I’m still splashing away in the pool, learning to swim the front crawl for the fabulous cause that is Sainsbury’s Sport Relief, kicking off on March the 23rd 2014 at the epic Olympic pool. Anyone can take part and if swimming isn’t your cup of tea there’s also the cycle / marathon . You’ll be getting fit for 2014 (the classic resolution) whilst raising money for some of the poorest in the world. Why not sign up?! Check it out HERE!
You might notice that whilst I’m rattling on about swimming, I’m not in a pool in these pictures (shot outside the newly re-opened Kenwood House, just at the top of London’s Bishops Avenue, aka Billionaires Row). Yes, it’s hard to swim through air, but this post is actually about training the small stabiliser muscles that comprise the shoulder; it’s usually these smaller ones that are susceptible to strains in the pool, and are often neglected when you train in the gym. To build them up and prevent injury, there are a few simple exercises you can do with just a trusty resistance band…
Christmas is infamous for overeating indulgent sugary, fattening foods. This post is my attempt at a healthier alternative – it’s a tour-de-force of the same foods but with a bit of a lighter twist. Perhaps you can just pick and choose a few ideas from it, and as you can see from the picture above, ‘healthier’ needn’t look any less inviting and ‘Christmassy’ 🙂 ! Click MORE to see lovely pictures of the rest of my meal & get the ‘how to’ 🙂 Faya
OK, so it’s hardly festive-themed food, but in my calendar, we’re not quite there yet. In the meantime, I’m staying on the straight and narrow with this immensely nutritious ‘Grilled Salmon, Quinoa, Lentils Avocado and Almond’ dish. Weighing in at a reasonable 480 calories with just 20 minutes of low-intensity preparation time, it ticks so many healthy boxes and leaves me feeling totally contented… though obviously a Selfridges mini mince pie (my personal kryptonite) complements it beautifully for dessert 🙂 ! Read more here… (more…)
Where possible, I’ll always try to buy organic produce from my local grocer. Organic foods are said to have more nutritional value, they certainly have fewer pesticides (chemicals including fungicides, herbicides & insecticides), they’re likely fresher (as they have a shorter shelf life), they can more often be tastier, have fewer/no preservatives and are more environmentally friendly. In the case of eggs, they even look better, with a deep, rich hue of sunset orange in their yolk, rather than nuclear yellow of battery hens.
In terms of meat organically reared animals aren’t dosed up with antibiotics, growth hormones, or fed other animal byproducts. Plus the animals roam for far more time outdoors.
Leading the healthy lifestyle that Fitness On Toast is all about, means committing to healthier choices and sticking to them (the tricky part!). So if you’re introducing more greens, healthy fats and proteins into your diet it only makes sense to make sure you’re buying the best quality products to optimise your nutrition intake, and more importantly preserve your body’s healthy state.
After visiting one of my absolute favourite places in Stockholm – Rosendahl’s Royal Gardens, where they grow all their own foods I felt inspired to make a own healthy autumn salad recipe. MORE about the beautiful Rosendahl and recipe below. Faya 🙂
Here’s a quick, summery recipe that’s super-light, rich in taste, and requires practically no skill in the kitchen! I try to include one salad a day, which can get exceptionally tiresome, so it’s fun to mix up the ingredients a little, and to depart from the safety Niçoise. This yummy summer salad is refreshingly light, yet still filling, packed with nutritious contents, and is easy & quick to make! You’ll spend a maximum 20min to complete the whole thing including the c.15 minutes it takes to bake the salmon. Hope you like it! Click more to get the full nutritional benefits and ‘instructions’. Bon ap! Faya x
In a bid to make Fitness On Toast more practical / useful this holiday season, this is the first post in a line of travel-related fitness ideas which I’ll be posting over the coming months. The first part of the holiday can be the most difficult, as you relax and sink into ‘holiday indulgence mode’. Before even reaching your fabulous holiday destination, it’s not unusual to have eaten your body weight in tempting travel chocolates whilst waiting out a delay! Being stuck in an airport waiting – bored, hungry, tired and emotional – is no fun, and the odds seem impossibly stacked against you to stay healthy. It’s often the case of grabbing a quick bagel, bag of crisps and a soda. Junk foods, like air, can be found anywhere, anytime. But unlike air, they should be occasional treats and not meals of laziness. In the pic below (all of them shot in Paris, en route to the South of France on the TGV), I’m tucking into a healthy and exotic fruit salad – a travelling gift from FOT‘s friends at the fabulous Buddha Bar Hotel, teamed with a Starbucks tall Green Tea for a hydrating metabolism boost! If you can’t muster up the enthusiasm to make your own healthy travelling meal here are 8 tips & tricks to stay away from all the refined simple carbohydrates and filthy factory foods when you’re jetting off… Bon voyage 🙂 Faya x
1. STOCK UP: Make sure to have a nutritious, sustaining breakfast/lunch/dinner before you even leave the house.
2. DRINK UP: Stay hydrated. Recirculated air-conditioned airplane air is draining, and when you’re already dehydrated you’ll feel even hungrier as your body recognises that it needs *something*!
3. PLAN AHEAD: Bring your own snacks – you control the content – think nuts, seeds, fruit, water – at least until you get to your detstination and can enjoy a proper meal!
4. CHEW SOMETHING: Chewing Gum is a sweet stimulation, to simulate sugar intake, and trick the brain into thinking its meal time. Not great on a totally empty stomach though, as it raises acid levels.
5. GO GREEN: Salads with some protein are a totally fair option if available, but be sure to check fat/salt content of things like the dressing – often a hidden calorie bomb!
6. SIZE MANAGEMENT: Watch your portions – nibbling little and often is better for the body’s natural metabolic pace.
7. MEET THE CHALLENGE: Being a bit hungry isn’t the end of the world and won’t kill you. Many swear that it raises mental alertness as you head into ‘forraging’ mode!
8. SLEEP IT OFF: Low in blood sugar? Feeling tired? Zzzz… far better than scoffing a packet of crisps and chocolate bar for the sake of it!
Click HERE for more to see the rest of the pics from sunny Paris 🙂
I love to innovate with my muesli recipes, and recently, I’ve been pacing around the local Organic Grocers for some renewed inspiration. This post builds on my previous piece about the Uber-Muesli, adding all my latest discoveries to the trusty recipe. My Muesli is a bit like the Sugababes then – always changing what’s in it, but you know just what you’re getting, and it’s a well-formed product nonetheless 😉
There are 9 novelties making their way into my muesli shaker-box these days, which are helping to reduce the fat content, boost the protein proportion, and reduce the carb constitution. In short, these are:
1) Chia Seeds, 2) Toasted Pine Nuts, 3) Organic Flaxseed, 4) Chopped Roasted Hazelnuts, 5) Roasted Almond Flakes, 6) Puffed Wholegrain Oats, 7) Organic Sunflower Seeds, 8) Puffed Wholegrain Brown Rice, and finally (perhaps most tree-huggingly), 9) universe-friendly sustainably grown Organic Puffed Spelt Flakes.
To read more about the health benefits of each ingredient, click MORE below, and see why I felt it was MISSION CRITICAL to tinker with the beloved Muesli recipe! Faya x
Published for me by my friends over on TheDailyHiit about 2 hours ago is one of my most popular posts to date. It’s my latest Ab-crushing workout. No equipment required, just a body, some clothes, a nice park and some healthy determination!
See the full workout here, then go let your abs out to play 😀
I was reading a certain fashion magazine the other day and came across a pretty mundane article entitled ‘what’s in your bag?’ – but reading it, some of the bizarre ‘essentials’ made me giggle including ‘air freshener’, ‘an iron’ a ‘mini screwdriver set’! It got me thinking however, so I decided to blog about ‘what’s in MY bag’. And these are genuinely things that I carry with me on a daily basis to help me live a healthier lifestyle – all fitness related, of course 😉
Click MORE to read about the benefits of each item… Faya x
I was recently invited to try out the Gym at London’s Corinthia Hotel, which recently opened at a reputed cost of £300m. Given that level of investment, I’d assumed the fitness facilities would be excellent, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t disappointed. It’s invariably the largest and best equipped hotel gym I’ve been to, with an ample supply of soft fluffy towels and refrigerated bottled water on hand at a moment’s notice. Fantastic, great workout, good…
… But it’s not the gym that blew me away, unsurprisingly, since I spend most of my days in one! That was reserved, instead, for the Spa. Or more specifically, Espa Life at Corinthia. Living in a ‘never-sleeps’ buzzing city like London, it sometimes seems impossible to stop moving and take a deep breath. That’s never more apparent, I think, than when you go on holiday only to realise how exhausted you feel. But there are things you can do in the meantime to mask that dilapidation of the soul, and to ensure you don’t turn into a ball of stress and combust before you reach the beach!
Aside from the obvious – eating healthy, training regularly, sleeping well etc – spending a day at a spa is the ultimate indulgence for both man and woman! The mood is boosted by endorphin, dompamine and seratonin release, it promotes regeneration and healing, muscular relaxation as well as invigorating & energising, and expunging toxins in your body through the cycles of sweating and re-hydration. Plus it’s likely to make you sleep like a baby later that night! Espa Life is impossibly relaxing, blending outrageously ‘cool’ design (e.g. a sauna with no perceptible walls, sleek lines and fibre-optics) with all sorts of fabulous spa innovations, from heated-stone ‘anatomical loungers’ to effervescent ‘vitality pools’ and regenerative ‘sleep pods’. This hotel basically bisects Trafalgar Square and Embankment – both frantically stressful parts of the City – but you wouldn’t know that you within 500 miles of the nearest ‘Nelson’s Column’! The cavernous (but always intimate) 3,300 square meters of uber-luxurious spa space are spread over 4 floors (!!) which has to be verging on excessive indulgence! You can literally watch the stress receding.
Admittedly, maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle takes planning, dedication and hard work; the pay back is without a doubt worth it, but sometimes a little reward to pat yourself on the back isn’t just allowed; it’s compulsory. Many find that staging a ‘cheat day’ once a week is a great option to keep you on track, especially knowing you’ve earned yourself some extra chocolatey calories. But for me, given that I spent 1 hour in the gym and 3 at the spa, there can be no better treat than this place!
