11 Sources of Plant Protein

How much protein do you eat? What are the sources of your protein? Here at Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers we believe in not only getting our protein from animal sources! Eating fewer animal products and loading up on powerful plant proteins can help prevent and reverse chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. So why not add some of these plant based proteins to your diet today?

1. CHIA SEEDS

2. GREEN PEAS

3. HEMP SEEDS

4. LEAFY GREENS (Spinach, kale, collard greens)

5. WHOLE-GRAIN PASTA

6. OAT BRAN

7. PUMPKIN SEEDS

8. QUINOA

9. SPIRULINA

10. TAHINI

11. WILD RICE

3 Breakfast Rules to Help You Lose Weight!

Here at Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers we believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day! But you need to make sure that you’re doing it right. If you are currently on a fitness journey of trying to maintain or lose weight then here are 3 tips that our personal trainers think you should consider when enjoying your first meal of the day.

1. Eat breakfast soon after you wake up : Studies have found that eating breakfast jump-starts your metabolism and can also help make sure you don’t feel starved later resulting in you making bad meal choices for lunch or dinner. To take advantage of your body’s fat-burning potential, try to eat breakfast soon after waking up.

2. Go for filling foods : Stay away from foods that are high glycemic and will only lead to a mid morning crash. Choose foods that are full of fibre and slow-digesting nutrients to help keep you satisfied throughout the morning. Our personal trainers recommend high fiber and high protein breakfast options to ensure you feel full and energized throughout the day!

3. Watch your portions : A big breakfast can help fill you up, but you don’t want to overdo it. Keep calories in check by looking at suggested serving sizes!

Quick and Unusual Tips on Diet and Health

Below are 7 useful but not commonly known tips on diet and health that we at Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers think you should know!

1. Always try and eat your food freshly cooked or use an oven if possible to re-heat your food. Did you know that a microwave heats your food by oscillating it at about a billion times a second damaging the nutrients, vitamins and minerals in the food.

2. The best time for you to have your post-workout protein shake or supplement is before you stop sweating! This is the best time to ensure that extra protein is used effectively! Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers’ recommends natural protein, not a whey-protein shake.

3. Be positive! Be positive about your workouts, your food and your life in general. Positive people are happier, healthier and achieve more than people who have a view the world in a negative light.

4. Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers’ general moto on diet ie: if it wasn’t here 10,000 years ago, don’t eat it….

5. Get more in tuned with your body and your emotions. This will help you avoid emotional eating which can be disastrous on your health and your waist! Any mind-body exercise will help with this like yoga, breathing exercises, stretching etc.

6. To ensure long term success in any health and fitness goals you need to have 3 things, without these 3 things succeeding will be made either more difficult or impossible. The three things are: 1: Your total movement. 2: The quality of your diet. 3: The quality of your rest/downtime/sleep.

7. Be patient! Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither with your dream body. Don’t be too harsh on yourself, enjoy the journey and have fun!

Good Luck with your health and fitness goals.

If you require any help or you’re looking for a personal trainer in Abu Dhabi then please get in touch. Our personal trainers and health coaches are extremely well qualified and will help you no matter what your goals are!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Oatmeal Cups

Chocolate and peanut butter protein oatmeal cups, does it get any better? Our personal trainers here in Abu Dhabi don’t think so! This recipe is definitely a favourite of ours! Rich and moist, you would have no idea that these muffins have no oil or butter! Our personal trainers recommend these healthy muffins as an easy breakfast option or perfect for a pre-workout snack!

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons chia seeds (soaked in 6 tablespoons water)

• 3 large ripe bananas, mashed

• 1 cup unsweetened nut milk of your choice (almond, cashew, coconut milk etc.)

• 1/4 cup peanut butter

• 1/4 cup pure maple syrup or honey

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 scoop chocolate plant-based protein powder

• 3 cups oats

• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa or cacao powder

• 1 tablespoon baking powder

• Pinch of salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray.
2. In a bowl, soak the chia seeds and water to make “chia eggs.” Alternatively, you could use 2 large eggs. Set aside.
3. In another bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Add nut milk, peanut butter, maple syrup/honey and vanilla and stir until well mixed. Stir in “chia eggs”.
4. Add protein powder, oats, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Stir to combine.
5. Spoon mixture evenly into muffin tin, filling tins to the top.
6. Bake for 25 minutes.
7. Remove from oven and cool in pan on a wire rack. Come, remove from pan and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Which Is the Best Day of the Week to Weigh Yourself?

You can’t lose weight if you’re not checking in with the scale. There’s no way around that. But how often should you weigh yourself and which day is best? It is agreed and recommended by the personal trainers here in Abu Dhabi that you should weigh yourself first thing in the morning, before you have eaten or had anything to drink and that you only needed to weigh yourself once or twice a week. But the question remains, which day of the week is best to weigh yourself?

MONDAYS: FIND FOCUS FOR THE WEEK

It makes sense: you weight yourself at the start of the week and then you know where you stand. It is helpful to weigh yourself on a Monday because it can help to motivate you and re-set your mind frame after what was likely a fun-filled weekend of eating and drinking. Weighing yourself is a nice check-in to get you back to your normal weekly plan of healthy eating and exercising. However, the down side may be the fact that your weight is likely to be higher on Monday as a result of relaxed eating and exercising over the weekend and this may in fact get you down and cause you to lose motivation. Seeing a higher number on the scale can either motivate you or deflate you, only you will know how you respond to seeing a higher number on the scale than expected. You just need to remember that this is only a number and use it as a starting point to get back on plan for the week!

WEDNESDAYS: GET THE BEST READING

According to the 2014 Finnish study, we tend to weigh the most on Sunday evenings and the least on Friday mornings. So some experts say weighing in midweek gives you the most accurate reading of what your true weight is. By Wednesday, you have had a few days back on track with eating healthy and exercising and your body has had time to recover from the weekend. However, if you are the type of person who can let your weekend eating and drinking habits bleed into Monday and Tuesday, then Monday may be the best day for you to motivate you to get back on track.

FRIDAYS: MAKE THE MOST OF WEEKENDS

Checking your weight before the weekend can help you strategize and prepare for it. If you weigh yourself on a Monday and then again on a Friday you can see what progress you have made and this may help you to decide if you want to reward yourself a bit on the weekend or seeing a decreased weight may inspire you to keep up your healthy habits into the weekend. The down side of weighing yourself on a Friday is the risk that you may have gained weight during the week which could lead to some people feeling bad, resulting in a binge eating fest all weekend. This “I might as well eat junk” mentality can then snowball — if you tell yourself you’ll start over on Monday, you may never get back on track.

THE BEST DAY TO WEIGH YOURSELF?

It’s simple: Do it on the day to which you can commit and to which you can mentally cope with the results, whether they be positive or negative. Weigh-ins should be a tool to help you stay on track not to derail you into giving up and binge eating. Ultimately, weigh ins can be whenever, but  do it the same day and same time every week, with the same scale. Every scale is calibrated slightly differently, and your weight can fluctuate several pounds in one day.

Everybody has stubborn body fat that we want to lose, but how do we do it?

We asked our Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers for their input in to the topic! The one piece of advice our personal trainers want to make sure you take away from this post is that there are tons of different supplements (think skinny teas, fit teas, pills, shakes etc.) that will tell you that their product will help you move your stubborn body fat, however, if it where that easy why would there be so many products out there and so many people struggling to lose weight? Our personal trainers want to make sure that you do not throw away your hard earned money on products that will promise you the world and not deliver on those promises.

The reality of losing stubborn fat is probably not what you want to hear, but there is not secret to it, there is no quick fix or diet pill that can help you target your fat loss. The only way we gain and lose fat is determined by two factors:

1. Caloric intake
2. Genetic predisposition

We all have the capacity to get absolutely shredded – while this may be easier for some than others we can all reach low levels of body fat. All it takes is a caloric deficit and consistency.

Fat loss is a simple equation and a simple task on paper – it is just difficult to implement and endure!

The second factor is a very important one and we most not forget it – our unique genetic predispositions. Unfortunately, our ancestors have determined our genetic make-up and this is what determines where and how much fat we store in certain areas. Some people store more fat in their abs, others on their thighs.

So don’t waste your money on diet pills, skinny teas or shakes that promise to target fat loss. If you want to get rid of these areas you need to train on a regular basis and induce a calorie deficit with your diet. Eventually it will come off, you just need to be patient and endure the process, because some areas will come off after others but they WILL eventually come off! A personal trainer can help set your calorie needs based on the training schedule they have made for you!