Guest Post: These Snacks are the Bomb!

Since it's been a while, I figured I owed you guys (and Tara!) a good post.  Thank you, Tara, for writing a guest post!  At A Daily Dose of Fit, Tara blogs about her life as a personal trainer and healthy approach to taking care of herself through a good diet and exercise.  I enjoy seeing Tara's posts pop up in my inbox each morning: they inspire me to stay positive, love my body, and eat well.  Go check out her blog and learn something new and fun about fitness everyday.


Enjoy her recipe - I can't wait to make it myself!  Healthy, yummy, easy snacks - sign me up :)


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Hello, Jammers! Tara here from A DAILY DOSE OF FIT. Lauren wrote a post for me a few weeks ago (edit: over a month ago!  I'm a bad blogger friend), and I am thrilled to provide one in return. She requested a healthy recipe—how could I ever pick just one? It was a daunting task, but one that I completed. What will soon follow is a recipe that I cannot take credit for, but have since made my own with a little experimentation. And I do believe you’ll find it easy to do the same. But first, let’s talk about the relationship between fitness and food.

As a certified personal trainer, I am constantly reminding my clients that their lives in and out of the gym coincide. What you do on the fitness floor is directly affected by your actions at the refrigerator door and vice versa. Success in one area cannot be achieved without the same in the other. So if you’re trying to lose weight, tone up, get healthy—it’s time to take stock of your actions. And your groceries.

Particularly your snacks.

Which brings me to my healthy recipe of choice. It’s all too easy for us to nosh on a “power” bar or “low-fat” granola bar, but what these bars boil down to is, well…not always the healthiest of ingredients. But, they are convenient. And tasty. Somewhat expensive, too. Which is why I believe that homemade snacks are wonderful. Quite often, they go much further than their store-bought counterparts. Not only in terms of the price-per-unit, but in nutrition aspects, too. I mean, we all know that healthy snacks do wonders for the body, especially before a good workout. And that’s when I like to pop the following:

As I said before, the original recipe is not mine to claim. That distinction goes to Whole Foods, whose website is peppered with great-tasting snacks, meals and more. Their version of the above is called a Chocolate Earth Ball. I call mine Amazing Berry Bombs. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

½ cup all-natural peanut butter

2 tbsp and 2 tsp of honey

1 tsp Kidz Wild Berry SuperFood

¼ cup dried berries

1/3 cup old fashioned oats, heaping

¼ cup almonds, chopped

2 tbsp Chia seeds

Directions

Mix up the peanut butter and honey, then add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until completely combined. Chill for an hour in the refrigerator, then form into bombs the size of a golf ball. Eat one, then place the rest on a plate and cover it with plastic wrap. You’ll want to keep them in the ‘fridge so they don’t melt. (Makes 12-15 bombs.)

So easy, right? Is your mind already spinning with a list of potential ingredients? Mine always does when I make these, which is why I have another version to share with you.

Ingredients

½ cup almond butter

2 tbsp and 2 tsp honey

1 tsp cocoa powder

¼ cup cashews, chopped

1/3 cup old fashioned oats, heaping

¼ cup chocolate covered pomegranate seeds

2 tbsp flaxseeds, ground

Directions

The same!

I really do believe you can’t go wrong, and you’ll ultimately love what these healthy bombs can do for you during snack time. (Or on top of a bowl of oats. Yes, I’ve been known to go there.)

Now go, give the above a try or discover your own version. Be sure to let me know what you come up with: dailydose (dot) notes (at) gmail (dot) com. And be sure to visit me at A DAILY DOSE OF FIT! Until then…