Heavy Lifting

I am conflicted on the way I feel about strength training and weight lifting. On the one hand, I know that when you work your muscles you burn more fat and strengthen your bones. On the other hand, you gain a little weight for the first week and then you have to keep on trudging through that frustration to get to the desired effect. This week I started weight training and that meant a few things for me. The first, is that I had to shorten my cardio which means I had to make it extra hard. Instead of and hour, I worked as hard as I could for 45 minutes. I Sweated like a pig, but it felt awesome! Next I did crunches, back lifts, side lifts, and leg machines. I went to work feeling good and strong, sat all day long and then woke up the next morning........... not being able to move! I guess this is expected the first time you do weights when you haven't done them in a long time. So I do feel a sense of accomplishment even though my weight stayed exactly the same, 261 lbs. I am going to blame it on my muscles growing so big and strong.
The goal for this week is to eat more vegetables. I get all my servings of fruit in every day but I know I am lacking in veggies. This is an experiment to see how they effect my diet. For those of you who don't get enough in your diet here is a great way to get spinach in. I know there are a lot of you that drink attain shakes, and I am on the attain train as well. When you go to make your shake put a handful of spinach with your shake in the blender. I am serious when I say you CANNOT taste the spinach, it does make your shake green, but I repeat you CANNOT taste the spinach! It gives you a lot of extra fiber, vitamins, and nutrients.
And now for the recipe for the week:

White Bean Chicken Chili

1lb. Chicken Breasts
3 cans White Beans
1 can diced Green Chili's
1 cut yellow onion
cumin, salt, and pepper to taste
2 cans chicken broth

What I do is a take frozen chicken and cut onions and cook it in the crock pot for about 5 hours. Then I shred the chicken and add the remainder ingredients and cook for another hour. Sorry I don't have more precise measurements for the spices, but when it comes to cooking I cook like my mom. I keep adding until it tastes good. You can add as little or as much as you desire of the broth, it just depends on how thick or soupy you want it. This is low fat, if you want a little more fat you can add light sour cream and mozzarella cheese, but I promise it tastes very yummy without it.

I hope everyone had a fun valentines and a little shout out, Dustin I love you, you are the peanut butter to my jelly!