Perfect Brussel Sprouts

    On this post, I want to talk about brussels sprouts and how to make them for yourself. I will be posting recipes for many different sides you can cook to complement your main dish however today, I first had to mention brussels sprouts! Not only do I personally love them, but if you don't cook them right, it can make you have a very rigid opinion towards them. Overcook them, they don't taste as good. Undercook them and its an even bigger mess because undercooked has a taste that will make your brain question if you put food in your mouth.

    I have been taught to bake them in the oven because boiling them or trying to cook them in anther fashion has a couple drawbacks. One, it changes the flavor profile entirely and (though I've never done it) boiling brussels sprouts is usually a very specific meal choice. Secondly, baking them is literally a few steps, easy and a healthy option.

    I never tried brussels sprouts, really, until Jennifer made them for us so don't feel bad if you look at these and think you're gonna pass on the sprouts. Give them a chance and try them with an open mind and if you still don't like them the way I was taught, at least you can say you gave it a chance. The first thing you wanna do is open the bag and cut off the ends, placing them aside for trash or compost. After that, you want to halve them and place them in a bowl.

    Once they're in a bowl, you want to add olive oil, salt, pepper and any additional seasoning of your choice. For this batch, I added garlic pepper seasoning. Once completed, get a medium sized spoon and stir everything up to combine the ingredients and make sure your brussels sprouts are glistening with a shine. 

    You can use whatever size baking sheet you would like but I chopped up that whole bag so I used a medium sized sheet. From here you want to put them in the oven at 350 degrees for roughly 30-40 minutes depending on your personal preferences. When they come out, you should have some crispy, tasty brussels sprouts that smell incredible and taste even better than they look! 

    Mine came out looking phenomenal at 30 minutes but it never hurts to give them some extra time if that's how you like it. I am appreciative to have learned this recipe first because of how good it is and I hope now you try this and add it to meals going forward (it pairs well with the chicken breast I posted).

Ingredients

• Bag of brussels sprouts
• Salt
• Pepper
• Seasoning of Choice (optional)
• (Extra Virgin) Olive Oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Chop ends off brussels sprouts and halve
3. Place halved pieces in bowl
4. Add Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper and Seasoning into bowl
5. Use medium sized spoon to stir up and ensure ingredients are mixed well
6. Pour onto baking sheet and space out
7. Cook at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until cooked to liking

    Until next time, friends, have a great day!

Let's talk about health and food misconceptions

     Today I want to take a second to talk about health/fitness and food misconceptions, as perceived in my mind. I want to do this not to justify my actions but rather to hold myself accountable and hopefully find some like-minded or opposing minded individuals who want to have a real discussion about this. The goal of this blog is to track my "fitness journey", right? So lets talk about Valentine's weekend.

    This time last year, I was single and really didn't do much. Valentine's Day fell on a Friday, which meant, I was probably working. The weekend probably saw me playing video games and sitting around on my couch a good portion of that weekend. This year was different. I'm proud to say I'm not single, better than that, I'm dating my best friend and I literally couldn't be happier. It was our first Valentine's day and of course this nasty freezing ice and snow had to ruin things but before that, we had Friday and Saturday.

    A few weeks back, we had an early Valentine's dinner and made beef steaks with mac and cheese we found at Sams Club (pictured a few posts back) and some potatoes we chopped up and tossed in the oven. We also made chocolate covered strawberries and pretzels! It was really nice to get to share a truly wonderful evening together but I knew we wanted to do something on the weekend of Valentine's still so we did.

    Friday night, we got Mexican and it'd been awhile for us both since we'd had Mexican so it was a real treat and boy, we loved it! We both drank water, as per usual, but the food was really good! I could eat an entire bowl of that rice, excuse me while I drool on my keyboard. After the meal, we stayed in and tried to keep warm in this overly cold weekend weather.

    Saturday is where I realize I had gone maybe a "smidge" overboard in regards to food. For those unfamiliar, I grew up a chubby kid and one thing my dad loved was buffets. He especially loved going at the end of lunch and staying into dinner to get the "dinner priced foods". As a food lover and connoisseur of things you munch on, I had to say the dinner foods were the best! Mac and cheese galore, bread, turkey or steak, etc. The list goes on and on. Of course my mom said one vegetable so I got a small serving of green beans since corn apparently doesn't count. 

    That being said, we went to a Chinese buffet with some friends and got our fill before we went axe throwing. It was really good and I hadn't had Chinese in probably three or four months before then so I was very eager to get started on my first plate. I'll admit I went a little overboard and definitely overate while I was there. There's this thing called "The Sigh" that Jennifer was telling me about where your body will let out an audible sigh when it's satisfied. Learning to recognize your body's sigh and implementing it into your meals could help with portions or even weight loss but personally, I can't tell when my body sighs but rather when I feel full.

    Put as much stock into that as you want but I have felt that sigh just not very often have I found myself recognizing it during a meal. I say all this to show accountability. I acknowledge that I overate and I acknowledge that it is a very rare scenario anymore in my life that I do so. This is the part of my post where you might find some dicey logic or opinions. Keep in mind they are all opinions and I understand I am not a fitness guru otherwise I wouldn't be fat and overweight with high blood pressure and borderline diabetic. 

    Science has proven that all bodies are different but a lot of us operate the same. That's why some diets work for some and not for others. Someone with PCOS is going to have a much harder time than someone with a high functioning metabolism, even if they both eat the exact same meals every day. It's not fair but when has life ever been fair? Again, my bias is showing. So for me, who grew up with a very unhealthy outlook on foods and ate very poorly, smiling at McDonalds for lunch/dinner and frowning at the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, oranges, apples and various other fruits and vegetables for my ENTIRE childhood, you can see where that leads me into my adult life as an overweight, naïve individual.

    Of course I'm overweight and have high blood pressure! Based on my actions, I would be shocked if I didn't! Not to mention, I had gone several days, even weeks, without drinking water. So when I make a small progress in my journey, I celebrate. Cooking chicken breast and brussels sprouts? I am proud of myself, and why shouldn't I be? I decided enough is enough and didn't want to keep living a lifestyle that would lead to my inevitable demise. So I have a very obscure mindset on health and I have a very unhealthy relationship with my body.

    Just this weekend past, I told Jennifer how I look in the mirror and insult myself and it shocked her. She told me to stop doing that and logically, I know she's right. Mentally, I just don't know that I will ever stop. I look at myself and say some downright mean and horrible things to myself. Not because I want pity or feel like I "deserve better" but because by tearing myself down, I believe that will motivate me to stop making those same mistakes again and again. Yet here I am at 337 lbs.

    Actually, I probably am still at 337 lbs, if not heavier by a smidge now (due to the weekend) but I weighed myself last Wednesday and I was down to 334 lbs and I have no idea why. I'm a little lazier in the winter and especially in the ice/snow. I figured I would just eat better meals and play racquetball up until the weather got more agreeable and then I would up my ante and try to incorporate more days a week to the gym and hope to see progress from that. 

    No doubt my eating better has probably affected my body along with dropping to one soda a week most weeks but overall, I really haven't been doing much else. Cooking the chicken breast is great but I've also been guilty of making some box Velveeta macaroni and cheese for dinner and eating the whole box. For perspective, that's three servings per box at 370 calories each serving equaling a whopping 1,110 calories for dinner. Sure, you can pair that with a steamer bag of veggies but you still had over 1,000 calories in a single meal.

    I'm not good at portions for things that don't fill me up in small amounts and I realize that I should probably think of Mac and Cheese as more of a side dish than an actual meal but when my dad made Mac and cheese from scratch growing up, he used an entire block of colby cheese and my plate was stacked full with three or four fish sticks and a big dollop of mayonnaise. That doesn't account for if I ate a second serving.

    I give you all these examples to call myself out, these are examples of my life and I own them. My dad made the best Macaroni I had ever had and I don't know that I'll ever find a version that compares quite like his did. A lot of memories I remember involve food. Not a lot else worth remembering if I'm being honest so I have a fairly dysfunctional relationship with food. 

    I'll save the rest of my examples for a later post. The point I'm trying to make with this is that there are a lot of misconceptions I have about food, health and fitness. I tend to start "doing good" based on what I know only to realize very quickly that I was using flawed logic and wasn't doing any bit of good the entire time. Does a Chicken Pot Pie sound good? Sure it does! It has peas, carrots, chicken and some gravy. Is it healthy for you? Not when its wrapped up inside a big buttery flakey crust! I used to buy chicken pot pie from the freezer section and eat them for lunch thinking I was having a small, portioned and healthy meal. I was kidding myself!

    When I tell you I thought it was healthy, I believed that with every fiber of my being and I was trying so hard to do right by my body and eat better (this was before I had learned to cook anything). There is no worthwhile frozen foods secret to health though. You cannot expect results from something not designed to help you and yet that's what I tried to do.

    In closing, I want to say this. If you want something bad enough, you will persevere and keep pushing until you get it. Sometimes, the incline looks impossible. You might have to climb rather than walk. I have been living in an alcove on a cliffside and instead of climbing, I've moved into this hole to make no progress. Last year, I packed up my things and decided to climb. I've made literally ZERO progress on my weight but I've made some pretty big leaps in terms of my health. Sometimes what you see isn't the whole picture.

    Thank you for taking the time to read todays post and I will continue to share recipes and my fitness journey. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll lose weight AND gain some tasty new recipes to share! Either way, I'm more optimistic and happy with the choices I've made this past year.

    Until next time, friends, have a great day!

A Simplistic Chicken Breast Recipe

    Today I would like to share with you the simple first recipe Jennifer taught me: Chicken Breast. Its a classically easy meal and pairs well with so many sides, its a perfect first dish to learn (if you exclude all the recipes she shared or showed me that my pea sized brain forget 😅). I won't give you a complicated back story or tell you how "chicken saved my life!" No. This may be a food/fitness blog but I know you want the receipe so I'll cut to the chase.

Chicken Breast (skinless)

    First thing you want to do is find the chicken breast that works for you. I prefer the Aldi's chicken breast (skinless) but due to poor weather at the time, I went with Hy-Vee for convenience. 

    The next thing you want to do is pull them out of the packaging and onto a baking pan with each meaty part opposite of the one next to it. From there you add your own preferred amount of salt and pepper. Then lastly, you add the seasoning of your choice. Tonight, I used Chicago steak seasoning but I also enjoy lemon pepper, garlic parmesan and even using ranch or taco seasoning packets to season my chicken! Once I got comfortable making it with salt and pepper, I started experimenting and you're welcome to do the same thing! Make sure you add seasoning to both the top and bottom sides of the chicken breast. You don't want to have a half seasoned chicken!

    Once you have the chicken breast seasoned, its ready to go in the oven. Yes! It's so easy, I'm ashamed I didn't know this recipe sooner! Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and put this chicken breast in for 60 minutes. Make sure you monitor your chicken as all stoves cook differently. From here you should have a picture perfect masterpiece of meat before you. Bon appetite!

    P.S. If you're not pouring that seasoned, delicious juice on the chicken breasts, you're not eating it right. It adds so much flavor and it comes right from the chicken so make sure you do just that.

    Thank you for reading my recipe and I hope you enjoyed what you found here today. Let me know on social media how you season your chicken breast (Instagram: phatlovefit)! I'm always on the lookout for new ways to try it.

    Ingredients

• Chicken Breast (skinless)
• Salt
• Pepper
• Chicago Steak Seasoning (use seasoning of choice)

    Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Prepare chicken on baking pan with thicker meaty sides opposite the one next to it (refer to above pictures for reference)
3. Add salt, pepper and seasoning of choice to both top and bottom side of chicken breast
4. Cook at 350 degrees for 60 minutes or until cooked all the way through

    Until next time, friends, have a great day!

Lets talk about meals

    Hello again and welcome back to my repurposed blog site, Phat Love Fit! I want to take things on a lighter note today and talk about some of the meals I've been learning to make or making, almost all of which I have learned from my girlfriend, which have greatly helped me continue to reach my goals.

    If you've been reading my blog then you're already aware that I am basically learning how to cook from the ground up. If not, I'm very serious. I just bought my first (extra virgin) olive oil at 27 years old for cooking and I made my first chicken breast at 27 years old too, along with a now fuller than before list of meals which would probably shock you. Not to mention the lies I had believed about what foods are healthy and the reasoning behind them. We'll get into that last one at a later time. As for now, lets talk, very briefly, about my history.

    I grew up with a Semi Truck Driver as a father and a mother who worked various jobs, usually multiple at one time. With my father being gone for weeks at a time and only being home a few days at a time, my mom made me meals as a kid when she was home and usually that meant it was something quick, convenient and cheap. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy what I ate as a kid, I had a lot of good food! However, as a result, I feel like nothing more than a statistic on a chart proving why overweight children develop bad eating into their adult years.

    I love my mom and will defend her to my last breath, but I do acknowledge that I didn't eat hardly any healthy foods as a child and that is the reasoning behind a lot of my misconceptions on health and why I never tried certain foods. I was of the mindset for so many years that if I hadn't had it before, it's best to just tell people I don't like it to avoid any conversations getting too personal. As I've been dating my girlfriend Jennifer longer, I've shared with her some of my reasons behind my food choices, habits and even goals to break the bad decisions.

    She is nothing but supportive! All she really wants is honesty. For years, when we were still just friends, I omit the fact that I didn't like tomatoes and this is a classic example. I would force myself to eat tomatoes because I thought it was healthy so I should get used to it and make myself like them and also, I thought she would like me less as a person if I didn't like tomatoes (Yeah, I know)!

    I don't think there's any study a person could create or participate in that would definitively prove that eating (or not eating) tomatoes can stand alone prove that it will make you a healthier or less healthy individual. I think I was just blinded by my attraction and wanted to improve my image more than I wanted to believe the lie that "Its healthy so make yourself eat it".  Needless to say, I do not eat tomatoes and I accepted that it's okay to not enjoy certain foods. 

    More to the point I was making though, my mom didn't have me trying veggies or some fruits in my childhood so when I got older and realized I had been spending my whole life making mostly bad food decisions, I had to want to change in order to actually start making progress. Come to find out, cooking is fun! Not to mention, it can be very photo worthy when it's done right! I am only trying to make progress towards a better, healthier me now as I acknowledge my past, accept my present and work to change my future. I'm on track and I'm getting closer every day to having the body I want through making the right choices.

    Still though, I have those days every week where I cheat and find myself in a drive thru ready to hand over my debit card to buy something easy and ready to eat when I get home. Best part about that though...It's okay! If you live your life wanting to be perfect and beating yourself down for making mistakes, you'll never make progress. So go ahead and order that Cane's chicken combo and get yourself a large sweet tea! Just make sure you're only doing that once or twice a week with the purpose of eliminating it down to a few times a month, if at all.

     I know I am going to fall short of perfection or any inclination of glory in relation to my weight loss or body goals. So going into them with a renewed and, quite frankly, realistic outlook has been making my journey this time around so much easier. Now don't get me wrong, I still have moments of doubt, frustration and worry. I ask myself if one day my gout medication will wear off and I'll get bad arthritis pain in my ankles or feet (or even worse, it will spread to my hands and/or knuckles).

    Small confession, while I'm on the subject, I have been having issues with my hands. Mostly my right hand, but I am getting horrible muscle pains in front of my thumb on the palm of my hand and it makes it hard to make a fist or use a fork to eat with, it will even hurt when I use a pepper grinder to season my food. It worries me that this is from an already known health related issue like my gout but when I see my doctor in March, I will bring it up and worry at that point. Until then, I am sort of dealing with the pain because, oh yes, it hurts quite a lot (especially in the morning). 

    However, onto more fun things, let's dive into the pictures I have to share with you and the story behind each one. Short note, I don't have these in any particular order and I will start taking more photos going forward but I only have a few to share with you today. Look forward to more pictures and even recipes in my future posts!

    This was one of the absolute best waffles I think I've probably ever had in my life. You think I'm kidding but when you make from scratch waffles with fresh blueberries and pair it with eggs, sausage and hash browns, you tell me what you could ever compare it to. I think you'll find the list of breakfast items is extraordinarily low.

    This is one of the first things Jennifer taught me to make and its still one of my favorite dinner meals! I will definitely be posting a follow up with the recipe I was taught for baking brussels spouts. Oh! The chicken is easy peasy too and so many ways to season it makes it a perfect dish to try new ideas on! 

    You can think what you want about me learning pasta so late in life but lets instead celebrate the victories. This one being some really tasty spaghetti I made with my favorite noodles and some ground beef I cooked up! Add the pasta sauce of choice and its done! Best part is you can cook the beef in the same pan you made the pasta in to save dishes. Win-win!

    Back to that chicken breast, when I learned the magic of seasoning and paired that with potatoes I chopped up and cooked myself, why would I pay $15 at a restaurant when I can spend $5 and make it myself!? So juicy and the seasoning here was just *muah!* You have got to try this one!

    Learning eggs was something I learned how to do late but not 27 years old late. I just wanted to share this to show off how beautiful this came out. To answer anyone's question, I made five eggs but that's very rare for me. It was all I was eating for awhile that day so I made an extra couple eggs to fill me up.

    Beef steaks is what I've most recently learned to make and boy are they tasty! This one is also really easy to make and pairing them, again, with those potatoes and some mac n cheese Jennifer and I found at Same Club made it even better! Carful on the bread though, it was tasty but pretty big too!

    These are just a few of the examples I have to share today but there will be more to come! I am extraordinarily proud of myself and I know I will continue to keep learning new recipes and meal combinations. I appreciate if you made it to the end of this post! I had a lot to share with you today and I am hoping you'll stay for the recipes I'll be sharing soon and the journey of my weight loss.

    Until next time, friends, have a great day!