30 s
Plan 30 - 60 s

Then stretch tight muscle groups...