Well, a few weeks ago I embarked on eating a strictly plant based diet. I didn’t get very far. I made it to I believe Day 5 and things started falling apart. Not falling apart in that I just quit eating my plant based diet (I am a lacto-vegetarian primarily with not much lacto involved) but that I got extremely wrapped in my activities on the farm and I wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be. I didn’t meal prep as much (one of my biggest hurdles) and I did have some parmesan cheese on one of my salads. Cheese!!! Ugh!! I know. But I really like cheese sometimes. And eggs! Even though I’m not a scrambled egg kind of girl, I do like eggs in certain dishes.
So what’s a girl to do that wants to change her eating and still wants to be a semi, say 95/5 plant based eater? Well, I say be a 95/5% plant based eater! And, you know what? It’s okay!!
One of my main objectives with the plant based diet is to eat more whole foods and less processed foods, which I’m still working on. Another goal was to quit eating so much added sugar and sweets. For some reason, the winter months bring out my sweet beast and I tend to not think about how much more sugary sweets I am eating. Even though the sugary sweets may be organic or made with unprocessed sugar or honey, it’s still added calories and sugar.
Like I said in my first blog, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life counting calories and weighing food or, especially, stressing out over food. So I am accomplishing that part; of not counting calories, not stressing and cutting out added sugar. So I can put a big green check mark in that column.
Now, have I lost any weight? No, I don’t think so, but I haven’t really tried. I have noticed that my skin issues are better when I do cut out chocolate, sugar and most dairy. Does that mean I won’t ever eat those things again? Heck no! But I will continue to strive to eat whole, super foods that nourish my body and feed my soul.
So many people struggle with food and have issues, myself included. Food is a necessity and a healthy, life giving product that each and every one of us need. When you approach diet and exercise, that’s an extremely personal choice in how you live your day to day life. You don’t need to beat yourself up if you do have chocolate cake, just don’t have it every day. You don’t need to obsess, just plan and if you veer off course, get your map back out and start over. That’s where I am right now. We have been working so hard getting ready for our farm animals to arrive, meal prep and even grocery shopping has been either last minute or nonexistent.
I’m tired of hating myself if I eat more than I should or feeling bad because I didn’t get a workout in. Like I say in yoga, the poses don’t change, just our relationship with them. The food in life will always be around and present, I just want to change my relationship with it. I am going to enjoy my life and live it to the best possible end.
I will still keep trying new recipes that are strictly plant based and I will try new recipes that may have eggs in them too! I hope you can follow along and try out some of the things that I’ve learned but I’m not finished learning yet. Every day I learn to love myself more and more and love this life I live.
Here are some pictures of some of my plant based foods and lacto-ovo vegetarian dishes.
