Well, I have one successful week of plant-based eating under my belt and I'm feeling happy about that. As you'll see in the video, I wasn't perfect and I fell short on some of my behavior goals, but I was thrilled with the 5 pounds I lost. I don't expect to lose that much every week, but it was really nice to have that happen the first week and know that all my efforts to change brought results.
In the video, I talked a little about the things that "went right," but I thought I would share a little more here about what made the week successful. I know, it was only one week, but it felt REALLY long because the changes were massive! Every successful day was cause for celebration! I think these were the keys to a successful week one:
1)Thinking ahead for meals and having the right food ready to eat.
2) Watching videos and/or reading posts daily from the plant-based community that provided continual motivation.
3) Finding a like-minded plant-based buddy to talk to/report to/share the experience with.
4) Forgiving myself when I wasn't perfect/fell short of my goals.
I'll talk more about each one:
1)Thinking ahead for meals and having the right food ready to eat.
This one is huge! My hubby is trying to do this with me, but we did not de-junk our home of all the off-plan foods because we are tackling our own need to change first instead of trying to make the whole family get on board (we have four kids). Thus, our home is full of convenience foods that are easy to grab when you are hungry. I had to counter that with making sure there was a lot of plant-based food that was ready to go the moment we were hungry. I had to cook much more than I normally do. We ate a lot of left-overs. I felt like I spent way more time in the kitchen than I had to spend, but I knew it was important. These are a few of the things I cooked last week:
--Vegetarian Chilli (from Lindsay Nixon): we ate it on baked potatoes and put it on taco salads
--Tofu Ranch dressing: I'm trying to eat oil-free so I made it without oil and it was fine.
--Quesadillas (no cheese of course): Sweet potato/black bean quesadillas, Hummus and roasted veggie quesadillas
--Beefless Stew, find the recipe HERE. It is a salt-free recipe, but it didn't taste delicious to me until I added salt and soy sauce. I also used veggie broth instead of water. I am trying to use less salt, but I need my food to taste delicious so I'm going to save that change for later. This was probably my favorite new recipe of the week.
--Thai Veggie Curry (From Engine 2 7-day rescue book)
--Baked sweet potatoes, plain. Thank goodness there is one thing I can eat without salt or seasoning. I love these warm and cold.
--Homemade fries made in our new Air-fryer (these do work better with a little oil).
--Spinach Artichoke dip from Forks over Knives Recipe App
--Mashed Potatoes from The Vegan 8, recipe HERE (really liked these)
I didn't love every recipe, but we ate all of them. Nothing was a total bomb and I haven't always had that much luck with new recipes! :) I also ate fruit, veggies, and tried to get leafy greens in every day. I had oatmeal for breakfast every morning with fruit, walnuts, chia seeds, and a decent amount of maple syrup. :) Almost every night, or sometime during the day, I had a bowl of cereal with almond milk (Engine 2 mix of Rip's big bowl and the Engine 2 granolas because they are oil-free). I was craving something sweet and comforting and that was the closest I could get.
Yesterday, I made a pot of chilli again and a big pan of vegan Augratin potatoes (yes, it's a thing and they are delicious and don't have processed vegan foods either!) so we would have some food ready to go for this coming week. I know I'll have to cook more meals, and make more salad dressing soon, but there is food in the fridge and I'm not worried about starving. At night or in the morning, I have been trying to think ahead about what I'm going to eat that day so I won't be tempted to eat the food my kids are eating. Knowing what you are going to eat is a huge help when there are tempting foods around.
2) Watching videos and/or reading posts daily from the plant-based community.
I joined two different plant-based challenges. One was Rip Esselstyn's Engine 2 Seven-day rescue challenge and one was a 10-day plant-based challenge started by Jane Birch from "Discovering the Word of Wisdom." The Engine 2 facebook group has been amazing with awesome success stories posted regularly and fantastic facebook live videos from plant-based doctors, athletes, and other gurus. They have been extremely motivational and encouraging and they helped me to keep my excitement for the lifestyle change. I did not eat as strictly as the challenge directed, but I enjoyed all the great motivation from the group. I talked about one of the e-mails Jane sent out in my video blog that helped me to get over feelings of failure.
3) Finding a like-minded plant-based buddy to talk to/report to/share the experience with.
I posted my concerns about making lasting changes on the Engine2 group page and another gal messaged me saying she had similar concerns. We decided to become penpals and report/discuss our journeys with each other by e-mail. It has been really helpful and enjoyable to have that this extra support this past week and now I have a new friend. :)
4) Forgiving myself when I wasn't perfect/fell short of my goals.
This one is also huge and I already talked about it a bit in the video. My all-or-nothing thinking can be like Kryptonite sometimes. If I fall short of my goals, my natural tendency is to say, "Well, I failed, the end, I'm done, there is no hope for me." I sort of had those discouraging feelings Wednesday night as I was falling asleep without having reached my goals for the day and feeling too tired to do anything about it. But I didn't give up, I kept trying. Yes, I ate chips a few times last week which wasn't part of the plan (and a good reason not to have that stuff in the house), but I made so many positive, healthy changes and I'm going to celebrate those!
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