Day 5?

I had a few busy days so I haven't posted daily as planned. I'll keep it short:

Foods
I'm still eating vegan and I don't have any issues with the foods. The recipes are yummy and easy to prepare. The only thing is: it needs planning and time. I found out that preparing my lunch the evening before works best. I often make a double batch from a dinner and then change it up a bit for lunch by adding some veggies, salad or some carbs. Lots of people believe that eating vegan costs a lot of money. I've noticed that I spent a lot of money on some basics (seeds, nuts, oils, supplements, super foods, etc) but that the weekly costs only consist of veggies and fruits. Furthermore I spend way less on lunch and drinks at work as I don't buy any sandwiches or drinks anymore. I actually think I spend less money on foods than with my previous vegetarian diet. I must say that I am 'freestyling' a bit, I don't just eat recipes from the VFF book. I use the basic principles and mix it up with ingredients that I have in stock. I replace nuts with other nuts, veggies for veggies, etc. But I keep to the principles of eating low carb at night, eating breakfast daily, eating vegan, and not eating after 19.00.

Sports
I went to sport once this week. I'm planning to attend a Zumba class tomorrow night so that's 2 times in one week, my goal :)

Drinks
I drink a lot of matcha shakes, water and green tea. I sometimes spike my water with some fruits, freshly squeezed juice or some organic apple sauce. I always drink tea without sugar so that's not a problem at all. I drank some coke this week, but am quite satisfied with how little. From today on I am sticking to the non-coke plan.

Smoking
Yeah that's hard. I still smoke, but I smoke about 10 cigarets a day, sometimes less, not more. For now I am happy about that, but I still want to reduce it until I quit smoking.

Results
I haven't stepped foot on a scale yet so I don't have any results thus far.

Next few weeks
I like eating this way and hope to continue it for longer as the prescribed 30 days. I am not sure I'll be eating vegan for 100%. I must say I have broken the cycle of eating tons of cheese, and I don't want to go back. I still eat gluten free and I notice so many changes in my body. The stomach aches are gone, I have more energy, etc. So yeah I do want to make these changes for a long time, but I think I'll eat cheese at dinner parties etc., but not at home or work. I haven't quite decided yet, I'll figure it out in the next couple of weeks. I have some dinner parties and in 2 weeks I'll be taking a weekend-trip with some colleagues and I'll see how eating vegan turns out then.

That was my recap of the first few days, time to go make my salad for lunch tomorrow ;)

Day 2

Day 2

Well, yesterday was a very very busy day at work. For breakfast I had a banana-choco-matcha smoothie and that was filling and gave me an energetic feeling. I had it at 6am and it lasted me until 10am. I had a fruit salad for a snack and didn't have time to lunch until 1.30pm. I had my zucchini spaghetti for lunch. At night I was still quite full so I only had some mixed vegetables (mushrooms, paprika, zucchini, eggplant, onions, pumpkin and garlic) for dinner. I didn't have anything to eat after 7pm. I drank a lot of water and green tea. 

The smoking challenge is a little too much for me at the moment. Not-smoking makes me want to eat, the VFF challenge makes me want to eat less and healthy. I don't want to make things too complicated so I think I'll stick to the VFF challenge for now. 

Sports: I walked for about 2 hours with my lovely dog. 

Well that's it for now, I'm quite proud of the healthy foods :)

Vegan for fit and other challenges!

Day 1....
There it goes... it's day one of the VFF Challenge! The book encourages to set goals that are realistic enough and can be achieved in 30 days. Other health challenges are also encouraged, so I am proud to present my list of challenges:

1. Vegan for fit
No sugar, no soda, no carbs after 16hr, all-vegan, all organic. That's the challenge! It also means thoroughly thinking about what you put in your mouth. Theoretically I can munch on vegan cookies all day, but that's not as healthy as it's intended to be. I will use all the recipes in his book, but will adapt them to be gluten free and soy free and I'll use whatever I have in the kitchen. I am not buying white almond butter when I still have brown almond butter etc.

2. No smoking...
I have been trying to quit smoking since I can remember... It costs lots of money, is unhealthy and when I think about it there is no good reason to smoke....other than the fact that I am addicted to it. But how about having a few awful withdrawal-weeks instead of awful years of smoking...sounds logical.. As I have way lower stress-levels as compared to a year ago, I feel up for this challenge. It will also approximately save me 1900 euros a year....! That's a crazy amount of money to blow up in the air... And I'll save about 2 lungs as well ;). So here it goes...no smoking for 30 days but actually for the rest of my life... Somehow it's not logical to eat as healthy as possible, detox your body from all toxins in other foods and than infuse your body with toxins from smoking. Also, I found out that cigarets are not vegan at all! They contain animal products and they perform horrible animal experiments on animals to test their cigarets. So no more cigarets for me!

3. Sports
I have actually been sporting a while now, but lately I have been too occupied with other things. So it's back to doing Zumba twice a week! And of course I'd like to do even more but the challenge is to do sports at least twice a week. I love Zumba, it always makes me smile, it's good for the body and mind!

4. No soda, no caffein!
Well that's actually part of the VFF challenge, but for me it's a separate goal as I am a soda-junkie! Cola, red bull...yummy! But so unhealthy! So according to the VFF challenge I need to drink 2 L of water and 1,5 L of green tea every day. I won't measure it exactly but I'll try to keep up with that. No caffein means no caffein from coke and red bull, matcha tea is also stuffed with caffein but is a superfood. I'll drink that when I can find it somewhere.

The ultimate goal
Is of course to look like one of these (girls then, no sex change operations here ;))

The measurements and goals
Well I'm not going to publish my weight or the width of my hips here... but in 30 days I will publish my results. My goal is to lose 5kg in 30 days, I'd like it to be more but I think 5kg is more realistic. I will not weigh myself daily but try to do it a maximum of once a week. That's actually quit difficult as it's so tempting to weigh myself daily.

So there it is written-in-stone or at least published on the internet... my goals! Now I really need to keep myself to them or otherwise I'll be publicly ashamed ;). Tomorrow (or maybe tonight) I'll publish how my first day went!

Course and Vegan for fit Challenge

Well I'm back from the course! I actually got back saturday night but didn't have any energy to write anything until now. I had a very nice lazy sunday and started work again today. The only thing that wasn't so nice is that I didn't have any fresh fruits or veggies yesterday as all shops are closed on Sunday here. But today I went to the supermarket and bought me some yummy fruits and veggies.

The course
I loved it! I met some lovely people, had tons of fun and learned a lot. Normally I have trouble concentrating, but maybe because of all the healthy foods (and omega-3-plant-acids) which are good brain-foods, I could focus and concentrate so much better! The topic of the course was knee-surgery and knee-implants. The only thing that bothered me during the course was the fact that we had to learn doing these surgeries on cow bones!

I was totally not expecting this as we normally learn surgeries on 'fake bones' made out of some kind of plaster-plastic-mixture. But this particular surgery involved cartilage-surgery, and we needed cartilage to learn it on. I considered not doing it, but I thought about it and had some other thoughts:

1. the cow wasn't slaughtered for this, it's only a rest-product from slaughter for meat (ok this argument sucks and is also used by meat-eaters for other crap
2. I do need to learn this and don't want to fail the course
3. If I don't do it they will throw the bone away unused anyway

Well, I decided to do it, but hated doing it so much I was distracted. It is just so strange for a vegan to use a part of an animal for something. I hated it, but I learned from it as well. Totally strange situation.

The foods during the course

I had some vegan and some non-vegan, definitely all vegetarian-foods. The first day I had a big salad for lunch (carrots, lettuce and cucumber, boy can cooks be uninspired when it comes to vegan-salads...). For dinner we went to a restaurant and I had a salad and some pasta with veggies, as a desert fruit with yoghurt, I only ate the fruits. The second day we had some cheese-dish for lunch (Käse-Spätzl), for dinner a salad as appetizer and some pasta with veggies as main dish. For dessert we had cocos with fruits. The third day I had a sandwich with camembert (the other option was goulash-soup which of course wasn't an option. For dinner I had a salad at a restaurant during my travel back home. So yeah not quite vegan. I noticed that my body really hates eating gluten and non-vegan foods, so I am happy to be home and vegan again :)

The Vegan for Fit Challenge

As I wrote before, I am starting the VFF Challenge as of tomorrow (I ate vegan today but needed to do some shopping before starting the challenge. In short, the VFFC is a book from a vegan Chef called Atilla Hildmann (I hope I spelled that correctly) and is focused on weight loss by using a vegan low-carb diet. The main points are (but hey if you are german: buy the book, it's cool!):

- eating vegan

- omitting all sugar (replacing it by Stevia or Agave Nectar)

- no carbs at night, only for breakfast and lunch

- no unhealthy carbs (white flour, white rice and pasta)

- sport

- no eating after 7pm

- making everything fresh, no preproduced products

- drinking a lot of water and green tea

- drinking matcha tea

There are tons of recipes in the book, but as I have so many ingredients left, I'm not planning on following only the recipes in the book. I will also make it gluten and soy free. So I will sometimes use different nuts or nut butters, oils etc. until I have used all the other organic vegan produce I have left. But I'll follow all the rules, just maybe with some different ingredients. I'll also remain eating my superfoods (bee pollen, maca powder, raw cacao, chlorella, spirulina) and will take my supplements as before. I will refrain from most produced products. My main goal remains weight loss and health. I guess this challenge for me is about eating a healthy vegan diet. It's so easy to eat a junk-vegan diet full with cookies, bread, pasta etc. Also it's easy to eat a junk-vegan diet meanwhile drinking a lot of coke and red bull (hello me). So that's it, a healthy diet for me as of tomorrow. I will post a (mostly) daily update here!