28 Day Good to Great Challenge, Interrupted

I spent about three weeks participating in the 28 Day Good to Great challenge at BCS Fitness before my normal life went to hell in a handbasket, and even though I didn't get to finish, I still wanted to write about my experience with it. 

This was an extra program that you could do for a small fee, and I wanted to do it because while I knew I was doing well with my exercise by running three days a week along with working out three days a week, I thought there were areas that I could improve...and let's face it, who wouldn't want to be great?  Along with the big two - exercise and eating, the program also focused on energy/sleep and stress management.  I mostly focused on the eating part of this challenge.

I had two goals - to get in more protein, and more vegetables.  I sound like a broken record with the vegetables, but for me it's easier to get off track than it is to make it a habit.  And I'm not always consistent with getting enough protein - just the sign of a lazy cook, I guess.

Roasting broccoli is one of my favorites.  Jeff and I can eat an entire bag with dinner, especially if we're not loading up the meal with rice or bread.  It finally dawned on me that I could spend the time prepping several bags of broccoli at once (I like to roast smaller bits so I end up cutting a lot of it up beforehand), which cuts down on the mess - plus it's so easy to grab several handfuls of broccoli, throw into a Ziploc bag, add a little olive oil and seasoning, shake it up, then dump out onto a sheet pan and pop it into the oven.

I have several Rubbermaid Freshworks produce savers so I use one for the broccoli:

 

I don't know if broccoli really needs a Freshworks tub but the size works for this much broccoli.

My very technical recipe:  several handfuls of broccoli florets, 1 tbsp of olive oil, many shakes of Mural of Flavor seasoning, mix well in a bag, place onto sheet pan, roast at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.  I also add sea salt afterward but that's not necessary - I just like salt.

The other thing that we were doing was grilling chicken breasts.  Our kadults gave us a nice Weber gas grill for Christmas and Jeff has been honing his grilling skills; mostly he's discovered that by using a meat thermometer, everything comes out perfectly cooked.  Amazing, right?!  So he'd be outside grilling while I had the broccoli in the oven, and I'm not going to lie, sometimes the broccoli finished before the chicken and we'd pick at it while we waited - nothing wrong with a roasted broccoli appetizer, right?  Obviously we were very casual with dinner, but it worked for us, especially when I worked out in the late afternoon and was basically ravenous afterward.  Filling up on broccoli is fine.

I branched out from broccoli to roasting carrots and cauliflower for one week:

All cut up and ready to go...

Ready for the oven.  This turned out OK but I still prefer the roasted broccoli.

As for the chicken, we usually grilled two boneless breasts with BBQ sauce and then another one with teriyaki sauce - we saved the teriyaki piece to use with bagged salads the next night for dinner. 

I made Skinnytaste's Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps in the instant pot for dinner one night:

I also made her bleu cheese dressing for a topping - this was so good!  I had plenty for leftovers, too.  The hardest part of the meal was getting the lettuce leaves separated in one piece for the wrap.

Most of the time I usually ate one meal late in the morning instead of both breakfast and lunch.  Now that the weather is warmer I went back to making my frozen fruit/Greek yogurt smoothies, or sometimes I made more of a breakfast-like meal:

Scrambled eggs with tomatoes, green onion, parmesean cheese, avocado, and topped with a squeeze of fresh lime juice - YUM!  I had the shredded hash browns in the freezer so I cooked some up but eh - they weren't anything special.  Next time I made the egg combo but had a piece of toast instead of the hash browns.

I don't put limits on fruit:

Sometimes I ate the fruit singly, and sometimes I mixed it all together.  This was so good; the only thing that would have made it better would be if someone else made it for me!

We made a version of pickle chicken one evening - there are a lot of recipes that have you brine/marinate chicken in dill pickle juice for 24 hours and then dredge it in seasonings and flour and saute it in a skillet.  We brined the chicken and then seasoned it with garlic and onion powder, pepper, and paprika, and grilled it - and oh man was that ever good!  I happened to have a jar of pickles that we recently finished so I saved it for that meal; if I make this again soon I'll have to buy pickle juice at the grocery store (they sell it alongside the sports drinks) because we don't go through pickles that quickly.  I served it with roasted broccoli and fresh green beans that I drizzled a little balsamic glaze over:

First time I roasted fresh green beans - we loved them and have added them into our roasted veggie rotation.

I was so pleased with the improvements we made to our meals, especially dinner.  This challenge was really helpful in nudging me to plan a weeks' worth of meals, actually shop for said meals, and - get this - actually cook them.  What a concept, right?  And while by no means was I perfect with all of my meals and eating, I made enough improvements that I think some are going to stick.  Well, when I get back to more normal eating, that is.