A couple of weeks ago I was sent a pre release tub of Good Hemp Chocolate Fit Shake protein powder sweetened with stevia to try out. Stevia, which is a naturally derived calorie free sweetener has only recently been approved for use in the UK and Good Hemp have added this natural sweetener to their already wonderful Chocolate Gym Shake.

I’m a massive fan of Good Hemp’s products and the Chocolate Gym Shake is definitely my favourite. Considering it is made with hemp it really does taste delicious! Each scoop is 145 calories and contains 17g of protein. Its also fairly affordable which is great for a minimally processed vegan protein powder. A 1kg tub costs £29.99 (currently on offer for £26.99)

I love this product because its vegan, minimally processed and tastes great! I’d already been using the previously sweetened version of Chocolate Gym Shake – I’d even just bought myself another tub! The new formula tastes just as delicious and perhaps a touch sweeter and more chocolately, it kind of reminds me of a more milk chocolate taste.

In fact its the only hemp based protein powder I’ve been happy to drink straight up just blended with water. Of course I’ve regularly been adding it to my green smoothies post strength workout to help with muscle repair:

I’ve also been enjoying on its own as a smoothie in a bowl:

My current favourite way to use it is to make chocolate protein pancakes!

Chocolate hemp protein pancakes (serves 1, vegan)

• 1/4 cup of Good Hemp Chocolate Gym Shake
• 1/4 cup of spelt flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 3/4 cup of non dairy milk

Combine the dry ingredients then add the milk and stir well. Heat a frying pan over a medium high heat, add a touch of oil and pour out the batter to form a medium sized pancake. Once bubbles start to appear on the surface flip and cook the other side. Keep cooked pancakes warm under the grill while you use the rest of the batter. Serve with your choice of fruit and sauce / syrup.

These taste wonderful and because the protein powder is already sweet they don’t need any further sweetener added. Yum!

GIVEAWAY and Special Offer

The lovely people at Good Hemp Nutrition are offering 5 lucky readers the chance to win a tub of Chocolate Gym Shake!

To enter (each of these counts as a single entry – please leave a separate comment for each one):

• Leave a comment to this post with how you would use the Chocolate Gym Shake if you won 
• ‘Like’ my Facebook page and leave a comment below stating that you have done so
• Follow me via Google Friend Connect (link under the ‘follow me’ section on the right) or follow me on Blog Lovin or Twitter and leave a comment below stating that you have done so
• Tweet about this giveaway: ‘check out @keephealthstyle GIVEAWAY’
• Sign up to receive blog updates via email using the link to the right and leave a comment below stating that you have done so 
• Post about this giveaway with a link back to this post on your blog and leave a comment below stating that you have done so

In addition to the GIVEAWAY, Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish readers can get an exclusive 25% off the Chocolate Gym Shake by using code GOODL1 which I think is a fantastic saving!

Giveaway open to UK residents only (sorry international friends!) and closes at 12am GMT Friday 16th March 2012 , good luck!

A couple of months ago I was sent the following Good Hemp Protein products to review:

I was sent the Strawberry Fit Shake and the Hemp Natural powders.

I was really interested in sampling these products, especially as I was already a huge fan of Good Hemp milk and hemp oil which I absolutely love. However, my experience of hemp protein powders in the past did make me a little nervous about how these would taste!

Why hemp?

• High source of Protein with 47% Protein
• Contains all 20 Amino Acids
• Contains all 10 Essential Amino Acids
• Naturally Rich in Omega 3 (with SDA)
• Good Fibre Content
• Free from Gluten, Dairy, Lactose & Soya, GMO, Hexane
• Free from Pesticides and Herbicides, Additives and Preservatives
• 100% Plant Based Protein

For someone who prefers a vegan, whole food diet hemp can be a perfect source of additional protein and other nutrients. However there is one stumbling block: the taste!

Strawberry FIT Shake

The strawberry fit shake has been specifically formulated to aid weight loss, sculpting and well being. Ingredients are hemp protein, xylitol, natural strawberry flavouring, xanthan gum and green tea, so a pretty clean and fairly unprocessed list which gets the thumbs up from me. A scoop is just 110 calories and provides 10g of protein, so not as much as a lot of other protein supplements, however the higher protein ones tend to be a lot more processed and / or expensive. A 500g tub of Strawberry FIT Shake costs £16.99.

I have to say I love this product! I was amazed that hemp protein could taste so good! The strawberry flavour is quite mild and not as artificial tasting as some other strawberry supplements I’ve tried. I have preferred to consume this as part of my regular green smoothies so obviously the taste is combined with fruit etc but to be able to give this an accurate review I tried mixing it alone with some soy milk and it still tasted pretty good and created quite a creamy smoothie. To really enjoy the flavour of this I created this lovely little recipe:

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Hemp Smoothie (vegan, serves 1)

• 1 scoop of Good Hemp Strawberry Fit Shake
• 1 cup of ice
• 1 cup of non dairy milk
• 1 tbsp of agave syrup or sweetener of choice
• 2 cups of fresh strawberries
• 1 tbsp of cacao nibs or 1 tbsp of cocoa powder

Combine all ingredients in a blender until smooth. Serve in a glass or ice cream style in a bowl topped with more strawberries and cacao nibs (or chocolate chips for a more decadent version)

This was delicious!

As this tastes ok mixed with milk (although the tub says mix with water, I didn’t have the guts to try it straight up!) you could easily use this as a quick post workout recovery drink or if your seeking to lose weight, as a protein rich snack any time of day. I personally loved it in a strawberry and peanut butter green smoothie for breakfast.

Hemp Protein Powder Natural

This product is pure 100% hemp protein with no added sweeteners or flavours. Obviously this means that this has a very distinct ‘grassy’ taste. However what it lacks in taste it makes up for in additional protein: unlike the Strawberry FIT Shake which has 10g of protein per serving this has 14.1g and is still only 110 calories. I certainly didn’t attempt to try this straight up, but mixed in fruity smoothies I found it gave a neutral creaminess. A 500g tub costs £10.99

I was very impressed with both products. They both have a fantastic ingredients list, are well priced and taste good when used in the right way! All the hemp is grown here in the UK and cold pressed and milled making these products locally grown and raw, even more thumbs up from me!

I will definitely be looking to purchase these products again, I loved the strawberry for adding another flavour option to my protein supplement selection and the hemp is great for when you feel you want extra protein but a neutral flavour. As the strawberry flavour was so good I’d be highly tempted to try some of Good Hemp’s other products such as the more protein rich Chocolate and Strawberry GYM Shake.

Have you tried hemp protein powder before? If so what did you think?

I was recently sent a couple of products to try and review for the blog, New Zealand Honey Co Honey Dew Honey and Good Hemp Mild and Light Oil.
I’ve been using Good Hemp Original Hemp Oil for a few months (purchased myself) so was looking forward to trying the Mild and Light version of my favourite oil.


I don’t like to use the original oil in cooked recipes as it is a cold pressed oil and heating it to high temperatures may cause the oil to change its molecular structure and not be as healthy (although the Good Hemp website advises using it for roast potatoes!) However I thought as the Mild and Light has a more neutral flavour it could be good in baking. The Good Hemp Oil really is an amazing product, I love both versions nutty flavour and only 1 tbsp contains 94% of the recommended daily intake of Omega 3! My favourite way to enjoy it has been drizzled over raw kale with lemon juice and using it to massage and wilt the kale, its really delicious!
I was also looking forward to trying out the honey. I am a ‘mostly’ vegan – so I do enjoy honey and bee pollen. I received the Beech Forest Honey Dew Honey in a convenient squeezy bottle. One of the great things about this honey, as well as its delicious taste, is that it contains pre biotic bacteria which can help support digestive health. This particular version has one of the highest antioxidant and pre- biotic rating of any honey world wide! I’ve been loving it on top of peanut butter spread rice cakes and drizzled over fresh figs:


I’d been using the honey and hemp oil together in my favourite salad – lemon and hemp massaged kale with figs, walnuts, honey and sea salt:


I loved the combo of the nuttiness and sweetness so I thought I might try and combine both ingredients in a couple of recipes!

Honey and Hemp Muffins (makes 12, vegetarian)

• 1 cup quinoa flakes (should also work with Scottish oats)
• 1/2 cup spelt flour (or flour of choice)
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3 tbsp ground flax + 1/3 cup warm water
• 4 tbsp Good Hemp Mild and Light Hemp Oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce (I used a pot of organic Apple and Mango baby food)
• 1/2 cup New Zealand Honey
• 3 ripe bananas, well mashed

Pre heat the oven to 180c. Begin by mixing the quinoa flakes, flour, baking soda and cinnamon in a large bowl. Prepare the flax egg by combining the ground flax and water and setting aside to gel. In a separate bowl combine the oil, honey, agave syrup and the bananas. Add the wet mixture to the dry and add the flax egg then mix well. Spoon into muffin cases filling 2/3rds full and bake for 15 – 20 minutes until the muffins are a deep golden brown and a knife comes out with just a few crumbs on. Remove from pan and allow to cool. Enjoy!


Considering these are exceptionally healthy and contain no refined sugar they taste really good! They are moist and bananary with a mild sweet honey taste. They even passed the James taste test! Of course you can easily make these muffins vegan by replacing the honey with agave or maple syrup. You could also use coconut oil or another oil in place of the hemp if needed.
I also decided to make another recipe – why not when you have all your bowls and measuring cups out!

Honey and Hemp Granola (makes about 2 cups)

• 1 cup of oats (I used Scottish but rolled oats would probably be best)
• 1/4 cup whole almonds roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup flaked almonds
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
• 1/3 cup desiccated coconut
• 1 tbsp of Good Hemp Mild and Light Hemp Oil
• 3 tbsp of New Zealand Co Honey
• 3 tbsp of shelled hemp seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 180c. Combine all the ingredients except for the hemp seeds in a large bowl to form a slightly sticky mix. Spread mixture on to a baking sheet or baking tray and bake for 20 – 30 minutes stirring every 10 minutes or so to prevent burning. The granola should be a lovely golden colour. Remove from oven and allow to cool then stir in the shelled hemp seeds if using. Store in a airtight container.


Its been a while since I made some regular granola (I’ve made raw granola a few times recently) and I’d forgotten how easy it is! This is really good, crunchy and crumbly with a mild sweetness. The hemp seeds enhance the nuttiness of the almonds too. Again, you can easily replace the honey with another liquid sweetener to make this vegan and use a different oil than hemp if required.
New Zealand Honey Co retails at £9.99 *edited - this is for a jar, a bottle is just £3.49* and a 250ml bottle of Good Hemp Mild and Light retails at £4.49. As with all good quality health food products, these aren’t cheap. Baring this in mind its probably better to use the honey ‘raw’ rather than in baking to reap most of its health benefits if your on a budget.
I would definitely purchase both of these products again as I think they are really versatile. Both products are excellent sources of nutrition and taste really good too.
Have you tried either of these products? What did you think? Have you tried using any unusual ingredients together in baking?

I think I’ve had a parcel arrive every day this week, when its not something for me its a gift I’ve ordered for someone else which makes me even more happy!

First up I received my Secret Santa gift from the lovely Nada:

This wasn’t so secret as obviously I had to let her know who she was buying for! I received some gorgeous earrings, a beautiful festive mug and a pack of the most delicious sounding Hotel Chocolat hazelnut truffles.

I also received another Secret Santa gift, when I first mentioned doing Secret Santa only one none blogger commented that they wanted to take part, the lovely Bronagh, who I have also corresponded with via email for some time. I thought it would be fun to organise a little private not so Secret Santa gift swap with her:

She clearly knows me so well! I received some vanilla coffee, some Hotel Chocolat Reindeer a pretty hanging photo frame and the most lovely candied ginger flavour Body Shop lip balm.

It hasn’t stopped there, yesterday I was so excited I screamed a little when I received a package from Jemma:

A few months ago I had signed up to take part in Jemma’s international food swap and unfortunately my partner didn’t hold up her end of the deal so I received nothing in return. Jemma is so kind and thoughtful that she got me some goodies on her trip to the states including blueberry and lavender dark chocolate, nut butter sachets, mini luna bars, flavoured coffees and my absolute fave choc covered sunflower seeds from Trader Joes. What a star she is, thank you so much Jemma :-)

Earlier in the week I also received a package from Amy’s Kitchen with a selection of their soups to try out for review:

I’ve heard of the Amy’s brand from the states so its exciting that they are launching here. I’m really looking forward to tasting some of these!

So not a bad post week! James also helped me out sourcing the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s back catalogue of CD’s so I have that to look forward to arriving! There’s just something lovely about this time of year and all the parcels being sent and received :-)

Before I go – why not check out Good Hemp’s competition on their Facebook page? Submit a recipe that uses a Good Hemp product and the recipe that gets the most likes will win a Good Hemp hamper worth £100 and a Tefal breakfast set! Even if you don’t have a recipe to submit why not check it out for recipe inspiration and give my honey and hemp granola and honey and hemp muffins recipes a ‘like’ while your at it ;-)

Do you like receiving parcels? What’s the nicest thing you’ve had in the post recently?

The weekend has finally arrived! Got much planned? I can’t wait to have a good catch up with my best friends, as well as other things like watching Wimbledon!

Today I started with a new plan at the gym. I’ve changed my interval training up a bit as it had been a couple of months since I last made any changes to my plan and I like to keep challenging myself! I did:

• 10 minutes: cross trainer, 1 minute fast, low resistance, 1 minute slow, high resistance, 30 sec low resistance, going ‘backwards’.
• 10 minutes: step machine, 1 minute low resistance, 1 minute fast high resistance.
• 10 minutes: bike, 30 sec low resistance seated sprint, 30 sec medium resistance seated, 30 sec high resistance standing jog.

I also changed up my abs and core to this routine:

• Push ups to failure – I managed 4 ;-)
• Plank – 2 minutes
• Superman x 20
• Full sit up x 20
• Bicycle crunches x 20
• Side planks – 1 minute each side
• Reverse crunches x 20
• Full sit up x 20
• Bicycle crunches x 20
• Mountain climbers x 20

This was a great workout all done in 45 minutes! Thursday’s workouts included a quick Detox Yoga podcast before work and a 3,2,1 workout at the gym after work.

I’ve also had some delicious eats, especially these breakfasts:

Gooseberry and Clemintine compote (I just cooked some gooseberries and 2 chopped clemintines in a small pan with a splash of water and some agave syrup) with two small chopped apples, Rude Health apple and cinnamon granola and some plain soy yoghurt.

This morning I had some overnight oats in the fridge (made using the wonderful Katie’s method plus chia seeds) which I topped with a punnet of raspberries, soy yoghurt, cashew butter sauce and a little granola:

Lovely stuff, the over night oats were so creamy!

Lunches these last two days have been big salad bowls filled with my Confetti Quinoa Salad made with sugar snaps instead of the red cabbage and hemp oil instead of the olive oil. I had it on top of a huge pile of greens:

I love the sweet / sharpness from the dried apricots and the apple cider vinegar.

I also got to try out one of my Pure Bars from NYC as a pre workout snack:

This was the Cherry Cashew flavour, it was very tasty but not as full of cherry flavour as I was expecting. I did like that it has big chunks of nuts and dried fruit within the bar though.

This evenings dinner was made with some lovely fresh produce from my organic veg box. I just wanted to make something quick and easy so I went with a huge veggie packed stir fry:

This included broccoli, spring greens, mushroom, radish, carrot, sugar snaps, green onion and soya beans with some sweet ginger sesame sauce (ginger, sweet chilli sauce, shoyu and toasted sesame oil). This was wonderful, I haven’t had a big stir fry like this in ages!

Last nights post workout dessert was a big wonderful bowl of protein ice cream made with 2 scoops of peanut butter swirl spiru-tein, water, ice and the usual gums topped with some peanut flour sauce and cacao nibs:

I’ve just ordered another big tub of this stuff from iHerb, I love it!

Tonight I decided to have some of this The Raw Chocolate Company Pitch Dark Chocolate:

I just love this chocolate, such a wonderful deep rich flavour.

I was also over the moon today when I received these tubs of Hemp Protein Powder to try out:

These are from the Good Hemp Company. I have the plain hemp and the Strawberry Fit Shake to try. I’m especially looking forward to seeing what the strawberry is like!

How often do you change up your exercise routine?

Hope you all have and awesome weekend and don’t forget to check out my Giveaway!

Well what a funny month August has been! For the first time in a while I can’t say that this month has been totally awesome, its definitely been a mixed bag of good and bad stuff!

Source

However, I am choosing NOT to focus on the negative and instead try and find the ‘silver lining’ of my clouds!

• Being injured – so yes, being injured totally sucks and has pretty much screwed up my running training. However I’m confident I’ll still be able to do the Great North Run this month and being injured has just reminded me that I need to take more care with stretching and icing after runs.
• The bed breaking – this was a right pain in the arse – literally! Especially as we had to spend a week sleeping on the floor, but it has now given me the opportunity to re decorate which is one of my favourite things. I’ll be sharing with you the finished room very soon :-)
• Having a couple of minor ‘over eating’ episodes – having these has really made me look at how I’m fuelling myself and has even made me completely re assess what even constitutes ‘over eating’. I’m actually happier that I am listening to by body and eating when I have genuine hunger.

On the completely positive side, this month has included:

My Birthday!

Birthday cake green smoothie

Lots of dehydrator experimenting:

My cousins Hen Party:

Me and my gorgeous Mam!

An amazing bloggers meet up:

My weight has also remained staple this month despite a couple of added indulgences!

Source

I’m really happy we are now in September, I love the autumn and have already enjoyed getting my autumn wardrobe together!

  source 1,2,3

For me, autumn is the time of cosy warm jumpers and boots, beautiful colours as the trees turn, squash, pumpkin, Halloween and Bonfire night and I can not wait!

Goals for September

• I’m going to go all out and say my big goal is to complete the Great North Run – preferably in under two hours! I need you all to send me lots of positive and healing thoughts!
• Get back on track with my Diet and Nutrition course – it has fallen by the way side again!
• Get a new training plan developed post Great North Run that includes a bit more strength training
• Keep on fuelling myself with tasty healthy foods!
• Stick to my grocery budget and use up some of the stuff I have hoarded in the cupboards

September Sponsors

I am so excited about my sponsors this month! First up the lovely Sarah and Cat are continuing to sponsor this month – make sure you check out their blogs as they are both awesome!

I’d also like to welcome two new bloggers:

Liz blogs over at I <3 Vegetables – I love her funny writing and great veggie filled recipes! Laura blogs over at Box, Run, Eat – I’ve been reading Laura’s blog for well over a year – check it out, especially for some hard core boxing inspired workouts!

Current sponsors and partners Viva Pure, Goodness Direct and iHerb are continuing to work with me and I would like to welcome my new sponsor: Good Hemp!

I reviewed some Good Hemp products and I am a genuine fan – I love that they use British grown hemp and that the majority of their products are vegan.

If your interested in sponsoring Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish check out my sponsorship info or drop me an email: laura@keepinghealthygettingstylish.com

Don’t forget, I can also design you a tailor made blog button!

This month I will be hosting not 1 but 3 fantastic giveaways that I’m sure you will all be excited about so stay tuned!

Are you a silver lining seeker like me? How was August for you? What are you looking forward to this September? Don’t forget to send those positive healing vibes for my knee!