Who Inspires You?

In my opinion, inspiration is the fuel of life. It lights my fire and gets me moving on things that are not easy. I have always strived to get in the best shape possible and I know that despite my passion for a healthy lifestyle, that has not happened yet. Now I realise that I wasn't training the most effective way and I need to clean up my diet even more!

This weekend I finished my Personal Training course. No, I'm not over the moon yet because all though my original certification education is finished (but education is never finished!) I still have to have a practical evaluation and take a 3 hour final exam. This is not as easy as it looks people! The registration process I am going though, BCRPA is not an easy one. They have the highest standards in Canada and  they do not want lazy, stupid, neglectful trainers so they make you jump through many hoops. The closer I get to the finish line, the more grateful I am for this.

What I learned in Personal Training: That most of the information out there for people trying to get into shape is not relevant or helpful to specific people. My passion is to help women who have struggled with their weight as I have, and I can't wait to get started. I have learned effective methods for fat loss and I now have a new workout program thanks to my personal training course that I can't wait to start trying it out on myself and let you all know how it goes.

I would like to leave you with someone that has inspired me. I have many, many people that inspire me but Taryn Shea Loughran is hanging on my inspiration poster. I was so impressed when I read her story in Oxygen magazine that I tore it out and hung it up. I also love that  she is Canadian and she has the same name as me! Click here to read her story! She has a Facebook fan page here and she is also launching a website September 1st.

Here is her before her fitness transformation:

After:

How inspiring is THAT? Who inspires you?

Taren

I heart soup

Originally posted on Life Of T October 27, 2010. Making this today!

I have a thing with soup. I want it all the time.

In the past week, it seems like the temperatures have dropped because I am always freezing. This seems to kick off my soup obsession that continues until about June.

I think this stems from when I was younger and soup was the one thing I could make myself when I didn’t like what my family was eating. This was pretty much every day. I used to be an extremely picky eater. Now I like almost everything except sushi and some seafood.

When I was younger, I loved to eat canned soup, usually vegetable and my special occasion soup was Campbell’s Vegetable mixed with Lipton Chicken Noodle. If you haven’t tried this before, you must. Especially if you’ve gotten hit with a lovely fall cold.

However with the exception of my special occasion soup, I find I am so not into canned soup anymore! I absolutely love making homemade soup, especially since you can make a big batch and have soup every day for a week. If you’re like me, that’s perfect!

One of my favourite things about soup is that it can be so good for you depending on the ingredients. For me, it’s the best way to get veggies in!

My go-to recipe is one I found in Oxygen magazine years ago and it’s a super-clean recipe!

(I apologize for the picture quality, I always forget to take a photo when I cook it so I took a photo of the magazine.)

Healthy Hodgepodge Soup

Ingredients:

Canola Cooking Spray
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped cerly
1/2 cup chopped carrots
2 minced garlic cloves
1/2 tsp ground black pepper, divided
pinch kosher salt
1 1/2 cups water
5 cups low sodium chicken broth
1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tsp tomato paste (which I never remember to buy, tastes fine without it)
1/2 cup finely chopped green beans
4 bay leaves
1/4 tsp dried basil
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1 cup uncooked whole wheat ziti
1/2 cup canned great northen beans (drained and rinsed)-(I always use white kidney beans, I can never find great northern beans)
2 cups chopped escarole (also difficult to find, I found it at superstore but tastes fine without it)1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup fresh italian flat leaft parsley chopped


Instructions:
1. Spray large non-stick skillet with cooking spray. On medium-high heat, saute onions, celery, carrots,garlic, 1/4 tsp pepper and salt for about 8 minutes
2. In a large pot, add broth, water, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, green beans, bay leaves, basil, oragano, remaining pepper and saute mixture. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 25 minutes.
3. After 25 minutes add pasta, beans, escarole, balsamic vinegar and parsley. Cover and simmer for 10-15 more minutes. Vegetables should be slightly soft and pasta should be cooked through. Remove bay leaves.

Enjoy!

Tips & Bonus Information

This soup is soo easy to substitute anything you want! I like to switch up my whole wheat pasta shapes to keep it interesting. You can used crushed tomatoes or diced if you like chunks of tomatoes in your soup. You can add different veggies, like chunks of potatoes. I also tried a variation of this soup in my slowcooker and it tasted fantastic!

I'd also like to try adding ground turkey at some point!

Nutritional Info:

Calories: 169, Total Fats: 2g, Sodium 362 mg, Total carbohydrates: 34g, Dietary fibre 9g, Sugars 4g, Protein 7g, Iron 1mg

Yield: Makes 10 servings.
Cooking Time: 1 hour 10 minutes total

Closer!

As I get closer and closer to my Certified Personal Trainer status, I want to get this blog updated more often. I find it difficult to have two separate blogs, maybe one day I will merge them, who knows. I will try to update this more often but if you don't read my Life of T blog you may have missed some of my recipes, so I will be reposting them on here. Enjoy! :)


Taren

How to Eat Healthy the Easy Way

Have you ever gotten busy and let yourself get too hungry? And then when you ate you either felt way too full or not satisfied or just didn't feel good for the rest of the day? I do too sometimes. Yesterday, for instance, I was out of the house for a few hours between 11 and 3 and since I was away this weekend, I didn't have any snacks in the house to take with me.

This brings me to the single most important (in my opinion) aspect of healthy eating:

                                

                                           BEING PREPARED!!

It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I think that was Winston Churchill but correct me if I'm wrong! Anyways, being prepared meaning having food ready to eat is such a HUGE part of eating healthy. It makes it so much easier to stay on track. Getting hungry is a recipe for disaster. Last time I let myself get too hungry, I went and got a burger. It was gross and I threw it out after a few bites and I was mad because it was expensive and I make better ones at home. It made me resolve to try harder to not let that happen.

Here are a few tips that have helped me and also my husband, who greatly benefits from my planning and preparing meals ahead of time.

1. Make big batches of your healthy staples. Mine are chicken, brown rice, quinoa, whole wheat pasta for my husband, and tuna (a tiny bit of light mayo with diced pickles)

2. Make a big pot of clean something! It's still raining in most parts so get your soup/stew/chili eating time in now. If you use a slow cooker, it takes minutes to prepare lunches for the entire week. See my recipes tab for my fave recipes. Also what I love about this is soups and stews are so filling!

3. Make some homemade protein bars! They are filling, nutritious and help you get in extra protein without yet another chicken breast! Plus they hit the sweet spot!

4. Hard boil eggs. If you pop out the yolk or just eat one, they are high in protein and low in calories and fill you up fast. It's a perfect thing to pair a piece of fruit with.

5. Speaking of fruit: buy some. Wash it. Put it in your fridge in a pretty bowl so you see it when you open the door.

 6. Also, veggies. I find having pre-cut veggies helps me a lot because I never feel like cutting them when I'm hungry.

7. Store everything in glass containers. They are a great investment for your health since they are easy to clean and won't contaminate your food.

These are President's Choice Containers

8. Have a nice big pitcher of water in your fridge at all times. I have a Brita, and for some reason I just drink more water if I can pour myself a nice cold pure glass. I also like adding slices of lemon.

9. Have a nice reusable water bottle (or a few, just in case) so you can leave the house with a full bottle of water at all times.

10. I also got my husband a shaker cup and stocked up on 1L containers of almond milk so he can have low calorie protein shakes at work whenever he gets hungry. We scoop out servings and put them in baggies so they're ready to go.

 I hope you liked my tips, they have certainly made eating clean easier for me! I'd love to hear your tips too, so leave them in the comment section!

Taren

Crushing Your Cravings: Breaded Zucchini Sticks

I think we can all agree one of the hardest parts of following a healthy lifestyle is the crazy cravings that can happen. You may be eating clean and loving your diet, but sometimes you just want something really, really bad. I'm not going to tell you that it's okay, eat whatever you want. That can get out of hand VERY quickly! First it's just a slice of pizza, then maybe a class of pop and while your at it you might as well have a slice of birthday cake, you don't want to be rude after all. This downward spiral is very familiar to me. However, I have found certain things that help me cut the cravings.

First of all, don't eat the crap!! It's scientifically proven that when you have sugar or fat in your system, your going to want more. If you don't believe me, try it yourself. Cut the junk and within a few days you won't want it nearly as bad. I have a good personal example of this. My husband and I have a serious weakness for Coca-Cola. You don't have to tell us it's practically poison, we know. But it's so damn good!! Around Christmastime we had it in our house a little bit because it was a special occasion. But what happened after Christmas was bad news. My husband was in trade school for 7 weeks  and was spending every night studying in our 700 square foot apartment. It was stressful and we were in survival mode and we had ourselves a wee bit too much Coke. Okay, a lot too much. Also chips and salsa. They were bad delicious days. Anyways, mid February my husband finished school (with wicked grades, I might add) and we cut the crap. Cold Turkey. Honestly, I don't even think about drinking Coke now. There might be a time later where I get a weakness for it again but as long as I can stay away from it, I know I won't have cravings.

Here's another example of me cutting my cravings. I used to work in an office that was super close to a Starbucks. It got to the point where I was craving Earl Grey Tea Lattes on a daily basis and BAD!  I wasn't gaining weight but they have sugar in them and it just was not a good situation at $5 bucks a day. So what I did was bought a tin of the Earl Grey Tea and as soon as I got to work I would have a cup just with a bit of milk and Splenda. As soon as I had some warm Earl Grey in my tummy, my desperate need for Starbucks went away.

I have realised that I can have a healthier version of something I love and when I do, I won't crave the fatty/sugary version. Awesome!!

Now a lot of the things that I love are some kind of bread/pasta/tomato sauce/cheese type things...I don't need to tell you I can't afford to eat like that! So I don't bother with the bread most of the time, and I make my own whole wheat pasta with a few different variations. I recently came across a recipe at one of my favourite sites EVER, Skinny Taste, that had me drooling so I decided to give it a whirl and I'm so glad I did because they were fantastic. I honestly felt as satisfied as if I had a big bowl of pasta!

                                            Skinny Taste's Breaded Zucchini Sticks

Note: I was lazy and cut mine too large. Don't do that!

Ingredients: 

• 3 medium zucchini sliced into 3" x 1/2" sticks
• 1 large egg white
• 1/3 cup seasoned whole wheat bread crumbs
• 2 tbsp grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• cooking spray
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
  
• salt
• fresh pepper

Instructions:

In a small bowl, beat egg whites and season with salt and pepper. In a ziplock bag, place breadcrumbs, garlic powder and cheese and shake well. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray and set aside.

Dip zucchini sticks into eggs then into bread crumb and cheese mixture, a few at a time and shake to coat. Place the breaded zucchini in a single layer and spray more cooking spray on top. Bake at 425° for about 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with 1/2 cup marinara sauce for dipping.

SkinnyTaste has a super simple recipe for Marinara along with her breaded zucchini stick recipe, so check it out here. I didn't have any canned tomatoes so I just used jarred tomato sauce, obviously homemade is always better if you can.

Enjoy!!

Taren

We All Need a Little Motivation and Inspiration..

I'm so sorry for taking so long to post again, I've been very busy with all my plans for the next few months, lots of exciting things coming! Today, I'll be talking about motivation and inspiration, the thing we all need to get our butts in gear!  One thing I'd like to talk about today is celebrities after having babies. The last few years there has been a huge baby boom in Hollywood and celeb moms are watched like crazy after the baby is born to see how fast they'll lose the weight. I feel bad for these moms, because they deserve to have the time to spend with their new baby and not have to worry about being scrutinized. The problem is, there are some celebs that seem to pop out the baby and be as skinny as ever! That's not how it goes for most people!


There are two celeb moms in particular that have been publicly open about their struggle to get back into pre-baby shape, and both are just doing absolutely awesome. Yes, I'm sure they have trainers and nutritionists, but we all have access to the same information, don't we? All it takes is moving your butt, and these women have been working theirs off!


Alison Sweeney
I have always admired her and have watched her on Days of Our Lives for years and years. She struggled with her weight quite a bit and then one day she realised she just needed to DO SOMETHING about it! She got in great shape and everyone who watched the show noticed. She also is one of the hosts of the Biggest Loser, and she says being on the show has taught her everything she needs to know about health and being in shape.
Here's a pic of her prego in 2008:

She just bared her awesome bikini bod in a photo shoot  with People Magazine:

Pretty amazing if you ask me! She also wrote a book called the Mommy Diet which I actually want to read (I know, I'm not a mommy, but I am interested in helping women get back in shape after babies!)


Another new mom who has publicly struggled with losing her baby weight is Kendra Wilkinson. Now, you gotta remember, she used to be a PLAYBOY MODEL! I watched one episode of Kendra where she was trying to do her own Girl's Next Door workout video, it was hilarious. But the struggle for her was not fun, especially when her own wedding ring didn't fit and the tabloids reported that there must be trouble in paradise. Jerks! Anyways, here is a pic of Kendra when she was pregnant:

And this is her now with her adorable little guy:

Also, she is currently on Dancing with the Stars, which has whipped several celebs in shape! In case your interested, here's Kendra in one of her DWTS costumes:

And if you need further motivation from a REAL person as in non celeb, a friend of mine named Sara recently got her success story featured on the Eat Clean Diet website. I highly recommend you go check it out! This girl is dedicated to her fit and healthy lifestyle and it definitely shows!

So I hope you've gotten a little bit inspired from these amazing women! I will be doing regular posts on motivation and inspiration so stay tuned!!

Taren

Skinnytaste's Potato Leek Soup

Soups to me, are so vital to my life when it comes to eating healthy. Some people may not feel the same way, but for me, soup helps me stay on track. Why? How else can you get that many veggies in, fill up, and eat something delicious? Exactly. Plus, on a rainy day like yesterday/today/every day in Vancouver, it's just cozy and nice.

Sigh. I just love soup.

A little awhile ago, I came across a healthy eating recipe jackpot, also known as Skinnytaste. My new healthy recipe guru's name is Gina, and she's awesome. Her recipes make me drool, and they're not even fattening! I truly believe the key to eating healthy is just to find healthy things that you like to eat. For instance, if you showed me a plate of vegetables, I would be like "Blech!" Yet if you showed me a bowl of vegetable soup, I would be like "Hand that over!" For some reason I like my veggies soft and liquid and sometimes hidden. Kind of like a three year old.

Anyways, back to Skinnytaste! This website is so great, it has all my favourite recipes gone all healthy! Yesterday, I was in a soup mood, but a different kind of soup. I wanted to venture out a little bit into something new. I made Gina's Potato Leek soup. It was really yummy!! Make sure you guys go check out her fantastic site for more kickass recipes!

                                                Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch leeks (about 4) dark green stems removed
• 1/2 white onion, chopped
• 2 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp butter
• 4 cups fat free chicken stock (or vegetable broth for vegetarians)
• 1/2 cup 2% milk
• salt and fresh pepper

Instructions:
Wash leeks extremely well, then chop them up!

In a medium soup pot, melt butter and add flour on low flame. Use a wooden spoon and mix them. Gina says this will thicken your soup and give it a wonderful flavor.

Add chicken stock, leeks, onion, potatoes and bring to a boil.

Cover and simmer on low for about 20-25 minutes, until potatoes are soft.

Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth adding the milk and adjusting salt and pepper to

taste. Serve immediately.


Enjoy!

Taren

Clean Eating

One of the biggest struggles most people, myself very much included, is the eating aspect of getting or staying in good shape and at a healthy weight. What do I eat? How much? At what times?

The best solution is different for everyone. You can always follow the Canada Food Guide, since they revised it in the past few years and now it makes much more sense. You can try to follow what your body wants and needs. Some people love a glass of low fat milk with their breakfast, and some people can't have a drop of dairy. Some people are vegetarians, or vegans, or eat meat every single day. How do you know what's best for you?

One of the best information sources out there that I've found is the Eat Clean Diet by Tosca Reno. It's so simple and easy that you could just read the title and find out what it's all about.


EAT CLEAN!


Every time you lift food to your mouth, you can ask yourself if it's clean or not. Donut? Nope . Can of soup? Nope . If you bought the ingredients in the outer perimeters of the grocery store and are now standing in your kitchen assembling your meal, you are definitely on the right track! Why those areas of the grocery store? That is where you will find fresh fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean protein, and dairy! Of course there are exceptions, I buy frozen veggies as well and canned tomatoes and things like that. The Eat Clean Diet is based on those food groups. For some reason, this way of eating really clicked with me. I realised that all my favourite foods could be "cleaned-up" to the point where they weren't bad for you! I used to be a white pasta/carb-loving queen. Now, every once in awhile, I'll make a "cleaned-up" whole wheat pasta dish that's satisfying without being heavy.


The other aspect of this way of eating is to avoid processed foods as much as possible. They always contain evil chemicals, trans fats, and other unidentifiable ingredients! Sugar is such a big subject when it comes to eating healthy it could probably have it's own post. I find for me personally, it's just better if I avoid it. It makes you hungry, it makes you gain weight, and it makes you want more, more, more sugar! There are ways to satisfy your sweet tooth without the white stuff.

I'd like to leave you with some info so if you'd like, you can research clean eating. There are some great resources on the web if you aren't sure if you'd like to invest in one of the books. I highly recommend the books because Tosca has an amazing story that most of us can relate to.
First of all, check out www.eatcleandiet.com Find the Kitchen Table, an online community where people can share their goals, struggles, before/after pictures, and recipes!

www.cleaneatingmag.com is the website for Cleaning Eating Magazine, a publication that's growing more and more popular. I believe it started out as a Nutrition Special for Oxygen Magazine and grew into it's very own magazine. The publisher of both magazines is Robert Kennedy, who is Tosca Reno's husband! They are a very fit and healthy couple!


I really hope you'll check this awesome approach eating and living out, it's helped me to understand the healthiest way to eat!

Taren

Welcome To My Newest Project!

I have been blogging at my personal blog, Life of T, since October and I love it! Everytime I hit post, I feel happy. In January, I decided to make a career change that I've wanted for a long time. After 8 years of office jobs, I decided to pursue one of my passions, health and fitness!

I am aiming to be a Certified Personal Trainer by June of 2011. Once I have completed that, I plan to start my own business. I have always loved the word Revive, because that's what fitness does to me, it wakes me up and revives my life.

I have always known that I wouldn't be satisfied with any career unless I can help people. This blog is my way of starting that journey. I want to share what I've learned and all the new things I learn along the way.
Stay tuned for recipes, ideas, and inspiration for your fitness journey!

Taren