Day 32 - A leap of Kind faith

Without knowing it, today I actually lived a day of a Vegan and I have to say, it's been a particularly harmonious and stress free experience. 

Having read a lot 'The Kind DIet' by Alicia Silverstone in a day, I've taken on board a lot of things she has written and overall it's an extremely inspiring book.  It's taught me a lot about the body and not only do I feel like the research correlates with a lot of what Michael Pollan says in 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' but it also makes a lot of scientific sense (although I'm not a scientist myself, I do know how to use Google pretty efficiently). 
As I've mentioned, leaping into the vegan lifestyle was never my intentions (at least for now) and I wanted to 'flirt' with it and see how things went.   As far as I could see, giving up eggs, milk and fish was just too much of a sacrifice.  Having read through her book, it's become increasingly logical to abstain from these animals and animal by-products and really start healing my body with the good foods that Earth provides.  I don't know how long I can go without beloved salmon sashimi, cheese omelettes and milk smoothies but for now, I think I can go without.
In saying this, I do have something quite interesting to report.  At the very beginning on The Slimming Strategy, I found that my skin began to clear up and my acne was rapidly disappearing.  It was phenomenal for the first week and since the second week, it seems to come back.  Having made the connection between cutting out red meat, fried goods and processed sugary crap out of my diet I slowly realised that it had something to do with reintroducing something back into my diet that was causing my skin to flare up again. 
Alas, I realised that I'd suddenly given into some processed flour goods and started consuming more dairy than before (remember that huge lump of cheese we bought last Saturday?).  I looked through The Kind Diet only to find that my hunch was correct.  She says that with the hormone levels in milk (which by the way is designed for baby cows to drink, not adult humans) milk can break her out and make her fart a lot! 
So since  yesterday I cut out a lot more dairy and today I didn't touch any and strangely enough, my skin has started healing again.  I will have to report on how to this goes but as far as I can see... I'm experiencing some amazing things with this new life style.

Furthermore, one thing that must be cleared up is that I'm not actually using The Kind Diet as a method of weight loss.  Alicia makes it quite clear that by adopting this lifestyle, you will naturally lose weight and glow from within.  Having embarked on this new flirtatious adventure with the vegan lifestyle, I've realised that without knowing, I've become increasingly concerned about my health and body, as opposed to my weight and looks.  The Kind Diet has taught me a lot and reaffirmed a lot of what I thought about my body and how I wanted to treat it.  So for the last few days, rather than concentrating on calories, I've been searching through The Kind Diet and found that it suits my style perfectly.  Now it's about finding the balance between putting nutritious, wholesome foods into my body, eating the right proportions and exercising vigorously.  This journey continues....

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Talking about exercise, I've finally completed three days of running this week.  My body is absolutely exhausted and I am very tired.  Needless to say, I feel fantastic and I can actually feel my muscles now; before I wasn't sure they existed.  I don't feel like any weight is shifting but I'm assuming my body is getting used to a lot of changes and is just adapting.  I'm sure within time, it shall drop off!

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Finally, on to today's food

 
Check out what I had for lunch.  What do you think this is?  A bowl of rice?  Surely NOT Helen. No, it's not actually.  Today I used cauliflower (yes you heard me) as a substitute for rice and fried it with spring onions and mushroom.  The cauliflower, when mashed lightly into bits, gives a similar texture to rice and therefore can become a fabulous alternative.  It was a wonderful wholesome bowl of goodness that I ate with...

Crispy baked tofu with a fruit soy sauce.  When I perfect the recipe, I shall pass it on to you.

 

For dinner I made lasagne again!  This time I use courgette as my pasta sheets and used beans instead of meat.  We even convinced my brother in law to have the vegetarian version and he gobbled it all up.  His version had pasta and cheese, whilst my sister opted for pasta-less but with cheese.  I was a bit hardcore and skipped both pasta and cheese.

Do you see which section belonged to whom?  I was so stuffed by the end of it I'm almost sure I overate.  But I overate on carrots, peppers, onions, courgettes, tomatoes and beans....so I really doubt it was serious.

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Seeing as I'm not exercising until Tuesday again (turns out, I'm going to be busy on Sunday) I will be back on diligent calorie counting. Let's hope tomorrow is going to be as equally as uplifting.

Helen

Day 31 - Intense Running, Resistance Training, The Kind Diet

I'm taking each day as it comes and each day is a challenge, an obstacle and a gift.  I am spending every day working towards goals and developing myself as a person.  I know I have to go back to university soon and even though it's only one day a week, I'm slightly anxious about it because it's going back to a life I did not like.  I am, however, determined to get this right and do well because after all, in the last month I've become a warrior so what can really stop me?

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Today's Food

On to other things, today I ate really well.  Here is a picture of breakfast - Overnight Oats with Apple and Yoghurt

Overnight oats were made by soaking organic oats in apple juice over night, and then mixing it with organic low fat yoghurt in the morning, shredded apple (organic :D) and half a teaspoon of Agave Nectar.

This was lunch - a bean salad tortilla wrap

I used a wholemeal tortilla wrap from Discovery.  The filling is black eye beans with organic lettuce, yellow pepper, onion, spring onion and cherry tomatoes.  Seasoning was chilli powder, pepper and parsley.  I parsley EVERYTHING.

For dinner it was meatballs because I was away on Meatball Monday.   Today I decided to make the shift of eating meat balls to  a vegetarian option so as there was left over beans I pan fried some bean cakes for myself.  Otherwise the family had turkey meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce, and we all had oven roasted butternut squash, tomatoes and onions with stir fried kale and lemon and butter quinoa.  (meatballs on the left, bean cakes on the right)

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Sausage Fear

Today I actually had this strange and intense need for meat.  I don't know why but I had been holding this craving back since the day before so I finally fried up a sausage to satisfy my craving.  The particular beef and mustard sausage was fried without any oil on a non stick pan.  Check it out:

 

Can you see how much oil comes out of the sausage alone?  I have to say that might be my last sausage for a long time because I did not feel good afterwards, both physically and emotionally.  I think it just highlights exactly why I no longer want processed meats in my system - just look at it!

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Running

I went for an intense run today and this time it was early evening around 4pm.  The sun was lowering but the breeze was still present and the sky was beautifully blue.  I did the same 0.08 mile stretch over and over again and today my body was just not working as hard as it was yesterday.  My mind seemed to stop me today but in saying this I ran a good 20 minutes and sweated a fair bit.  The work out included press ups and bench presses against the railings because I wanted to shed my arm weight, tone up and grow stronger. I am now feeling quite broken but very, very alive.

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The Kind Diet, by Alicia Silverstone, finally arrived at my door today!  I am incredibly excited and fascinated by the book and concept.  This is what I've been looking for all along and this book speaks to me like no other book has (besides a few other life changing books I will tell you about another time).  The Kind Diet talks of a vegan lifestyle, of a sustainable, honest, kind to earth, plant based diet and while I don't know whether I can commit to it, I can definitely be a flirt for as long as I want.  Learning about this lifestyle and educating myself on alternative recipes will only expand my palette and love for foods - this is definitely a journey I want you all to join me on. 

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What a fascinating day.  I'm finding that I am procrastinating in certain areas of my life so tomorrow is a day of clearing up odds and ends and facing up to things I haven't done in a long time.  Also I haven't been counting calories properly but have been eating sensibly.  I feel little change in my body as of yet but perhaps by the end of the week we shall see results.  Tomorrow I will try to monitor my calorie intake a little more and make tomorrow's run a good one before a rest until Sunday!

 

Good night x