068. 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge: Details, Goals, and my Thoughts Going into the Challenge

So, due to my case of the blahs and total lack of productivity over the weekend, I’ve decided to push back my 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge until next week. I want to give myself some time to reflect and prepare so that I don’t decide being a vegetarian sucks and bail on my ultimate goal of a 30 day challenge.

What? Starting Sunday (1/17), I’m going to go 1 week eating 100% vegetarian. For this particular challenge this means no meat – including fish. This 7 days challenge is a pre-cursor to a 30 day challenge I plan to do later this year.

Why? There are several reasons I wanted to do this challenge.


Initially, I was inspired by a few things Laura’s post about reducing her meat consumption and transitioning to a flexitarian diet. Caitlin's post eating ethically also got me thinking. The Vegan Week/ Blogger Vegan 4 a Day Challenge that took place back in November also piqued my interest though I wasn't read to tackle that challenge at the time.

I already knew about the cruelty a lot of animals endure when they’re being raised and slaughtered. I also had an idea of the negative impact the meat industry, and factory farming as a whole, has on the environment. However, I’ve justified this in my own mind a million different ways.

It was a complete coincidence that I read Skinny Bitch as I was decided to start my first veggie challenge; however, reading the book fueled my plan. It’s also motivated me to learn more and stop trying to justify the cruelty and negative impact on the environment that my eating meat has.

Where is this going? I don’t think I will ever become a full-fledged vegetarian, but who knows. Maybe after I do my 30 days, but I doubt it. I do have a few goals in mind for this mini challenge and my upcoming longer challenge.

• This will make my look at my meal plans for a week and make truly conscious decisions about what I'm eating since I'll need to make sure they're 100% meat free.


• Prove to myself (and others) that you don't need meat to be healthy and get enough protien


• Find more creative ways to incorporate fruits and vegetables in to my meals (rather than having meat with a side of veggies)


• Increase the number of vegetarian meals I eat weekly and decrease the amount of meat I'm eating.


• In eating less meat, I want to increase the quality of the meat I do eat (e.g. buying organic free range chicken rather than the giant bag of frozen chicken breast from Sam's Club.)


• Learn more about factory farming and it's impact on the environment.


• Find new and yummy recipes to add to my files.

Coming up...
Meal plans for my Challenge
New recipes I'm trying (complete with pictures and reviews)

059. Practice for my 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge: Tofu Fried Rice

Lunch with my friend Colleen today was awesome. I didn't get a picture because I forgot my phone at the office and my camera is still with my dad. As I mentioned earlier, we met at Roti; it was so much better than I remember! We were at a different location and my order was slightly different, but damn was it good. I had the Chicken Roti Sandwich which was Roti chicken on flatbread. I added a little bit of hummus, lettuce, feta cheese, and some of their garlic sauce. It was stellar!

Moving right along to dinner, with my 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge on the horizon, I decided to go for a test run tonight. For dinner, I made Vegetarian Tofu Fried Rice.

It's a little blurry, I must've moved my phone. Oops!

(Notice the cute, fancy plate and different background!)

The linked name above will take you to the recipe on SparkRecipes, but here's what was in my nutritious and delicious fried rice:

• broccoli
• snow pea pods
• pea shoots
• red onions
• carrot
• corn
• tofu
• egg

I think this was hands down the best fried rice I have ever made! I ended up going back a second helping (only half a serving though.) I'm actually kind of sad we're going out for lunch tomorrow for a co-workers birthday, and I can't eat the left overs.

Turning the Dreadmill into...well, something a little less dreadful.

To go along with my amazing dinner, I got in a really great workout today. I've been really struggling with my running/ work-outs because I cannot stand running on the treadmill. I make it about 15 minutes before I start losing it. I started thinking about how last winter I had no problems running on the treadmill, and I finally realized the difference. Last winter I had just started the Couch to 5K program. I wasn't running on the treadmill endlessly, going no where. I was running intervals. That's when it hit me. If I want to survive winter on the dreadmill, I need to be mixing it up! I decided to seek out some treadmill workouts to keep me going.

In her post earlier today, Tina mentioned MotionTraxx and how much she was digging the downloads. I decided to check it out. On the site I found three podcasts for interval workouts from Fitness Magazine which, oddly enough, a friend on SparkPeople had mentioned to me earlier today.

I downloaded all three of the Fitness Magazine "Lose 10lbs" podcasts and tonight I did "The Countdown." It was an awesome workout! If you're looking something to make the treadmill (or even elliptical) a little less miserable, check out these podcasts. I'm not usually a big fan of dance/ techno music (It's something I really need to be in the mood for.), but it really got me going. I managed to burn 550 calories in 35 minutes according to my heart rate monitor.

After my kick booty treadmill work out, I hit the 60 minute yoga class with my mom. I really do love yoga. I always feel so relaxed and centered after I finish. I also love that I get to go to class with my mom!

It's getting late so I need to go Whittle My Middle and get in the shower!

I'll be back tomorrow with more eats, a review of the book Skinny Bitch, and some Veggie Challenge related posts.

057. 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge

One of the items on my 10 in 2010 is a 30 Day Vegetarian Challenge. However, before I take on a full month of going veggie, I want to do a week long test run.

So, next week I’m going to be doing my 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge. This week I’m going to be planning my meals for next week to make sure I’m 100% meat-free. (Also, I’ve been really terrible about meal planning lately, and I think this would be a great time/ way to get back into the habit.) I’ll be going shopping over the weekend so I can buy ingredients for the weeks meals (and because I want to get back into the habit of shopping weekly as well.)

Does anyone have suggestions of really great vegetarian meals I should try?

This is a precursor to the 30 day challenge I’ll be doing later in the year so the more Vegetarian-friendly recipes I can collect the better.

Hopefully my camera will be working (or replaced) by next week so I can fully document my challenge.

I’ve got a ton of posts in the works right now. So keep your eyes open for these upcoming posts…

• Preliminary thoughts/ reflections on my 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge
• Awesome Ideas for Applesauce (I’ve been working on this one for a while)
• Meal plans/ recipes for my 7 Day Vegetarian Challenge
• Book review of Skinny Bitch (which I randomly picked up and started reading this weekend)

017. Back in the Groove for Real

So, recently I’ve been eating WAY too much processed junk-foods. I’m really starting to feel gross. I’ve also started to notice a pattern over the last couple months. I start the month really strong with a lot of ambitious goals. Near the middle of the month, I fall into a funk where I start slipping on my work-outs and not eating as well. After a week – week and a half, I get my act together again and finish the month off strong. Even my blogging has suffered this month which rarely happens because I really enjoy blogging! Of course, I do manage to do a lot of damage in the week – week and a half. So, in attempt to remedy this, I’m going to stop focusing on monthly goals try to set goals for a longer period of time.

I haven’t talked a lot in this blog about my specific weight loss goals or goals I’ve been setting to get to my goal weight. There are two reasons for this. First, this is more about getting healthy than loosing weight. I’m really not in much of a hurry to loose the weight. I’ll get there when I get there. Second, I started this blog after I set my November goals and I just never posted about it. I want to start monitoring my goals more actively on this blog.

As a way of managing these three things here are my goals for the next 6 weeks (until the end of the year.)

1. End the year at 150lbs (This is about -6lbs.)
2. Track all meals here and track calories over at SparkPeople
   2 a. Limit eating out to once per week
   2 b. Stick with weekly meal plans
3. Track all Work-Outs here.
   3 a. Work on including more cross training (spin class and swimming)
   3 b. Strength training (including 30 Day Shred) at least 3 days a week.
   3 c. Keep up with Whittle my Middle Challenge
4. Log 75 miles between now and the end of the year (I still have a couple left in the Pile on the Miles challenge!)
   4 a. Run 10 miles at least once.
   

So there you have it. My goals for the next 6 weeks. I tried to keep them simple and not too overly ambitious. I figured I should ease myself in to this.

There is one other challenge I want to do for myself and that is going vegetarian for a week. At this point, I have no intention of ever going totally vegetarian, but recently I have found myself wanting to reduce the amount of meat I consume and find more creative ways to integrate protien. I've been wanting to follow a more "flexitarian" model over eating - especially after Laura posted about it last month. I'm going to wait until after Thanksgiving to start that challenge though. We're going to Chris' counsin's house for T-Day, and since a) I love turkey and b) I have no control over the food, it seems like a bad day to be experimenting with vegetarianism.