Heatlhy Pancakes

I love such healthy, easy and clean recipes. Yesterday, I made these delicious and yet so healthy pancakes. 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup cottage cheese ( I used 1 small pack)

1/2 cup oats

2 eggs

Cinnamon

Honey

Tad of coconut oil for greasing pan

For the toppings, you can be creative with fruit / nuts / honey / yogurt. I personally used frozen berries by warming them up in a sauce pan to get the juices out :-)

Method:

1.       Put the oats in a food processor and grind until powdery. When oats are powdered add in the cottage cheese, 2 eggs, cinnamon and some honey. Mix thoroughly with food processor.

2.       Make the batter in a bowl so that it can be easily handled. Heat the non-stick pan and when it’s hot, use a dipper/punch spoon to take some of the batter and pour it on the pan.

Tips:

When you see bubbles forming up from all sides of the circle you can turn it over to cook from the other side. Check them out so that they don’t burn, remember they only take some seconds.

I served them with warmed up frozen berries. Made out 4 but could have easily made 5 or 6 smaller ones.

Recipe from Jessy Hamawi, Club Fitness Nutritionist and Personal Trainer

11/18/2011 Coffee Talk with Jessy

A note from Jessy Hamawi, Club Fitness Nutritionist and Personal Trainer

If you came to talk to me at the Club, you know that I stick to my philosophy and nutrition approach. Before that, I shifted many of my strategies in order to best target these 3 main objectives: health, workout performance (supporting my training), and body composition (keeping lean and optimizing fat loss). One element that has always been a key to my success is my happiness as it relates to my diet. It’s not just about carbs and proteins and calories – it also has to be about whether or not, on a whole host of levels you actually enjoy your diet. Call me crazy but I want to enjoy preparing and eating my super clean healthy food.

Food is not just an energysource. Food is also about enjoyment, creativity, expression and social interaction. We should enjoy the creative process of preparing our meals as much as we enjoy eating them and sharing them with our friends and family.

So having these 4 goals in mind: health, workout performance, body composition and happiness, I have decided to stick to my nutrition approach. Before joining the staff of Club Fitness , I was sharing my progress and recipes that inspired me from a great read by Michael Pollans book In Defense of Food. 

Every once a while I will be posting my own thoughts and talking to you guys on a personal level, but for a start here is a quick sum up the rules to my approach:

1. Eat foods from the superfoodslist, and avoid processed food as much as possible.

2. Eat as many fresh veggies as possible.

3. Complex carbs and fruit in moderation.

4. Try to include protein in every meal. This does not mean that you have to eat meat with every meal. You can use a protein supplement or you can get your protein from other whole food sources.

5. Drink water as your go-to beverage. Avoiding processed foods also means avoiding artificial sweeteners and soft drinks.

6. Dairy in moderation.

7. 1-2 glasses of dry red wine a night if you so choose.

If the word “moderation” throws you into a fit of panic and uncertainty – relax. This is about balance so eat for energy not for storage. Most portion sizes are huge. I often easily split a single restaurant portion meant for just 1 person. Use your hands to measure your portions and you won’t go wrong.

As a general rule:

1. Meat portions should be the size of the palm of your hand (2 palms for guys).

2. Veggies – 2 hands cupped together (but basically you can eat as many veggies as you like).

3. Bread – 1 slice of whole wheat bread per meal.

4. Potatoes ,Pasta, Rice, Oats etc – 1 cupped hand (cooked).

5. Fruits – I enjoy fruit 1-2x per day – a piece in the morning and a piece for a snack later in the day.

Cheat days are out – moderationwill also apply towards deserts and sweets. I am not in the habit of eating deserts on a regular basis anyway, and I may choose to enjoy a small piece of dark chocolate with my coffee now and then. Obviously you have to strike a balance between your diet and your goals, but we can enjoy a treat now and then.

So to sum up this post:  Use your hands to control your portions and everything in moderation.

Have a great weekend and leave some comments for us to read :)

Here is again a short list of some superfoods:

Protein – lean red meat, salmon, fat free greek – plain yogurt, black beans, tempeh, kidney beans, low fatcottage cheese, chicken breasts, turkey breasts, protein supplements (whey protein isolates, milk protein isolates, or rice protein isolates)

Veggies and Fruits – spinach, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, oranges, mixed berries, lettuce, bananas, grapefruits, cucumbers, kale, collards,

Other Carbs – mixed beans, quinoa, whole oats, amaranth, brown rice

Good Fats – mixed nuts, avocados, extra virgin olive oil, fish oil, flax seeds (ground), coconut milk,

Drinks – unsweetened green tea, water

The Essentials for Post-Workout

You just finished one of your best intense workouts. Do you know what—and when—you need to eat in order to maximize your results? The answer is in this article. With my earlier article focusing entirely on what to eat before exercising, I’d be remiss to not explain what you should be eating after your workout.

What’s the point of eating after exercise?

It’s all about two things: recovery and storage. You need to recover the losses you undertook during the exercise, and your body is simply better at storing that recovery fuel right after your workout. Sure, you can eat later—but the benefits won’t be as good.

The sports medicine pros at ESPN explain it: “athletes need carbohydrate and fluid to replace glycogen and water losses during the exercise. The muscles store more glycogen immediately after exercise than they do later”.

We’ll talk about what to eat shortly, but generally you want to stick to carbohydrates and protein. Why, exactly? Protein provides the amino acids necessary to rebuild muscle tissue that is damaged during intense, prolonged exercise. It can also increase the absorption of water from the intestines and improve muscle hydration. The amino acids in protein can also stimulate the immune system, making you more resistant to colds and other infections. While you might find some advice that suggests carbs will serve you fine on their own, one study found that athletes who refueled with carbohydrate and protein had 100 percent greater muscle glycogen stores than those who only ate carbohydrate. Insulin was also highest in those who consumed a carbohydrate and protein drink.

The Re-Hydration Essentials

There isn’t a ton of information on drinking water after exercise, and for good reason—it’s simply obligatory. That’s always your #1 priority, especially if you’ve gone for a run and haven’t had access to any water during it.

If you want to get really scientific about it, it is recommended weighing yourself pre- and post-workout, and using the difference to replace fluid losses. For example, drink 20-24 fl oz of water for every 1 lb lost. Of course, most of you will just hit that water bottle with abandon.

When to eat

Do we need to eat right away? You might say no, not exactly—you probably want to get some fluids into you, towel off, get changed, take a quick shower—whatever your normal post-workout routine is.

But the first 15 minutes are crucial: the enzymes that help the body resynthesize muscle glycogen are really most active in that first 15 minutes. The longer we wait to eat something, the longer it takes to recover.

If you can’t get to some proper food within those first 15 minutes, make sure you get something in your stomach within an hour, maximum,post-workout. You won’t get much increased storage at all if you wait longer than that.

What to eat—with real suggestions

Ah, and now the crucial question, where we move away from talk of abstract carbohydrates and protein, and into actual suggestions for the kind of things you should scarf down post-workout.

Sports drinks are better during a workout, but juices are better afterwards, when our body needs those carbs. One crucial notion is digestion: if our bodies aren’t used to processing food after a workout, it might be difficult to digest solid foods right away, especially after some long, serious endurance work. Columbia University comes at us with some real food suggestions: “eat a few slices of turkey on a wheat bagel, or have a large glass of protein fortified milk. The most important nutritional strategy post workout, though, is fluid replacement. Drink water, juice, or carbohydrate rich sports drinks to replace what you sweat out.” All good advice, although be careful of sports drinks that function more as sugar-delivery systems than workout tools.

The final bit of advice

Eating after exercise takes some time to get used to. Remember that if you’re working out just 2-3 times a week, it’s not as fundamentally important to concentrate on your post-workout recovery. But if you’re working out nearly every day—it’s essential.

And don’t think of your post-workout food as a proper meal: the portion sizes should never get that big: it’s a small amount – a fist-sized quantity, low-fat chocolate milk works very well. The goal is not a post-exercise meal. It’s really a post-exercise appetizer to help the body recover as quickly as it can. That’s a strange-but-perfect way to think about it: a post-exercise appetizer.

Keep these general principles in mind, eat clean and healthyabove all.

Article by Jessy Hamawi, Peoria Club Fitness Nutritionist and Personal Trainer

Science Behind the Biggest Loser TV Show

I’m hooked on “The Biggest Loser” TV show. Maybe because I get to watch lives being transformed and new behaviors shaped or because I feel gratified that these changes are a result of improvements in nutrition and exercise, areas in which I have expertise in, rather than the promise of a fad diet, magic pills or surgery as a solution. But I was always so curious about what goes on behind the scenes. So you can imagine my excitement when I had the opportunity to learn from the dietitian and the medical physician for the show at a conference held in Chicago last year.

First off, they both admitted upfront that one of the reasons the people lose so much weight consistently is because of their new environment. All the barriers that usually exist to behavior change (job/life stresses, family and friends, lack of time, lack of knowledge about what to do) have been removed. Their new job is to exercise, learn about good nutrition habits, and practice them every day. This is one of the keys that contributed to their success. They get enough time in the new environment that once they leave they have enough knowledge and motivation to keep it going. Essentially, they transform their lifestyle. 

Biggest Loser Diet

·      45-30-25: Modified 45% of calories from carbohydrates (mostly fruits, vegetables and some whole grains), 30% of calories from protein, and 25% of calories from healthy fats or oils (seeds, nuts, avocado, olive oil)

·        Whole foods, elemental ingredients

·     4-3-2-1: daily 4 cups minimum of fruits and vegetables, 3 servings of healthy proteins (e.g. fish, skinless chicken breast, 93% lean ground turkey), 2 servings of whole grains, and 1 serving of healthy fat.

·         Aim to have 1 serving of fish daily.

·         1 optional treat per day.

·      Cereals must contain a minimum 5 grams of fiber per serving and less than 5 grams of sugar per serving. This limits the cereals to certain oatmeals, bran cereals, or other high fiber cereals on the market.

·      Goal of 7 calories per pound of body weight for daily caloric intake. This is recalculated after significant weight loss.

Participants are provided with calorie counting resources and a food and exercise diary which they must maintain daily. This helps to raise awareness of past behaviors and develops an understanding for calorie balancethrough diet and exercise.

Their diets are analyzed daily by the show’s nutritionist. The nutritionist reported a 70% adherence to the diet. The nutritionist also reported as a result of the diet, the contestants experience decreased risk for diabetes because the measure that is used to diagnose diabetes decreases from “at risk” to a healthy range.

Biggest Loser Exercise

·         A goal of 7 hours per week of exercise

·          Incorporate weight training, coaching, teamwork, and competition

What a Typical Week at the Ranch Consist of 

Before getting started, participants undergo extensive medical tests, including a physical, stress test, DEXA (to measure accurately percent body fat and lean mass), and “Bod Pod” (to measure resting metabolic rate). Participants also undergo psychological evaluation and the support network at home is briefed on the program so they know what to expect when the person returns home.

All participants get a full nutrition consult, including a week of food journals review. They discuss any GI symptoms they are having as well as eating schedules and cooking and shopping strategies.

Common Denominators

In 3 seasons, they found many common characteristics, including:

·         No idea of the number of calories they need or what they actually consume

·         Most skip breakfast and snacks and let a long time go between meals

·         Most consume very little fruits and vegetables

·         Most are not getting enough protein, and what they do get is high in saturated fat

·         Most get very little whole grains

·         Most have too much refined flour and sugar

·         Little planning of meals, mostly on-the-go eating and dining out

·         Most were meeting their daily caloric needs through beverages alone (e.g. caloric sodas,  juices and fruit punch)

·         Many consume very little water

·         Nearly all reported limited to no exercise

·         Nearly all prioritize everything and everyone else in their life ahead of their own health

I found that list to be insightful. It is easy to see why they are struggling with their weight when you look at behaviors they have in common. The goal of the Biggest Loser, just like any other actual weight loss program, to restructure that lifestyle and get them on the path to better health and wellness.

Article by Jessy Hamawi, Club Fitness Nutritionist and Personal Trainer

Discover the Differences in Flours!

What's the Difference? Cake Flour, Pastry Flour, All-Purpose Flour, and Bread Flour

For those who do not make bread every weekend or have an obsession with baking cakes, it is important to know the difference between all-purpose flour, pastry flour and cake flour. 

First, what's the same about all these flours is that they are all made from wheat. What makes them different is how they are milled, what kind of wheat they're made from, and even what time of year the wheat was actually harvested. But what it really all boils down to is the protein content.

Protein content is directly related to how much gluten can be formed using that particular flour. Gluten helps create the structure and determine the texture in your final baked good. Flours with low protein contents will generate less gluten and flours with high protein content will create more.

To get the light and airy structure of cakes such as Angel Food cake, you want flour with very little protein. But to form the dense chewy structure of bread, you want flour with a lot of protein so that you can create as much gluten as possible.

Here is the approximate protein content of all the common types of flour:

·         Bread Flour: 14 - 16%

·         All-Purpose (AP) Flour: 10 - 12%

·         Pastry Flour: 9%

·         Cake Flour: 7-8%

The exact protein content varies by brand, region, and also by country. However, the name given to the flour is usually an indication of how it's intended to be used. If you're having trouble with a recipe written by someone in another country, try to figure out the protein content of the flour they're using and then find your local equivalent.

Substituting flours with different protein contents can get a little tricky. For most intents and purposes, you're safe using pastry and cake flour interchangeably. You can also always use all-purpose flour for either pastry or bread flour.

If all you have is all-purpose flour, you can approximate cake and pastry flour by adding 2 tablespoons of corn starch to a cup of AP flour. Likewise, you can bump up a flour's protein content (and it's gluten potential) by adding a few tablespoons of vital wheat gluten.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!

Article by Jessy Hamawi, Peoria Club Fitness Nutritionist and Personal Trainer

JessyHamawi@peoriaclubfitness.com