Day 43: Tuesday, Oct. 15, Assessment & New Recipe - Good “Bad” Food My Husband Loved

So I’m all for finding recipes that take bad food and make it healthy! Makes me feel less deprived which is a plus, right? So I went to make this Hungry Girl Buffalo Chicken Salad but my romaine was bad – MAN! Austin got home and was like let’s make Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches instead….

So I measured 2 servings of boneless skinless chicken tenders, sliced it into cubes, and cooked the chicken on the stove with cumin. While it cooked I combined 2 tbsp Frank’s cayenne pepper sauce and 1.5 tbsp Reduced fat parmesan cheese and stirred. Once the chicken was cooked, I simply put it in a bowl, added the sauce/parm mixture and stirred until the chicken was coated, then popped in the microwave for 45 seconds. Meanwhile, helpful Austin was toasting nature’s own light wheat bread and spreading fat-free ranch salad dressing on each slice – yum! Then we simply put the chicken on and topped it with tomato slices and cut in half- FANTASTIC! I added everything up and got this:

2 slices Bread: 80 calories; 1 fat gram; 19 carbs; 5 protein
Chicken (136 grams): 110 calories, 1 fat gram, 0 carbs, 26 protein
Tomatoes (1 large slice): 6 calories, 0 fat gram, 0 carbs, 0 protein
FF Ranch (1 tbsp): 25 calories, 0 fat grams, 5 carbs, 0 protein
RF Parm (.75 tbsp): 23 calories, 1 fat grams, 2 carbs, 1 protein
Frank’s: 0,0,0,0

TOTAL per sandwich: 244 calories, 3 fat grams, 26 carbs and 32 protein


Something tells me that’s significantly less than buffalo wings and seriously – it tastes JUST like it. The parm/cayenne make like a spicy breading. It was excellent and me and Austin plan to make it again and again. And if we do make a salad with it, we’ll take Hungry Girl’s suggestion and do fat-free ranch, romaine, celery and carrots – YUM!

We had it with sweet potato fries (each had 5 oz. sweet potatoes cut into French fry shapes, 1 tbsp olive oil, cinnamon, paprika and kosher salt). Each serving had 247 calories, 27 carbs, 14 fat grams and 2 protein. Note: if you reduce the olive oil to ½ tbsp you’ll make the fries be 187 calories, 27 carbs, 7 fat grams and 1 protein – MUCH better. I think the fries would have been just as good without it and will definitely change it up next time!!

So while that was clearly a big part of my day – it wasn’t all (although it was the most interesting). Other that I just had my usual breakfast sandwich, a smart ones (chicken parm – mmmmmm), a 100 calorie pack (oreo thin crips!) and baked Cheetos (gotta love orange crunchiness…) – here’s the full day: What I Ate Today. In total, I had 1,277 calories, 155 carbs and 38 fat grams. Not bad! I also burned approximately 203 calories (walking 3 15-minute miles) taking me to 1,070 calories. Not a bad day at all.