Just Geen's Salmon Burgers

If you're a salmon lover like myself, you will definitely love this recipe. 

INGREDIENTS 

• Salmon filet (cooked or uncooked). 
• 1 egg white.
• 1/2 diced red onion.
• 2 spring onions.
• 1 bread of your choice (sandwich bread, mini pitta bread or any whole wheat bun).
• Burger toppings of your choice (lettuce, tomatos, onions etc).
• 2 tsp cottage cheese.
• Seasoning of your choice (garlic, ginger, pepper, herbs, thyme etc).

DIRECTIONS 

1.  Season your salmon with salt, pepper, garlic, thyme, mixed herbs.

2. Bake in the oven at 200°C for 13-15 minutes. (If your using cooked salmon, skip this step).

3. Flake and mash the salmon in a mixing bowl. 

4. Add the egg white and onions.

5. Gently shape the salmon into patties. 

6. Make sure you use a non stick pan on a medium heat and cook in a skillet using coconut oil.  the patty is cooked on both sides. Cook the burgers for about 5 minutes each side and cook until the burgers are brown on each side. 

7. Place the burgers on your choice of bread, spreading cottage cheese on one side of your bread and add your desired burger toppings. 

BON APPÉTIT 

Hamstring: The Forgotten Muscle

The hamstring is probably one of the most forgotten about muscles and that’s probable because they can't be seen in the mirror, so people may think they're not as important as the Quadriceps (quads). Personally, I’m just lazy, so once I’ve done my variation of squats and lunges, doing hamstring exercises are the last thing on my mind.

However, recently I found out that I might suffer from knee problems because my Hamstrings are weaker than my Quads. I know knee problems are quite common in females and after having a read around the problem, I think this might be something a lot of females might relate to.

Before I go any further, I think I should explain the function of the Quads and the Hamstring and how they relate to your knees.

So your upper leg contains two opposing muscle groups, your Quads and your Hamstring. These muscles together, move your hip joints and your knee and stabalise your knee.

Your Quads flex (bend) your hip and extend (straighten) your knee and your hamstring extends (straightens) your hip and flexes (bends) your knee. In most cases, the Hamstring tends to be weaker than the Quads because the Quads are bigger and are used more frequently in day to day activities.

I’ve suffered from ‘bad’ knees for about a year now. I went to physio, completed my rehab exercises and home works and had the all clear to go back to weight training, but things were never the same.

It is important to have a balance between your Hamstring and your Quads because a strength imbalance increases the risk of injuries, such as damage to your muscles, ligaments and joints. As your Quads contract, your Hamstring lengthens and if you’re Hamstrings are too weak, your Quads will pull your Hamstring faster than it can lengthen, which may be too forceful and that’s where the injury starts.

Putting this into context with my own training regime, it all makes sense. I rarely train my hamstrings anyway, in comparison to my quads, so this does not come as a surprise at all *sigh*.

So how can you fix this problem then? It’s simple, train your Hamstring!

There are several exercises that can be done, which I will list below:

1.     Stiff Leg Deadlift 

2.     Lying leg curl 

3.     Good mornings 

4.     Exercise ball curls 

5.     Kettlebell deadlifts 

6.     Glute bridge 

All these exercises should help increase the ratio between your hamstrings and your quadriceps, which should hopefully fix the problem.

G

 

Can you lose body fat without losing your curves?

This is something I’ve struggled with since the beginning of my fitness journey and I know a lot of females can relate, so I thought to share my experience and explain how the process works.

So can you lose body fat without losing your curves? My answer is yes and no.

The thing is you cannot determine where you lose fat from. If you do cardio, you can’t only burn the fat off your waist area and keep it on your bum and thighs. Trust me I wish you could but it just doesn’t work like that.

Please bare in mind that your body does burn fat all over, it’s just that sometimes it can burn fat more in specific areas. For example, my fat burns quickly around my chest area (hence my lack of boobs lol) and although I still have a bum and thighs, I have still lost body fat in those areas.

Everyone has stubborn fat cells in specific areas. For me, I’d say my stubborn areas are my bum, thighs and waist, which isn't a bad thing except the waist area- but this, is not within my control. The only way I focused on those stubborn fat cells in my waist was to keep up the cardio until it finally responded and disappeared (it still hasn’t gone yet but its slowly getting there), although I did suffer the risk of losing my curves. So what do I do?

Well I know how my body works and I know it’s a lot easier for me to put on weight than it is for me to lose weight. So I took the risk (and still am taking the risk) in order to give my body the best possible chance of stripping down my body fat. I haven’t lost too much mass in the process as my cardio mainly consists of high intensity workouts (refer to previous blogpost) which has in some way retained my muscle.

But inevitably I was bound to lose fat from my bum, thighs and hips so I also weight trained those specific areas on days where I wasn’t doing cardio. I’ve now incorporated more leg days in my fitness regime focusing more on exercises which target my glutes, thighs and hips (squats, lunges, leg raises, glute bridges etc) in order to compensate for the fat burned in those areas.

I still haven’t replaced all the missing fat from those areas YET but just know I won’t stop until I do. Personally, I'm yet to see the gains of my work because I know this process will probably take a year to master effectively and my body doesn’t respond to muscle training as fast as I would like it to. But everyone’s body is different so it might not even take you that long.

There are two ways to do this, you can either lose the fat first then weight train or do both at the same time. I’ve chosen to do both at the same time because when combined with a good balanced diet, adding muscle mass will increase your metabolism and help burn off any excess body fat, so it’s a win win situation.

The only thing is that muscle takes a lot longer to build than fat takes to burn so this process requires the most amount of patience. My advice to anyone embarking on this part of their journey is to be patient and accept that slow progress is better than no progress.

Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day…and neither are your muscles.

G

R.E.S.T

 

So it’s ‘wellbeing’ month at work and my company have quite a few seminars and workshops going on. This week I completed something called a ‘Boomerang Life Balance Questionnaire’ which measures your mental and physical health. I scored highest on my diet and exercise and lowest on my body, sleep and relaxation.

You would think that my lifestyle would mean that I am taking good care of my body, and to be fair I am, but the one thing I am really neglecting is recovery and sleep- which is paramount when it comes to exercise as this is the ONLY opportunity where your body is at complete rest and is able to fully recover and repair itself.

R-ecover E-nergise S-leep T-rain

Recover - Allow your body to adequately refresh itself in order to deliver the same output (if not more) for its required use.

Energise: You will see a MAJOR difference in your physical and mental wellbeing. A renewed energy will allow you to avoid burning out and should help maintain your enthusiasm and fitness goals.

Sleep: Sleep aids recovery and can enhance exercise performance.  Taking at least one day to catch up on sleep will benefit your training more than pushing your body for another workout with a lack of sleep. The majority of your Growth Hormone, which is a highly anabolic substance, is released during sleep. Getting enough sleep provides you with the energy and focus you need to see you through an intense workout. It also provides the optimum anabolic environment for your muscles to recover and grow.

Train: Training is what we all strive for so why not prep your body to train at its best, by simply giving it what it demands...REST!!!

 

So I’m going to take my own advice and get some more rest and I suggest you do too.

G