Super-food Week

Happy Monday everyone =)

It`s always nice to start a new week, especially if last week was challenging.
My focus this week is on eating plenty of incredibly nutritious foods that will strengthen my immune system and boost my overall health. I will be posting my meal plans for some of the days and add the recipes along with it.

Super food are foods high in nutritional value and low in calories. They are superior sources of anti-oxidants and essential nutrients that our bodies cannot produce on it`s own. It`s food with allot of color, it usually tastes awesome in it`s natural state and can be found in nature.
These foods have high concentration of easy digestible nutrients, vitamins and compounds to burn fat, protect and heal our bodies. The green leafy vegetables are especially rich in chlorophyll, which our cells thrives on.
This can be foods like, but not limited too: goji and acai berries, cacao, vegetables, fruits, seeds (chia, flax, hemp etc) and nuts.


Here is my super food meal plan for today:

Breakfast - Papaya Salad (ripe papaya, blueberries and blackberries)

Lunch - Baked beets and Quinoa salad (gold beets, cooked quinoa and minced baby broccoli)

Snack - Coconut water, bee pollen and homemade chocolate fudge,

Dinner - Belgian Endive salad (endive, arugula, avocado) with apricot garlic crumbs (dried apricots, almonds and 1-2 cloves of garlic in a food processor)

Vitamins - pro-biotic, multi vitamin (B12, B6, C, folat etc) and flax oil.

I will post pictures after every meal. I really love capturing amazing foods on photos ;)
Have a wonderful day -Kathrine-

Resources: Eating for Beauty

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Water

How is everyone`s fitness goals going? I am curious! =)
For the last 5 days my knees have been completely stressed out and not very co operative, and I have not gotten my work out`s done. This is beyond sad, but has made me realize how important our joints are.

I got on my computer and did some research and found several articles, researches and discussion boards about how dehydration can cause joint paint. "Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers". Here are some other facts I found interesting:

• lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue
• having a "dry mouth" is an extremely late sign of dehydration
• 75% of all Americans are chronically dehydrated

So most of us could be drinking more water. Who`s up for a challenge?
It is said that we should drink half our body weight in oz, (if you weight 120lb. Drink 60 oz. of water etc), but I think that should be an "at least" amount. Jillian Michaels golden number for how much water to drink is 100 oz a day. There will be some bathroom run`s, but lets just get used to it and become avid water drinkers!

Here are some benefits to drinking water:

• protects and moisturizes our joints
• helps with our metabolism
• regulates body temperature
• relieves fatigue
• reduce the risk of cancer
• detoxifies our body
• helps our organs to absorb nutrients better

-Kathrine-

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Christmas Eve Work out

I am absolutely loving to rest this week. No hour long work out, no gym going, none of that. But this morning I needed to move around a little more then these last days.
Braking a sweat, even just for a short while is very healthy. These work outs are using our own body weight and is more then enough resistance for a rockin` work out that will help shed fat and gain muscle and energy!

• Jumps - I found a rock that was about a foot tall (knehøyde), and did about 35 jumps on it. Gets my heart rate up really fast
• Hip raises - try this one, it is a killer
• Opposite hand to toe touch - works many muscles including abdominals
• Burpee`s - conditions the entire body, develops strength, explosive power and anaerobic endurance
• Sprint intervals - I just busted out a couple of 0.2 mile sprints

Have a Blessed Christmas Eve everyone!

Kisses

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Mini Booty Challenge

I have been so so busy this week,  renewing my personal trainer certificate. But this coming week I will have more time to blog and I have many projects to put up here. So stay tuned.
One thing I want to do this week is to make a daily challenge, a work out that everyone can try out, and maybe even start doing on your own.
It`s Christmas and we all need to rest, but our bodies will be so happy if it gets to move and sweat a little bit every day. So I encourage you to just try some of these work outs.. !!
Here is two  exersices that I LOVE! Plie squats and backward/forward lounges. Both will target your large muscle groups - glutes, hamstrings etc.
I started with doing 40 of each (40 on each leg for lounges too), and have worked my way up till 100.
When these exercises gets easy, add a bodybar!
Another way to tackle this work out is to do the work out in sets. One set has tree rounds, each rounds has 50 sec. of work, then 10 sec of rest for each exercise. Work to max repetitions and write down your score.

Kisses

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I wish for definition!!

Here is one part of my work out today. These exercises are great to do at home, does not require any equipment and they are fun.
Here is a little breakdown of the work out:
The first work out is reaching down to the toes with opposite hand then up to the ceiling the other direction. This one targets your core and abdominal. Make sure you really tighten the muscles while performing this exercise.
The next work out, where I hold my hands behind my head will also be working your abdominal. Tighten the muscles as much as you can to get the most out of the exercise. The next few work outs I am doing will target shoulders and arms.
Try to do 40 repetitions of each exercise and then work your way up to one hundred.

I wanted to put music to my videos but I`m not sure how it works with copyrights. But put on some Madcon - Glow while you watch this video, makes it more fun =)

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Hi =)

 For some reason this does not look much like me, but it is me... this is my tired face from this morning. But now I feel refreshed  and blessed after having been on skype with my Mom for 2 whole hours. She taught me how to make sweet and sour sauce over skype. =) So I made lunch while chatting - quinoa with carrots and onion in sweet and sour sauce. Thank you technology for making California-Norway seem a little bit closer. I love my mom, she is always so happy and encouraging. 

Other then that I`ve spent time on making a cheesecake  - I use cottage cheese, and a gluten free crust from graham crackers (recipe for the crackers is here). I`ll be posting pictures later. The cake is SUPER cute...it`s pink. My friend is having a (gluten free! I`m in heaven) Girls Night and I`m bringing my cake.

My work out went something like this:

Warm up - 1000 Skipping rope jumps

Triceps dip 100 - I did them in 2.23 sec. 30 seconds faster then yesterday!
Mountain climber, push up, pull up, bicycle crunch, lunges w/bodybar and more push ups was what filled the main part of my work out. 

My upper body is exhausted.

I better jump in the shower and get ready for the party tonight. Wooh!

KISSES

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Active Rest - Tricep dip challenge!

I wrote in an earlier post that I work out most everyday and if I don`t, that is an exception. I wanted to clarify what I do on all those days.  After a challenging work out, our bodies need rest to recover. Muscles that are being worked will need to rebuild in a proper time format. Depending on the work out, and the muscles used, it can take a shorter or longer amount of time. Even diet can play a part here (lack of certain vitamins etc).
So on the days when I am not too sore but still not ready yet for a new work out, I will spend the day(s) doing active rest.  For an athlete, it is the better way to spend the days in between competition (according to research). As for the non-athlete that I am, active rest simply means keeping my focus on giving my body a physical challenge. On those days I go for walks, deep clean the house, take my cruiser out for a bikeride (LOVE those bikes), or maybe some light Spinning or jump rope.

Another fun thing to do is to introduce time challenge on these days. You can take easy exercises that can be done at home or almost anywhere and add a time challenge to it (It works even if you are spending the day traveling, or you are visiting family). Here is my time challenge for this week. I chose to use my arms since my legs are sore and useless from my last work out.
Join me by doing the same and share your test score with me on my comments.

100 TRICEPS  DIP CHALLENGE

• Find a stabile chair or bench
• Position your hands shoulder width apart
• Move you body in front of the bench with your legs bent and feet placed hip width apart
• Straighten out your arms, but keep a little bend in your elbow to keep the tension on the triceps
• Slowly bend at your elbows and lower yourself down towards the floor til your arms are at a 90% angle
• Keep your back close to the bench
• Now push yourself back up in to the starting position. 

PS: keep your neck relaxed. As you get stronger, straighten your leg out, or even alternate using one leg at the time

Set your timer as a stop watch ( I use my phone) just before you start, see how many minutes it takes for you to do 100 of these. Write down the test score and don`t forget to share your score in the comment!

I did 100 tricep dips on this video in 2.53 sec. I wanna keep doing the challenge and see the time improve. See the video of it in post below.

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Vlogg of Tricep challenge

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