12 Week Self-Imposed Vegan Challenge: Week 1 Day 6
*This post contains Amazon affiliate links and WW affiliate links. I will receive a small percentage of the sale, at no additional cost to you, if you purchase through my link. Thanks for your support!
Has it been six days already?! I thought that a year has passed…am I a year older? Official Vegan slogan today: “Veganism – You won’t really live forever, it’ll just feel like forever since you have eaten something delicious.”
Today I had a respite from all the cooking, cooking, cooking that comes with being a vegan, and ended up at a Mexican Restaurant with my family. The problem is I am in rural Missouri trying to be a vegan…you don’t understand?
Here are a few examples:
You literally cannot explain being a vegan in it’s simplest form: abstaining from all animal products. This will not be comprehended in rural Missouri, we don’t get it. When my best friend went vegan her dad had a tough time figuring out what to feed her. She told him she could eat “basically no animal products” to which he pulled out a huge baggie full of meat and said, “Can you eat turkey then?”
Because around here turkey and chicken count as vegetables, and if you can’t name 10 people raising cattle for a living in 30 seconds, then you are not a native. Half the town has their own chickens, and when you say you are vegan they still offer you their eggs. Rural Missouri…they don’t get it.
So you can imagine the complications of being vegan at a Mexican Restaurant in rural Missouri. It’s hard. I ended up eating beans (no cheese) and rice (both of which had lard), guacamole, salsa, and chips. It was the best thing I have eaten all week…was it the lard? Definitely.
Here are my thoughts for the day:
Here is what I ate today:
Breakfast: (12 points)
2 pieces of Simply Nature Knock Your Sprouts off 7 Grain Bread (Aldi, could you please come up with a dumber/longer title. This is one of the reasons I hate you…4 points) 2 Tbsp Nuttzo Butter (6 pts), 1/2 Tbsp Apricot Jelly (1 pt) 1/2 tsp honey (0 pts)
Lunch: (??? SOL)
There is nothing worse on WW or MFP than eating out at a Mexican Restaurant with those baskets of chips. “Push the chips out of your reach, count out your portion and eat them slowly on a sad napkin”…that’s what they say…but I refuse. Maybe if eating out wasn’t such a rare treat I would. We haven’t had Mexican at a restaurant in MONTHS, and I love their salsa. I conscientiously choose to turn off WW and have a good time.
For that reason, I don’t have points for you. I could probably ballpark it, but I don’t want to. If you are on this WW journey, or any weight journey, you must arrive at the permission to eat and have fun/ freedom phase before you will have any lasting success. I read this book and learned about true food freedom. Please buy that book. It literally changed my life. I was a lifelong dieter who found food freedom from reading it. It finally clicked for me, and I am now finding success. This new mindset is why WW is working this time.
Dinner: (0 Points)
Dinner was an apple, a small green smoothie, and a roasted acorn squash.That was not punishment or because of guilt, but because my body needs that to feel nourished (Brain Powered Weight-Loss in action). Otherwise I’ll feel terrible. I’m happy with my body, I’m literally only trying to lose weight to be a more efficient runner. My joints will thank me and I will be faster than my sister…which is my only life goal.
But I’m not here to lie to you. Getting through that smoothie was the opposite of a good time, and things didn’t get better with that squash. It was nothing short of sheer will power making it go down. It literally took me 20 minutes to eat HALF of it. Someone carelessly left the butter in sight, and so help me, had I not had the accountability of this giant blog/video project, I would have used it. And that would have made the whole thing delectable. Sigh. Instead I threw a tsp of brown sugar on it and gagged it down like Ron Swanson with a banana.
Here is my exercise log for today:
Steps: 7000 (I don’t wear a tracker, so I just guess for WW, 5 points)
Sweat App: PWR Back and Biceps, 45 minutes of weightlifting (9 points)
14 points earned total
So there goes it. That’s how my Saturday ended up shaking out. Weekends are hard and a bit unpredictable, but aren’t they fun? This break from cooking/eating something I LOVE might be the key to success on this journey. Chipotle, please come to rural Missouri, you’re my only hope!
If you’d like to try your luck at losing with WW, you will find it at this link. It honestly doesn’t work for everyone, I explain why here. But you’ll never know unless you try, so why not try? It is the only program I have ever lost weight with, and I’m down 50 pounds from doing it…. intermittently over the last 3.5 years. (haha!)
