Tasty Tuesday: Berry Summer Salad

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Enjoy this delicous berry summer salad!

What better way to enjoy fresh summer produce than with a simple, tasty recipe?!

My mouth is actually watering for a delicous, homemade salad like this one. And it’s full of healthy ingredients like spinach, avocados, mushrooms, goat cheese and, of course, berries! Lots of berries!

So what’s so great about these ingredients? Well berries are full of antioxidants, powerful substances that can help protect your cells against free radicals. Goat cheese provides some protein, riboflavin and phosphorus. Avocados are a good source of vitamin C, vitamin K and dietary fibre. Spinach is also an excellent source of vitamin A, calcium, vitamin C and iron!

So what’s not to love about this recipe? Thanks to The Primitive Foodie, we have a delicious Berry Summer Salad! (click for recipe).

 

Bike to Work!

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Spring is here! Hop on your bike and take advantage of it!

Get your daily exercise on your way to work and put the pedal to the metal!

The sun is shining. The weather is sweet. Make you wanna move your dancing feet. Well, Bob Marley had it mostly right. The sun is shining and it is sweet, but right now it makes me want to move my bike pedals!

One of my best friends used to bike to work all the time, rain or shine. Now that’s impressive! But it is equally impressive to make the effort on the sunny days! If there is ever a perfect time to consider commuting by bicycle, spring and summer is the time to do it! It’s National Bike Month in the USA and June is Canada’s National Bike to Work month. To all our Canadian friends, let’s get a pedal up on the trend and to all our American friends, May has just arrived and it’s time to put the pedal to the metal!

Biking is fun and easy way to exercise and get all your muscles working and your heart pumping. It can also be a way to save money on parking, help the environment, and skip the the traffic and hectic roads! If you’ve never biked to work and find the very thought of it daunting, then ease it into your routine. Start going for bike rides and get your muscles used to the movement. Try doing other exercises like lunges, squats and the plank to make your leg and core muscle groups strong.

Increasing your fitness activities can never hurt! Learn about more useful exercises to help you get ready for this beautiful biking weather from Alive Magazine’s Dust Off Your Wheels.

 

Tasty Tuesday: Heirloom Tomato Salsa

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Dive head first into Spring with one of our favourite PGX recipes!

We’ve gone into the PGX Recipe archives and retrieved one of our favourite recipes.

It’s an oldie but a goodie: Heirloom Tomato Salsa. Packed with fresh veggies and a couple sticks of PGX Singles, this salsa makes a light and refreshing snack for any potluck or bbq, in under 30 minutes.

Here’s a quick overview of the ingredients you will need:

  • ? cup lemon juice
  • 1.5 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro (or basil), chopped
  • 2 cups heirloom tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 medium green onion
  • 1/8 tablespoon pink rock or grey sea salt
  • 5g PGX Daily Singles (2 sticks)

Optional Ingredient:

  • 1 tablespoon hot pepper, minced

Find the full recipe and directions here. Enjoy!

Exercises to Bring Out Your Inner Kid!

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Make exercise fun and become a big kid again!

Remember your monkey bar days? Exercise can be that fun, it’s true…

Remember the days when you used cute, colourful plastic plates for your veggies and always had recess to run wild in the playground? I’d lying if I said I didn’t miss them sometimes, especially in the middle of a workout! Back then, working out wasn’t called “working out.” It was just play time in the great outdoors! Now, exercise is all too often a series of boring, mind-numbing repetitions and staring blankly ahead at the next machine in your gym routine!

Well, maybe we can’t completely lose the repetitions but the exercises can be more fun than the average push up! Jay Cardiello of Shape Magazine shares hi top five exercise moves that will have you feeling like a scampering young’un in 5 Exercises to Make You Feel Like a Kid Again!

Remember, fitness can be fun and if the whim hits you, grab a friend, go to the park and frolic like nobody’s watching!

 

To Camp or Not to Camp

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Spring Time Activities: Camping & Hiking

It definitely feels like Spring out there but is it too early to head into the great outdoors?

As we enter into the month of April, Vancouver is experiencing one of its best starts to Spring that its had in several years. While we can only hope that the sun continues to shine on the Lower Mainland, the sunny days open up a whole new realm of activities that many of us put aside last Fall as soon as the clouds (and rain) rolled in.

One of my favourie outdoor activities, that I don’t get to do nearly enough, is camping. I love the chance to spend an entire weekend outdoors and go for walks, hikes and the occasional swim. However, I’m one of those people who is always (and I mean always) cold. So, I’ve been grappling with the question: is it too early to head into the great outdoors for a weekend trip?

I turned down an opportunity to go this past weekend, thinking I’d been freezing throughout the whole trip – I mean, it was still March! But, as the gorgeous Vancouver weekend drew to a close, I found myself feeling as though I’d missed out.

So, I leave the question to you PGX’ers: Is March/April too soon to camp?

 

Fitness Trend: Dancer’s Body Workout

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It’s Friday and we’re talking fitness!

Get that long, lean and scultped look of a dancer’s body with this Friday’s Fitness Trend!

I’ve got good news for you and me! We don’t need to be a professional dancer to look as sculpted, long, lean and toned like one! Today’s Friday Fitness Trend is from the creator of Barre 3 , Sadie Lincoln: the Ballet Boot Camp Challenge. This challenge consists of exercises that will work out all the muscles in your body, incorporating techniqes from yoga, Pilates, light weight workouts, and barre work, and combining them with cardio. What I love most is that you don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home to proceed with this challenge!

This type of dance-inspired exercise routine helps strengthen core muscles, pull in your waist, trim and tone legs and arms, and firm the gluteus maximus (now who doesn’t want that?)! Basically, these exercises emulate the work muscles would do if you were doing pli?s, ballanc?s and arabesques but without the pain of pointe shoes! This workout can also help straighten posture and that alone has its many benefits! It’s the exercise method where “ballet meets yoga and pilates,” to help strengthen and lengthen the body.

So if you always wanted to have the figure of a ballerina but didn’t feel coordinated enough, this might be the workout for you (and me!). It’ll take some work but I know you can do it 😉

Have a fabulous weekend! Dance and get your daily fibre!

 

Join the PGX Health Challenge!

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If you live in Burlington, ON, take the PGX Health Challenge from now until February 15th!

Join Cedar Springs Sports Racquet and Fitness Club and enter the PGX Health Challenge today.

If you are a memeber of Cedar Springs Sports Racquet and Fitness Club in Burlington, Ontario, sign up for the PGX Health Challenge and start achieving your weight loss goals today! Not a member? There’s no better time to join!*

After joing the PGX Health Challenge, points are awarded for working out, taking PGX, losing weight and losing body fat percent. Challenge runs from January 1st to February 15th, 2013.

*You must be a member of Cedar Springs Sports Racquet and Fitness in order to enter the PGX Health Challenge. New memebers are welcome!

UPDATE: PGX Health Challenge extended till February 28th!  Draw for prizes March 2nd!

The Eatery App & PGX

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There’s an app for that! Change your eating habits for the better with help from PGX and The Eatery app.

Empower yourself with the tools you need to achieve your weight loss goals!

Now a days, there’s pretty much an app for everything. Whether it’s for Facebook, Twitter, or that awesome app that tells you the name of the song that’s playing on the radio, smart phones and their applications play a large part in how we socialize and spend our free time. So, why not start using one to help you lose weight!

Allow me to introduce (drum roll, please), The Eatery! Getting started is easy: Just take a picture of your food (don’t forget to sprinkle your PGX on top or into the mix!), rate your meal on how healthy it is, and record how much of your meal you ate. Then invite your friends to follow you for support, encouragement, or to strive for the same goals along side you. As The Eatery says, “You never have to eat alone.” Finally, The Eatery will provide you with feeback and stats on your eating habits, forcing you to see the facts on what you’ve been eating – this, maybe more than anything, will push you to eat healthier.

Why we like The Eatery:

It gives you a sense of community by allowing your friends to follow your progress, and vice versa. You can achieve your goals together, and have a buddy (or multiple!) to support and encourage you on your weight loss journey!

Have you used this app or something similar to help you achieve your weight loss goals? Let us know in the comments below.

 

Eat Like an Olympic Athlete!

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Today’s Thursday Obsession: Eating Like an Olympic Athlete!

The 2012 London Olympics are almost here! Let’s learn to eat like an Olympian!

We’re 14 days away from watching the world’s greatest athletes compete in the summer olympics and I wondered, “What do these incredible people eat to keep themselves in tip top, spit spot shape?!” Luckily for me and anyone else who was wondering, Canadian National Olympic team dietician, Kelly Anne Erdman shared her knowledge on how these and probably all other athletes are keeping healthy to prepare for the games!

Check out the fabulous article from BCLiving.com and learn how to eat and maintaina the healthy lifestyle of an Olympic athlete!

As always PGX’ers, stay healthy!

 

Healthy Pets, Healthy People

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PGX Investigates: The Health Benefits of Pet Ownership

Can owning dog really make a difference to your health? Yes!

You may be surprised to learn that owning a pet is actually connected to better health! There are plenty of reasons why people have pets and now improved health can be one of them!

Studies have shown that people who own pets are less likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and feelings of loneliness. Depending on what kind of animal you keep, having pets can also increase your opportunity to get outdoors, exercise and socialize!

A study conducted in 2007 by Queen’s University Belfast found that dog owners especially are more likely to live a longer life and experience healthy weight maintenance, improved cardiovascular fitness and superior self esteem, as well as reduced blood pressure adn cholesterol!

According to the British Journal of Health Psychology, daily walks with your dog (a great way to get out and exercise) are only part of the equation. Dogs can be great stress “buffers” and have been a great source of companionship to people with injuries or disabilities. Incredibly, dogs have also been able to detect an oncoming seizure!

So even though walking is only a part of the healthy equation of pet ownership, the next time your dog comes to you with the leash in his mouth, lace up those sneakers and go for a walk!

Want to read more about the health benefits of pets? Check out these great articles…

Health Benefits of Pets, CDC

Dog-owners ‘lead healthier lives’ BBC News

Live Like Royalty: The Many Health Benefits of Dogs, Man’s Best Friends, The Atlantic