Breakfast is Orange and Frothy

So today is Day #3 of my new drive to take charge of my health and weight. I started out on Monday with all the vim and vigour of the newly converted, hitting the gym and the juicer with equal enthusiasm, and vowing to myself that this was the start of something...erm...big.

Or small - whichever way you want to see it.

My fervor carried me through most of yesterday as I shopped for tons of fresh produce, spent a sweaty 45 minutes in the gym again, and noodled around the interwebs looking for inspiring weight loss stories.

But then came 6pm and it was time to cook dinner. :( As mentioned, My Beloved is trim and utterly without a peck of extra flesh so needs to lose no weight whatsoever. This means I have to be careful about dinners - the only meal we share during the week - as it can't be 'just' a salad. So I started preparing some vegan stuffed mushrooms (portabellos), tabbouleh and green leafy salad with a raw peppery-avocado dressing. Normally I would have baked a loaf of fresh, crusty, deliciously-warm-in-the-center bread to go with this, and perhaps a dessert for afterwards too. But this time I refrained. Keeping myself from devouring the stuffing - onions, garlic, spinach, breadcrumbs, thyme, pepper and Daiya cheese - by the handful was the tricky part as my mind screamed at me that I had been great all day dammit and I deserved some actual food!

Still I managed to resist but not without descending fairly rapidly into a crabby mood. It is interesting to me to see that, although I know that my love affaire with food has perhaps the most major impact on my emotional functioning, there seems to be little I have learned to help myself manage this. I am not without insight into my own mind, but still allow myself to be ruled by feelings around food: what to eat, how much to eat, even where to eat - the formality and process of a meal, and so on and so forth. I have read that folks doing a cleanse or a juice-fast (neither of which I am doing, btw) often have to deal with a surge of emotion around the food they are not intaking, but that they usually come out of the other side intact. I have to assume that this will also be the case with me. So for the meantime, I will plough on and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, along this path towards health and wellness.

Breakfast this morning was this:

Looks like an orange-creamsicle, no?

Actually, it is the juice of 2 large carrots, 2 oranges and 1 small grapefruit. And, yet again, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. :)

Thanks to the Nutrition Ninja

I can't deny it: I am not a skinny vegan. Nowhere. Near. In fact, I couldn't even claim to be chunky. 'Chubby'? Perhaps 'voluptuous'? 'Curvaceous'! Nope, plain and simple 'fat' is the more honest descriptor. I have battled weight all my life - both in my pre-vegan, omnivorous days and now. The problem is that fundamentally I am physically lazy, except when it comes to food preparation and consumption and then of course I am a dynamo. I can stand and cook for hours, eat as an Olympic sport, bake up a storm, and keep coming back for more. During my lifetime, I have tried the majority of the 'brand-name' diets, but either they don't sit right with me or I don't have enough willpower to make them work. Inevitably some pounds disappear but they always come back and when they do, they bring their friends.

During the course of her visit here, my mother channeled her inner Nutrition Ninja and bought me a juicer. It's one of those kitchen tools I've always quietly desired but never really thought to buy as a. they're expensive, b. they're uni-taskers, and c. I'd use it only for myself. My Beloved, skinny and gorgeous as he is, is more partial to a good microbrew or a glass of wine than he is to juices and I just thought it a waste of money to buy something solely for myself.

Thank you, Mum!

Here's the beastie she sneakily purchased without even telling me:




So I have resolved to incorporate a ton of fresh juices into my diet and see if I can crowd out the calorie-laden vegan goodies I have come to so enjoy. My plan is simple: juice and salads for breakfast and lunch, and smaller dinners with My Beloved.

I have not yet set goals for weight loss or milestones for the challenge, but I just know I have to change how I take care of myself before it all gets too late. I made the change from meat-eater and cheese-lover to vegan very easily and have really not looked back. But I always find it easier to act on behalf of someone else - in this case, the animals whose suffering and death I was supporting with my foolish choices - than to act for myself. This must change and it's started here, with lunch:




Cucumber, celery, pear, green apple, and a blood orange.




Actually, quite delicious. And now I want another! :)