Monthly Archives

February 2014

Fitness, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary

February 23, 2014

This has been another of those weeks that have just flown by! Do you guys ever get that? I accredit that feeling primarily to the fact that I am busy 24/7 with my MA work …

I was also invited to Santa Cruz this weekend by my sorority sister to go to their semi-formal (I am an alumn of Kappa Kappa Gamma). It was great to see my friends and to visit Santa Cruz for a little while, plus Santa Cruz has such good food! Have any of you ever been?

Fitness wise, my upper body strength has definitely improved. With the assistance of a resistance band, I am now able to do 6 chin ups! And 1 pull up … baby steps people, baby steps. I am also planning to start Kayla Itsine’s 12 week training program called the ‘Bikini Body Guide’. She is the inspiration for my chin up and pull up challenge actually!

KI training ebook

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Kayla, here’s a quick summary about this amazing lady. She is a personal trainer based in Australia who specifically focuses on helping women achieve a bikini body; toned arms and legs, shapely butt, and a flat and toned stomach. She became famous after posting photos of her own amazing bikini body, and several client transformations on her instagram account (who all start to achieve the same coveted look). She has a very realistic and no nonsense attitude which is so refreshing to see, no endorsements of silly products and quick fixes, just good old fashioned exercise and eating right!! I am really excited to give her program a go and to see how it helps my own problem area’s. Let me know if any of you have tried it, or are interested in trying it!

Food wise, I went out to an amazing Japanese place in Lodi (California) called Komachi Sushi with my boyfriend and our friends this Saturday. The food was fantastic, and they had some really original options such as Japanese nachos, seasoned edamame, and Japanese pizza! The photos below are of the Japanese style nachos with salmon, and my entree of broiled squid. If any of you are in the Central Valley or live nearby, I certainly recommend you try them out. My Japanese friend has described them as the ‘best Japanese food in the Valley!’

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That’s it from my end! For next weeks Friday Fare I am planning an infused goody for you all .. betcha can’t guess what it is 😉 And I will also be telling you all about an amazing new food blog I found as well, so stay tuned!

Honestly yours,
Alice

Health

Green Tea – Part 1

February 18, 2014
green tea - part 1

Green Tea – Part 1

Green tea – it’s become a major player in the health and fitness world, and for good reason. There are many benefits to drinking green tea, although unfortunately, most of green tea’s benefits have been highly skewed by the fitness industry in their quest to market green tea as the ‘miracle fat loss drug.’ Green tea extract fat burners, dieter’s green tea, the list goes on.

Green Tea - Part 1

Source: www.myessentia.com

Now that’s not to say that green tea can’t help you with losing weight, and adding to your health and quality of life; quite the opposite in fact. Green tea DOES have many health benefits, and I wanted to give you guys the cold hard facts about green tea. Without further ado, here is my green tea – part 1 post.

So to start my research off, I decided to look at a few academic studies that have been done on green tea and its weight loss, and other health benefit links. Let me just say that reading scientific articles are n o t fun. Sure, they have really interesting content but sheesh, the language … the language! Everything is epicatechin this, supernatant that … which is exactly why most people just accept the health benefits of green tea with little to no research into it. And I definitely don’t blame you guys!!! However, someone has to do it AND give you all an honest and real summary of green tea’s health benefits soooo here goes nothing 🙂

There have been scholarly articles written about green tea since the 1970s (as far as i could tell), and a whole bunch in the last decade. What is so special about green tea, and various other tea’s is this ingredient: C A T E C H I N S

EGCG’s belong to a group of compounds called catechins, Catechins are a type of flavanol, which is essentially a naturally occurring antioxidant (which can, but not neccessarily, help prevent cancer). Catechins include several different compounds, and in green tea these are:

E P I G A L L O C A T E C H I N
E P I C A T E C H I N G A L L A T E,
E P I G A L L O C A T E C H I N G A L L A T E (EGCG)

Phew, what a mouthful!!!

Okay guys, you still with me? Okay, awesome!! Let’s continue.

The EGCG is the thing we wanna focus on, because out of the three compounds given above, EGCG is the big daddy, and the compound that is you find the biggest amount of in green tea.

Sorry for the chemistry lesson guys! After reading several different articles (not all of which are posted below), here is a round up of the health benefits of green tea:

  • Can help in fat and weight loss due to its ability to increase energy levels, and fat oxidation (obviously if you are eating a terrible diet and not exercising, it won’t help much)
  • Can help regulate blood glucose levels (important because crazy all over the place blood sugar levels can make you crazy hungry .. I’ll talk more about blood sugar levels in another post)
  • Studies have shown promising results in using green tea in the fight against various types of cancers (does NOT mean that drinking green tea will 100% prevent cancer)
  • Can help keep your breath clean (lol)
  • Can be helpful in making you feel less bloated (this is just from personal experience, and this probably just happens because you are running to the bathroom so much!)

Alright guys, I am going to end part I there. I think that’s enough information for one day. Stay tuned for part II where I will talk about how much green tea you should drink, and my own personal experiences with green tea. It will be a much lighter blog post and not as intense as this one I promise 🙂

I hope you all enjoyed this post, and please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for a new post!

Honestly Yours,
Alice

Key sources:
Green Tea and Theamine: Health Benefits – Raymond Cooper
Going Green: The Role of the green tea component EGCG in Chemoprevention – Laura Schramm
Emerging Evidence for Tea Benefits – Carrie Ruxton
Nutrition and Health Info Sheet – Karrie Heneman and Sheri Zidenberg-Cherr
Nutrient Data Laboratory US Department of Agriculture. USDA Database for the Flavonoid Content of
Selected Foods. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, 2007 (chart)

Fitness, Health, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary

February 16, 2014

Congratulations on another successful week everyone! I hope you have all been mindful of what you have been eating (Valentine’s Day is of course an exception!) and making sure you are staying active throughout the week.

What did you all do for Valentine’s Day? My Valentine of 5 years was sweet enough to come and see visit me (he lives about an hour and a half away) and we went out for Japanese food. I had a delicious and hearty soup of soba noodles (soba noodles are made out of buckwheat) and we shared some gyoza (how can you not?) and some grilled lamb chops.

We went to Sushi Zen; have any of you San Franciscans ever been there?

Apart from the extremely decadent banoffee pie (recipe here) I made as a Valentine’s Day gift, this weekend has been surprisingly healthy. I for one always give myself a little more wiggle room during the weekends because I like to meet up for meals with friends and I know that it is unrealistic to expect to eat healthily 100% of the time. My boyfriend and I went to a great restaurant for lunch yesterday in the Castro area of San Francisco called Chow. They had many healthy options, and a lot of their offerings were organic which is always nice to see. I got a Chai BaBa Chai to drink (delishhhh), Arancini as a shared appetizer and an amazing Beet salad with greens, fennel, endive, grapefruit, goat cheese and avocado.

Jump rope is #bae

In fitness news, I have re-discovered my love for jump rope (a.k.a skipping for all my European readers)! I became inspired by seeing amazing jump rope videos by the likes of Michael Olajide, Jr. who trains various models including Adriana Lima, and bernapril20 from Instagram. Jump rope is also a great form of cardio and strength conditioning so I highly recommend you try it out. I recently reached out to Miss Galaxy Australia 2012, Danielle Johnson, and asked her what she did to keep her legs in amazing shape, and one of her pieces of advice was to jump rope! So just do it everyone, it’s cheap, can be done anywhere and portable.

Here is a little video I posted of me on Instagram doing criss-cross jumps. I was SO excited I could do these again … they are harder than they look everyone!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yxSXAEfTY&feature=youtu.be]

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a great fresh start to your week! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a message in the comment section below, email me or get in touch via my social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest).

Honestly yours,
Alice