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!

Why Diets Are A Good Thing & 3 Reasons Why You Might Want To Do One

Article reposted with permission from Liam O’Hagan. Article reposted from https://www.ohagancoaching.com/single-post/Why-Diets-Are-A-Good-Thing-3-Reasons-Why-You-Might-Want-To-Do-One

First off, if you’re one of my fellow personal trainers hear me out. I’m usually one of the trainers that goes against diets but today I had a sudden realization and kind of wanted to challenge my own current thought processes on this topic.

The idea for this came about when I got a notification about someone posting on my free Health & Fitness tips & advice group on Facebook (if you want to join click here). It was someone who was saying that ever since they stopped eating after a certain time they feel less bloated, has less digestive problems and it helps her to lose a little bit of weight/body fat.

Now, this is a myth and has been proven wrong so many times that you don’t have to stop eating at a certain time to lose fat/weight. But, before I replied just saying “this is a myth”, I looked at the bigger picture of what it had done for her and then realized well if it works for her, why would I tell her not do it?

Diets are now often demonized or loved depending on where you read them. (Good) fitness sites usually say that they’re bad and do more harm than good, whereas if you read the latest women’s magazine all they do is go on about the next big diet. And whilst I’d say I’m still against diets (or rather extreme ones), they do have some benefits that people can find valuable.

1. It Teaches Discipline.

One of the main things that people can get from diets is the discipline aspect. Let’s say if you’re on a diet and that diet tells you that you have to restrict something like sweets for it to work, a lot of people follow it for however long that they do the diet. Now, what they may or may not realize is that they now know that they don’t need that one thing and can live without it, so now they can say no to it just that little bit more the next time it’s offered.

I would say that’s a bit of a valuable thing when it comes to losing fat, wouldn’t you?

2. People Become More Aware.

This again kind of goes in line with the restriction thing and having to eat certain things when you’re on a diet. People might start to notice how their body reacts to eating certain things, take for example the ketogenic diet where you severely limit carbohydrates in order for your body to switch the main focus of using glucose (sugar) as energy and into ketones (fat). For some people this might work better for them rather than a normal diet, where they just restrict calories overall, because maybe their body is just better suited to running on fat as the main source of energy rather than sugar.

It’s because people forget when it comes to health, fitness & nutrition we’re all similar but yet so different it’s hard to say what works for everyone.

3. They Give People Guidance.

Most people when it comes to wanting to lose fat or change their body shape feel so confused and lost and I don’t blame them. So if they find something that they’ve seen has worked for other people then I’m sure most of us would try and emulate that for ourselves, right?

I’m not saying all diets give a great guidance but at least people get given some form of a plan to follow and that’s what most people want. Besides, if you follow a plan you’re bound to get some results, after all it’s better than following no plan and getting frustrated and angry about it.

When You Shouldn’t Do a Diet

Now there are certain things you should avoid when looking for when looking for a specific diet to follow to make sure you’re following something that isn’t going to damage your health:

When you feel tired and hungry all the time – whilst you should feel a little hungry on a diet (because you’re now eating less than you’re used to), you shouldn’t feel tired & hungry and you definitely shouldn’t feel it all the time. This would suggest that you’re not getting enough energy to get through the day, so either stop the diet or increase your food intake a little.

When they just sound crazy – think of the “baby food diet”, “the charcoal cleanse”, “the vision diet” (last one you eat with blue sunglasses on – weird I know). These diets are only ever made to get whoever created them famous by coming up with the most ridiculous thing that they can think of to get more publicity, whether it’s good or bad. It’s just common sense.
If they tell you to completely remove one macro-nutrient (carbs, fat, protein) – generally these diets just aren’t good for your health as all of the macro-nutrients serve a purpose in the body and without one of them you’ll struggle with certain functions. Whilst it’s fine to reduce some of them, it’s not a good idea to cut them out completely.
Avoid juice or any other cleanses – not only are they a waste of time and money it’s unnecessary to only consume kale laced smoothies for 3+ days or sticking a coffee enema up your butt (yes, this is a thing). Besides, you have a liver & kidney to do that for you, just feed them good food…

Conclusion

I usually recommend my clients to focus on lifestyle and behaviour change when it comes to food but if you want to get technical about it, then technically that is a diet of some sort. So ultimately we have to sacrifice some of our favourite “bad” foods to get in the shape we want.

Am I saying that all diets are bad? No. Am I saying you should follow a specific diet? No. I am telling you to do what works best for you, even if it’s against what I recommend. If I tell you not to go on a diet but you come to me 4 weeks later and say you achieved the results you wanted then I’m nothing but happy for you.

The Importance of Mobility!

Our Personal Trainers in Abu Dhabi know that there is a lot more to training and being fit than just walking in to a gym and bench pressing and squatting as much as you can. While lifting and pressing and much as you can is fantastic, how long can you keep this up? At some point your body will start taxing you for the amount of stress you’re putting into it.

This is why our personal trainers encourage flexibility and mobility training. Flexibility and mobility play a huge roll in overall health and fitness performance. Knowing how to structure your training routine so that it includes mobility, flexibility, intensity and recovery is what will determine whether or not you can do this for the years to come.

There are many different ways of performing mobility and including it into your program. If you do not have a personal trainer, we recommend hiring one so they can guide you through this process, but if that is not an option for whatever reason use YouTube or Google to look for different examples and start including them into your daily routine until you find what works best for you.

Our personal trainers recommend that you start every workout with a 5-10 minutes of a cardio based warm up followed by 10 to 20 minutes of mobility work and then ending your strength training with 10 to 20 minutes of stretching. If you do this consistently you will notice how much your overall training program will improve and also help you avoid injury as much as possible.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

If you have every exercised with a personal trainer, chances are they have made you do interval work. It is no secret in the fitness world and among personal fitness trainers that high intensity interval training (HIIT) has been shown to be the most effective form of cardio for fat loss and weight loss. Our personal trainers know that it’s not the only way of performing cardio, but since they usually only have one hour with their clients they know they need to have effective workouts that lead to the best results for their clients.

HIIT consists of short all out bursts of exercise, followed by rest intervals that will last between 1 and 2 minutes in order to recover before performing all out again. HIIT is usually in the form of running sprints (treadmill, outdoor, hills etc.) or sprints on a bike. These high intensity/low intensity intervals should be performed between 10 and 20 minutes. If you are able to perform for longer than this then the intensity was not high enough. Our personal trainers will make sure that you are working at your maximum capacity.

 To achieve the full benefits of a HIIT workout the all out periods should last anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds, if you can perform more than 30 seconds at a time, it means it’s not intense enough. So fire up the intensity and give it your all, you should have nothing left in the tank at the end of the all out period! After you have performed your 30 seconds of high intensity, drop the intensity right down to a slow pace for 1 or 2 minutes to recover. Repeat this process 10 or 20 times per session. Usually 2 or 3 HIIT sessions a week should be enough to help you achieve your fat loss goals if followed with a proper diet. Ask your Abu Dhabi Personal Trainer today about HIIT workouts and incorporating them in to your workout schedule!

More Weights, Less Cardio!

In whatever routine you are doing, there should always be room to do both cardio and weights. But here are Abu Dhabi Personal Trainers we believe that your main focus and energy should be spent on the weights! While cardio is a great tool to help burn extra calories, it can be detrimental to your muscle building and muscle toning goals! Too much cardio can help you lose weight, but is not so great for sustaining and growing your muscles!

Our personal trainers also believe in the mantra of more weights, less cardio because doing weights can help change your body composition for the better! Think tighter and more toned looking bodies! Weights aren’t just good for building muscle but also good and helping you lose weight! Ultimately, it is your muscle mass that is going to give you that athletic toned shape you’re looking for. Without that muscle mass you’re only going to achieve a soft skinny-fat look.

So ladies, don’t be afraid to pick up the weights!! Your personal trainer can help guide you through weight and recommend the best program for you!