Day 1 - A willing start

I was sitting on the loo this morning and I stared at the scales for a long while, and I would be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind to ignore the fact that I had to weigh myself today.  Generally I'm not very afraid of the scales but what I am afraid of is knowing that afterwards, I have to accept that breakfast will be modest.  Oh dear. 

So this morning I weighed in at 12st 4.8lbs.  Again, oh dear.  For those who work in pounds, that's 172.8lbs or if in kilos it's 78.3kg. 

So I'm just under four pounds away from what I was last August when I began this battle, in other words, I'm pretty much back to square one.  Yesterday I promised to really give this a shot so Day 1 was all about preparation and no over-whelming myself.

I started off the day with a light breakfast of one slice of organic seed toast, with soya yoghurt and fruit.  Lunch was sushi which now in hind sight wasn't as controlled as it should have been, and dinner was black eyed beans and squash stew.  Not bad.
Breakfast and dinner were all modest portions and I even made sure to not snack on anything bad (in fact I didn't snack at all) and I got a bit of fruit in after dinner. 

Today's focus was preparation so I popped into my local health food store and began picking up my vitamins to make sure I give myself a fall back in case my diet goes horribly wrong.  The one thing about being vegan is that there is a concern about not getting your B Vitamins (namely B12) which is vital for your nervous system and brain function so I picked up a supply of those.  I have read that I can get B12 from raisins which, I'm not sure about, but I think I will try to include more of them in my diet.  I don't know if I should be taking them daily because I've heard lots of reasons why you should and shouldn't.  To be safe, I think I'll take it once a week to begin with.
I also got large bottles of quality Acai and Aloe vera juice to cleanse my body and give me great antioxidant hits in the morning.  I'm excited because while I'm used to drinking Aloe Vera juice every so often (I usually drink the one mixed with cranberry) I can now alternate and have Acai which promises me youthful skin for longer and an even stronger immune system - yay!

I also got a whole load of nuts and seeds because a colleague of mine was telling me about a breakfast he's been having for years that he swears has improved his health.  This man is in his mid 50s and he doesn't have any grey hair, he looks a lot younger than he is and still has bags of energy to work a crazy amount of hours and swim once a week.  Well, that's more than I can say for myself and I'm 22.  His secret, he says, is to mix his porridge oats with ground linseeds, walnuts, almonds, black sesame and goji berries or raisins and have that five out of the seven days a week.  He doesn't add any sweeteners either and suggests fruit or raisins (B12..?) sprinkled on top.
Another thing he suggests is to drink a large glass of water when you wake up and give your body time to wake up before you have your first meal.  I have heard this a lot before and so I'm going to give it a go - I'm still unsure as to why but hey, if it's going to make me healthier, why not?
So I got a whole load of those and ground them all up in a blender and stored them in little jars.  I even took advice from my bible, The Kind Diet, to toast some sunflower and pumpkin seeds and stored them in a jar too to sprinkle over my meals; that's my dose of Vitamin E, C, Magnesium, Fibre, and Zinc.  Apparently both these seeds contain phytosterols which reduces your levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol! 

It makes me quite happy to know my kitchen is armed full of healthy things, I do actually feel a bit more prepared.

Tomorrow I am going food shopping to keep my veggies stocked up.  I have to face a 'family' breakfast out tomorrow and I know it's going to be a bad breakfast...so I might wake up earlier to have my own meal before we go.  I just hope I don't end up with two breakfasts!! Wish me lunch...I mean, luck!