Arms and Crock Pot Honey Sesame Chicken

Oh my arms… they hurt. But it’s a good hurt, it’s a getting back into it hard and loving every minute hurt 😉

I’ve decided I’m going to look into the Jamie Eason LiveFit program. To be honest, I probably won’t follow it exactly at least for the 1st phase. The program is made to start people from the very beginning. BUT I do really like the principles of it and she has some great exercises. So honestly it’ll probably just be a few exercises here and there I change. Which also means about 3 weeks off of cardio other than for some ankle PT and locking down my diet (mainly goodbye to my after dinner sweet tooth). Since I had just done a similar workout to her day one, I started on day two and adjusted it based off what I did on Monday so the workout ended up like this…

3 sets of everything, not super-sets, lifting as heavy as I could with still hitting 12. I rested about 30-60 seconds in between each set (30 at the beginning, 60 at the end when I was tired):

• 12 wide push-ups
• 12 Dumbbell rows
• 12 cable rows
• 12 underhand cable pull-downs (this was new for me, I liked it)
• 12 dumbbell bicep curls
• 12 narrow push-ups… these I “set” with 20 calf raises for my ankle and to give my arms a break

I was def. feeling it by the end, and between this and the triceps from Monday my arms are worked today. The trainer had to reschedule yesterday so I’m hopefully meeting her today and we’ll hit legs 🙂

Last night I knew I’d be getting home later than normal and gone when I normally cook so I wanted to use my new crock pot for dinner 🙂 I made a honey sesame chicken and it was delicious! Based off the recipe from The Comfort of Cooking but made some changes to make it easier to cook and a bit healthier. This made about 5-6 servings.

You’ll need:

• 3-4 Boneless/Skinless Chicken breasts
• Pepper
• 1/2 white onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 C honey
• 1/2 C low sodium soy sauce (again all you GF readers, make sure to check the bottles!)
• Approx. 2 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/3 C water
• 3 scallions- chopped
• sesame seeds
• quinoa (or brown rice)

1. Lightly season chicken with pepper and place in crockpot
2. Combine onion, garlic, honey, soy sauce, oil, and pepper over the chicken.
3. Cook on low for 6 hours **I was really worried about this drying out the chicken because her recipe is different but I didn’t have much choice with how my day played out. With all the sauce, it ended up being great and just falling apart!
4. After about 4 hours I added in some water to the crock pot and after 6 just turned it to the “warm” setting before I ran out to my next appointment
5. Remove chicken and shred into bite-size pieces (here you can either set aside or put back into the sauce)
6. Prepare quinoa according to directions on package
7. Serve quinoa onto plates, top with chicken and spoon sauce on top.
8. Sprinkle sesame seeds and the chopped scallions over the top

I was so hungry I forgot to take a picture so here’s the one from Comfort of Cooking. We obviously didn’t have rice with it and since I didn’t add in any thickener the quinoa absorbed some of the sauce… but it looked about the same. Hubby said it tasted similar to “coke chicken” which I don’t remember having before but we decided this can be a healthy substitute. 🙂