Week One: Secrets!

It has begun everyone! Week one of the challenge (both online and in real life) is upon us! How are you coping? Hopefully you didn’t spend any time this weekend sitting in your closet crying, while shamefully shoveling cheese doodles into your mouth. I know I didn’t. I live alone, so I get to do all my shame eating right in the living room. Also, it was beer, not cheese doodles.

But that’s okay! So what if I gained back some weight during the break between challenges?! I won’t lie, I was purposely eating badly. I had pizza for every meal like three days in a row.

I REGRET NOTHING!

It’s been a glorious couple of weeks. Now, as with all good things, it has to end. It’s time to get my head back in the game. I’m planning out my next trip to the grocery store. I’m getting back into the habit of journaling everything that I eat, as well as tracking my daily calories, body fat percentage, and exercise with Fitwatch.com. I love this site. It’s free, it’s simple, and it has a lot of useful calculators, articles, and charts and graphs to monitor everything that’s going on with your weight loss. I know for a fact I wouldn’t have been so successful this far if I hadn’t started using this site.

My other secret to success is turkey chili (recipe below). It’s super yummy, very easy to make, and really good for you. I make it in large quantities and then divide it up into a million containers for freezing. Then I have my lunch prepared for at least a couple weeks, and on those nights where I really don’t feel like cooking I always have something healthy to throw in the microwave.

It’s really simple. Tracking and planning. That’s how I lost the first 20 pounds, and now that I’m incorporating exercise into my routine ( I didn’t do any during the first challenge) I am feeling really positive about this whole thing. We’ll see how long that lasts.

So everyone should remember Corey “C-Muscle” from the first challenge, right? She is joining me for the second challenge as well AND she has started her own blog! Check it out HERE, follow her, and show some support! I’m still going to beat her without mercy in this second challenge, but it’s nice to be supportive anyways.

Below is the chili recipe I use* in case anyone is interested in making it. I say use* because I don’t really use recipes. I pretty much just throw a bunch of stuff into a pot until I like the way it looks and smells. You have to try pretty hard to screw up chili anyways.

1 lb ground turkey

1 large yellow onion

5-6 chopped garlic gloves

2 large cans of diced tomatoes

1 can tomato paste

2-3 cans of red kidney beans

2-3 small sliced zuchini

2-3 small sliced summer squash

a bunch of sliced celery

2 chopped jalapeno peppers ( like mine really spicy)

1-2 poblano peppers

1 package reg chili seasoning

1 package hot chili seasoning

salt, pepper, chili powder, and crushed red pepper to taste

That's the basic idea. I usually brown the turkey on the stove with the onion and garlic and then throw it in the crock pot with everything else to cook for 4 or 5 hours. It's up to you to figure out portioning and calories, but mine usually ends up being under 200 calories for 1 cup. Throw some reduced fat cheese on top, or fat free sour cream and it's so amazing that I really never get bored with this stuff.

So there you go. That's all I have for secrets right now. What do you got?