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 :)

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!

 

Course and sucky sucky cheese and gluten

Usually when a vegan post concerns a course, it is about a spiritual/yoga or a vegan cooking course. Well I'm not that lucky but I am excited about leaving for a work-related course tomorrow. It's always good to leave work behind for a few days. So as of today I won't be going back to work until next monday!

The only thing I am concerned about is the food.... When I decided to eat a vegan diet again I decided not to concern myself with vegan (always vegetarian of course) foods when I'm out for dinner, or at a party. However, the more I read, the more I get into it, the less I want to eat anything else. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend and had a big goat-cheese salad. Although goat cheese has always been my favourite in the cheese department (and I ate a lot of cheese...), I felt bloated and unhealthy afterwards. I  had the (sorry yet to the nasty part) worst stomachache, diarrhea and gas the rest of the day! I thought about it and one of the following must be true a) cheese is bad for human beings, b) maybe I am lactose-intolerant? c) maybe your body can't digest cheese so easily after not eating it for a while (but that seems strange as my body never needs to remind itself how to digest an apple), d) all of the above.

I have always had stomach/colon/digestion problems. However, when I eat vegan I don't have them at all (only when I eat soy, I know my body can't handle that and I have been tested allergic for soy). When I was 16, I was tested positive for celiac disease (gluten allergy). As a student I didn't much care for the dry gluten free bread and expensive-pasta and started eating gluten again. I always knew it was bad for me but didn't think twice about adopting a gluten free diet again. When we handled celiac disease in medical school I felt a pang of guilt but forgot about it afterwards. Then I read 'the crazy sexy diet' from Kris Carr, and she not only talks about the health benefits of a vegan diet, but also about gluten intolerance and how it effects your body. She listed about 10 symptoms of celiac disease, and yeah I have to say I have 9 out of 10 (except the fact that most people become skinny from the disease, why o why is that the only thing that didn't happen to me.... :( )which isn't that strange as I have been diagnosed with it. How unhealthy can it be to just deny a disease? Well apparently very unhealthy, as it is known to give a 30% increased chance of colon cancer and causes many vitamin deficiencies etc. So I guess it's time to accept it for what it is and stay the hell away from any gluten.

That means a vegan, soy free and gluten free diet. Which sounds worse than it actually is. Luckily veggies and fruits don't contain any of them. But a lot of vegan products and recipes contain soy or gluten. I am happily in love with rice- and almond milk. Rice, quinoa and rice-noodles are all gluten free and inexpensive. And there are so many gluten free products in the market at the moment! I found an organic gluten free brand which I am quite happy about.

But how can I obtain such a diet in strange surroundings? I emailed the course directors secretary and she told me there are lots of fruits and veggies available during the day. We have two dinners in different restaurants and I assume that they will serve a buffet which usually contains rice (probably white rice but hey I'll take it over anything non-vegan) and a salad bar. So I am hopeful, but packed lots of snacks, fruits and gluten free crackers to take with me.

I guess it's time to go packing. I'll be back on sunday and probably won't be posting until then. Have a good and healthy week!

Not-so-lazy-Sunday

It's been awhile since I had a completely free Sunday, with nothing to do, no shifts or sleeping after shifts... and I loved it! I thoroughly enjoyed doing stuff without actually having to do something. First I needed to do something about my home...it was in desperate need of some cleaning... but I actually enjoyed it while dancing to some music. I took a very long walk with my dog, did the laundry and all that other stuff I tend to do on Sundays when I have one...

But I also did some cooking. As a result of my enthusiastic-I-am-vegan-again-let's-buy-anything mood I had lots of fresh fruits and veggies that needed some attention.

Carrot cupcakes
First I baked some glutenfree-soyfree-vegan carrot cupcakes. I browsed some recipes on the internet but couldn't quite find what I needed so I decided to try and bake something of my own with some inspiration from different websites (sorry but I can't quote as I have no clue where I got it from, but try google and vegan carrot cupcake and you'll find some recipes). I used the following ingredients (measurements are an estimate, I didn't really measure anything):
1 cup of shredded carrots
1 cup of cranberries and goji berries (or you can use raisins or any other dried fruit)
1 cup of buckweith (don't know the English word...) flower
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of dates
100 gr walnuts
1 cup of water
1/4 cup of orange juice (freshly squeezed)
A bit of shredded coconut (you can omit that, I just had some leftovers)
1 cup of chopped walnuts (I pulsed them in my kitchen machine, not for too long, no walnut flower!)
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ginger powder
1 tablespoon of ahorn syrup

First I cooked the water with the chopped dates, cranberries and goji berries and the cinnamon and ginger. I let it simmer for a few minutes. Then I shredded the carrot and poured the warm mixture over the carrots and let it cool off.

I then mixed everything together with the walnuts added at the last moment. I baked them at 190 C for about 40 minutes (a bit too long). I tasted them and they are a bit dense but taste GREAT :). As you may have noticed, there is little fat and no sugar added, only natural sources of sweetness and deliciousness.... The recipe yielded 9 cupcakes, enough for a week (or maybe less....)

Pumpkin and sweet potato chips
For lunch I ate some pumpkin and sweet potato chips, yummmmmmy! I had read about these chips before but never made them. As I had some of both the pumpkin and the sweet potato but didn't want to use them all for the curry I'd make later, I decided to have some for lunch with a sauce of vegan mayonnaise and mustard. I'll definitely make these more often! The only mistake is that I used too much oil for them, so they were a little soggy. I drained (yuk...) them and let them bake a bit more (oven about 200 C, I had them in there for about 30 minutes). Good to know for next time!

Vegan Pumpkin Curry

Last time I was vegan I made a lot of curries. As I had so many vegetables I decided to make one again, and a lot of it so I can put some in the freezer for shifts etc. I baked some onions with ginger and garlic in some coconut oil and then cooked the vegetables (cauliflower, pumpkin, sweet potato, green and red bell peppers, spinach and carrots) in coconut milk. I added some spices and other stuff: orange juice, cinnamon, tahin, tamari, rice vinegar, salt, curry, kurkuma, and pepper. I also added half a package of quinoa for some good amino acids. I think I had too much tasting and smells from cooking as I had a very small bowl for dinner and was super stuffed afterwards. 

Well that was my sunday... time flies by unfortunately. Have a good (vegan) week!

Loving the animals & Zucchini pasta

Well, I picked up my dog yesterday (part-time dog as I share him with my ex), and I always feel much better when he's around. As I was cuddling my dog and meanwhile looking at facebook messages I came across the following picture:

Well that's some common logic! I looooove the picture as it exactly states how I feel these days about animals! There is no good reason to slaughter these lovely animals, we don't need them to survive and we surely don't need them to have a healthy and lovely meal.

Today I ate:
Breakfast: Smoothie (almond milk, raw cacao, maca powder, bee pollen, hemp seeds, banana)
Lunch: none actually, not so good
Dinner: Zucchini pasta with bolognese sauce (onions, garlic, basil, mushrooms, grilled paprikasauce and sun-dried pesto (self-made) with a splash of bio-red-wine, topped with some nutritional yeast  (which is actually better as parmesan!). Adapted recipe from the vegan for fit book.
Snack: Vegetarian sausages with bread, pickles, ketchup and fried onions

I bought this funny little kitchen helper (only 6 euros) that makes zucchini into spaghetti easily. It's nice without all the extra carbohydrates and it's a nice way to get some easy raw veggies! And it tasted yummy!

I went to the birthday party and my friends were so lovely as to buy me some vegetarian sausages instead of the regular ones. There was some milk-traces in them but the gesture was so nice and so were the sausages ;). I didn't tell them yet from my change to a vegan diet, and I don't care when I eat something once in a while which isn't 100% vegan.

Today I drank a few glasses of coke. This Dutch store the Albert Heijn, sells coke with stevia instead of sugar or some carcinogenic aspartam. I love coke, it's one of my weaknesses. After I get back from my course next week (more on that later) I want to follow the 30 day vegan for fit challenge. It's a nice transition period at the moment, eating vegan but not a 100% healthy. Of course I'll post updates about that later!

Have a nice Sunday and think about some lovely animals, vegan hugs!

Eating in my shift

I hope that this blog will help me in the next few weeks to remain enthusiastic and successful in continuing a vegan lifestyle. That's why I wrote a new post so quickly, albeit a quite short one as I just finished an 18-hour shift. Before my shift I went to the Bio-store and bought myself a copy of Vegan for fit from Attila Hildmann, a German vegan Chef. I am quite excited about the book as it looks wonderful and the recipes aren't stuffed with Soy (I don't like it and am allergic to it). I can't say much more at the moment as I haven't tried the recipes and didn't read the book yet. It's a shame that the book can only be bought in German, but maybe some day it will be translated.

So what did I eat yesterday?

Breakfast: Smoothie (2 glasses) from frozen strawberries, purified water, banana, superfoods (bee pollen, maca, chlorella, hemp seeds, chia seeds, raw cacao), and some biological apple-sauce for a taste of sweetness. 

Lunch: left-over tortilla pizza with a salad (romaine, tomatoes, cucumber, paprika with a dressing of hemp oil, tahini and balsamico vinegar).

Dinner: zucchini soup (onions, garlic, vegetable stock, 2 zucchinis, nutritional yeast and raw cashews pureed together) with gluten-free bread and self-made sun-dried tomato tapenade. 

I had some biological cookies, raw cashews and some fruit as snacks. I drank water and green tea. 

Tonight I have a friends birthday party. I will stuff myself before that with some delicious vegan foods so I won't be tempted by cheese or other non-vegan produce. I will also refrain from drinking alcohol as I learned that most wines and alcohol are cleaned with gelatin! I have some biological-vegan-wine, but lately I'm not in the mood for alcohol and I don't really drink that often anyway. 

I plan to make some delicious and healthy vegan snacks (muffins etc.) tomorrow so I can start the week with a stuffed freezer. Also I have another shift this Monday so I need to be prepared.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Slow slow slow

Hello,

Since my last post it's going Ok-ish. I'm back to eating vegan, 99% of the time. Although I've had 3 weeks of and didn't always choose the right vegan foods. The problem is that I'm not losing weight anymore.

I have lost around 13 kgs of weight in the last 3 months, so I am very happy about that. But I still want to lose another 20 kg! I know where I go wrong...

The things I do right:
- I mainly eat healthy
- I eat my fruits and veggies daily
- I juice daily (green juice, mostly spinach, apple and pear)
- I joined the gym and actually go instead of sponsoring the gym...

The things I do wrong:
- I'm not drinking enough water anymore
- I forget to eat breakfast again
- I started to drink cola-light again
- I still smoke!

The main thing is that I persist in eating healthy. I'm not totally falling off the wagon, which I normally did when I hit a plateau-fase. So I am still very proud of what I accomplished so far :). I need to change a few things and hope to start losing weight again.

To kick-start losing weight again, I plan to have a juice-feast as off next week. I watched the documentary 'Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead' from Joe Cross. As usually thefruitpursuit.com has been a source of inspiration for me (she provides a link to the torrent of the documentary).

Joe Cross had a juice feast for 60 days and loses tons of weight. I'd love to do one some day, but I can't imagine it with my lifestyle of working and 24-hour shifts. So that's why I'll start with one week to see how it goes. I don't want to faint in the OR...

I'm off to work, but first I'll have my daily green juice :)

Cheers,
Nancy

So what do I eat?

Hello,

I'll use this post to write about my daily eats since I have decided to eat vegan (about 4 weeks now).

Breakfast
I have never been the type to eat a large breakfast. It's actually a lot of trouble to eat breakfast for me, but since I have turned vegan I haven't missed a breakfast! I wake up at 5am as I have to drive an hour to work and I have to be there at 7:15am. So I usually eat around 5:30am. Lately I have taken up starting the day with lemon water. After that I drink a smoothie (green monster) consisting of spinach, water, agave, and whatever fruit I still have left in the house (usually pears, apples, pine-apple, or frozen berries). After that I have a bowl of fruits with nuts and soy milk. It can occur that I munch on some biological cookies in the car when I don't have the time to eat my bowl of fruit (but then I eat that at work).

Here are some pictures of my breakfast from yesterday:

Lunch

Lunch varies every day for me. I often eat a sandwich with vegan mayonaise with avocado, lettuce and tomatoes. Or I eat leftovers from the previous night. Other times I take a salad with me to work. It all depends on what's left in my refrigerator. Yesterday I ate a sandwich with homemade tapenade (sun dried tomatoes, hazelnuts, walnut oil, and basil blended together, really yummie...), lettuce and cucumber. I really liked it...

Dinner
Well when I said lunch varied... dinner varies even more. I usually whip up something, sometimes I use a cookbookrecipe (my favourite so far is vegan planet, I'll do a book review later when I have tried more recipes). My dinner varies from different stirfries, to salads, to home-made pizza to pastas etc. Lately I prefer to eat grains like quinoa or bulgur. Yesterday I made a curry with cauliflower, carrots, potato, cashew nuts, coconut milk and loads of spices, served with quinoa. Loved it!



Snack time!
For snacks I usually eat biological cookies (way too often, I try to cut back on them...), fruits, or vegetables with a dip. I often don't have time for snacks, that's why I eat fruits for breakfast. Yesterday I went to the Ikea with my boyfriend. While he ate a chocolate pie, I was happy that they started a fruit bar. So I had a cup of yummie fresh (hopefully) fruits.

Drinks
I have had an addiction to coke (the drink...) as long as I can remember. I have always used the excuse: "I drink coke as I don't drink coffee and I need the caffeine!", but I was just a coke-addict. The regular kind, not the diet coke kind. When I just turned vegan I weaned off the coke completely and only drank water, water, tea and tea. Lately I have started drinking Diet Coke, which is bad bad bad as I know it's full of toxins. As a result I drink way less water which then gives me a blinding headache at the end of the day. So as of today it's back to water and herbal teas!

That's the end of my ramblings about my vegan diet.

As I haven't had any reactions yet to my blog (and yes I know I have readers, so reply!), here a question:
What do you want to change in your eating habits?

Love,
Nancy

30th birthday and reflections

Hello everbody!

And I can really say everyboday as the statistics option of my blog shows that lots of people from all over the world are reading this new blog :) Please feel free to leave a message!

30th birthday
Time flies by. Last week I celebrated my 30th birthday! I had a blast! I invited my friends over for a bbq before I went vegan. So I decided to do a traditional (with meat) bbq (I refrained from eating meat) for the very last time as I didn't want to impose my lifestyle on my friends. As of next year I will only serve salads etc. on my birthday as I felt guilty to buy so much meat while I try to save as many animals as possible by not eating meat or dairy. But all in all I had a blast at my party!

Reflections
So what did I achieve before my thirtieth?
- I have graduated medical school
- I am a surgeon in training
- I found my beautiful (in- and outside) boyfriend
- We live together in a house which feels like a home
- We have 5 wonderful pets (4 cats and 1 dog), and I love them to death
- I have really good and loyal friends, both in my hometown and in other places in the Netherlands and this world
- I have found peace with some issues that happened in my past (more on that in a later blog)

So what have I done wrong before my thirtieth?
Too many things like any other human being. I have hurt some people and I wish I could go back in the past and change that. But I have forgiven myself and others what happened. I don't like to linger too much in the past. Every mistake I made I know I did that with 'good intentions' at heart, although afterwards it appeared that those intentions were wrong. I can only try to avoid making those mistakes in the future.

So what do I want to achieve before my 35th birthday?
I actually wanted to write 40th birthday, but that sounds so far away..
- I (and we) want to have children. We feel ready for it so it's an exciting but also anxious time. We will see...
- I want to finish my training and become a good surgeon, not only technically good, but also a humane doctor.
- I want to be healthy, thin, fit and non-smoking!
- I want to continue eating/being a vegan. It feels good, healthwise, but also animal-wise.
- I want to be (and also stay) a stable, friendly and loving friend, mom, and family member.

Love,
Nancy

Welcome!

Hello everybody!

Welcome to my blog! I am Nancy, a nearly-30-year-old woman, living in the Netherlands. I live together with my boyfriend Erik, and our four cats and one dog.

I am a surgeon in training, and love my job! Unfortunately it also means a quite busy and irregular lifestyle, but as they say...that's part of the job!

Why start this blog?
When I was 16 I weighed 60kg and thought that I was overweight. That's when the dieting started. I only gained weight (sounds familiar?). I even went so far as to get a lapband, but that didn't help anything and is one of the biggest regrets of my life. Today I weigh much more than when I was 16, and I am sick of it. Not literally yet, but if I continue this way I will be some day. So two weeks ago I decided I'd had enough of it. I had done my research and read the book 'skinny bitch' which promotes a vegan and toxinfree lifestyle to become slim. I have also read the blog of a vegan here in the Netherlands (http://www.thefruitpursuit.com/), which inspired me a lot. As I have been a vegetarian for years (not recent) it is not such a big change. So I decided to give it a go. As a rule I only eat products that are biological and of course vegan. So why this blog? To document my progress and hopefully to get to know a lot of other vegans that can help me with my new lifestyle.

How is my progress?
Well so far I have really liked the 'diet'. I have lost 6,5kg in two weeks! Every morning I start with a glass of water with lemonjuice to get my body started. Then I drink a green smoothie, usually with spinach and fruit. As breakfast I have fruits with nuts or grains, and my lunch usually consists of a salad or bread with tomatoes/avocado or cucumber (and no I haven't had EHEC yet...). For dinner I have tried a lot of recipes that you can find online. I make sure to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, grains and nuts. I also drink at least 1,5 liter of water per day.

What do I need to change?
My other bad habit that I still need to change is... smoking! It's so contradictory to smoke while I eat so healthy, and I also know what it does to my body. It doesn't only cause cancer, but also breaks down a lot of vitamins. So that's the next step, that I hope to take the next couple of days! I will blog that progress here as well!
Another thing that I need to change is exercise. I don't exercise nearly enough. I had so little energy the last couple of months that I only worked and slept. Thankfully I have so much more energy since I started eating so healthy!

Why blog in English while I am Dutch?
Well, there is a simple answer to this one: I want to get to know other vegan bloggers all over the world!

Will you write everyday?
I'll try to, definetly!

So that's it, my first blogpost in this world. I hope to be read, to be reacted on, and to receive a lot of tips and tricks!

Love,
Nancy