My Vegan Challenge

All this week I've had "We've got the power, so can yoooooooooooouuuuuuu" stuck in my head. My husband got me She-Ra, Season 1, Volume 1 for Christmas. The kids are loving it, especially my daughter. She is totally into "Princess" and go-go Girl Power! :)

This week I've been undergoing a "vegan challenge". I had joined the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart (free to join), which began on January 3, but I didn't follow a vegan plan for the entire first week. Then I learned about a "vegan challenge" where I work. They were doing a 7-day challenge, and I was determined to give it a try. (A vegan diet contains no animal products - so no meat, dairy, eggs, honey.)

The majority of my meals this week came from Brendan Brazier's Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life and from Robin Robertson's Vegan Planet. In some ways, it was nice (lots of fruits and veggies, new recipes to try), but my food processor definitely got a workout, and so did my digestive tract. Let's just say I had a lot of fiber and flax. :)

Here's my menu so far this week (in somewhat random order, not necessarily by meal):

*Denotes Thrive Diet recipe, or at least derived from a Thrive Diet recipe ;)

Monday:
Quinoa and Sweet Potato Pancakes*
Salad with cukes, tomatoes, nutritional yeast, sesame seeds*
Dressing made with tomatoes, oil, vinegar, and agave nectar*
Homemade vegetable crackers*
Clementine, banana
Energy bar*
Tofu & Kale Spanakopita (Vegan Planet recipe)

Tuesday:
almonds, date, flax, carob powder, Vega powder, almond milk*
Tofu & Kale Spanakopita leftovers
pear, apple
Energy bar*
potatoes/onion
Boca burger
applesauce
prunes, peanut butter, almonds
popcorn with nutritional yeast

Wednesday:
Quinoa and Sweet Potato Pancakes*
lentil soup with quinoa
clementines, banana, pineapple
Energy bar*
Polenta Chili Casserole (Vegan Planet recipe)
almonds, raisins, peanut butter

Thursday:
Oatmeal with pumpkin, walnuts, almond milk
Salad with cukes, tomatoes, nutritional yeast, sesame seeds*
Dressing made with tomatoes, oil, vinegar, and agave nectar*
Clementines, pear, almonds
Homemade vegetable crackers*
Energy bar*
Mac and "Cheese" (Vegan Planet recipe - pictured below)
Chocolatey Peanut Butter Brownie (Vegan Planet recipe - pictured below)

Friday:
Tortilla with peanut butter, banana and strawberries
Mac and "Cheese" leftovers (lunch and dinner)
Homemade vegetable crackers*
almonds, pineapple, carrots
Chocolatey Peanut Butter Brownie











Quite frankly, I miss eggs. I don't really miss meat, but I miss eggs. Thursday night I had a dream that I ate something with egg in it and after I ate it I thought, "Wait, eggs aren't vegan!" and then I woke up. One of my son's favorite meals is "eggs and toast" and we usually have that for dinner a few times a month, so I think those dinners will stay. :)

Energy-wise, for the first 3 days I was kind of tired (probably sugar withdrawal) but by Thursday, I had tons of energy. Basement painting here I come! We are turning part of the basement into a playroom for the kids. I let the kids choose the colors - one wall will be pink, and the other will be green.

Have a great weekend!

TT Contest Voting And Other Random Stuff

TT Contest Voting is up and ready - if you haven't voted yet, check it out here ==> Turbulence Training Contest Voting

Lots of great transformations!

In other news, if you can call it news (haha), I have a funny story. One of my new favorite workout songs is Lady Gaga's "Telephone". I have no idea why. It's about dancing in a club, and I have never been dancing in a club in my life. Wait, there was that one time - it was '80's night! (And I use the term "dancing" loosely. LOL) Anyway, I bought the CD and was listening to it in the car. I guess there's one too many "telephones" at the end of the song because all the sudden from the backseat my daughter asks, "Is this song over yet?" :)

One of my other current favorite songs is 10 Years' "Through the Iris". Why this band isn't huge I will never know. They are fantastic! In addition to the lyrics, I love the rhyming scheme - the way the song flows. One of my favorite lines is, "Please understand me, that now where you're standing, is closer than I'd hoped."

And in book reading news, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Good book! I recommend it if you are already familiar with the story. The language can be a little tough to read at times and you can get lost if you don't already know what's going on. There were a couple parts that were a little gory, but overall there wasn't nearly as much "zombie mayhem" as I expected.

Then I was shopping last weekend and saw Christopher Pike's Thirst 2: Phantom, Evil Thirst, Creatures of Forever. The first 2 parts were excellent. I liked them better than Thirst 1. But the last part got a little too supernatural at times. And I was devastated by the ending - I did NOT like it at all! I noticed there was a Thirst 3 coming out next fall so I am curious to see what it will be about. :)


Have a great day!


Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase the product, I will receive a small portion. I don't get paid for reviews, and I only review items that I actually own.

The Butternut Squash Incident and Other New Things

So I may have hinted previously that I can be accident prone (immersion blender, anyone?). Last Thursday night I decided to make a new recipe. It was the "Baked Deep-Dish Butternut Squash with Pears" from Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Cookbook. The dish was tasty. My finger was bloody. I managed to cut it...twice. It took a little while to get it to stop bleeding the second time. The recipe called for raw butternut squash cut into cubes. Do you know how hard it is to take the thick skin off of a butternut squash?! Next time I am just going to cut the squash in half and bake it first. It just gets pureed anyway. :) I took a picture of my finger today. I'm afraid it's not very exciting. It's healed up quite a bit.

We've been trying lots of new recipes this week. My husband got me a great cookbook called The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook. Today for lunch I had the Luscious Lentil and Brown Rice Casserole. It rocked. My husband scored a home run with this book. As for the other book he bought me recently, Peter Walsh's Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat ... not so much. LOL To be honest, I probably would have bought that book myself. But from my husband? What's he trying to say? ;) The best advice I've heard in a while came from that book, though. It says that whenever you feel like raiding the fridge, get naked in front of a mirror and do jumping jacks. Heheh.

And finally, Turbulence Training is having a "4 for 1" sale - you get the TT Beginner Total Torso Training program, TT 2K10, TT Transformation, and as a bonus - the new Turbulence Training Adrenaline Circuit Workout (this one looks pretty crazy!). And you get 30 days free in the TT Member's area where you can ask Craig all of your training and nutrition questions. This "4 for 1" offer ends on Wednesday, February 3rd. You can check it out here: Complete TT 2K10 Package


Have a great night!


Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase the product, I will receive a small portion. I don't get paid for reviews, and I only review items that I actually own.

A Random Thursday

Heheh....so Recipe day was supposed to move to Tuesday this week. But that was before I had to call the vet to come out and visit my sick kitty. He's having some thyroid problems and potentially some liver trouble. My kitty that is, not the vet. :) The vet has to come back in about a week so we'll find out more then. The vet coming to the house prompted a giant house cleaning party on Tuesday night. :)

Also, I just bought a new book, The Coupon Mom's Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half, and I had to share my shopping success this week! I went to a local drugstore and by combining all the deals and coupons I had, I saved $32.95! My total before tax was $54.39 and after deals and coupons my subtotal was $21.44. I thought I was pretty good with coupons, but I did learn a few tricks from this book.

And, in my last post, I mentioned that I like to air drum while running at the gym. :) Out of curiosity, I went to YouTube to see if my favorite song to listen to was there, and it was! It's the song d_letion by Abigail's Ghost. The whole album is awesome, but d_letion is my favorite song, particularly while running. The movie goes for about 8 minutes, but the song is only 5 minutes. There's a few minutes of blank space after the song ends. The movie is just a picture of the album cover while the song plays. Enjoy! And don't forget to drum along. ;)

In Defense of Food

Part I: In Defense of Food

I finally finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food (I'm a little behind) and all I can say is "Wow, what a great read!" Even though I like to think I'm a pretty healthy shopper, by the 6th page of the Introduction, I was prepared to change my shopping habits; by the 7th page, I was taking notes. The writing style is easy to read and I even laughed out loud in a number of places.

The author's take home message is "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants." I've been eating less meat nowadays anyway (more on this in a future post). He mentions how America is becoming a nation of people with Orthorexia - an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating - and I feared I was heading in that direction. I spend more time planning menus than any normal human being should.

The first section of the book is about the Age of Nutritionism and how "nutrients" have taken the place of "food". Also how "healthy" foods aren't always what they seem, and how there always seems to be one nutrient that's better (and one that's worse) than all the others (think low fat/low carb/trans fats/omega-3's/etc).

The second section is about the so-called "Western Diet" and how humans can thrive on many types of diets (all meat/few plants/no meat/all plants/no dairy/etc) except the Western Diet (lots of meat/highly processed foods).

The third section is broken into several personal rules (like "Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food") to follow while you are shopping/eating.

It is basically a commonsense approach with a focus on whole foods. This book prompted me to rethink what I've been eating (and feeding my children). Not that my diet is awful, mind you. I looked over my meal plans for the next two weeks (see orthorexia, above) and only changed a few things. It also prompted me to visit my local farmer's market.

Part II. The Farmer's Market

I live in a town that has a very nice farmer's market...at which I have never shopped in the 13 years I have lived here. Yesterday I went for the first time. It was a fantastic experience. Everyone was very nice (well, the gourd guy was a little weird) and I got some great produce and even a pound of grass fed bison burger (for cheaper than I can get at my grocery store!) I found myself wishing that I didn't have to stick to my meal plan so I could buy things that weren't on my list. (I did end up buying some unplanned asparagus because more than one vendor proclaimed "last of the season!")

There was only one tense moment as I returned to my car in a mostly empty parking ramp, and a strange guy walked past as I was loading my trunk. But I held tightly to my small bison-and-ice-pack-filled cooler, ready to swing it at his head if necessary. All in all, it was well worth the extra drive, and I plan to go again next week. If I hadn't read In Defense of Food, I don't believe that I would have gone to the farmer's market and discovered how nice it is.

I also think reading this book has given me the extra push to move away from neurotically counting calories. I can't tell you how liberating it felt today to sneak a few bites of fresh pineapple as I sliced a whole one up for the week. I have already been using Fitday a little less, but I am striving to not use it much at all. (Don't get me wrong, it's a great tool, but I was getting to be a slave to the numbers.) I'm still using Precision Nutrition, but not exactly following the anytime vs. post workout meals. (More to come about my current nutrition in a future post.)

I have also decided to (gasp!) NOT stick to my meal plan for this week. (I've got to eat that asparagus!) I will stick to the bones of it, but I'm allowing myself to be more flexible and if I want a few more almonds, I'm going to eat them, darn it all! ;) I'm just going to focus on eating real FOOD. Remember, "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

I think that this is a great book for anyone interested in what they eat. (That should be most of you!) :) It really opened my eyes to what real food is, and how some foods claiming to be healthy really aren't. Highly recommend it!