Who knew that Swiss chard was amazingly awesome and delicious? I didn’t…until we got some from one of those “meal box” services. So I had to cook it, and it turned out to be so good that I’ve made the dish four more times. So without further ado, here’s the recipe. I’ve modified it to have slightly less fat (as I prefer to eat mine in the form of chocolate).
Ingredients:
One bunch Swiss Chard (rainbow or single color)
8 oz of cubed butternut squash (we use the frozen organic stuff from BJs)
Onion or shallot diced
One clove garlic minced
2 oz shredded gruyere cheese
1/2 cup of milk (preferably whole)
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Thyme
Salt and Pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Cut the stems off of the Swiss chard and chop into pieces about the same size as the squash or onion
Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Add the chard stems and onion and a large pinch of salt.
While the stems and onion saute, slice the chard leaves into smaller pieces (I usually go about 1.5 – 2 inch squares)
When the stems and onion has softened, add the garlic, and thyme. Stir until squash begins to soften.
Add the huge pile of chard leaves and more salt. Turn until it wilts (about 2-3 minutes)
Stir in the gruyere and milk. Turn the heat to low and allow to thicken a minute or two.
Taste the sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Transfer the mixture to a small casserole dish and top with panko bread crumbs.
Cook covered for 10 minutes and then uncovered for 5-7 minutes until bread crumbs are brown
Remove from oven and let stand about 5 minutes before serving.
You’re welcome.
I usually eat half the recipe. Macros on this are approximately:
365 calories
16g protein
36g carbs
19g fat
And yes, you just ate half of that enormous bunch of greens. Don’t you feel so healthy? Almost virtuous.
Earlier I mentioned that this came from a food box service. I have tried several of these including HelloFresh, Blue Apron, Sun Basket, and Plated. By far, my favorite one is Plated where this recipe came from, and the top photo is from their recipe card. Apparently there’s no way for me to refer you to them and get credit for it, so this post is free of commercial interest.
Note: I usually make it with a pound and a half of taco shredded chicken for the kids and add extra chicken when I serve it for me. But you could start with more chicken if you like.
Directions:
Sweat onion in 1 Tbsp olive oil (medium heat with a pinch of salt until soft and translucent)
Add garlic and sweat another minute or two (don’t let it burn)
Add green chiles and allow the juice to evaporate a bit before doing the next step, or it will clump.
Add masa and stir until evenly coated
Add tomatoes and then pour in chicken stock and being to a boil
Rip up chiles and toss them in (or cut them with scissors)
Add chicken
Turn down to a simmer for 10 minutes
Add corn, simmer 10 more minutes
Add lime juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Serve with tortilla chips, cheese, sour cream and cilantro (Nonfat Greek Yogurt works pretty well instead of sour cream if you just have to up your protein)
And voila! Or should I say Olé! Chicken Tortilla Soup fit for a king with macros to boot.
To log it in MyFitnessPal,
1. Create a recipe
2. Log all of the ingredients
3. Measure the total volume of soup in cups or mL or whatever you use.
4. Now when you serve it up, just log the number of cups you dish out.
Here is one of my go to recipes for a high protein, low calorie meal. One of the most challenging things that a lot of people just starting on higher protein diets face, is that’s actually quite difficult to eat enough protein. A lot of people end up relying on protein shakes to get enough protein. Others find themselves choking down dry, tasteless chicken breast. When I first started flexible dieting, I was supposed to eat 160g of protein and often found it hard to get enough protein in while enjoying it, until I came up with this solution.
Here’s a recipe that makes a large amount of chicken breast taste amazing and features a large amount of vegetables in an equally satisfying format. For a little while I was eating this every single day. The main reason I stopped is that it takes a while to prep, and personally, I like it fresh—not left over. I still eat this once or twice a week, but I’ve switched to Taco Shredded Chicken for my daily protein intake due to its easier prep.
Recipe Ingredients
Chicken breast (variable amounts; depending on what else I’m eating that day, it’s usually 300 – 450 g raw)
Coconut oil (1 tsp)
Garlic powder to taste
Assorted Vegetables (some common choice for me
Onion
Bell peppers of various colors
Broccoli
Zucchini
Cucumber
Carrots
Celery
Sauces of choice (some fun choices
Teriyaki
Soy Sauce (with or without honey)
Sriracha
Lime juice and lemongrass
Directions
Chop the vegetables and weigh each one (for logging in myfitnesspal).
Cut the chicken into small pieces or strips and season with a small amount of salt
Heat a 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil over medium heat and saute the chicken with as much garlic as you like.
Just before the chicken is completely done, hit it with some sauce.
Put the chicken in a bowl and set aside
Add another 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil to the pan and saute the vegetables.
When the vegetables are still al dente but almost ready, hit them with some sauce.
Return the chicken to the pan and stir.
Plate and eat.
That’s pretty much it. You can eat it as is or serve it over rice if you want to up your carb/calorie count. I usually use about 3/4 cups (cooked) of jasmine rice. If you want to kick the flavor up a notch, add the rice to veggies.
Chicken Stir Fry for the Whole Family
Macronutrients for this meal.
A typical meal of say 400g of chicken, 150g of zucchini, and 100g of carrots (with the coconut oil) is:
560 calories
97g protein
14g carbs
9g fat
The same meal with 3/4 cups of cooked jasmine rice is
710 calories
100g protein
48g carbs
10g fat
That meal will satisfy you for several hours and set you up very nicely to have a whatever you want for dinner and have 300 caloaries left for dessert. (Well, that’s what it does for me anyway.)
What if I need to cook for my whole family?
No problem. You do everything the same except that you need to do some 7th grade math (ratios and proportions). Say that you’re going to cook 800g of chicken for the whole family, and you need to eat 300g of chicken. That gives you a ratio of 300:800 or 3:8. You just apply that ratio to each ingredient to log it in myfitnesspal. To figure out your total serving, when the whole dish is done, weigh the entire amount of food, and apply the same ratio to the total weight.
If that explanation was too difficult, I’ve created a spreadsheet that you can just fill out. Fill in the total weight for each ingredient, the total weight, and your desired serving of chicken (raw), and it will automagically calculate everything for you.
If you listen to any Hollywood “body transformation” stories, one common theme you’ll hear is people being tired of eating “boiled chicken breast”. The thing about chicken breast is that it’s very low fat and has no carbs in it, so it’s almost all protein. The problem is that it doesn’t have much flavor has a tendency to dry out easily. Even if you’re on a relatively “low” protein diet for a fitness person (0.82 – 1g per pound of bodyweight, at 175 pounds, you’re still eating between 150 to 165 grams of protein daily.
That’s a lot of protein, and chicken breast is one of the easiest ways to get that protein, even if it’s not the most fun. This particular recipe makes boiled chicken delicious, moist, and easy to eat. I first learned about it in this particular form Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast, although the basic concept is quite common. Basically you’re making crockpot chicken breast, and then shredding it.
Ingredients
2 – 4 pounds chicken breast (if you use more, you’ll probably need more of the other ingredients)
One jar of salsa (I usually use Trader Joes green tomatillo salsa, but feel free to experiment)
Juice of 1-2 limes (if you want to up the ante, add the zest one of them)
1-8 garlic cloves
Chili powder to taste (I usually do 2 tablespoons; Jack’s original recipe uses “taco seasoning”) (see instructions below for an easier method than making your own chili powder)
Salt and Pepper to taste (I usually don’t use salt here, and add it to whatever I use the chicken with)
Chili powder the easy way
I used to make my own chili powder Altona Brown style. Now I just toss the component’s into the crockpot
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon of smoked paprika.
As a bonus toss in some dried chile’s like Ancho and guajillo. (I do 2 of each)
Optional: cayenne pepper or Chipotle
Instructions:
Turn the crockpot on high.
Dump the jar of salsa, lime juice, garlic cloves, and chili powder into a large crockpot. Stir together.
Optional: Wait about 5-10 minutes until the mixture is hot
Place your chicken breasts in the crockpot, and make sure they are coated with the mixture. One easy way to do this is to put them in upside down, and then flip them over.
Cover with lid (very important; crockpots don’t work right if you forget this step)
Wait 4 hours. Remove Lid.
Remove the chicken from the crockpot and shred with two forks.
Dump the rest of the liquid mixture on top of the chicken and mix until even.
Done. Use as is or refrigerate for future use.
So what are the macros on this thing?
95% of the calories come from the chicken breast, so I completely ignore the calories from the salsa. A jar of Trader Joe’s Salsa Verde has about 110 calories in it, and you’re spreading it out over 3-4 pounds of chicken, but if you really want to track every calorie, knock yourself out. To figure out the calories
Weigh the raw chicken. Let’s say it’s 1560 grams.
Once the chicken is cooked, and you’ve added the liquid back in, weigh it again. Let’s says it’s 1740 grams.
Divide the raw weight by the cooked weight, and you’ll get a decimal. In our case 1560/1740 = .8965 or round it to .9.
WRITE DOWN THAT NUMBER!
Now let’s say you want to use 400 grams of chicken breast for a recipe, just divide 400 by the number in step 3. 400/.9 = 444 grams. That’s how much of our final prepared product you should weight out to get 400 grams.
Log 400 grams of raw chicken breast in MyFitnessPal (or whatever you use.)
So how do I use this stuff?
Use it like chicken. Eat it. But in case you’re imagination deprived, here’s a couple quick meals:
Shredded Chicken Bowl
This kind of mimics the main ingredients of a Chipotle Burrito bowl (minus the sour cream and corn). It has a huge amount of protein in it, and when you see this in the bowl, you’re going to think, “there’s no way I’m going to finish all that.” It’s a great first meal, because it’s high in protein with moderate carbs, and relatively low fat. It’ll provide a large proportion of your daily protein intake while leaving you tons of calories for the rest of your day. To reduce the carbs and calories you can leave out either the rice or the tortillas. If you want to up the fat a bit, use tortilla chips instead of tortillas.
Calories and Macros:
Calories: 937
Protein: 114 grams
Carbohydrates 82 grams
Fat 15 grams
Ingredients:
400 grams of chicken breast (raw weight using the calculation technique above)
3/4 cup of cooked rice
1/2 cup of canned black beans
One ounce of sharp cheddar cheese
3 small corn tortillas
Mix the first four ingredients together. Salt and pepper to taste. Eat along with the tortillas.
Shredded Chicken Omelet
This doesn’t really look like an omelet or taste like one, but it has egg in it, so…whatever. This is kind of the opposite of the recipe above. It’s got a relatively small amount of protein, almost no carb, and a decent amount of fat. You could reduce the fat by leaving the butter out, but why would you want to. It’s a great “small meal”. You could also leave out the butter and egg and use the mixture to make chicken and cheese quesadillas.
Calories and Macros:
Calories: 456
Protein: 49 grams
Carbohydrates 2 grams
Fat 28 grams
Ingredients:
100 grams of chicken breast (raw weight using the calculation technique above)
10 grams of butter (I prefer Kerry Gold)
2 slices of reduced fat cheese (44 grams; I use Finlandia variety pack from Costco.)
2 eggs
Melt the butter in a pan over medium and cook the chicken until it begins to dry out a bit. (Personally I hit the chicken with some extra chili powder for extra flavor.) Place the 2 slices of cheese on top and wait until it melts. Use a spatula to mix the melted cheese through the chicken. Scramble two eggs in a glass along with some salt to taste. Pour the eggs over the chicken and immediately begin stirring the egg throughout the chicken so that’s it’s evenly dispersed. Turn the heat to low, and once the egg is mostly congealed, form a flat chicken/egg patty and allow to cook for about 30 seconds. Flip and allow the other side to cook to desired doneness. Serve.
This recipe comes from the Good Eats episode “The Big Chili.” It’s a phenomenally versatile seasoning that can be used for anything from scrambled eggs to tacos to chili. It uses dried chiles. In South Florida, Walmart now sells these in bulk. So I just get six of each chile (double Alton’s original recipe).
Ingredients:
6 Ancho Chiles
6 Guajillo or Cascabel Chiles
6 Arbol or Japones Chiles (these add a bit of heat, so you could use any dried hot chile, such as dried cayenne)
4 tablespoons whole cumin seeds (you can use powder if you can’t find seeds)
4 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoon smoked paprika (this can be hard to find at most stores; I found it at Whole Foods.)
Instructions
Cut the stem end off each of the chiles, Cut a slit in the side and shake or rub the seeds into the trash. (You might want to wear gloves if you’re processing a very hot chile.)
Cut the chiles into small pieces and place in a heavy skillet over medium heat along with the cumin seeds. Keep the cumin and chiles moving until they start to smell fragrant.
Remove from the heat and place into a blender. In my experience when working with this double recipe, it’s better to pulse it a few times, and don’t let it go too long. Otherwise, the blender base will get hot, and the powder at the bottom will form a a cake that prevents the rest of the mixture from becoming blended. If you have a Vitamix with the dry blade, that would be ideal. Be very careful about opening the blender as you’re essentially making pepper spray (albeit a mild one). Don’t put your face in it.
Once the chiles and cumin are blended to a powder, add the garlic, oregano, and paprika and pulse to mix.
That’s it. You’re done. This stuff is amazing. And since you’ve been such a good audience, I’m going to give you a couple recipes that use it:
In the last few posts, I’ve talked quite a bit about how I’ve lost weight (31 pounds as of today). I’ve gone into some detail about the diet, but I haven’t really talked about the workouts much. There’s a couple reasons, but the main two reasons are 1) workouts are complicated, and 2) 95% of your results will come from your diet. There’s a reason fitness models say, “abs are created in the kitchen.”
I do plan on writing more about the workout in the future, but for today, I just wanted to give you some tips on how to do more chin ups (or pull ups if you desire). When I started this journey 14 weeks ago, I could barely do 4 chin ups or 3 pull ups. This Monday I did 5 chin ups with 40 lbs attached followed by a set of 6 chin ups with 25 pounds attached. Today (Thursday, I did a set of 13 bodyweight chin ups).
Now I know for some people that may not sound very impressive, but I haven’t been able to do more than 8 pull ups or chin ups since I was 19. And I certainly wasn’t as explosive as I am today. So here’s how I did it. You can use this method with either pull ups (palms away) or chin ups (palms toward you). Personally I prefer neutral grip chin ups (palms facing each other). For the rest of this article, I’ll just call them pull ups out of habit.
Some people will tell newbies that they need to be able to do 8 pull ups or 12 pull ups or even 20 pull ups before they start adding weight. But I prefer to start adding weight as soon as you can do 4-6 pull ups. I’ve never been good at doing lots of pull ups, and if I had waited until I could do 12 pull ups before adding weight, I’d probably still be doing 5 pounds. Below is how I did it, and you can too…if you like.
Step 0: Be able to do at least 4 pull ups
If you can’t do at least four pull ups, then that’s your first step. If you can’t do any pull ups, then follow this below video for a nice progression. If you can do at least one pull up, then do several sets of as many as you can do with good form at least three days a week.
Step 1: Add 5 lbs
Once you can do a at least 4 good pull ups, it’s time to add some weight. Get a dip belt. Attach 5 pounds and do a set. Wait at least 3 minutes, then do a second set bodyweight pull ups. On your other two workout days just do one set of bodyweight pull ups. So to recap: one set of weighted pull ups and 3 sets of bodyweight pull ups per week.
Note: I was doing this while on a fairly aggressive cut of 700-1000 calorie deficit per day. If you’re eating at maintenance or bulking, you can do three sets on your weighted day or even to two days of weighted pull ups (I’d recommend at least 3 days recovery between weighted sets.)
Step 2: Adding reps
Keep doing the weight you added in Step 1 plus two sets of bodyweight pull ups on other days until you can do 6 weighted pull ups. Here are some tips:
Focus on trying to make your upward movement as explosive as possible.
Try to keep your shoulder blades retracted (pull down and toward each other)
Don’t reach your neck for the bar.
Don’t struggle with half reps. When you can’t complete the rep with good form, don’t do it at all. If you really want to do another rep, jump up to the top and do a long negative (slow descent) or get an elastic band and do assisted pull ups.
Step 3: Add 5 more pounds
When you can complete six good, explosive pull ups, it’s time to add 5 more pounds.
If you can do 5 or more reps with the higher weight, then add 5 pounds again next week.
If you can only four reps with the higher weight, stay at that weight until you can get 6 reps and then add another 5 pounds.
If you can’t get four reps with the higher weight, drop the weight by 2.5 pounds the next week.
Keep doing your bodyweight pull ups for the second set and on your other two days.
Step 4: Add weight to your second set
When you get to the point where you’re doing pull ups with 10% of your bodyweight added, you can start adding weight to your second set. So if you’re 180 pounds, when you get to 20 pounds, add 5 pounds to your 2nd set. Generally speaking you should be able to get at least one more rep out of your 2nd set with lighter weight than your first heavy set.
Whenever your second set gets 2 good reps higher than your first set, add five more pounds to it. Follow the same rules as step 3 (but with a higher rep count).
Step 5: Take videos of yourself doing weighted pull ups.
That’s pretty much it. The video below is my second set of weighted pull ups this week with 25 pounds added. You can see my weight progression in the table below. Notice that even though my weight is going down, the total weight I’m lifting is going up. (So my absolute strength and relative strength are both increasing.)
Date
Weight
Set 1
Wgt w/body
Reps
Set 2
Reps
2/23/2016
196
0
196
6
0
3
2/29/2016
195
0
195
6
band
5
3/7/2016
194
0
194
5
0
4
3/14/2016
195
15
210
4
5
4
3/18/2016
193
15
208
4
5
4
3/23/2016
192
15
207
5
5
5
3/28/2016
192
15
207
5
5
5
4/2/2016
190
20
210
4
5
5
4/11/2016
189
20
209
4
5
5
4/18/2016
188
20
208
6
5
6
4/25/2016
188
25
213
5
5
6
5/2/2016
186
30
216
5
10
7
5/9/2016
186
35
221
5
10
7
5/16/2017
187
40
227
4
15
6
5/23/2016
184
40
224
5
20
6
5/30/2016
185
40
225
5
25
6
6/6/2016
182
40
222
5
25
6
Frequently asked questions:
Man! I could NEVER do weighted pull ups!
It’s not really a questions, but that is exactly what I thought until I started doing it. I’ve never been good at pull ups. When I was in the Air Force Academy, the max I ever did was 13, and I assure you the last five were not nearly as explosive as the last five in my video at the top. When you see someone doing pull ups with 70 pounds attached, you think, “there’s no way I can do that,” and you’re right. You can’t do it…now. But if you start with adding 5 pounds, increase your reps to 6, add five more pounds, rinse and repeat, you’ll be doing 45 pounds before you know it.
So what’s this simple secret you mentioned in the title?
Too subtle, eh? The secret is adding 5 pounds. As you get stronger, you’ll be able to do more pull ups with just bodyweight.
Does this work for weighted dips too?
Absolutely. It actually works even better for weighted dips. In the time it took me to go from 0 to 45 pounds for pull ups, I went from 10 pounds to 77.5 pounds for 6 reps for dips. The only thing holding you back is not using a dip belt. Some gyms even have one you can borrow. But if not, buy one on amazon.
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