Vegan Kickstart: Day 1 (well 1.5-2)

Vegan--Day one

Ok. To be honest I don't intend to be a vegan forever. However, I have wanted to be a vegan for several years and am going to commit to 21 days.

Q1: Why 21 days?
Good Question! I don't have an answer. One-month seemed to long, two-weeks not long enough. Apparently you need 21 days to establish a new habit. We'll see.

Q2: Why?
I have only been a vegan for 24 hours, but I am already getting sick of this question. Check out the following resources on the topic: http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vegetarian_foods.html. For me, I was really surprised by how much research there was on the protective and promotive health benefits of a vegan diet. Additionally, I was happy about the following reasons: opportunity to reduce my carbon footprint, watched too many PBS specials on the impact of chicken coops on local water sources, eliminate toxins from my system, finish something hard to do ect...

Q3: How's it going?

One thing that has been fairly consistent thus far on my "vegan" kickstart diet is that I am starving! My poor husband--I was up all night because I was too hungry to eat. Yesterday I tried to be vegan--but I inadvertantly ate non-vegan foods twice. First, Naturally More Peanut Butter has egg whites--it seemed like a good idea to get the healthiest peanut butter I could find. However, now I am stuck with a jar of peanut butter with flax seed that I can't eat for at least three weeks.

After my breakfast fiasco, I waited to eat lunch until 3pm. I had rotini pasta and mushroom sauce. Turns out the pasta was made with eggs. Grrrr. Also, Kashi GoLean Crunch is not vegan because it contains honey. This begs the question...what can I eat?

Q4: What are you eating?

Breakfast: bananna, ezekiel bread (spelling?)
2nd Breakfast: 1/2 cup of steel cut oats

Lunch: Kashi Mayan Harvest Bake, orange
Snack: Disgusting Vegan Muffin I made yesterday
Snack: That's right a 3rd snack--I was starving so I had a Larabar (Cherry Pie)

Dinner: Quick tip--First of all I made dinner. The recipe indicated that I was making black bean chili. However, it turns out that when they said "Black Bean Chili" what they meant was "a side dish (on a good day) or--let's be honest here--a salsa. I should make a salad but I am too lazy. Somehow, I managed to get through today eating very few vegetables. No wonder I'm hungry.

In addition, I accidentally burned it. So now I am eating burnt salsa for dinner. Good news--I am planning to have a glass of soy milk before bed. Mmmmm...only 20 days to go.