Week 1, Day 3

I honestly believe the beginning of weight loss journey is the hardest.  You have no progress to motivate you.  The food changes are hard - eating veggies vs. eating Doritos, I know what I WANT to eat, but I also know what I SHOULD eat.  You are hungry more often and think you need more to eat.  You don't, you just think you do.  Luckily, there's a small window of inspiration.  The days when you are still excited about your life change and hopefully that window lasts long enough for you to see the positive changes so you can keep on keepin' on.  I'm in that window right now.  And that's why I took a picture of my lunch yesterday.

Main Event: Ranch Chicken Sandwich (leftover chicken, whole wheat Bagel Thin, 1 tbsp Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, 1 slice reduced fat Sargento Provolone cheese)

Sides: Banana, handful of Sugar Snap Peas, Peach Harvest light Yoplain yogurt

Total Weight Watchers (WW) PointsPlus (PP): 13

Isn't it just fun to see your food laid out in front of you and KNOW you made healthy choices?  Yay!  Read on to learn more about my featured protein and how I made it THREE ways.  No boring repeats here!

I made Ranch Chicken two nights before and had leftovers (recipe here).  BTW, I made the following changes to the recipe...I substituted Brummel & Brown's margarine for the butter (using 3 tbsp).  I used less Parmesan cheese and subbed the reduced fat version (used about 1/2 cup).  I used an entire bag of frozen chicken breasts, which ended up making about 7 servings (one breast per serving).  I rubbed the chicken with more spices before dipping/coating.  I love spices because they add flavor without the fat.  I used the Coriander Herb blend from Velata and your standard garlic powder (and S&P).

This chicken was awesome and I'd highly recommend it.  The first night we ate it as the main dish with mashed cauliflower*** and mixed veggies as sides.  Mashed cauliflower is an AMAZING alternative to mashed potatoes.  They pass the appearance test as Dave didn't even realize it was cauliflower by looking at it on his plate.  Ha, ha - got ya! And they taste pretty darn good too. 

Day 2, I cut up a breast and 1/2 and put it on a super veggie-fied salad (peppers, tomatoes, snap peas, cucumber, carrots).  I added reduced fat feta crumbles and a low fat Italian dressing.  I have a love/hate relationship with salads.  They're delicious and I love the nutrition I get, but they're one of those foods that fill me up for about 2 hours and then I'm hungry again.  Luckily, the massive salad (17 PP) kept me full through dinner time.  I know, 17 PointsPlus sounds like a lot for a salad.  I'm an aggressive WW tracker.  I try hard to input my recipes so that I get an accurate points value.  It's kind of annoying that if you entered all the veggies as separate items, they'd come up with 0 points, but as a recipe end up being 4-5 points.  However, I feel the higher number is more accurate so I go with it - that number is based off the combined nutritional stats and in the WW info, you'll see they find it more accurate too.  

Anyway, just goes to show you that making one healthy protein can last you several days and you don't have to keep eating it the same way either.  Thanks for visiting!

***Sidebar: Have you heard of Hungry Girl?  If not, check out her website and buy her cookbooks.  Her recipes are delicious and, for the most part, pretty easy to make.  The only ones I can't get on board with include the Tofu Shirataki noodles.  I tried them.  Too weird of texture.