If you’ve grown up eating Chamorro comfort food your whole life, the idea of changing your diet can be overwhelming.
Fitness expert Ray Chargualaf makes the transition to nutritious eating easy — and tasty. Chargualaf recently opened his food truck Fat Boy Slim.Their slogan is “where happy meets healthy,” and they have two menus to satisfy both nutrition and cravings.
Guam born and raised Chargualaf is a physical trainer, who coached two winning contestants on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser.”
After living in Las Vegas for 14 years, gaining expertise in his field and opening two gyms, Chargualaf came back to Guam and started the HÅTSA fitness program.
His clients needed assistance with healthy eating, grocery shopping and creating meal plans.
“So I decided, let me eliminate the guesswork and instead of writing multiple nutrition programs, why don’t I just provide the food service,” he said.
Chargualaf trains about 200 to 300 people a week. With such a large demographic, he thought it’d be easier to provide the food, rather than making individual meal plans for each trainee.
He said the easiest way to prepare the food would be through a food truck. That way, people could put in their order before their workout, exercise, pick up their food and go about their day.
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Chargualaf wanted to share his food with even more people — and so Fat Boy Slim was born.
The food truck has about 15 menu items. They serve two to four dishes daily and rotate items on the menu, so people don’t get tired of eating the same foods.
Chargualaf and his team want to help people make positive lifestyle and eating changes by showing you don’t need to sacrifice flavor and comfort food.
“As long as you have things in moderation, it’s okay to have that fiesta plate,” he says. “Just as long as you make better choices than none, then you’re gonna be in better health overall. If you’re constantly making these choices because that’s all you think is available, then you’re never gonna win that battle. But we want to show for the most part that there’s options out there to make food that you typically find that would be tasty, healthy.”
To help introduce the average person to the healthy items at the truck, Chargualaf created his Happymenu.
On it you’ll find local plates made with recipes from Chargualaf’s family down in Inarajan.
Try the BBQ or sweet and sour finger-licking good ribs: the Kenribs Lamar.It’s a local favorite.
Pick up a plate of School Boy Que (BBQ chicken with mac salad) or 2Pork Shakur: Chamorro sausage. Seafood and Eminem fans will love the Shrimp Shady (butter shrimp).
Healthy menu
“When people think ‘diet,’ they think they have to sacrifice flavor, calories or desserts,” Chargualaf said. “It’s really more about making better food choices and better options and that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be flavorless.”
Chargualaf saidpeople often think of healthy food as bland or boring, like chicken breasts and brown rice or salad. He created the Healthymenu to show that foods can be nutritious and tasty at the same time.
On the Healthy menu, the Pollo Escobar is one of their best sellers. Chargualaf strives to make every item on the menu just as excellent as this one.
This chicken bowl features a tangy housemade aioli sauce, refreshing housemade pico de gallo, cilantro brown rice, stovetop cooked black beans, corn and avocado. The chicken is slow-cooked and marinated for four to seven hours, to soak in all the flavor.
The Wiz Kha-leaf-a veggie sandwich and Letty Wrap (turkey lettuce wrap) are also customer favorites. You can also try out their newer dish, the M Sea Hammer (Teriyaki salmon bowl).
The truck and all its dishes have fun names, based on musical artists. Lunch and dinner items are named after rappers, and desserts are inspired by R&B singers.
They’ve also noticed a trend in meat eaters trying out more of the vegetarian options and loving it. He says people like the meals for their flavor, and are happy it happens to be healthy too.
All items can be customized to meet your individual fitness goals on the Healthymenu. And they’re just as delicious.
If you’re focusing on weight lifting and building muscle mass, you can add more meat and beans to the Pollo Escobar. For a low carbohydrate diet, you can ditch the brown rice and add more veggies.
Chargualaf’s goal is to show people it’s not that hard to make tasty, healthy local food. He encourages customers to ask what ingredients they use, to help teach people how to prepare healthier meals.
“We want people to know that they can do this on their own, they can find these ingredients and it’s not time-consuming,” Chargualaf said. “All it requires is a little bit of effort, a little bit of direction and they can easily do it themselves.”
Fat Boy Slim will expand to include breakfast, in addition to their lunch and dinner menu in the near future. The menu hasn’t been released yet, but Chargualaf saidyou can expect to find flourless pancakes, red velvet pancakes, skillets, wraps and more.
Desserts
Surprisingly, the most popular items at the truck are their desserts.
They have 10 treats on rotation, including coconut bread, the Banana McKnight (flourless and sugarless banana bread) and LL Cool Whip (pineapple cake topped with Cool Whip).
For their flourless brownies, they use substitutes like almond meal, oat flour and coconut sugar compared to your average recipe.
“Those kinds of substitutes are just as tasty, if not even more flavorful than your typical sugar brownies, cookies or cupcakes,” he said. “We’re just adding more natural ingredients with more nutrient-dense materials.”
A lot of people are familiar with healthy foods, but they haven’t tried healthy desserts, Chargualaf said.
“Desserts are typically a guilty pleasure,” he said. “We’re still keeping the pleasure, but removing the guilt. I think that’s what surprises people the most. They think it’s an oxymoron to find a healthy dessert because when they think of something sweet, there’s no way it can be healthy. We’re one of the few places on island to offer that sort of service, between the desserts and our delivery.”
Reporter Chloe Babauta keeps readers up to date on Guam’s latest trends, food spots, festivals and more. Follow her on Twitter@chloebabauta and Instagram@mestisachamorrita.Follow Pacific Daily News onFacebook/GuamPDN andInstagram @guampdn.
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