Gold's Gym Challenge Week 1

I recently signed up for the Gold's Gym Challenge. It's a 12-week competition to lose weight and body fat, and there are big cash prizes at stake! Before I started this challenge, I had lost 35 lbs on my own and with only two training sessions a month. When I started on Thursday, January 12th, I had 80 lbs to lose. Today, 6 days later, I have already lost 4 lbs!

So, to keep this weight loss going, I am going to have to go to the gym twice a day and eat healthy meals. I figured I should share my progress and recipes with others who are interested in leading healthier lives.

I usually follow a moderate carb diet. I typically keep my carb intake between 30 and 50 grams of carbs. My meals usually consist of mostly protein (especially chicken) with sides of veggies or a salad. Last night, I made shiitake soy ginger chicken and stir fry. It was pretty damn easy. Here are the ingredients:

- 8-10 boneless, skinless chicken breast or thighs
- 2-4 bell peppers, sliced (I used one of each color-red, orange, yellow, and green)
- 2 large yellow or white onions, sliced
- 8-10 mushrooms, sliced
- Asian marinade (I used shiitake soy ginger sauce)
- Soy sauce

I put 8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (breasts work just as well, but my family prefers dark meat) in a casserole dish and covered it with Annie Chun's Shiitake Soy Ginger sauce from Sprouts or on Annie Chun's website. I used enough to come about halfway up the chicken and kept turning it to get both sides evenly covered.

 

 

 

 

 

Delicious Sauce!

While I let the chicken marinate for about an hour, I sliced all the veggies with my awesome new food processor. What would have taken me half an hour only took me a minute! I highly suggest getting a food processor! It's my new favorite appliance!

I set aside the veggies and started on the chicken. In a deep saucepan, I arranged the chicken and all of the marinade. It takes longer to cook it in the liquid than to just grill it after being marinated, but this way makes for really moist chicken! After all the chicken was cooked, I kept the sauce on the heat to reduce it even further to be a thicker, more delicious sauce.

This picture is making me hungry again! YUMMY!

For the vegetables, I sauteed the onions in a wee bit of olive oil from my Misto Olive Oil Sprayer. I love how I don't use as much oil when I use this awesome invention! Then I poured in some soy sauce. Probably a couple tablespoons. When the onions were getting soft, I added in the mountain of peppers and mushrooms. Then I added a bit of the reduced chicken marinade to the veggies and cooked them until they looked like this:

So delicious!

I plated the chicken on top of a pile of stir fry, but I totally forgot to take a picture because I was STARVING! Here's a pic of the same thing (I made this last week at the cabin for my bithday) with a big helping of whole wheat couscous on the side. Couscous has about 1/2 the carbs as the same amount of rice. It's my go-to when I'm craving rice, but I don't want to sabotage my diet too badly.

The BF and I LOVED this easy meal!

When I entered this meal (without the couscous) into my favorite weight-loss app "LoseIt!", it was under 300 calories and had about 20 grams of carbs. The carbs in the ginger sauce and veggies really added up, but it's definitely still in my carb range and definitely in my calorie range!

So, that's my first official blog post! I definitely want to use this as a place to share my yummy, healthy meals and my weight-loss progress! Now, I'm off to the gym in a bit! Gotta work my tummy off!