Day 1

Prepping for Day 1 of this was hard. I washed and packed berries and an apple and a salad with chickpeas. That's what, 300 calories for the day? I'm typing this after I've already left for the day and I just remembered I forgot to add sprouts to my salad. Like that extra 3 calories was going to make me feel full, I guess. Even worse, I have a singing gig tonight so I am going to be in a bar ... hamburgers and bar food will be my dinner options! Are french fries vegan? Right now my plan is probably to visit Panera between work & the gig for a big salad and vegetable soup.

Clearly I don't have the food plan completely worked out yet. I'm really not clear on how I'm going to get enough protein without living on nuts, nut butter, and protein powder for the next month, which is not exactly in keeping with what we're trying to do here. Nuts are great, but PB sammiches are not the foundation of a healthy diet.

I can already see a major challenge will be sticking to the spirit, not the letter, of this challenge. Vegan bread, corn chips, pasta etc may be vegan food options, but 21 days of spaghetti and marinara sauce is not really expanding my horizons or changing my relationship with food - at least, not in a good way.

Breakfast: vegan toast with peanut butter and an almond milk protein shake

AM Snack: strawberries and blueberries

Lunch: Spinach/romaine salad, EVOO/balsamic, chickpeas

PM Snack: apple

Dinner: Black beans and rice (home, gig got canceled)

Grocery Shopping

I asked Jess what we could eat on this plan. She replied: "Veggies. Fruit. Beans. Whole grains. Tofu. That pretty much covers it."

Sounds easy, right? Okay, smartypants, you go to the grocery with that as a shopping list and see how far you get on buying a week's worth of food that you will actually eat! Now, I work as a freelancer so my schedule can be a little whacky, and right now I commute 2 hours a day 4 days a week to various client sites. So I need to be able to pack my food ahead and be prepared to be on the go for 10 or more hours at a time, often without access to a fridge or kitchen of any kind. While I know vegetarian/vegan eating is getting more popular, I do know that my options for quick food on the go will be limited.

So that's how I found myself in three different grocery stores AND a farm stand this weekend. I started at Nurells, the local produce stop, where I acquired black grapes, a peach, nectarines, and some fingerling potatoes. Yum. I spent $11.82, all this produce was conventional.

Then I stopped at the local King Kullen to get cheesecloth for the almond milk project (which deserves its own post!) and saw pineapples were on sale for $2. Also not organic, but they looked delicious. So by the end of the Sunday, this vegan plan looked awesome in terms of cost savings anyway! But something was missing...... protein.

Today I went over to the local "natural" grocery, Wild By Nature, to load up on beans. I like to buy the organic beans from the bulk bins here. I have a few pounds of black beans, along with some great northern beans that I'm really not sure what I'll do with yet. I got some extra firm tofu, corn chips, brown rice wraps, strawberries, vegan "Primal Strips" (surely also deserving of their own post) and some couscous. I also bought a vegan chocolate bar because chocolate is not something I do without for a week. Also in my reading I discovered that it's a good idea to supplement with flax seeds (which I already had) and B12. The attendant in the supplements aisle was very helpful and warned me to get enough protein. Total came to $36.87 for a fairly small bag of mostly organic food. Not unexpectedly, specialty processed vegan food items are a little pricey.

I also went to Stop & Shop for bread, apples, onions, a jar of marinara sauce, tomatoes, and some pretzels for munchie emergencies. $18.21, all organic.

This has me at $68.90 for groceries, which is probably pretty average for a week of food for me. I'm not at all convinced, however, that this will actually feed me until next weekend.

Black beans are soaking now, as they will definitely be a staple this week.

And here's my first vegan meal of the experiment (though I don't know if today really counts): PB&J with some of the black grapes. I supplemented this with homemade almond milk and a scoop of Metagenics UltraMeal 360.

Vegan Experiment Kickoff

My sister and I have become somewhat addicted to trying new eating plans. She went high-protein, no carbs for a few months last year based on a recommendation from her doctor for weight loss - I tagged along for the ride. She read The Biggest Loser 30 Day Kickstart book right before one of my visits home and sure enough, some of the recipes looked good so we tried that too. Now she just read this one: 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart: Boost Metabolism, Lower Cholesterol, and Dramatically Improve Your Health and guess what? We're going vegan.

You know what I just realized, typing that paragraph? These are all her idea. WTF?

You'd think, with all these diet and food plans, that we're both overweight and looking for the magic bullet. Not the case. We're both normal weight (if a few pounds above where we'd like to be) and fairly active. We run, we lift weights, we do yoga. But we're both slightly abnormally interested in food, nutrition, being fit, and being healthy in what is often an unhealthy world.

So the only thing better than trying a new food plan is to also write about it. Here we go, three weeks of vegan eating!