Fat-Burning & Fab Music Tomorrow Morning @ 9am!

Today's class was fun as always, watch an #instavideo of it:  http://instagram.com/p/doUCDLgDcM/

I asked a few members for some feedback/reviews of my classes to share with those of you who are thinking of coming to one of my classes, and still haven't!

Here's Ceri's in full:
"I used to hate spin before I started attending Adura's classes - monotonous thumping dance music, accompanied by the uninspiring drones of a bored instructor. Adura's classes couldn't be more different. A lively, fun team spirit atmosphere is encouraged by Adura's fantastic instructing - she takes special care to choose music we all love - and no class is ever the same. Brilliant." 

Before you think this class is 100% on the spin bike, think again! Yes there will be sprints, hill climbs, and other spin drills but there will also be bodyweight and core challenges.
Fun, right? :p

Don't tell me you need anymore convincing! Sign up for tomorrow's classes now, send me an email --> info'AT'adura-o.com (replace the 'AT' with @, this is to reduce the spam emails I get).

Time: Saturdays @ 9am
Location: Fitness First Oxford Circus
Fee: £10 per class or £40 for 5 classes.

Quick and Easy Low Carb Meal: Cauliflower Fried Rice With Peppers & Prawns

I can't get over how quickly it is to make this meal, I just posted this on Instagram (@Adura_O), and had to share the recipe here with you. So before you you say healthy eating is time consuming and expensive, just read on!

I went for a 1.5 hour walk on Sunday, yes ME, the-one-who-hates-walking went for a long walk. 

Things are happening! :p 

Huge thanks to my friends at Fitter London for organising a bank holiday walk on Saturday, it was so much fun and inspired me to download 'Striiv', a pedometer type app. 

There's a a competitive edge to it thanks to the 'Leaderboard' feature, love it! Some of my friends walk over 20,000 daily, not me ...YET! 

My aim is 10,000 steps daily and as you can see -->

I have a lot of walking left to do today. 

Oops I'm getting carried away as always!

Back to the reason for this post! While on my Sunday walk, I found a farmers market in Alexandra Palace, woohoo! I had some money on me (in case of emergency) and bought some fresh, locally grown produce including cauliflower and bell peppers, which inspired this very simple meal.

INGREDIENTS

Cauliflower (1/2 a head)

Red Bell Pepper (1)

Prawns (1 cup)

Onion (1/4)
Coconut Oil (1 tbsp)

Curry powder (1 tsp)

Parsley

Cinnamon
Salt (to taste)

Serves: 1-2 (I ate it all on my own!)

1. Wash and grate the cauliflower (for more info on this, read: http://www.adura-o.com/2013/04/nigerian-twist-on-cauliflower-rice-from.html).
2. Wash and chop up the red pepper and onion.
3. Heat the coconut oil in a pan, and brown the onions. Season the prawns with the curry, parsley, cinnamon and salt.
4. Add the prawns and pan fry for a few minutes until they start to turn pink. Add the peppers and stir fry until prawns are completely pink. Remove from pan and set aside.
5. Add the grated cauliflower, add a pinch of salt and stir for 3-5 minutes.
6. Add the prawns and peppers, stir for a short time, turn heat down to low and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.
7. Eat!

Healthy, Natural & Refreshing Watermelon Juice Recipe

I made this last week and LOVED it! So I had to share the recipe for this refreshing, all natural juice with just three ingredients. I promise you'll love it!

Did you know watermelons have many health benefits including being rich in lycopene, an antioxidant found to be helpful in reducing the risk of many types of cancer including breast and prostate cancers! They're also good for the heart and highly alkaline? Well, now you know!

Watermelon (1.5 - 2 cups)
Cucumber (1 whole)
Lemon Juice (from 1/2 a lemon)

1. Add all ingredients (chopped watermelon & cucumber, with lemon juice added ) to a blender
2. Blend!

Add some ginger for a nice kick to it. I plan to add some mint (leaves) next time to make it extra refreshing :)

Do you have any watermelon juice recipes? Please share. Try this and let me know what you think.

TIP: It tastes even better chilled :)

Last Week On Instagram

Hello & Happy Monday! 

I hope you had a relaxing weekend, I wish I could say I did but everything I did was worth the time spent :) 

Apart from last week's recipe post - Lettuce Wraps (Minced Turkey,Tomatoes and Peppers, I didn't update this blog last week. For that, I really apologise! To make up for it, I will post at least twice this week, and today's post is one of them.

I'm very active on Instagram and posting a 'Week On Instagram' summary is a way to share tips, info or just random pictures with you my blog readers who aren't on IG :)

I started last week feeling unwell, I'd been fighting some kind of bug all weekend and my body lost the battle on Sunday. Monday morning, I woke up feeling fatigued and weak, the thought of doing any work made me want to curl up in bed and sleep... and I did just that. Not before, I posted this picture on Instagram:

On Tuesday, after spending an entire day in bed, I had a lie in and got out of bed at 10am. I felt better but nowhere near 100%. One of the things that was nursing me back to good health was green tea with with lemon and ginger. 

FYI: Ginger helps relieve congestion, lemon is high in vitamin c and is great for fighting colds and green tea is rich in antioxidants and also has antiviral and antibacterial properties.

On Wednesday, I decided the best way (to a wider audience) to answer a Get Trimmer Challenge participant's question was by posting this picture to show a couple of ways I eat sweet potatoes while sticking to my two MUSTS - yumminess and healthiness.

Still on Wednesday, I shared a tip I learned from my big Sis. I still wasn't 100% yet but I was getting there :) I made a green smoothie, straight from the freezer (I had bulk prepped and froze 5-6 smoothies' ingredients - spinach, cucumber, avocado and bananas. Serious timesaver, it took 5 minutes from my freezer to cup!) and added lemon and chia seeds before blending. To also help with my cold/cough, I grated some fresh ginger and mixed it after I'd blended the smoothie. That explains the lumpy bits in the picture:

Two posts on Thursday, I was on a roll! First one was to promote my new Spin class. Londoners, I expect to see you in this class soon! Oxford Street is so quiet at this time - start your weekend right by working out at 9am and avoid the crazy Saturday crowds by shopping early ;) It's a Win-Win situation, isn't it?!

I was itching for a new *daily* challenge and May's challenge inspired me (Who's joining me here? You know you want to!):

                                     

Friday started great, as always thanks to the members in my 7am class, I posted this video of the awesome, hardworking members:

http://instagram.com/p/dEPFakgDY8/

I was also clever and added 2 minutes of plank to the class, so I could do my 1st day of plank. Go me! Ha! 

Saturday was great - I woke up feeling like myself and ready to workout! I had a good crowd at my 9am Oxford Circus class (be there next week!) and I also taught the Fitter London strength class and hour later. Again, I included planks in my class so I could it with them ;)

Sunday started with a Yoga session and a (brownish) green smoothie, again from my frozen stash. This time I added berries to the mix, hence the colour. Trust me it was yummy! I also did 2 minutes of plank before my Yoga session but I didn't post a picture on Instagram, I had another busy day.

And that brings an end to last week, did you like this post? Tell me!

Lettuce Wraps (Minced Turkey,Tomatoes and Peppers): Inspired By Daisy!

While promoting The Get Trimmer Challenge last week, I posted this picture on Instagram:

Not up to 10 minutes after posting it, I got one recipe request and a few questions on what was in it. So I thought, "Yay! A recipe blog post, my blog needs one!". Lettuce wraps are a great way of totally eliminating bread (wraps) from a meal. This is a low carb and high protein meal and can be breakfast, lunch or dinner.

I was feeling creative and decided to do an InstaVideo of the recipe. Why did Instagram CRASH on me??? Thankfully, a copy of the video was saved on my phone and because I didn't want to throw away my hard work, I uploaded it on YouTube:

Ha! It's not the usual quality of my videos but it does the job, right?

Ingredients
500g Turkey Mince
400g chopped tomatoes (Better option - Fresh tomatoes, chopped)
Lettuce (I used romaine, but any should do)
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 Yellow Bell Pepper
1/2 Red Onion
1 Tablespoon Coconut Oil
Salt
Mixed Herbs and Spices

1. Wash and chop up onions and peppers.
2. Heat coconut oil in a pan (preferably a wok).
3. Fry onions until they're lightly browned.
4. Add turkey mince, cook until the meat isn't pink. keep turning in the pan to cook evenly. Season with (1/2 tsp) salt. This should take no more than 5 minutes.
5. Add the chopped tomatoes and season with mixed herbs and spices, and two pinches of salt.
6. Immediately add the peppers. Stir contents for 30 seconds, cover and leave to simmer for a minimum of ten minutes.
7. Wash the romaine lettuce and remove the leaves (for the wraps). A tip here is too use the bigger (outer) leaves. I made 4 wraps, so I used 8 leaves.
   
   
8. Add 2-3 heaped tablespoons of mince to each wrap and enjoy :)

Shout out to Daisy for the inspiration! I usually make my lettuce wraps with eggs, sliced meat (chicken, beef) or fish.

Last Week In Pictures

Happy Monday!

I think I'll start doing this once in a while, - I'm quite active on Instagram and sometimes duplicate the pictures and posts here.

Other times, I don't think they're good enough to be stand-alone blog posts so grouping a week's worth of post should work better.

MONDAY

I posted this on Monday, full of positivity for the week... if you know me personally, you should know I'm a cynic *sigh* but that's a story for another day (or never). But last week, I woke up inspired and ready to make changes that I'd been procrastinating about. We keep saying we'll make changes but "life gets in the way"(my most common excuse)... I didn't want to do the same last week so starting the week by declaring to the world (okay people who follow me on IG, Twitter and Facebook) it was going to be GREAT, helped me believe it more.

TUESDAY

On Tuesday, I took part in the 7am Fitter London class (I actually did a blog post on this HERE) and I haven't done any kind of running in AGES. We started off with a 5-10 minute jog, then did many sets of sprints, before jogging back to the gym. We finished off with heavy kettlebell drills. I wasn't very excited about jogging or sprinting before we started but after the class, I was so glad I did. It's so funny (bearing in mind my cynic status) but this inspired me to post the above, and also be a little more daring and a few hours later, I had the idea for my new class (see below).

Re: your healthy goals, both exercise and diet, if you've been doing the same thing for a while and are either bored or not seeing as much progress as you used to, it's time to make a change. Try cutting down (or out) something that you've been advised to but just don't want to. Or do exercise that's way out of your comfort zone eg sprints because there's nothing like HIIT (high intensity interval training) to help burn fat! Strength training, a spin class, *wink*

WEDNESDAY

Yep! Inspired by how my week started, I decided to put this out there no matter how nervous I was. I'm glad I did! This class officially starts on Saturday (although I did a test run over the weekend!) 10th August, and if you haven't registered, do that NOW.

THURSDAY

August 1st! Inspired by the week's progress and my challenge in May (-->READ HERE<--), I decided to set myself a few challenges which I'll start posting this week :) It's going to be a GREAT month!

On FRIDAY, I posted an InstaVideo from my Fitter London 7am class, watch it HERE.

SUNDAY

Saturday was a very long day so I forgot to post! Sunday's post was actually Saturday's, the test run of my new class went well and I had a green smoothie (chia seeds, spinach, cucumber, banana, lemon and a slice of lemon, with the skin) post workout.

I didn't post this on IG but I did on my Facebook page, and had to share it with here too... still on the positive and inspired train:

One more thing, the Get Trimmer Challenge starts in exactly one week.

It is an online program, so it's available anywhere. If you're having difficulty paying via Paypal, send me an email :)

Have a great week and if you're on Instagram, follow me: @Adura_O.