The
Daily
Fix
Rest
Turmeric-Spiced Chicken With Riced Cauliflower
How Do We Get Fat
Rest day
Turmeric and curry with tender chicken and a creamy tomato sauce, all served over cauliflower rice and topped with cilantro and lemon.
Why we get fat, what determines where calories go, and what happens when we look beyond energy balance.
Enjoy the recovery time, or make-up anything you missed from last week.
Ingredients
4 oz chicken breast
¼ cup chicken broth
¼ cup cauliflower rice
½ tsp turmeric
14.5 oz tomatoes, canned, diced
3 Tbsp cilantro
2 ¾ tsp red onions, diced
4 ½ tsp butter
3 Tbsp sour cream
1 ½ Tbsp curry paste
1 slice lemon
Salt and pepper to taste
Macronutrients
Protein: 28g
Fat: 24g
Carbs: 11g
Preparation
Season and cook the chicken: Season the chicken breast with ½ tsp turmeric, salt and black pepper to taste. In a large skillet, melt 2 tsp of butter over medium heat. Add the chicken (4 oz) and cook for 4-5 minutes on each side until golden and cooked through. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Prepare the sauce: In the same skillet, add the remaining butter (2 ½ tsp) and sauté the red onion (2 ¾ tsp) until translucent, about 2-3 minutes. Add the curry paste (1 ½ Tbsp) and stir for 1 minute until fragrant. Pour in the canned diced tomatoes (14.5 oz) and chicken broth (¼ cup.) Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Cook the cauliflower: While the sauce simmers, in a separate pan, sauté the cauliflower rice (¼ cup) with a bit of salt and pepper until tender, about 3-4 minutes.
Reheat the chicken: Slice the cooked chicken breast and add it back to the skillet with the curry tomato sauce. Simmer for an additional 2 minutes to reheat the chicken. Remove the skillet from heat and stir in the sour cream (3 Tbsp) until well combined.
Plate and serve: Place the cauliflower rice on a plate, top with the chicken and sauce mixture. Garnish with chopped cilantro (3 Tbsp), any leftover sour cream, a squeeze of lemon juice and a slice of lemon.
This 2016 article explores why we gain fat and challenges the idea that obesity can be explained simply by eating too many calories and moving too little. Gary Taubes examines the role of hormones, particularly insulin, in regulating how the body stores and releases fat—and asks whether the foods we eat may influence fat accumulation before changes in total calorie intake even enter the conversation.
The bigger question is what actually drives the body to store excess fat. The conventional model treats weight gain primarily as a problem of energy balance: consume more calories than you expend, and the excess is stored. Taubes argues that this explanation describes what happens, but not necessarily why it happens. From this perspective, hormonal signals influence where energy goes, how much fat is stored, and how hungry we become.
Rather than treating obesity as simply a failure of willpower or calorie counting, the article asks us to think about the biological mechanisms regulating fat storage. It ultimately raises a broader question about metabolic health: are we eating too much because we are gaining fat, or are we gaining fat because something in our metabolic environment is driving us to store more energy?
FRIDAY 260911