Jessica Zoo

I love life and I can't really get enough of it.. every day is an opportunity to achieve something new end a chance for new experiences. My day to day routine consists of a constant battle between my left and right brain. When the right wins I get tangled in a whirlwind of new ideas and projects, my house ends up looking like it's been hit by a tornado and my to do list triples in length. When the left wins it attempts to beat some sense into me, I turn into a little bit of a general but my drawers end up being fairly neat and my to do list is cut down by half. I love dance, cheerleading, fitness, food, film and generally having a merry good time. 3 words to describe me: restless, curious, determined.

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Funny video of FRIENDS doing the Harlem Shake!!

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Introducing FirePoms™ - Fusing cheerleading and fire show for spectacular performances! Find out more on http://www.cheerobics.net/fire.htm

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VERY BERRY Power Breakfast Shake

Breakfast has always been somewhat of a puzzle for me. I hate drinking milk, the thought of plain oatmeal makes gag, munching on dry cereal is more of a challenge than a meal and eating eggs for breakfast may be a great way to get some protein in first thing but leaves me starved until lunch. Let's not even discuss whey / protein shakes please (big yuk factor for me)..

I've been trying to solve the issue of breakfast with something that is:

Quick

Delicious

Nutritious

Gives slow-release energy 

Low in sugar 

About 350 calories

A natural source of protein

Capable of keeping me full till lunch

I have come up with the Very Berry Breakfast Shake! It's very yummy, and does include those dreaded oats but in a way that makes them taste incredible, not slimy! Yusss

INGREDIENTS:

85 g Total 0%

1 tbsp Smooth Organic Peanut Butter

30 g Rolled Oats

100 ml Skimmed Milk NO FAT

100 g Frozen Berries

50 g Tofu

1 tsp Truvia Sweetener

Blend with a hand blender: the more you whizz the more air it will get and grow in volume!

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"I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 Occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why... I succeed." Michael Jordan

Failure is not the end. Not trying is.

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Why You Get Grouchy On a Diet

Every time, before I start my diet I issue my boyfriend with a word of warning: "I'm going on a diet for the next 4 weeks. I apologize in advance for being a moody b****." It's amazing how your mood really changes after a week of low carbs... no wonder the likes of Victoria Beckham and Naomi Campbell are known for being moody and inflexible..! Thankfully I have a very understanding boyfriend.. the man has the patience of a saint..

I've always blamed it on the frustration of longing for a cookie / pizza / whatever floats your boat, but there are actually chemical reasons why this happens. Unfortunately, I don't think most people on diets are aware of this.. and there is an easy solution to boost your moods does not involve giving in or throwing tantrums. Today I was doing my daily reading of Dr. Amen's Magnificent Mind at Any Age (aka the most insightful and useful book i've read in years) and I got to the chapter on the Anterior Cingulate Gyrus: a very fancy name for the part of the brain that makes you feel settled, relaxed and flexible. Dr Amen in my opinion gives the best and most straightforward explanation of why people get grumpy during a low carb diet such as Atkins or Dukan and I thought it would be selfish for me to keep it to myself..

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Carbohydrates contain high levels of L-trytophan. This star-trek sounding name is actually the amino acid building block for Seratonin, the feel-good hormone that boosts our mood. Low levels Seratonin causes us to be negative, rigid and oppositional. Serotonin only takes 30min or so to kick in, which means why we feel so good after eating our long-awaited cookie, aside from the pleasure of eating it and satisfying our craving. The problem is that stuffing our faces with cookies is hardly a good solution to help our diet.. Even though we should all be able to enjoy the occasional treat, moderation is key and when you're on a diet it's not very helpful. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that you can boost your Seratonin levels naturally by increasing your intake. 1 - Food that is High in  L-trytophan and diet friendly

eggwhites    

spirulina

atlantic cod

raw soybeans

pumpkin seed          

caribou     

sesame seed          

sunflower seed     

pistachio

cashew

turkey     

chicken     

beef     

salmon     

lamb chop     

altlantic perch    

almond

whole egg     

cacao powder

milk     

rolled oats, cooked     

banana

peanut butter (in moderation!)

green peas

2 - Exercise! L-trytphan finds it difficult to enter the brain when the body is at rest, it gets to the brain a lot more quickly when we perform aerobic exercise. 3- Natural Supplements Dr Amen recommends natural supplements such as 5-Hydroxytryptophan, inositol, and St. John's Wort to boost your L-trytphan / Seratonin levels, but please make sure you do more research and / or consult your doctor before taking any supplements! For more detailed explanations about this topic or how to make your brain work better for you, I would strongly suggest reading any of Dr Amen's Books And if you ever cross Naomi Campbell in a restroom, just hand her a cookie and RUN.

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launching Cheerleading Hen Parties by Cheerobics® in collaboration with Zoo Dance. Hen Parties don’t have to involve L plates and bottomless tequila shots. Cheerobics, in collaboration with Zoo Dance, offers a brand new way of celebrating the ultimate girl’s day out in a healthy, fun and memorable way. Find out more on http://www.cheerobics.net/henparties.htm

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Working your abs can be a drag... We have a fun, innovative way of working your sixpack! No pompoms? No problem: you can easily do these exercises without poms too. I will be publishing weekly videos so please subscribe to our Cheerobics® youtube channel for more core exercises, bums, legs, arms, thighs.. you name it! Please join our facebook group and suggest any workout videos you would like to see.

I'd love to hear back if you're finding these exercises effective :-)

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A friend on facebook just posted this photo online - which got me thinking. The same ethical question seems to arise whenever a celebrity leaves 'for the carribean' (as I like to think of it).. The deaths of Steve Jobs and Amy Winehouse lately seem to have had a similar effect.

Regardless of the cause (as one might feel less empathy towards deaths which resulted from a lifestyle choice), death is always a sad incident which makes us reflect.

In this instance, the recurring catchphrase seems to be: "1 person dies and 100 million cry, 1 million die and no one cries". It is a comparable reaction to when we go and see a sad movie and the main character dies, and watch the news after a terrorist attack in the far east, for example. Or when the character in the book you are reading is hit by a terrible illness, as opposed to reading about a SARS outbreak in the papers.

How many of us find ourselves sobbing in the cinema or reading the book? Compared to when watching the news or reading the paper..? Which is quite ridiculous given that the character never existed in the first place. In a way it's a similar comparison to the reaction around Houston's early departure, of course in this case, the victim has lived for real touched many lives who are left in mourning.

But it leaves me thinking: we mourn Whitney because we have learned to 'know' her through the media. Hence, we empathize. We are shown images of destruction, famine and disease of millions, but many of us brush it off: we do not know the people in the images, so what impact does it make on us?

Should people be to blame for the way they feel in regards to deaths of a few 'key' people yet ignore the death of millions? Or are we caught in a whirlwind of glitz and glamour that we cannot escape from, slaves of the media conglomerates which dictate how we should feel ? Is our media there to provide entertainment and distraction, or should it play a more important role in making us more responsible human beings?

Thoughts on a postcard :-)

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Epic Salad Recipe

My all-time favourite lunch salad, and a delicious way of using that leftover roast chicken from the night before!

Cooking time: 5min Difficulty: 1/5 HungerMeter: 3/5 Healtho-meter: 4/5

Ingredients:

A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

2 handfuls of baby leaf spinach

2 slices of light halloumi: grilled then diced

Half a RIPE avocado, diced

2 tbp Pine nuts

150g (handful) of shredded chicken

(2 rashers of uber crispy bacon on naughty days calories not included here )

Equally, if you're really watching it just scrap the halloumi and take 130kcal and some fat of the total :-)

Directions: once you've prepped all the ingredients, just throw it in a big bowl and mix! I love this seasoned with a few tbsp of my all-time favourite zesty salad dressing. Otherwise it's great with just plain olive oil, lemon and salt/ pepper. If you're feeling the urge, then give this a go because it's worth it!

ZESTY SALAD DRESSING RECIPE This makes me enough salad dressing for an entire week, and is really healthy! Also works amazingly well on seared tuna and asparagus, and other combinations. Just add more or less water to make it the right consistency for a sauce, dip or dressing.

Cooking time: 5min Difficulty: 1/5 HungerMeter: depends what you put it on! Healtho-meter: 3.5/5

 Ingredients:

1 cup fresh basil

1/4 cup olive oil

Juice of half a lemon 2 tbsp water

2 tbsp pine nuts or pistachios

Salt & pepper to taste

Directions: just stick it all in a bowl and blitz it  with your blender!

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To Blog or Not to Blog?

Ok - I've been nagged and nagged that I should be blogging.... I opened up a Tumblr account a few months ago after giving in but not given it much love since then. To be honest I can't quite think what could be that interesting for me to say on a regular basis, but it can't kill to give it a go. Worse comes to worse it will be one more way for my mum to keep an eye on me from across the border (hello maman!) and one more reason to procrastinate and not do my admin. Genius.

Anyway for this month, the blog actually has a purpose. As a few people may know, I'm in Dubai for the whole month of February to spend some time with my man, who lives out there temporarily. It's also a month for new goals of improvement:

1) Swap the pompoms for golf clubs. The man is a pro so I can't be left behind and dragged aimlessly from golf course to golf course. I will be swapping the pom shaking for a lot of putting and chipping action. Unfortunately it doesn't sound as sexual..

2) Blitz the shape. The 30s are looming close and I figured I have a better chance now to settle to a size 8 than later. Plus I do own a fitness business so I should be setting the example, dammit!! So I'll be doing much BTS.. BodyAttack, here I come!

3) I'll be cooking! Taking a few tips from How to Cook like Heston and combining it from the tips by Kat Millar and SixPackchick - i'll start to create and collect my own healthy recipes and share them with you all.

4) Re-earn how to be a girl. 3 years running a business and left to my own devices have left me to forget how to apply makeup, the point of exfoliation and what to do with cuticles. I feel a bit sorry for Le Boyfriend...

5) The right brain has been straight jacketed (even though it does suffer from occasional bursts of creative tourrette) and the left has been left in charge to get my life sorted and the admin up to date. That, I promise, I won't bore you with.

Right, so here I go off to my golf playing, healthy cooking, bodyblitzing, polish-applying saturday... bye for now!

P.S. Please if you do wish to offer some form of encouragement for this blogging thing, feel free to follow and comment of facebook. Even if it's just you mum.

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Cheerobics® DVD Launch Party at Amika! The Cheerobics® DVD is finally OUT on Amazon... Partying in style to celebrate, with the lovely Zoo Fever Cheerleaders

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Cheerobics® DVD shoot in Esporta in Guilford

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After many of work, the Cheerobics® DVD Home experience is finally out!! With a massive thanks to Ian Gibbons, Rachel Berenson Perkins and Zoo Fever Cheerleaders, and everyone else that has been involved in the production process. We're now looking forward to bring the joy of Cheerobics® in the comfort of your own home!

2 DVDs, your own pair of professional pompoms and an amazing selection of high energy music hits such as: 'Party Rock Anthem', 'On The Floor', 'Fireworks', 'Edge of Glory', 'Save The World'. Check out the trailer on the website: http://www.cheerobics.net/dvd.htm

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A sneak preview of the Cheerobics® DVD Home Experience..!

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Yummy healthy dessert I made with my little sis: Skinny Chocolate Berries Total 0%, Cocoa powder, vanilla essence, stevia, strawberries and raspberries. Tot cal per serving: 147 Fat: 14% Carb: 35% Protein: 44% If she loved it, so will you!

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