Is Chicken Adobo Healthy? (3 Tips For Weight Loss)

Chicken Adobo is probably the most popular dish when it comes to Filipino food.

It’s a delicious chicken dish that is savory and has a ton of flavor no matter where you get it.

Although a typical dish of Chicken Adobo is delicious, is it healthy? 

Chicken Adobo is a great food to eat while dieting as it contains a large amount of protein with fats and carbs making up a small portion of its calories. This allows for more flexibility in your diet which translates to better results and tremendous health benefits. 

Although Chicken Adobo is great to eat while dieting, it can still be hard to lose weight while eating it if you don’t know the fundamentals of portion controlling.

Here are three steps you can take in order to eat Chicken Adobo while staying in great shape. 

1. Understand What Goes Inside Chicken Adobo

2. Understand How Many Calories Are In Chicken Adobo

3. Understand How To Lose Weight While Eating Chicken Adobo

Now that we know the three steps in order to stay healthy while eating Chicken Adobo, let’s take a deeper look into what we can do to get to our goals. 

Tip 1: Understand What Goes Inside Chicken Adobo

Chicken Adobo is a very complex dish with a tremendous amount of savory flavors that can’t be beat.

It’s probably the most popular Filipino dish and is what defines its cuisine.

Let’s take a look at what goes inside a typical Chicken Adobo marinade. 

Although the flavor of Chicken Adobo seems complex it really comes down to a few ingredients that make up the components of the marinade.

For the aromatics we have onions, garlic, bay leaves and black pepper. For the liquids we have white vinegar, soy sauce, vegetable oil, and a small amount of water. 

All of these ingredients are basically calorie free except for the vegetable oil.

Extra fats in a marinade add more flavor to the dish so this something that is necessary for some really juicy chicken.

However, if you’re someone that can make the sacrifice to not use oil in the marinade then, by all means, take it out. 

Other than the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil you get from a typical Chicken Adobo recipe, there are hardly any calories that seep into the chicken as it marinades.

Getting rid of the excess 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil will allow you to save on lots of calories from fat which leaves you more options for the rest of your day. 

A successful diet relies on how many calories you consume in a day and where those calories come from.

This is why looking into the nutrition labels of your foods is a tremendous tool that will help you reach your goals.

So, let’s take a look at the nutrition label for a typical Chicken Adobo dish. 

Tip 2: Understand How Many Calories Goes Inside Chicken Adobo

Now that we know what goes inside a typical Chicken Adobo dish, let’s take a look at the nutrition label and see what we can find.

For a single serving of Chicken Adobo, we have 140 kcals coming from 4 grams of fat, 3 grams of carbs, and 24 grams of protein. 

This is a great meal to eat when dieting as protein is typically the macronutrient that is hardest to get out of the three.

Finding high protein sources are essential to sticking to a healthy diet as protein allows us to build and retain muscle.

The American diet typically consists of a large amount of carbs and fats so finding a balance of all three will make a huge difference in the long run. 

Eating a food like Chicken Adobo allows us to have room for foods heavy with carbs while sticking within our range of calories.

For example, since Chicken Adobo is mainly a protein dish, we can add some rice and vegetables for some carbs to pair with the protein.

This will balance out the protein and carbs within the dish which makes for both a healthy and delicious meal. 

So, now the question is, how many grams of each macronutrient should we be eating in a day?

Well, it all depends on the individual and many factors regarding activity level and BMR.

Here is an article that we wrote which goes over how you can find your daily calories for shredding and the macronutrient ratio you should eat with those calories. 

https://www.aspirefitnesswalnut.com/how-to-actually-get-a-six-pack-after-30

Once you’ve found the macronutrient ratio you need to consume in a day, it’s important to track your food everyday and see how it affects your body.

The main reason why fat loss does not occur is because calories and macronutrients are not tracked.

You may be eating too many calories in a day which means you will either gain or retain fat. 

So, start counting those calories and fit them into the calories you need to eat in a day! 

Tip 3: Understand How To Lose Weight While Eating Chicken Adobo

There’s a concept called Energy Balance which compares the amount of calories you burn in a day to the calories consumed.

If calories burned are higher than calories consumed, then weight loss (fat loss) will occur.

If calories consumed are higher than calories burned, then weight gain (fat gain) will occur. 

Thus, the first step to achieving a successful diet is to understand how many calories you need to eat in a day just as we described in section two.

Once you’ve figured out those calories, you need to track your foods and see how it fits into your diet. 

For example, we found here that Chicken Adobo is a dish high with protein and low in fats and carbs.

To fill out our allotted calories for the day, we need to add some fats and carbs which should be no problem at all. 

As we mentioned earlier, Energy Balance is the concept of comparing energy burned to energy consumed in a day.

What happens, however, when calories burned are too low?

When calories burned are too low we can find that staying in a deficit of calories can be hard to obtain. 

Our TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is how many calories we burn in a day throughout our everyday lives.

15-30% of our TDEE is accounted for by something called TEPA (Thermic Effect of Physical Activity) which is the percentage of calories burned from activity and movement. 

This means that we are in charge of up to 30% of our daily allotted calories!

This is why it is not enough to track and understand calories.

You need to also fill your days with lots of awesome movement to help our bodies burn calories effectively. 

There are two things that will greatly benefit a long term investment into getting to your fitness goals.

Resistance training and a strong focus on high activity everyday.

Resistance training builds muscle and high activity ensures that we are utilizing the calories we get from our foods. 

Muscle is crucial when dieting as it allows us to burn calories at rest. It also looks great so adding muscle all around will definitely be the best things you can do to get towards your goals.

It can be intimidating, however, to start resistance training so we’ve come up with a workout plan that will get you started. 

Here is the workout plan that will teach you the basics of lifting weights: 

WOMEN 

Monday (Full Upper):  

• Seated Shoulder Press: 4x20 

• Lateral Raises: 4x15

• Lat Pulldowns: 4x12

• Dumbbell Row: 3x10

• Dumbbell Fly: 3x10 

• Knee Push Ups: 4x20

• Weighted Crunches: 3x35 

Wednesday (Back/Hamstrings/Biceps) 

• Assisted Pull Ups: 3x10

• Lat Pulldowns: 4x12 

• Cable Row: 4x15

• Stiff Leg Deadlift: 4x15

• Hamstring Curl: 4x15

• Bicep Curls: 3x10

• Hammer Curls: 3x10

Friday: (Legs/Butt/Abs): 

• Squats: 5x5 

• Goblet Squats: 4x20

• Glute Bridge: 4x20

• Glute Kickbacks: 4x20 each leg

• Jump Squats: 4x20

• Weighted Crunches: 3x35 

• Leg Lifts: 3x35

MEN 

Mon: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Abs (Push Day) 

• Bench Press: 3 sets 10 reps

• Dumbbell Press: 4 sets 12 reps

• Shoulder Press: 3 sets 10 reps

• Lateral Raises: 3 sets 15 reps

• Triceps Rope Push Down: 3 sets 15 reps

• Cable Crunches: 4 sets 15 reps 

Wed: Legs & Abs

• Goblet Squats: 4 sets 20 reps

• Weighted Walking Lunges: 2 sets 20 steps

• Stiff Leg DeadLift (Romanian Deadlift): 4 sets 15 reps

• Glute Bridges With Weight: 4 sets 20 reps

• Jumping Squats With Resistance Bands: 5 sets 20 reps

• Weighted Sit Ups: 4 sets 25 reps

• Weighted Toe Touches: 4 sets 25 reps

Fri: Back & Biceps (Pull Day)

• Assisted Pull Ups: 3 sets 10 reps

• Lat Pulldowns: 4 sets 12 reps

• Dumbbell Rows: 4 sets 10 reps (Each Side)

• Seated Cable Rows: 4 sets 15 reps

• Bicep Curls: 3 sets 10 reps

• Hammer Curls: 3 sets 10 reps

Muscle is such an important factor to looking and feeling great and it is often neglected which is understandable.

This was definitely the missing factor for me when I started my fitness journey but it was intimidating as I was afraid to hurt myself among my peers at the gym. 

I’ve been lifting weights for over 5 years now and I am so thankful for the results I’ve received.

It’s definitely become my passion to spread the word about lifting weights and to encourage people to track calories and understand their nutrition. 

Now that we know the importance of muscle we need to make sure we stay on track with our workouts.

Consistency and longevity are the two key factors when building muscle so there will be some commitment involved.

You can either go to the gym or build one for yourself.

It really just comes down to 3 pieces of equipment that you need to do most workouts.

These three are the workout bench, dumbbells, and gym flooring.

Check out our recommended gear page to see our best picks for these pieces of equipment here. 

https://www.aspirefitnesswalnut.com/home-workout-equipment

If a home gym is not for you then getting a membership somewhere works too.

As long as you are starting your muscle building journey, we’re happy! (1)

Stick with it for the long run and you’ll see how amazing the results can be. 

There It Is! 

In this article we went over what goes inside a typical Chicken Adobo dish and the importance of looking into the nutrition labels of your favorite foods.

We found that Chicken Adobo is a dish that is high in protein which makes for a great meal when dieting. 

We also learned the importance of tracking calories and building muscle throughout our fitness journey which is how we utilize the calories we get from foods like Chicken Adobo. 

If you’re looking for more information on your favorite foods, then make sure to check out our other articles where we go over their nutrition labels and tips to eat them while staying healthy! 

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