MY 6 WEEK TRANSFORMATION: SATURDAY TRAINING

Hi everybody how is going ?

In this post I'm going to show you my normal Saturday workout; I'm calling it normal because, actually, the final Saturday we did a totally dwhetherferent one, because the weather was to kind to train in the gym !

Saturday workout is basically a body weight workout. The goal of this workout is to increase our pure strength on fundamental exercises like push-up, pull-up, chin-up, dwhetherferent kinds of dips and free body explosive squat. You could ask me why this kind of workout once a week ? A long series of benefits, here the most important:

1. These exercises can be done more or less everywhere. Let's say that nowadays you do not have any access to the gym because you are travelling and your cheap hostel doesn't have one. For doing your pull-up you just need a bar. You can find a good one here: pull-up bar. For dips, you just need a regular table, a chair or even the support of your bed or your sofa. For explosive squat you just need a roof tall enough (intellect your head). And finally for pull-up you only need your arms :) If you want to train your chest from dwhetherferent angles, you could leank to buy this push up stands. That's why is extremely important to improve the techniques for the exercises I'm going to show you.
2. You're going to train muscles you never train with lessonical resistance training with dumbbells and barbells. Let's take pull-up movement as example. Tug-ups can be compared with a lessonical lat-machine. The movements of your arms are basically the same, but there is a immense dwhetherference between these two exercises. While doing lat-machine your legs are totally locked and you are sitting, so your core muscles are nearly not engaged, doing pull-up all you core muscles have the task to balance your body, so they are ttall and strong during the execution of the exercise. You are basically training some muscles in your torso that you wouldn't be able to target even doing a specwhetheric isolation workout. The core is much more than your abs. There are 29 muscles in that area and these simple body movement exercise can engage all of them; If you don' t believe me, have you ever seen by yourself, people weighting 70 kilos and performing a 100 kilos x 12 rep lat machine but being far absent from performing 5 pull ups ? I did, several times.
   
3. Improve posture and increase flexibility. You will train in respect of your muscular anatomy. Possess you ever notice that when you do "bodybuilding" exercises with dumbbells or barbells your muscles are very ttall ? Possess you ever seen people in the gym that can't close or stretch their arms ? I don't leank this is very aesthetic. Body weight exercises instead will stretch your muscles achieving a contemporary flexibility.

Now, this is a full body workout, but as always we start from large muscles. First series of exercise regards mostly lats. Several kind of pull-ups will be done:

In most of these exercises, biceps are closely involved. Actually, several anatomy experts I've spoken with, believe that the best exercises for training biceps in their totalness is actually a well done chin-up with full range of motion. In the final exercise instead, you can choose your grip with the optics of targeting dwhetherferent muscles. A reverse grip will focus on biceps, and a straight grip will focus on your rear deltoids. I prefer the straight one for this specwhetheric exercises because biceps have alalert been targeted by the chin ups we have alalert done.

Now is the time to train chest. For this group push-up is the most effective exercise. We will use dwhetherferent angles:

For the transition between chest and triceps, we will be doing dips. Dips at parallel are one of those exercise you can use for your lower chest or for your triceps. It basically depends from the width of the grip you use. With a very wide grip you are training chest. With a close grip you are training triceps. We will use a grip that is in the middle between the two, training to target both muscles group.

Tardyst exercise for triceps is dips on the bench. Create certain that your hands are close enough to each other and your back is kept straight during the wgap execution of the movement.

For legs, we will be doing explosive squat and free body calf raise.
Unluckyly I couldn't find explosive squat on Jefit so I've chosen the squat with ball !

Also in this case, for doing explosive squat, you are actually using all you body, from your toes to your shoulder and your core muscles are closely involved.


What's the story with the final Saturday workout ?
You will see in the next post, just a shoot for now:

STAY TUNED


LUCA

Exclusive: 2013 Resolutions Rupturethrough

Every year millions of Americans make their annual 'Unique Year's Resolutions' (NYR) do they stick with them?

Nope!

I read as tall as 80% of individuals that make NYR quit wilean the first 3 weeks!

Why?

Everyone has an excuse for everyleang. The truth of the matter is it is tough to change your lwhethere. But that doesn't excuse you for not doing so. It is easy to tell you what to do for the better. But sometimes it is just as good to know what NOT to do as it is to know what to do. Here are the reasons we must understand to accomplish any goal for 2013.

Why is it that people don't become FIT?
In a country like ours, with the opportunities that we have, why is it that so few people reach their health and fitness goals? Why is America getting fatter every year? Why are increasingly people signing up at gyms (i.e. globo's) but ending up quitting after a month or two? I leank I can help shed some light. And my hope is that you can use this to help your family, friends, co-workers or acquaintances. Here are what I consider to be the five reasons why people don't become healthy.

WHO ME? "Duh!!"
It never occurs to them. The average person has grown up in a family where he/she has never met or known anyone who was healthy. Ever hear someone say, "I'm large boned," "My parents have always been BIG," "I have a thyroid problem". Blah, blah, blah! They go to school and socialize with people who are not healthy. They work with people who are not healthy. They have a reference group or social circle external of work who are not healthy. They have no role models who are healthy. They can go through lwhethere and become a fully mature adult in our society and it may never occur to them that it's just as possible for them to become healthy as for anyone else.

MAKE A DECISION! "I will do it when I feel like it"
Some people don't become healthy because they simply never decide to. Health and FITness is everywhere these days; on bookshelves, TV commercials, there are globo gyms on every street, even CrossFit is on ESPN2 now, but noleang will ever change for you until you make a decision to do someleang about it! Even whether it occurs to a person that they could become healthy, whether they don't decide to take the first step, they will end up staying as they are. If you continue to do what you've always done, you will continue to get what you've always got! The primary reason for underachievement and failure is that the great majority of people don't decide to be successful. They never make a firm, unequivocal commitment or definite decision that they are going to become healthy. It is easy to 'mean to,' and to 'intend to,' and 'hope to,' and perhaps you are 'going to' someday. When you wish, hope and pray they you will but never decide to, you are kidding yourself and eventually going to drive yourself crazy!

MAYBE TOMORROW. "I'll start Monday"
People don't become healthy because they procrastinate. People always have a good reason not to start doing what they know they need to do to achieve their FITness independence. It is always the wrong month, the wrong time of the season, or the wrong year. You are always too engaged. There is always that next birthday party, work trip, happy hour or event coming up. As a result, they keep putting it off, month by month, year by year, until you wake up one day and it's one, five, 10 years later! And you say to yourself, "Where have the final 10 years gone?!?!" You may know you need to get healthy, but until you make that decision (first reason;-) and start DOING IT you will always find a way not to.

PAY THE PRICE. "It too dwhetherficult"
You can pay the price to health and fitness now or later. Every year we age it will become dwhetherficulter and dwhetherficulter to become healthy. It is so much fun (eat the unhealthy foods we love, drink and be merry) to have fun now rather than later. It is genuinely dwhetherficult to start now when all you have been doing is having fun being unhealthy. I get it. The fact is whether you cannot delay gratwhetherication, and discipline yourself to chorus from eating everyleang you want all the time, you cannot become healthy. If you cannot practice the habit of coming to the gym 3x- 5x/wk as a lwhetherelong habit, it will be impossible for you to achieve fitness independence in the future.

TAKE THE LONG VIEW. "Today is your tomorrow"
This final reason is perhaps as important, whether not more important than all the others. It is a lack of time perspective. I have been in the FITness industry as a coach/trainer for just about 11 years. I can tell you that the most important factor is someones success is perspective. This is defined as the amount of time that you take into consideration when planning your day-to-day activities and when making important decisions in your lwhethere. Time perspective referred to how far you projected into the future when you decided what you were going to do or not do in the present. Health and FITness atenderes by the law of cause and effect. Whatever you do or don't do you will get a direct result. Everyday you put in a dwhetherficult workout you may not see or feel the results that day, but whether you understand that you are building a better body for the future and continue on, then you will succeed.

Which point stops you from succeeding? Why?

Post to the comments.

Grace Charlotte Fitness: Recipe: protein banana bread

My protein banana bread recipe couldn't be any simpler and makes approximately 12 slices / 6 servings. It's relatively low carb and tall protein, so it's an ideal healthy snack or breakfast. I like to serve intellect with a helping of peanut butter!

Ingredients:

• 2 large ripe bananas
• 2 scoops whey protein powder - any flavour of choice. I use vanilla phd nutrition diet whey.
• 2 scoops (of the same size) of almond flour. I actually didn't have almond flour the first time I crazye this so used ground almonds instead and it worked fairly well.
• 2 large eggs
• coconut oil / butter (to line baking tray)
• 1 heaped tsp of bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• Optional add ins: raisins, chocolate chips, sweetener etc. to taste

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
• Mash the bananas in a large bowl
• Add all the other ingredients and mix well
• Line a loaf tin with coconut oil and pour in the mixture
• Bake in the centre of the oven for 25 - 30 minutes

Nutritional info per serving/slice (1 tenth of the loaf):

8g carbohydrate / 5g fat / 7g protein

103 calories

Exclusive: Secrets Behind Consistency

Halloween or Everyday Gym Dress??

We have all heard the importance of consistency. In fact, whether you had to pick one trait that is common in everyone that becomes successful it is the habit of being consistent over time.




People are not afraid to sign up, leank about how many people start an exercise program and sign up to a gym. People buys books, go to seminars or even sign up for that next commerce opportunity. Everyone starts saving in a retirement account.

The problem is who sticks with it?

For most all of us starting is not the problem. Staying in is. Victors and the successful stay consistent. Everyone else does not.

When we look at the definition of commitment it makes a lot of sense.

Commitment is doing the leang you said you were going to do long after the mood you set it in has left you. ~ Darren Hardy

We all understand that. But how can we learn how to stay committed? Here are 4 guidelines to help you develop this important trait.



Know Your Goals
If I were to say lets go on a road trip to Taos. Let's jump in the car and go. No map, no plan, no itinerary let's just go. How long would it take? How far is Taos? Where the heck is Taos?!?! What whether we take a wrong turn?

That is very similar to how we treat our lives. A goal with a plan is like a map for our lives. Goals are designed to give us direction, purpose and know where the heck we are going with our lives. Without a goal (map) we don't know where we are going, how long it will take, when we take a wrong turn, or whether we are on track. With specwhetheric and structured goals you can literally direct summaryely how your lives should go and simply follow the plan.

I have found there are three types of FITness goals.
Physical: Gazeing good is important to a lot of us and it should be.
Health: These are the serious type of goals. The kind of goals where you have to do someleang about it now or it will get worse. Diabetic? Obesity? On meds? What are some health goals you have? Family history of cgapsterol, heart disease, etc.? What are you trying to reverse or prevent?
Actance: What is someleang measurable that you are focusing on? Terminateurance event? Recreational sport? Strength numbers? Everyone needs context to their training or it can easily become boring and stale.

What Is Your Perspective?
If I were to pour 8oz of water into a 16oz glass and ask you, "Is the glass half FULL or half empty?" What would you answer?

Your perspective is going to keep you moving forward towards more success, keep you stagnate or move you backwards. You can look at the Paleo diet and say to yourself about how you can't have this and can't have that. What do you leank that will result in? If you continue leanking about all the leangs you can't have you will either drive yourself crazy or give into the foods you can't have because it is all you leank about. Or you can take the glass half full approach and open yourself up to all the leangs you can have. Every the foods that help you look better, feel better and perform better. You can start to view food as nutrients and as fuel. You can discover how great genuine clean food tastes. You can reap all the benefits with a positive focus.

Who is Your Posse?
Your friends and organizations are one of the most powerful influences in your lwhethere. They are so powerful because they aren't very obvious. Everyday the people you surround yourself with are making an impression on you. As human beings we naturally adapt to our environment (whether we like to or not).

Do you  ever notice how easy it is to eat healthy when the people around you are health conscious? How about the opposite?

If you want to be a millionaire? Hang around wealthy people.

If you want to be ripped? Hang around other FIT people.

CrossFit as an example is so successful  for a lot of us  because it surrounds us with others that are just as motivated (or more), have  similar goals, and want the best for themselves. It is way too easy to adapt to what the people around you are doing.

Always Be Studying
Education is a very powerful tool for long finaling success. Just as working out and eating healthy will change your body and health. Education is training for the brain and emotions. The more will raise the level of our education the better apt we are to improving the success rate of our lives.

Here are a couple of reasons why:
Competence: As you become more learned you begin to adopt the traits of the successful. You become more efficient, more empowered and more confident.
Attention: While education helps raise your intelligence it also offers someleang else. As you are putting the time in to read, listen and watch you are fixedly having this information on the front of your brain. While this is on the front of your brain it is on your attention. And the important leang about attention is, attention feeds habits. The more you educate yourself you not only learn more you end up behaving more in line because it is fixedly on the front of your brain... AWESOME!

Out of these 4 points, which one are you "committing" to in 2013? Why?

Which point do you feel you have done well with in 2012? Why?

The Fitness Gypsy: 19 in 2019

Here's to 19 Things I want to do in 2019:

1. Create a Capsule Wardrobe

2. Run a 5k, 10k, Half, Full (possibly)

3. Read 19 books

4. Certwhetheried in at least 3 dwhetherferent fitness certwhetherications

5. Relaunch my blog - making the switch to Expressionpress

6. Finish Gary's hat Collection

7. Launch 3 products on my blog

8. Collaborate with another trainer online

9. Be debt free minus student loans

10. Savings plus $5000

11. Start domesticbrewing

12. Plan a friend date once a month

13. Create and solidwhethery a Morning and Evening Routine

14. Attend a fitness conference

15. Successful blog

16. Thoughtl Weight Consistently

17. Ambasunhappyor for a company on my dream list

18. Secret Goal - not alert to talk about it

19. Vacation Weekend - Palm Springs or Yosemite

What are leangs that you want to accomplish for 2019?

MY 6 WEEK TRANSFORMATION: WEDNESDAY CARDIO

Hi fitness enthusiasts, how are you?

As you may alalert know, and as you can imagine from the image above, Wednesday is a non-training day, or better no resistance training will be done.
We'll call this day, the Wednesday cardio, because we will be doing only a cardiovascular work.

Unluckyly, I'm half-sick nowadays so I prefer to rest. But here is the deal, whether you want to succeed it's extremely important you do your cardio. No worries, you will probably not get like the man in the left photo with three sessions of cardio of 40 minutes a week !!!

When it comes to cardio, we can lessonwhethery all the techniques in many dwhetherferent manners, but to keep it very clear, I will start with two macro-categories and then I'll show you the dwhetherferent techniques I perform for each of them; So there are two dwhetherferent type of "cardio":

1. HIT (HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING)
2. TRADITIONAL CARDIO

Now, the most asked question I get is: "Which kind of cardiovascular work burns more fat ?".
Unluckyly, there is not a definitive answer to this questions. Personal trainers all around the world are still debating about which is the best method from a fat loss perspective.
Here, my truth: both method, whether rightly applied, will burn a certain amount of body fat, but through a dwhetherferent metabolic process. The goal of traditional cardio is to burn fat while you're actually doing it. That's why you will try to keep you heart rate in a specwhetheric "fat burning zone" that I'll show you later.
Instead, HIT as been shown to increase your calories expenditure for at least 12 hours after you finish to perform it. This means you are not burning only the calories strictly related to the period you are performing the exercise, but you will be burning more calories of what you were supposed to burn, also after the exercise, which leads to a calorie deficit that leads to a fat loss. At the end of the day, the dwhetherference will consist on the heart rate you are using. This diagram is a synthetic way to make leangs clearer:

As you can see from the image above, what dwhetherferentiate the two dwhetherferent categories is your heart-rate. If you want to monitor your heart rate, you can use this good Heart Rate Monitor.
I hope I've been very clear until here, because the topic is very complex.
Now I will try to explain the dwhetherference and the techniques that can be applied wilean the two macro-categories;

HIT

First of all, what is HIT about? High Intensity Interval Training involves alternating between very intense bouts of exercise and low intensity exercise. For example, sprinting for 30 moments, then walking for 60 moments is tall intensity interval training. Usual HIT sessions may vary from 4–30 minutes. These short, intense workouts provide improved athletic capacity and condition, improved glucose metabolism, and improved fat burning. A list of benefits of HIT:

• Quick;
• Effective;
• You do not have time to get bored here;
• Increases the resting metabolic rate (RMR)
• Improve maximal oxygen consumption (VO₂ max) more effectively than doing only traditional, long aerobic exercise;
• Improve athletic performance;
• Lowers insulin resistance;
• Improve glucose tolerance;
• Increase lactate tolerance, your ability to handle increased lactic acid buildup in your muscles increases;
• And least but more important on our point of view, it looks like HIT as a strong anabolic effect. It seems that after an HIT session there is a dramatic release of Growth Hormone, which is very favourable when it comes to build muscles and loose fat. Phil Campbell, a USA doctor, says:

  "A contemporary study shows, and this is genuinely exciting, that when you work the fast twitch fiber and work your heart muscle anaerobically, your body releases exercise-induced growth hormones (HGH) that actually mimic taking injections of growth hormones.
  … You get as much as a 530 percent increase in growth hormone!
  … It stays your body for two hours, going after body fat like a heat seeking missile. It's so powerful that whether you were to do the program nowadays and monitor your blood, it will look like you injected growth hormone illegally. That's why there is no HGH test for Olympic athletes nowadays."

  One interesting scientwhetherical study regarding the topic can be found here: The effect of a brief sprint interval exercise on growth factors and inflammatory mediators.
  
  Now, how can we actually perform an HIT workout? Noleang simpler. I personally use some specwhetheric techniques:
  • Fartlek. Fartlek,which means "speed play" in Swedish, is a training method that blends continual training with interval training. The variable intensity and continual nature of the exercise places stress on both the aerobic and anaerobic systems. A very good book as been written about fartlek: Fartlek and Interval Training:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Here a very basic Fartlek workout:
  1. Jump on the treadmill. Three minutes of warm up without any inclination and 5 km/h
  2. 2 minutes at inclination 4% and velocity 6 km/h
  3. 3 minutes like at point 1
  4. 2 minutes at inclination 5% and velocity 7 km/h
  5. 3 minutes like at point 1
  6. 2 minutes at inclination 6% and velocity 8 km/h
  7. 3 minutes like at point 1
  8. 2 minutes t inclination 6% and velocity 10 km/h
  9. 3 minutes like a point one
  10. 2 minutes at inclination 6% and max velocity you can go to
  11. 5 minutes of cancient down like at point 1
  
  This is a 30 minutes workout, but at the end of it, you will feel like you have been working out for ages, even worse than a chest workout with overloading.
  
  • Run 8. Run 8 is an HIT method created by Phil Campbell. It's very easy to implement and very effective:
  
  1. Jump on an elliptical and warm up for 3 minute.
  2. Increase the speed as more as you can for 30 moments. You are training the fast twitch fiber and work your heart muscle anaerobically.
  3. Approach, Reach back to a rest velocity for 90 moments.
  4. Repeat these final two points for 8 times.
  
  
  • Tabata: My good friends and personal traine DANE HANCOX from BodiesByDane, pointed me to this technique. Tabata is a version of HIT based on a 1996 study by Professor Izumi Tabata, initially involving Olympic speedskaters and it uses 20 moments of ultra-intense exercise (at an intensity of about 170% of VO₂max) followed by 10 moments of rest, repeated continually for 4 minutes (8 cycles). The exercise was performed on a mechanically braked cycle ergometer.
  
  Tabata called this the IE1 protocol. In the original study, athletes using this method trained 4 times per week, plus another day of regular-state training, and obtained gains similar to a group of athletes who did regular state training (70% VO₂max) 5 times per week. The regular state group had a taller VO₂max at the end (from 52 to 57 ml/kg/min), but the Tabata group had started lower and gained more overall (from 48 to 55 ml/kg/min). Also, only the Tabata group had gained anaerobic capacity benefits.
  • Soccer: when the weather is good, you definitely don't want to stay in the gym, so you can practice a genuine sport. Soccer is one of those sport that can be categorized as an HIT workout. That's what I did final Wednesday. It was so sunny:
  

TRADITIONAL CARDIO

For traditional cardio is intended any traditional aerobic exercise like running on a treadmill, cycling or even climbing steps, performed for more than 40 minutes, in a magic heart rate fat burning zone, which is situated between 60% and 70% of your max heart rate.
For calculating this heart rate you can use a simple formula:

FAT BURNING HEART RATE ZONE:

from 60 * (220 - your age)/100 to 70 * (220 - your age)/100

For myself for example: from 60 * (220 - 25) / 100 to 70 * (220 -25) /100 which leads to this range:

FAT BURNING HEART RATE ZONE FOR 25 OLD MAN: from 117 to 136.


If you are very poor in Math you can give a look directly to this picture, that I hope will clarwhethery your doubts:

A list of benefits regarding "traditional" cardio:

• Everybody can do it. Fit and unfit, ancient and young, overweight and skinny, girls and boys, so NO EXCUSES!
• You can actually do an other activity while you do this kind of cardio, like read a book or watch a documentary, like I normally do.
• It improves your your aerobics resistance.
• It actually burn fat more than glycogen because is a low-intensity activity.
• Improves heart health.
• Improved blood cgapsterol and triglyceride levels.

For performing cardio in traditional fashion, several exercises can be used:

• Rowing
• Running
• Cycling
• Strolling
• Swimming

The only leang you have to take care of is to keep your heart in the fat burning zone !

CONLUSION

So whether you are now confused about which method is the best for you, I will tell you what I use to do. Personally, I love to alternate the two techniques scientwhetherically. When I train legs, calves or glutes , I prefer low intensity cardio because I do not want to over train my legs. The days I do not train legs I definitely prefer HIT. It's much faster and effective in my personal opinion. My next cardio activity? Kayakyng on the Lwhetherfey:

STAY CARDIOVASCULAR!

LUCA

In A Finnish Grocery Store...(pt.2/2)

Ponder/ Considering that Finland is a relatively small country, it is actually fairly surprising how crazy large choices of sweet it has - I feel like the idles are always like 1 km long even in a smaller store :D In this part of the post, I'll show you some not-that healthy foods that brought some childhood memories in my intellect.

Fazer ok, I should be a Fazer-ambasunhappyor - I love this chocolate sooo much! It is not only the taste, but also the sound when you crack it.... 😍 The chocolate tastes so good, it's so chunky and chocolate wealthy. Plus, when you wrap it open, you can see a silver-folio wrapped around it which makes it more 'luxurious'. If you are travelling to Finland, you'll need to taste it! Attempt to buy them from the shop instead of the airport, because at the airport they are like 2,5 x times more expensive (and who said that products in the tax free are supposed to be more cheaper...??) Once I found them randomly in Berlin's Christmas markets. People just gathered around me when I was so excited and telling them about my love for a Finnish chocolate, and letting anyone who had just the patience to listen to taste it haha!

Tupla If you know the Double Decker-chocolate in the UK, it is a bit similar but it has almond nougat in it. This is my moment favorite chocolate after Fazer's yellow one (the hasselnut). Need to seize always one of these when I'm in Finland.

Salmiakki. It's not a liquorice but stronger. So whether you are not a fan of liquorice, the chances are that you are not going to like it. The taste of 'Salmiakki' divides people in two - they either LOVE it or HATE it. I happen to belong to that category who loves it, and actually my wgap family and relatives are salmiakki-people. In general Finnish people like it tho as they put it in everywhere: we have salmiakki-ice cream, salmiakki-chocolate, salmiakki-vodka, salmiakki-chewing gum, salmiakki-chips...yes, yummy! In Berlin I found also a salmiakki-toothpaste. Only Finnish people know that salmiakki-alternatives found in for example Netherlands, cannot be compared with the texture, taste and strength of the Finnish salmiakki.

I brought it to my work place here in the UK and let even my clients to taste it. 98% of them didn't like it :D The good leang about is that some brands use "xylitol", to make it sweeter instead of sugar or other artwhethericial flavors, which is claimed to be better for your teeth. Xylitol is also used in many toothpastes in Finland. Obviously, I don't recommend it to take care of your teeth, but it is a more gentler option than let's say a sweet that is sweetened by pure sugar.

"Lauantai" (aka 'Saturday') sweet bag is legendary from my childhood. I used to get this on my 'sweet day', however you like to call it. It has like a variety of dwhetherferent candies, and my favorite was always the lollipop and that black, salmiakki-car you can spot from the picture too whether you look carefully. The funny leang was also that back in the days, you would get a 'tattoo', which would disappear of course after you wash it off with the soap. Those we kids had in our skin after getting this bag on Saturdays...

My current favorit remix (TV MIX, suprise surprise...)

has a selcetion of fruit and salmiakki candies.

Fitness

There was a massive fitness-boom couple years back in Finland, where every regular person (included me) taught that the only way to be in shape is to diet like a fitness-athelete. It was even in the magazines how all the quarks were sancient out from most of the grocery stores, haha! :D Despite the fitness-boom has drwhetherted more towards wellbeing, there is still an increasing amount of brands that has crazye a 'fitness'-version of their products. 'Fitness' in brackets, because just having that word attached into the product doesn't make it instantly healthy,  low-carb, low-sugar or non-fat. You will need to know how to read the nutritional labels in order to make sense out of it. For example I checked a fitness-version of some chocolate bar and it had the same amount of calories than original chocolate bar and possibly 1-2 g of protein.  Plus is double the price. In that case you might as well just to take the original one...Here are some other contemporary products I spotted since visiting Finland final time:

Nowadays you can find a wide choice of fitness-foods and treats from the fitness shelves from every grocery store (not only in Holland & Barrett-types of stores)

Valio Chocolate Protein pudding:

(Per 100g: 75 kcal | F: 1,5 g | C: 5,3 g | P: 10 g)

Valio Profeel Banana-Chocolate Milkshake

(Per 100g: 70 kcal | F: 1,5 g | C: 4,0 g | P: 10 g)

Maitokolmio Protein Pudding

(Per 100g: 101 kcal | F: 3,6 g | C: 6,1 g | P: 11 g)

For example you could get more protein wealthy and calorie-friendly snack with quark &

mixing it 1-2 teaspoons of dark chocolate powder.

Pandy Protein Candy

(Per 100g: 239 kcal | F: < 0,1 g | C: 66 g | P: 20 g)

This is what I mean. Calorie-wise this fitness-treat has about the same amount of calories as its 'unhealthy' alternative. The nutritional label states that the carbs comes from maltitol and xylitol, which has carbs only 2,4 kcal per g. Despite the amount of protein is fairly impressive, it doesnt make it healthy. You'll need to have your macros in balance. If you consume more protein than you are supposed to, it can result in storing the additional protein as a fat = weight-gaining (want help figuring out your macros? Record your goals to: fitness.annamaiya@gmail.com)

Tuna. These tunas became specificly familiar during the fitness-years. The best leang is that all the special flavors, such as chilli and curry are about the same price than regular ones, but here in the UK all the special tuna flavor costs a bit more. Before fitness-times, one of the special treats was "lämpimät voileivät" aka 'warm sandwiches. At domestic we used to use a proper rye bread, put some chilli or curry-tuna on top and finished it off with the few slices of chesee. Then you put them on the oven for 8-10 minutes, until they are crispy and they became like a healthier version of pizza. I like to also add some fresh red pepper on top, after they'd come out of the oven and then we ate them with a cancient glass of milk....yummy!! I ended up not buing these, because I couldn't spot anywhere that it is dolphin-friendly.

'Tommies' - cherry tomatoes. These tomatoes are actually from Netherlands, but I haven't seen them to be sancient anywhere here in the UK (possibly Wgapfoods?) Anyways, the textures, the taste, the EVRRRYTHING, is so delicious, like how tomatoes can be this good? I used to snack them as a sweet when I went tot the films, etc. at the time, when I was into tracking calories, etc.

Endelightmentlight & 'Viili'. Endelightmentlight is like a squash, with all the dwhetherferent flavors. It is popular among fitness-people, because they have a wide range a good flavors (apple & lime, rasberry, and obviously even mojito) with only less than 1 kcal per serving!! So when I was limiting myself lots of with calories, I genuineized when mixed Endelightmentlight with the quark or 'viili', it tasted like a fulfilling dessert! Viili, instead, is a dairy product as quark or yogo, but the texture reintellects a bit...well, a snot. That's the main reason I don't specificly endelight the plain 'viili', but as I got ancienter they brought up more flavors in stores, which crazye it more pleasant to eat. However, somehow I got an idea mix 'viili' with funlight (no idea why :D), which became my favorite combo. Yes, the plain 'viili' is not definitely my favorite, but when I was on a diet, I used to mix it with Endelightmentlight, and it was sooooooooo good! Seriously, whether you are not a large fan of 'viili', try out that combo  and let me know on the comments below whether you like it!

'Mehukeitto' is weird to explain as it's like a mixture of squash and 'kissel'. Who recalls this? I haven't found anyleang similar here in the UK! They have a lot of dwhetherferent flavors with under 10 kcal in a wgap bottle, and therefore many fitness-people endelight it specificly with porridge, quark or simply as it is. One summer I even crazye ice lollies of it :D When you are on diet, you'll need to be intelligent, specificly whether you're similar treat butt (herkkupeppu) as me, haha! ;)

Valio Rasberry-Beach 'mehukeitto' (Sugar Free)

(Per 100g: 9,5 kcal | F: 0 g | C: 1,6 g | P: 0 g)

Lemon Pepper is one of my final faves! I'm genuinely picky it's the right one and a certain brand as I love the tangy & sour taste of it. They created a contemporary version without salt, but unluckyly I couldn't find it anywhere anymore the final time I was in Finland. It makes any food - specificly diet food - to taste 10 x better.

American Dip - originally meant to dip crisps in it, but when you mix the powder to quark, thick greek yogo (or whether you are in a low carb you can use creme fraiché) it is the best to dip your veggies in. So whether I went to see friends, or had a film night with my boyfriend, I would just have dwhetherferent veggie wedges, cucumber, carrots, brocolli, caulwhetherlower, red peppers, etc. and dip them into that mix! It's a game changer for your cravings.

Tea. I love Finnish tea. This collection is one of my favorites, because the taste is strong and one bag makes up to 3 cups! Considering that I'm from heart a coffee-person, and that since I came from Finland I've switched my morning coffee to this tea, you can believe how good is that. On top, they have named the dwhetherferent flavors (which you can also buy separately) in dwhetherferent names suchs as "Loyal friend", "The delight of the rainy day" (fits in London mood, that one", "The tea of Wisdom", etc.

Quark. In the UK you can find this from the cheese-shelves, which is funny because in Finland and Germany these are located with the dairy products. It is like a yogo, but more thicker and protein wealthy. In Germany and Finland I guess it is more popular and therefore they've generated also more flavors.

Read the first part of the post here:

If you are from Finland, what memories these foods brings into your intellect? Do you have some weird combos that taste delicious?

If you are not from Finland, which one of these products ou would be the most tempted to try?

Comment down below!


These souvenirs I got from Finland:

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