One of my favourite things to do is go for picnics. Since I aim to combine carbohydrates, good fats and protein with each meal, I find the easiest way to do this for a picnic, if you don’t have a portable BBQ, is to bring a salad.

Here are some of my favourite healthy salad recipes for the beach, enjoy!

Annilou

Simple Spinach Salad with Toasted Walnuts & Blue Cheese

Ingredients:

Baby spinach
Fresh tomatoes, cut into wedges
Walnut halves, toasted
Blue Cheese or Feta, crumbled
Olive oil
Fresh lemon juice
Salt & pepper, to taste

Top this salad with a hard boiled egg and you have a perfectly balanced meal!

Quinoa Corn Salad (with Cilantro, Chives and Lemon Lime Dressing)

Ingredients:

1 Cup Quinoa
1.5 Cups Water
0.5 tsp salt
2.5 Cups Corn (fresh or frozen or canned)
1 small red onion
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and minced
3 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp lime juice
0.25 Cup Cilantro (I use more!)
3 scallions minced
2 Tbsp finely minced chives
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp tabasco sauce (or to taste)

Method:

1. Place quinoa in a fine mesh sieve and rinse thoroughly with cold running water. Bring water to boil in a small pot, add the quinoa and salt and bring to a boil again, Cover and reduce heat to low for 15 mins. Turn off the heat and keep the pot covered for another 5 mins. Let the quinoa cool.

2. Steam or lightly saute corn until just tender and cool to room temp. (I usually just use the canned low sodium corn and rinse it under cool water) Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and gently toss. Season with additional salt, pepper or hot sauce to taste. (I actually don’t use any salt, just pepper!) Serve with fresh lime wedges if you so desire!

Tangy brown rice salad

Ingredients:

Brown rice cooked in chicken stock (add chicken stock cube to water or replace water with low sodium chicken broth)
½ – 1 avocado diced
½ English cucumber
4-6 campari tomatoes cut in quarters
Generous amount of fresh cilantro
3 stalks of green onion
Pitted kalamata olives sliced in 2
Sprinkle of Feta cheese
Juice of 1 lemon
Pepper & salt, to taste

Combine above ingredients and serve over a bed of baby spinach. Do not combine the spinach with the salad until you are ready to serve in order to keep the spinach fresh. Add a few shrimp or chicken to your salad for an extra bit of protein. Enjoy!

Everyone has that one favourite dessert, for me just put some gooey dark chocolate goodness in front of me and I need some serious discipline to resist. When I’m craving some sweets I make myself something slightly more healthy, free of refined sugar and absolutely delicious.

I’m going to share with you a simple recipe that has no sugar and is sweetened with fruit. It’s the perfect desert for spring/summer time or a refreshing mid-day snack.

1. Buy some ripe bananas and freeze them into 1 inch pieces.
2. Buy some frozen berries, my favorite combo is raspberry & strawberry. Blueberries have a great consistency too.
3. Locate a food processor.
4. If you don’t have one you can use a hand blender but don’t expect to be serving this up to more than 2 people because it’ll take you a while to blend due to the fact that you can’t add too much liquid.
5. Put following ingredients into food processor: add frozen banana & frozen berries equal amounts and blend until ingredients are into small pieces then add a splash of vanilla (optional) and a couple tbsp of plain yogurt. Consistency should be thick like gelato, add a little bit of milk if it needs more liquid to mix. Be careful not to add too much or you’ll have yourself a smoothie.
6. Enjoy!

I’m always on the lookout for a healthy treat. If you have one, I’d love to hear about it! Please send me an email at info@ultrafit.ca.

Cheers,

Annilou

Today I sent out an email about one of my favorite workouts. I call it my “20 minute Fix”. As promised here are the details…

It’s simple. Find a playground and bring a timer.

You must complete 80% of your maximum for each exercise non-stop for 20 minutes. Basically stop each exercise when you know you can only do 1 or 2 more reps then move on to the next exercise.

Round 1 80% max of each
Push ups
Power Squats
Tricep Dips off a bench
Chin ups
no break
Round 2 80% max of each
Push ups
Power Squats
Tricep Dips off a bench
Chin ups
no break
Repeat until you’ve completed 20 minutes.

A couple details….
Chin ups: I realize not everyone can do chin ups so when you’re starting off, you may need to find a bar that is low enough so that you touch your chin to the bar and still touch the ground with your feet. Start on your toes in a squat and lift your chin up to the bar then slowly lower down while taking most of your body weight with your arms. If you don’t have a chin up bar at your playground/park you can substitute this one for Jumping Lunges instead.

Power Squats: Start in a low squat position and jump up as high as you can in one fluid motion while bringing your hands above your head then land softly into a low squat and repeat. Add hand weights to make this one more challenging.

For best results: A 5 minutes warm up and cool down are essential for keeping you injury free so don’t forget those and if anything hurts other than your muscles then stop and choose a different exercise.

Have a good workout and feel free to contact me if you have any questions at info@ultrafit.ca.

Annilou Verge-Marion

Owner, Ultrafit Bootcamp Ltd.
Committed to Improving Lives!

This week I found a great article on top 10 apps for fitness and health. Enjoy, and let me know of any good ones that aren’t on this list.

To your health and success,

Annilou Verge-Marion

Top 10 apps for health, fitness and nutrition

Source: CBC News

Apps designed to promote physical activity and healthy eating should be easy to use and allow you to input your own goals or targets. (Beck Diefenbach/Reuters)

There are apps to track how many calories you’ve burned, measure your blood pressure and plan meals.

As part of the special report Chasing Cures, CBC News checked with doctors, dietitians and other experts to assess some health and fitness apps.

Their 10 most commonly recommended apps were:

MyFitnessPal

A free tool to help people lose weight by counting calories and tracking physical activity levels. “Research demonstrates that those who record their food intake will achieve greater weight loss than those who don’t, so I highly recommend this to all my clients. For those high-tech users, apps are fantastic option,” says Jodi Robinson, a registered dietitian and fitness specialist in Toronto.

Lose It! app and LoseIt.com

“It’s free, it helps you to count and budget calories, plan meals, factor in exercise, and lose weight at a safe, sustainable pace,” says CBC medical specialist Dr. Karl Kabasele.

MyNetDiary

Another app to track nutrients, MyNetDiary is free, but also offers a $3.99 upgrade, though that isn’t necessary, says registered dietitian Rosie Schwartz. The Toronto-based expert emphasized monitoring food intake — the food, time and amount after you eat. “Taking steps to record your food consumption can help limit it,” Schwartz advised.

Sodium 101

This Canadian site has an app for the iPhone and iPad that tells you how much sodium is in foods and tracks your consumption. CBC medical columnist Dr. Peter Lin says it’s valuable for people with high blood pressure.

Apps can help people to reach their food and fitness goals, but the key is to make a plan and stick to it, says registered dietitian Zannat Reza. Reza suggests My Heart and Stroke Health app for people who want to find out about their risk for heart disease and get heart-healthy recipes that are lower in sodium.

iMapMyFitness

The site maps out your workout route for running, cycling, etc.

Digifit

A tool to track heart rate, distance, pace and calories burned during exercise.

Pedal Brain

The app has a GPS that tracks where you bike and uploads performance data in real-time to a website where personal trainers and teammates can track your progress, says Dr. Brian Goldman, host of CBC Radio’s White Coat, Black Art.

“Apps designed to promote physical activity and healthy eating should be easy to use, allow you to input your own goals or targets, monitor behaviours (e.g., built-in GPS to record and store physical activity) and provide motivational prompts,” advises Mark Tremblay, director of Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research in Ottawa.

GluCoMo

An app to help people with diabetes track their blood sugar levels, food consumption and insulin dosage and transmit the data to a network of doctors for feedback, said Goldman.

Way of the future

WebMD for Android, iPhone and iPad

The app offers advice about acute symptoms, with reliable, up-to-date information, Lin says. Goldman calls patient apps the way of the future for getting healthy and staying healthy. The bottleneck is finding a doctor or hospital in Canada to receive the data and advise patients accordingly, he says.

“We’re also starting to see apps that enable patients and doctors to look at X-rays, CT scans and MRIs together. As well, apps can be very helpful in getting patients to book their own appointments with specialists instead of waiting for your GP to do it for you,” Goldman says in an email.

“To make that a reality, Canadian doctors must be willing to embrace new technologies and to surrender some of the traditional control they maintain as gatekeepers of the health-care system.”

On Sunday, April 22nd we’re putting on a FREE event and everyone’s invited! What better way to start off your Sunday than with a yoga session on the beach!

Join Zuzana, one of our superstar trainers, and fellow bootcampers for a 1 hour yoga session from 10am-11am. The class will be for all levels of fitness so friends and family are welcome to join in. RSVP to info@ultrafit.ca to let us know you’d like to join. Let us know if you’d like to bring a guest so we can be sure to send them the necessary paperwork ahead of time.