All posts by petersan

Banana raisin oat cookies

August 9, 2020nutrition, recipespetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and vegan

Nowadays, the world’s most succesfull body-builders and athletes are recognizing the benefits of a plant-based diet. Sometimes their switch from omnivore to plant-based is a true lifestyle transformation! They manage to get even better performance results without the discomforts of animal sourced foods. And they feel morally better now that no more animals need to suffer or die for their appetite and sports diet.

A perfect plant-based alternative

One of these athletes and nutritional advisors is Canadian Derek Simnett. You can always check out his videos and enjoy his good-humoured, warm-hearted and honest contributions. I think I may have found the base for the following recipe for healthy oat cookies on one of his webpages or in one of his videos. But I made some adaptations to make them even more healthy.
These cookies, without any added sugar, are an excellent alternative for the industrial sugar loaded cookies that are sold in supermarkets as “Breakfast cookies”. They fit perfectly into a strategy to lower the sugar content in your foods.
colate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

What you need for about 12 to 16 cookies:

75 grs (1.5 cups) rolled oats, ground up into oat flour
50 grs (1 cup) rolled oats (not ground)
3 ripe bananas, mashed
30 grs (1/4 cup) sunflower seeds
30 grs (1/4 cup) pumpkin seeds
70 grs (2/3 – 1/2 cup) raisins, soaked overnight
30 grs (2/3 cup) unsweetened shredded coconut
1 flax ‘egg’ (2 tbsp. ground flax seeds mixed with
3 tbsp water)
2 tsp baking soda
Juice of 1 lemon (add just before baking)

This is how you make them a success:

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.
Prepare flax ‘egg’ and let soak for a few minutes in small bowl.
Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl except the lemon juice.
When all the ingredients are mixed together, add lemon juice and gently mix. Spoon mixture
out onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 15 – 20 mins depending on cookie size.
Take the cookies out of the oven off the baking sheet and let cool on a wired rack.

You can store these cookies in the refrigerator for 3-4 days in an airtight container, but I am sure you will want to finish them a lot earlier …
Enjoy!

High nutritional density

We can consider cookies like these as food with a considerably high nutritional density: relatively rich in calories and with an average moist content. The nutritional density of food can be calculated as the amount of calories per 100 grs of product. In healthy nutrition, it’s advisable to consume a lot of foods with a low nutritional density. Good examples of those are: vegetables and fruits. So we better consume these cookies with moderation.

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The eight weeks fat loss challenge

August 9, 2020powertrainingpetersan

There you go. I left on August 3, 2020 for eight weeks.
Not on vacation! But still on a voyage of discovery. I made a commitment to an 8-week fat-loss challenge.
Now you might want to take a look at the attached photo that looks like a robot photo of someone condemned to jail for a decade. And then you might think, “That’s not so bad, is it, that fat?

Attaining results

The truth is, for over a decade, I’ve been thinking I’m eating totally healthy. And apart from that, I’m mildly to moderately physically active. The lack of periods of illness and doctor’s visits (none!) the last 7 years, point to say I am in the right direction.

If I wouldn’t do anything at all for my dear body, I would become “skinny fat”,. I call it myself: a fat skeleton. Not so much meat on the bones and the tendency to accumulate fat deposits in all the classic body areas. I do like physical activity, I’ve practiced sports for years, but only following a very irregular pattern.
I am one of those persons who eagerly longs for visible results with sport, but never manages to obtain real results.

And so I made the wise decision to descend from the realm of fantasy and supposition to the world of objectively measurable reality. The figures, measurement results and progress tables of the challenge bring me straight to the tangible experience, of what it means to work systematically and with great consistency towards a result.

Photographs are part of this. The classic “before” and “after” selfies. Because the image the photo shows provides more objective information than your own glance at yourself in a mirror. Because you view and judge yourself, depending on the mental filters through which you look, often too positively or too negatively.

An objective view

Those pictures also help me to accept myself. There I am, a person of 58 years old in underwear, with all the dents and flaws and imperfections that belong to that body. I see things that I can’t change much. Like that spine, which is very assymetric. Or those deformed feet. I also see things I can handle. Like the fact that my legs can be a lot more muscular, or the back of my body that is clearly less muscular than the front side of it.
We’ll get to work on that.

Manifesting the best version of myself

These are some of the reasons for my participation to the challenge:

The motivations are:

I want to develop a strength training and maintain enough muscle tissue, good posture and mobility, now and in later life.
Less fat and more muscles, I find that aesthetically more beautiful. And it’s healthier.
Create the best physical version of myself, depending on my genetics, history and age.
Develop the mental discipline by adhering as strictly as possible to a well thought-out, planned and achievable practice schedule for sports and nutrition.
Learn from my own personal experience how the interaction between eating and being physically active actually works out.
Experience what works and what doesn’t for me in terms of nutrition
Get, once and for all, clarity about the protein story.

The challenges are:

To lose 500 grams of fat per week for 8 to 12 weeks
For 8 to 12 weeks, to track all the food I eat in a food tracking app
To do progressive strength training 4 days a week
To gain the know-how from this experience in order to sustainably maintain the result after the challenge.

No more guessing and supposing and fantasizing! I love my chaotic mind with its dominant right half, but that alone won’t get me there.

Oh yes. Almost forgot to mention, I’m doing it all vegan !

How is your relation with your body and its health ?
Are you entirely satisfied ?

Would you like to know from time to time how it goes with the challenge and would you like to benefit from the useful experiences ? Subscribe to the newsletter or follow me on Facebook and Instagram.

Oats and chia

August 6, 2020nutrition, recipesbreakfast, chia, oatspetersan

Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, vegan

Now here’s a really healthy and complete breakfast for lazy people. One of its advantages is that all ingredients are raw. No need to heat or cook anything. Just mix some things together the evening before, and then cut some fruit in the morning. That’s all.

What you need for one serving:

ca 50 grs of rolled oats
one and a half tablespoon of chia seeds
ca 200 ml of plant based milk
fruit of your choice

Ready in no time:

Pour the rolled oats and the chia seeds in a bowl, or, even better, in a glass jar that you can close.
Pour the plant milk over the oats and mingle well. The oats will swell as they absorb the liquid, so make sure they are well submerged.
Close the jar or cover the bowl and put in the refrigerator to soak for the whole night.
In the morning you can stir again and add some extra plant milk if the mixture looks too dry.
Cut up the fruit of your choice to pieces and mix in. You can top with some nuts of your choice, preferably soaked.

There you are.
This breakfast does not contain any added sugar, has a velvety soft texture and a fairly neutral taste, which enhances the flavour of the chosen fruit.
It will give you a satisfied feeling that will last for hours.
Enjoy it!

Even more protein

Do you practice power training or an intense sporting activity? Then consider this:

Three tablespoons of chia.
Soy milk for higher protein intake.
a generous serving of soy yogurt on top.

You can choose whatever plant based drink, like soy milk or a nut-based milk.
Nut milk can be easily home made, in the quantities that suit you. Click here for the recipe.
Are rolled oats “raw” in the strict meaning of the word? Not really. Rolled oats are oat grains that have been squashed between the rollers of a machine, hence “rolled oats”. In the process, some heat is generated. Still, it can’t be compared to boiling.
Chia seeds, are the tiny, black and white seeds of the plant with the latin name Salvia hispanica. When you soak them in water they swell by forming a jelly like layer on their outside. That’s why people sometimes use them in vegan recipes as a substitute for eggs. They are immensely popular as “superfood”.
But what’s so “super” about them? Well, they contain a lot of plant protein of very good quality, and fairly easy to digest. Furthermore, they contain a lot of fibre, a lot of omega-3 fatty acids and minerals such as calcium, phosphor, magnesium en the micronutrient copper. And also vitamins, such as B1, B3 and a remarkable lot of vitamin E.

Product	Energy	Carbohydrates	Fats	Protein	Fibre
Chia seeds, per 100 grs	1832 kJ	4,9 grs	31,4 grs	21,2 grs	33,7 grs

Breakfast or no breakfast?

With breakfast I mean your first meal of the day. One can discuss whether to take a breakfast early in the morning or later that day. A lot depends on your daily activities and schedule. I had a tendency to start eating almost right after getting out of bed in the morning, but nowadays I sometimes have my first meal at 10, or 11 am, or even later. It is important to regularly grant your intestines a rest, at least 8 hours or even better 16 hours a day. That way your body is able to correctly assimilate the food and eliminate the waste. A lot of problems with overeating and overweight find their cause in the questionable habit to stuff ourselves with food, almost non-stop from the morning till the evening. Advertising and marketing constantly try to seduce us to do so. To alleviate one’s hunger is something completely different than getting addicted to the feeling of a constantly filled stomach.

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