Day 1

Why do I want to chronicle my attempt to eat healthier? Maybe so I’m held accountable in some way. Dunno.

Anyway, I watched Forks over Knives and what can I say… the stuff they said made sense.

Trust me, I never in all my 50 years considered being a vegan. Vegetarian… maybe… but vegan?

But I’m going to give the idea of a plant-based diet a shot. It’s almost completely the opposite of a diet others in my family have embraced… the Paleo diet (meats, veggies, fruits, no grains or legumes, I believe).

The plant-based diet is veggies, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts/seeds. Both diets (the plant-based and the Paleo) do have some things in common, though… no refined products and no processed sugar.

Well, this blog isn’t supposed to be informational… it’s just me writing down what I do and how I feel about it.

So… Day 1… for breakfast (before I watched the movie) I had:

• Organic granola with
• Organic raw milk

Then I watched the movie, made a grocery list, and drove to Trader Joe’s.

Our Trader Joe’s doesn’t have as many organic items as places like Whole Foods, but the prices are about half of what I’d pay at Whole Foods, so I tried to get what I could at TJ’s.

The last thing I grabbed was their pre-made:

• “Spicy Lentil Wrap” (Trader Joe’s: lentils/cabbage/tortilla)

… which, although it’s on a white flour tortilla, I still felt good enough about the rest of the ingredients (lentils and cabbage mostly) to be okay with it.

I ate half the wrap there in the parking lot and the other half several hours later.

One thing that works for me when I think of it, is portion control. I was thoroughly sated after eating half the wrap, but I’ve been known to eat twice the amount that satisfies me for various stupid reasons (I like the taste of something, I don’t want to deal with leftovers, etc).

Small frequent meals are better for me anyway because I’m hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) so having a constant release of glucose into my system is better than a huge dump of glucose every 8 hours with nothing in between.

For dinner, I was surprisingly not starving, but like I said, I don’t like to go too long without eating, so around 7pm I made a smoothie:

• Frozen organic blueberries
• 6 oz strawberry soy yogurt (TJ’s didn’t have any plain yogurt, but it was sweetened with cane sugar, not corn sweetener)
• Organic almond milk (lightly sweetened)
• Organic flax seed oil
• Trader Joe’s Green Protein powder

Next to that, I had:

• Organic saltine crackers (TJ’s didn’t have any organic crackers so I just used what we already had in the house)
• Organic peanut butter

In case you can’t tell, organic is important to me. I don’t want GMO foods or pesticides.

So here are my goals:

1. Lose 50 pounds
2. Low resting heart-rate (maybe 50 or so)
3. Good blood pressure (maybe 110/70)
4. Have more energy
5. Have great mental health