The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘weight watchers’

I am not huge on fast food breakfast but every now and then I get a craving for some McDonald’s Hashbrowns or a McGriddle or a McMuffin.  Luckily it is not often because they are killers when it comes to Weight Watcher points.  I came across a McMuffin “Weight Watchers” swap a while ago.  I can’t remember where I found the recipe or what actually was in it but I decided it couldn’t be that hard to figure out myself.  So a few weeks ago I decided to give the swap in my head a try.  I have to say, I did a pretty darn good job because now I am hooked on my McMuffin swap and it is super easy to make even on work days.  In under 5 minutes, I have everything cooked and ready to be put together.

So here is how you do it:

Ingredients:

1 Lite English Muffin
1 Slice Fat Free Cheese
1/3 cup of Egg Beaters
1/4 cup frozen veggies
2 pieces precooked turkey bacon

How to cook:

1. Preheat your skillet on medium heat.  Spray with non-fat cooking spray
2. Cut English Muffin in half.  Put in Toaster and start cooking
3. Put 2 slices of bacon on plate and microwave for 20 seconds.
4. Cook frozen veggies until they are soft.  Then add the eggs.  Scramble until cooked.
5. Take out English Muffin and put sliced cheese on it.  Microwave for 15 seconds until cheese is melted.
6. Add turkey bacon to english muffin and then egg/veggie mixture.  Season with Salt/Pepper and put the top of the muffin over the eggs.

Voila!  You have a great Egg McMuffin swap and it is only 5 points!

After lazy chicken you probably didn’t think I’d find something even easier and lazier did you?  Well, I scoured the internet and my slow cooker cookbooks over the weekend and I found one!  This recipe is called easy chicken and it really was easy.  All you need is 4 chicken breast halves (boneless, skinless of course), a packet of italian dressing mix, and a cup of water.  Yup that is it!  So what do you do?  Here is the recipe:

Easy Chicken

1. 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2. 1 packet of Italian Dressing Mix (found on salad dressing aisle)
3. 1 cup of warm water or chicken broth

Line the slow cooker/crockpot with disposable liner.  Put chicken on the bottom of the slow cooker.  I used a mallet (is that the right word?) and gently beat them until they flattened out a bit.  Next, sprinkle chicken with the Italian dressing mix.  Lastly, pour cup of water/chicken broth over chicken. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. The ideal crockpot size is 4 quart so that the crockpot is 2/3 the way full.  I have a 6 quart so I just added more water so the chicken wouldn’t dry out.  Adding the water diluted the Italian flavor but it kept the chicken moist so I can’t complain.  Next time I will just double the entire recipe.  The recipe makes 4 servings.

Overall, the meal was good.  I served it with a salad and corn.  You could probably serve it over brown rice as well.  I opted for cooking on 7 hours since I didn’t fill the crockpot 2/3 the way full and everything turned out fine.  As previously reported the Italian seasoning was diluted so next time I’ll just double everything and it should turn out fine.  I didn’t calculate Weight Watcher points but I would imagine it would be one point per ounce of chicken.

I was looking online a few weeks ago for slow cooker recipes – BBQ chicken to be specific – that would be relatively easy to make.  I typically turn to the cookbook, Fix It and Forget It Lightly, for all of my slow cooker recipe needs.  But this time I was unable to find a relatively simple BBQ chicken recipe.  Every recipe in the book required a minimum 10 ingredients because you would be making the BBQ sauce from scratch and not using the bottled sauce.

I was surfing and came across A Year of CrockPotting blog.  Basically, the blogger used a crockpot to cook/make something every day in 2008.  I have spent hours on her blog copying recipes into Word so I can put them into my rotation because they are so tasty especially since she includes pictures of the ingredients used and how it should look when it is done cooking.  I highly recommend this blog if you crockpot.  There really are 365 different recipes, believe me I was digging through the posts but was not able to finish reading it.

The first recipe I tried from the website was Lazy Chicken.  It really is just that – lazy chicken. LOL.  All you need is a pound or two of chicken, a crockpot liner, and a jar of spaghetti sauce.  It was very quick and easy to throw together during the tail end of busy season.  Here is the official recipe and directions.

Lazy Chicken

1-2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken

1 jar spaghetti sauce (depending on the amount of chicken you may need 2)

1. Line Crockpot with liner.
2. Put chicken in. Cover with sauce.
3. Cook on high for 8 hours (I did 6 hours and it turned out just fine)
4. When you get home boil some noodles for 20 minutes. While noodles are going shred up the chicken with a fork in the pot then serve chicken mixture on top of noodles.

This made approximately 8 generous servings mainly due to the amount of sauce I used.  Next time if I use the restaurant bought (homemade) spaghetti I will be throwing in 2 pounds of chicken and then freezing half of the mixture.  I would estimate about 6 Weight Watcher points per serving maybe less if you use Whole Wheat noodles.

We all know dark chocolate or pure cacao can be good for your health but who really likes going around eating dark chocolate all the time.  I know I prefer milk chocolate to the bitter dark chocolates.  But this isn’t what I want this post to be about: milk vs. dark. vs pure cacao.  Instead, I want to write about my new favorite way to work chocolate into my diet.  In fact, I eat it about every day and it only costs 1 Weight Watcher point.  No it’s not by eating 1 bite of a Snickers bar, Hersey’s bar, or 1 Ghiradelli chocolate carmel square (though that is an awesome way to spend a point).  Instead it is actually much more filling and can be eaten as breakfast with some fruit, or a mid-afternoon snack, or dessert after dinner, or to top things off after you workout.  So what is it?

“It” is called Vitalicious Chocolate vitatop muffins.  These are decadent treats that you buy from vitalicious.com and pop into your freezer.  When you are craving one you just pop it into the microwave and heat for 30 seconds and enjoy.  There are tons of flavors and they are my new favorite Chocolate fix because I feel like I am eating something really bad but it really isn’t. Vitatops are all approximately 100 calories and contain at least 4 grams of fiber.  I first heard about them a few years ago thanks to HungryGirl and then I was reminded about them again at a Weight Watchers meeting.  I finally broke down and bought some on sale and fell in love.  I eat on average one per day usually with a half cup of fresh berries and a glass of milk.  Absolutely fabulous as it tastes like a chocolate covered whatever-berry and it is a great way to spend 3 points out of your daily allowance.

Whoever said chocolate was not a weight loss friend has never tried a Vitatop!

One thing I dislike about my job is that we have a busy season stretching from the beginning of January until the end of February and sometimes into March where we are working and ordering in delivery food every single day.  It gets very old, repetitive, and unhealthy.  One thing I promised myself this year was that I would not be ordering in junk everyday.  I would either bring food from home or I’d order a salad and use my own dressing.  I have to say that I have been successful so far thanks to lean cuisine and their expanded line of frozen meals.  I have not gained a pound but I haven’t lost anything either.  I guess I should be happy about the no gain when I’m sitting on my butt 12 hours a day.

So earlier this week, I decided that I would drag my slow cooker out and make something that I could bring to work.  I had a pound of ground beef and not a clue what to do with it.  So I pulled out my favorite cookbook and found  a recipe for Beef-Lite.  The recipe seemed easy enough and only had 4 ingredients so I gave it a whirl.  Overall it was a good and quick thing to throw into the slow cooker over night while I slept.

Beef-Lite

1 pound extra lean ground beef
1 package dry onion soup mix
1 10 3/4oz can of 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup
1 10 3/4oz can of 98% fat free cream of celery soup

1. Spray slow cooker with fat-free cooking spray or insert 1 liner
2. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker
3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours
4. Serve over brown rice

This recipe made approximately 6 half cup servings when placed over a half cup of rice.  It was fairly tasty but could use a little seasoning but I’m not sure yet what I would add.  It comes out to about 5 weight watcher points per serving including the brown rice.  Not too shabby!