Tag: Fitness

Home Made Protein Bars

Making your own home made protein bars is not only easy but will save you money. Not only all this but home made protein bars will also help you to increase your protein consumption and can be used as a really healthy snack.

Chocolate Banana Home Made Protein Bars – 8 Bars

INGREDIENTS
300 g raw banana
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
3 large  egg whites raw
4 oz non fat milk
200g 100% whole grain old fashioned oatmeal
1/3 cup splenda
1 tbsp Udo’s choice oil blend
60 g Designer Whey Chocolate flavour ( or equivalent brand)

DIRECTIONS for Chocolate Banana Home Made Protein Bars

Mix ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Pour into non stick cake pan. Bake at 300 for 25 minutes or until firm, leave until cooled slightly then cut to size. We have made these into 8 small bars, but you could easily make into 4 larger ones, with double the protein , so around 23 grams protein per bar.

If you don’t want the fat replace the Udo’s oil with unsweetened applesauce. It will taste just as good and still retain the moist but firm texture.

Chocolate Banana Home made protein bars NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Calories (Per bar) : 188.32
Protein (g) : 11.05
Carbohydrates (g) : 27.94
Fat (g) : 4.56
Carb – Protein – Fat % Ratio: 57-22-21

These Home Made Protein Bars are not only delicious but are really good for you as well

How nice it would have been if you could lose weight by eating, right? Well, your wish is about to come true with weight loss superfoods. In this article I will tell you of three weight loss superfoods that will help you lose weight. Sounds too good to be true?

weight loss superfoods

Lean meats: Lean chicken meat is one of the best weight loss superfoods you can ever have. Why? It contains a lot of amount of protein and very little fat, and as you know, protein will build lean muscles. Lean muscles will help you burn fat by accelerating your metabolic rate.

If chicken proves to be too expensive for your pocket, try turkey breast. In any case, make sure you eat only lean meats and stay away from red meat.

Fishes are also very good as weight loss superfoods. Fishes such as salmon and tuna contain Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids fall in the category of ‘good fats’ or unsaturated fats. You gained weight because of a hormone called leptin which stores fat inside your body. Omega-3 fatty acids will cut down on leptin; when that happens, you are bound to lose weight.

Olive oil: Replace your fatty oil with olive oil. Olive oil is almost free from the ‘bad fats’ (saturated fats) and contains a considerable amount of unsaturated fats. These unsaturated fats will not only suppress your appetite but also fight cholesterol. In short, olive oil will keep your cholesterol levels down.

Berries: Berries are also good for weight loss. There are several types of berries: blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, etc. All of them will help you with weight loss in one or the other way. Strawberry is especially the best among the berries: not only it tastes good, but also helps in suppressing your appetite. Once you get rid of hunger pangs, you can focus more on your weight loss goals and less on eating.

Why eat weight loss superfoods?

As you can see, just because you want to lose weight doesn’t mean that you have to starve. Many people tend to starve or follow crash diets but nothing beats eating and losing weight using these weight loss superfoods. I firmly believe that if you eat the right foods, you will not only lose weight but also become healthy. Plus the weight loss superfoods I mentioned above are also rich in vitamins and antioxidants.

Also remember that these are not the only weight loss superfoods that are available to you. Other foods such as nuts, oatmeal, eggs and almonds can also help you with weight loss. Add these weight loss superfoods to your diet and see how quickly you are able to get rid of your fat and become lean.

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Ok, I know the post title is a bit deceptive but only a bit in my case. I had a bit of an episode yesterday, an issue that probably millions of people can relate to and will nod their heads reading.

I have been taking an anti-anxiety medication called Fluvoxamine for a few years. It started a few years back when I went a few weeks not being able to sleep and at the same time kind of paralysed with a mixture of panic and fear. I had never had any mental problems at all before in my life so it caught me completely by surprise.

I have researched and spoken to doctors about this in the past and the fact is that out of nowhere it is quite easy to have a switch trip in your brain. There is not any obvious cause, I did not have any event that caused this but in talking to a psychologist found that often a smell or a flash of light, or even just an event that does not seem at all jarring can lead to panic attacks and a long term issue with anxiety and panic. The Fluvoxamine has been prefect for me. No side effects and I tend to be level headed as anyone should be.

Build Up With Sleeplessness and Bad Planning

So with a busy week this week full of the regular stresses of a couple of IT rollouts and other work stresses I got caught with a bad week and  half of sleep.

I like sleep.

I never usually have trouble with stress at work but in this case I had to pull an all-nighter at work, missed a day of my crazy pill, and then forgot the next morning and in this case as problems started cropping up quickly I got panicky.

Sucks to be me…

Anyway, the problems that I have are not really terrible, thankfully when I say crazy pills it is not like I have any kind of debilitating problems. Some people have problems much worse than me of course, and I got just a bit of an idea of how much trouble real anxiety issues it could be yesterday.

So here I am in a crowded office at 9:00 in the morning, work stuff that had to be done, I am stressed, panicky, have a headache, going though some kind of withdrawal from my lack of the magic fluvoxamine andin an edgy bit of clarity decided that I would have to try and control my situation until I got home.

Battling the Serotonin Deficiency

So here is what I did. First water. I always crave water and I thought the feeling of the water in my throat would help to stop my throat from being so dry. Next I made sure I was moving around a lot. I made sure to stay busy, troubleshooting problems and then ended up at my desk working on documentation while listening to some calming music.

Then the gym. The problem that my Fluvoxamine helps is with Serotonin levels. This drug is known as a Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor sometimes called SSRI. What this means is that my serotonin levels are kind of messed up. You know what increases Serotonin levels? Exercise! I had a good long weight workout, doing lots of squats and lunges and working my big muscle groups. This worked awesome and the pump I felt afterwards kept my energy and spirits up for the rest of the afternoon.

And this story is not over yet. The plan that I have going forward is that after my kidney transplant to my daughter sometime this year that I can start to dial down my dosage to zero. The way to ease off of Fluvoxamine is to slowly drop the dosage over a few weeks (never just stop taking meds cold turkey). I am on a very low dosage so it would only take a month or two to wean myself off of them

I got through this tough time yesterday alright, and I hate to admit my need for help from pharmaceuticals to keep me level headed, but I am hoping that this story of my tough and terrible day yesterday helps you or people around you that are struggling with anxiety problems. This is a medical issue that although we can easily feel ashamed of and really it is not. There is no reason people should just “Suck it up” but instead we need to care for ourselves very well so that we have the mind, energy, and motivation to help others around us.

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