All About The Glutes

     Alright ladies who of us do not want a firm butt? These days’ people pay big money on plastic surgery to get a bigger and a more lifted butt.  In fact, the majority of my female clients always wanted their glutes toned and to look bigger.  The problem that I found was that many people think that in order to tone up the glutes the need to do squats and lunges.  Well, squats and lunges alone will not get you there.  This is because squats and lunges focus more on the legs.  In order to really see results you need to understand how the muscles work.

The glutes consist of the 4 superficial muscles and their job is to:

Gluteus minimus:   The gluteus minimus muscle does abduction and medial rotation

Gluteus medius:    The gluteus medius muscle does abduction and slight medial rotation.

Gluteus maximus:  The gluteus maximus muscle is what gives the glutes their shape.  It does extension  of the hip and lateral rotation.

Tensor Fascia latae:  The tensor fascia latae does abduction of the hip, medial rotation, and flexion of the hip.

There are also muscles that are deep under the maximus minimus and their job is to:

Piriformis:  The piriformis muscle does lateral rotation and abduction of the thigh when flexed.

Obturator Internus:  The obturator internus does lateral rotation of the thigh and abduction of the thigh.

Superior and Inferior gemellus muscles:  These muscles do lateral rotation of the hip joint and abduction of the flexed thigh.

Quadratus femoris:  The quadratus femoris does lateral rotation of the hip.

I have come up with a workout that focuses on the movements of these muscles.  As with all workouts, it is really important to warm up your body to prevent injury.  I do not set a time limit on warming up.  There are days were I only need a few minutes and I am ready to go but then there are those days were I am dragging and it takes me a bit longer to get going.  So before you work out make sure that you have spent at least 5 to 10 minutes warming up.  A typical warm up for me when doing a glute workout will go as following:

Leg kicks

Butt kicks

Jumping jacks

Plie squats

Deep squats

Lunges

Now comes the workout! With this workout you can always adjust it.  There are times that I will do 10 slow reps and 10 fast paced reps or I will do slow reps the whole time.  If you want more of a challenge you can use weights.  I never keep doing the same workout so I do not hit a plateau. 

 At the end of the workout make sure you stretch.  Hope you enjoy!

Kids' Corner Fun and Healthy Halloween Treats

Kids’ Corner

Fun and Healthy Halloween Treats

Today's Chefs: Baileejo and KyleeJo

Our family loves Halloween.  It is hands down one of our favorite holidays.  We love to decorate the house, carve pumpkins, and pick out what costumes the kids will be wearing for Halloween.  The only part that I dread is all of the candy!   Between all of the parties, trunk or treats, and trick or treating, the candy seems to be endless.  So, the kids and I have found some fun ways to enjoy Halloween treats without all of the candy.

Apple Bats

  The girls are all about bats this year, so we bought a cookie cutter in the shape of a bat, cut an apple, and decorated them with peanut butter, blueberries, and white chocolate chips.  You can see that they added toothpicks.  For some reason they really liked the toothpicks! 

Witches Broomsticks

Witches Broomsticks are very easy.  All you need is string cheese and pretzels sticks.  I cut the string cheese in thirds then the girls stuck a pretzel stick in the top of the cheese stick.  Lastly, they pulled apart the cheese at the bottom. 

Orange Monsters

For orange monsters, we used clementine oranges, blueberries, peanut butter, raisins, and toothpicks.  They stuck the toothpicks in the oranges and placed blueberries on the toothpicks so they looked like arms and legs.  For the faces they put peanut butter on the oranges and stuck on raisins and white chocolate chips. 

Apple Monsters

 The girls used gala and granny smith apples, peanut butter, chocolate chips, blueberries, raisins, and toothpicks.   I cut the apples and then the girls spread on the peanut butter and used white chocolate chips for teeth.  They added raisins and blueberries for eyes and toothpicks as antennas.  

Worms

Worms are really easy.  Since the girls like purple grapes, we went with purple worms.  They stuck grapes and blueberries on long toothpicks.  With one of the worms, they put peanut butter on the grapes so that they could place white chocolate chips on them. 

Nutrition Facts

Apples: a medium size apple is almost 20% of the daily recommended amount of fiber.

Cheese: Have many nutrients such as calcium, protein, phosphorus, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin B12

Blueberries: new studies are coming out that blueberries can actually improve memory.

Raisins: have a high level of potassium which helps with hypertension.  Meaning they help to lower blood pressure.

Peanut butter: high in healthy fats, protein, and is cholesterol free. 

Where I got some of these fun ideas!

Witches Broomstick: Mom Foodie @http://blommi.com/ 

Apple Monster: Mom foodie @ http://blommi.com/

Worms:  buzzfeed.com

 

Kids' Corner Pizza

Kids’ Corner

Whole Wheat Pizza

 

Today's chefs, Aiden & Baileejo

For this week’s Kids Corner I wanted to let the kids make dinner instead of just making a snack.  So, of course they all wanted to make pizza! I don’t blame them, who doesn’t love pizza?  Now you might be thinking that pizza is not healthy so why are we choosing it for the blog.  Well, I personally feel that having a healthy diet does not mean cutting out things that you love.  You can take any dish and add ingredients to make it healthier.   In order to make our pizza healthier, we chose to make our own whole wheat pizza crust, use organic sauce, with fresh mozzarella cheese.  I also added flax seed because of the omegas!

Now, I will be the first to tell you that I cannot come up with my own recipes and this is why I love Pinterest.  I found this whole wheat pizza crust from http://www.yummyhealthyeasy.com.  I also have it under my Pinterest board under pizza. Here is my Pinterest link https://www.pinterest.com/kelejoe23/.    We loved this recipe and found that it was very easy to make.

Pizza Crust

Serves 1 pizza crust

Ingredients

      1 ¾-2 ¼ cups of whole wheat flour

     1 (1/4-oz) envelope pizza yeast

     1 ½ tsp. sugar

     2/3 cup very warm water (120-130 degrees

     3 Tbsp. olive oil
     2 Tbsp. Flax seed

Instructions

     Preheat oven to 425ºF.

     Combine 1 cup flour, undissolved yeast, sugar, salt and flax seed  in a large bowl. Add water and 3 Tbsp. olive oil. Mix until blended, about 1 minute.

     Gradually add enough remaining flour until a soft ball is formed. Dough will be somewhat sticky.

     Knead dough on a floured surface, adding more flour if needed. About 4 minutes, until smooth and elastic.

     Pat dough to fill out greased pizza pan. Add toppings as desired, bake for approximately 10-15 minutes, depending on amount of toppings. Enjoy!

For the pizza sauce, we just blended some fresh roma tomatoes and mixed it with some organic spaghetti sauce.  I like for my pizza to have lots of sauce and flavor. For me, the sauce is what makes the pizza and I have not yet found a 100% homemade sauce that we all love.  So, if we do not make something from scratch, then we will buy organic so it is not highly processed.  It is our goal for our family to stay away from processed foods as much as we can. 

Pizza Sauce

     Serves for 2 pizzas

     3 Roma tomatoes blended

     2 cups of organic spaghetti sauce

     (Depending on how many pizzas and how much sauce you like, will depend how much ingredients to use)

For toppings we used fresh mozzarella and the kids really wanted pepperoni.  Because pepperoni is a processed meat and has sodium nitrates in it, we do not have it that often and they did not go overboard when adding it to their pizza.  It’s okay to not be perfect all the time.  We go buy 80% of the time we are healthy and the other 20% is to live on the edge! 

We are big Utah Football fans and Baileejo had to make a U out of pepperoni! Go Utes!

Helpful hints:

Like most kids, my children will not eat something if they see something on the food that they do not like.  It is easy to add veggies to any sauce.  I will blend vegetables when my kids are not looking and add them to the sauce.  Then they think they are just eating a plain pepperoni pizza. 

For Dads and moms, add vegies that you love to make it healthier.  If the kids see you eating a pizza loaded with vegies, then eventually they will try it and hopefully love it.

Kids' Corner Peanut Butter Energy Bites

Kids’ Corner

Baileejo, KyleeJo,Aiden, and KaydeeJo

This week’s Kids’ Corner is Peanut Butter Energy Bites.  We found this recipe from the Crunchy Creamy Sweet Dessert Baking Blog.  Here is the link from my Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.com/kelejoe23/ you can find it under the board Kids Corner. 

We loved this snack because it has everything we love, peanut butter coconut, chocolate chips, honey, oats, and flax seed (Mom is the one that loves the flax seed)!  We added crasins to give it more of a fruity taste.  It is also very easy to make.  All you do is combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix.  Than roll the mixture into balls and voila, all done. 

Some fun facts about:

Peanut butter:  Peanut butter is loaded in protein and potassium.  It also contains fiber, healthy fats, magnesium, vitamin E, and antioxidants.  The one thing about peanut butter is to get all natural so you are not eating trans fats.

Coconut: Coconut improves heart health, it is high in dietary fiber, reduces sweet cravings, and is a natural energy booster.

Oats:  Oats are high in fiber, they lower LDL (which is the bad cholesterol), and controls blood pressure.

Honey:  Honey is an anti-inflammatory; it soothes coughs, reduces seasonal allergies, gives a quick boost of energy, and helps with memory.

Flax seed:  Flax seed is high in omega-3 fatty acids, it is an antioxidant and anti- inflammatory, and is great for digestion.

This snack is loaded in protein, fiber, healthy fats, and natural energy! Of  course there is sugar from the coconut, crasins and chocolate chips, but you can go easy with them:)

Who doesn't like to lick the peanut butter off the spoon?!

                            

I think they did an amazing job!