Resolve to eat more vegetables. Or try new foods. Or eat more colorfully. Or reduce carbs. Or eat more home-cooked foods. Or just eat cleaner. Which ever one of these resolution categories your “diet” falls into, this dinner is a perfect fit.
We snagged this Spaghetti Squash Chicken Alfredo recipe out of the new book The Biggest Loser Bootcamp (out December 30, 2024!). It met our own food resolutions — C: all of the above — and offered a fresh take on the spaghetti squash trend we love so much. Spaghetti squash has taken off in recent years, and for good reason. It’s a hearty vegetable that has a mild enough taste that you can pair it with almost anything. It’s a great alternative for noodles, but I don’t fully buy in to it being a supreme replacement. Don’t eat this expecting it to taste or feel like noodles; it gets the job done, deliciously so, but stands on its own as a noodle-ish food.
The first time I ever had spaghetti squash — served in a traditional spaghetti-style marinara — was at the original Biggest Loser Resort in Ivins, Utah (now going by its original name Fitness Ridge). It was surprisingly really good! Even the pickiest of your eaters (raises my hand) will take little convincing to dig in and devour this dish.
We chose this recipe from Biggest Loser Bootcamp to share because it’s an (easy) lighter take on one of everyone’s favorite meals. Chicken Alfredo is commonly known as “heart attack on a plate,” because of the extremely high fat content. Not this version! Eat, indulge, and not feel a shred of guilt (or chest pains!). A serving has 327 calories and a mere 5 grams of fat.
To prepare the squash, we followed this super simple recipe at The Kitchn. This is the most time-consuming part of the near 1.5 hour prep. The roasting of the squash takes quite a bit of time, but after that, the actual labor on the recipe is minimal! The result? Stringy noodle-like shreds of the aptly-named spaghetti squash.
Now, we love cooking, but we don’t want to be at it any longer than we have to. So in another effort to save time, we used a pre-roasted chicken from the deli. From that we were able to pull the three ounces (about 1/3 cup) of skinless chicken. Bigger bonus: Now we still have an entire chicken that we can use to make more simple meals this week like Sticky Red Wine Stir Fry or Chicken Taco Soup. That deli chicken is seriously one of our go-to, must-have grocery items every week. Put it on the list!
And to bulk up the meal while adding even more color, we served ours on a bed of spinach (any greens will work).
The Alfredo sauce that Biggest Loser has put together is about as simple as it gets — Greek yogurt, Parmesan, garlic, pepper. Just whip those four ingredients together for a single-serve sauce in a matter of seconds.
“Pretty firkin good” was how our food photog Kacy described it! Downright delicious was our take. Comfort food you can feel good about… who’s not on board with that?
Spaghetti Squash Chicken Alfredo
serves 1
INGREDIENTS
2 Tbsp. plain fat-free Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. minced garlic
cracked black pepper
1 cup cooked spaghetti squash
3 oz. cooked chicken breast
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Combine the yogurt, cheese, garlic, and pepper and mix together.
2. Toss this together with the prepared squash and chicken, and serve.
Now, this recipe is just one of many tucked inside The Biggest Loser Bootcamp. That’s because, in addition to workouts designed by Dolvett Quince, the book provides an eight-week clean eating plan with seven-day meal plans for that time. These aren’t diet recipes; primarily because Biggest Loser has always promoted real food that you really want to eat. Emphasizing foods that promote satiety and even staying ahead of hungry, you’ll enjoy recipes like Oatmeal Pancakes, Protein Mocha Shake, Sweet Waffle Sandwich, and Sesame Salmon with Rice Noodles. Not to mention that Spaghetti Squash Chicken Alfredo! See the full book review here.
Also Read:
The 25 Most Popular Diets of 2024
FREE Healthy Dinner Meal Plan: One Week of Comfort Food Dinners
Homemade Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Frozen Waffles
Images by Kacy Meinecke Photography for DietsInReview.com.
Excerpted from The Biggest Loser Bootcamp. © 2024 NBC Studios & Reveille LLC; THE BIGGEST LOSER is a trademark of Reveille LLC and its related entities, and is used under license. Reprinted with permission from Time Home Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.