making a sandwich
Yesterday was the halfway point in the 28 day challenge. It honestly feels like I’ve been doing this longer than just 15 days. I wish I had weighed myself when this all started. I know approximately what I weighed. I’ve been toying with the same 5-10 pounds for the past few months. This morning I weighed myself and it’s the lowest number I’ve seen on the scale in over 10 years. Compared to the numbers on the sidebar there on your right, from January it’s not a big drop, but I know I was climbing from that number last month. My guess is I’ve lost about 5 pounds in the past 15 days.
tasty sandwich
This challenge really isn’t all that hard. Avoiding meat is easy, no cheese or milk is fine… whatever. Avoiding the oil, when out to eat, yeah a bit of a challenge. The hard part is keeping it interesting so you’re not just eating salad all the time. Luckily I can eat the Ezekiel Bread on this plan. Yesterday for lunch, after the awesome smoothie, I made a sandwich. I toasted the bread and then I smeared hummus on it with a sliced avocado and the little cherry tomatoes. I cut the tomatoes in half so they wouldn’t roll off the sandwich. I may stop today and get regular sized tomatoes and more avocado because I really liked this sandwich. I think it’ll be pretty portable in the coming weeks when I need to pack a lunch. I just need to find my lunch bag. It always manages to end up where I totally don’t expect to find it.
nutritional yeast
I also added some nutritional yeast to the sandwich. We were given a little sample of it to try at our cooking class the other night. They told us it had a kind of cheesey flavor and it sort of does. It’s flaky, like fish food. According to the Wikipedia page it has a lot of B vitamins. Vegans use it as a cheese substitute and I’m told it tastes great on popcorn. I threw it on the sandwich, I’m not sure if it changed the taste at all though since I’ve never had a sandwich like that one before. I’m not sure if this yeast is something I’ll go out of my way to buy in the future, but I’ll use what they gave me and see if I like it. Popcorn is next on the menu. I may try tossing it on salad too.
sweet potatoes and asparagus
For dinner I tried the roasted asparagus recipe using orange juice and black pepper to coat the vegetables. I had a sweet potato and I thought that might be tasty that way too. I think I added a little too much pepper, but it tasted really good. I threw a bit of lemon zest on top for garnish. In all this has been a fun experience. I know I need to cook more at home and plan meals in advance. I’m working on that and I know I’ll get better at it. Today I made extra smoothie so that I’ve got it ready for tomorrow morning. I’m off now to get what I need to make the mighty muffins. I know I’m going to wish I had those around this weekend.
I want you to tell me, what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done? In the end did you feel good about having done it? Would you do it again? This is hard, but it’s not impossible and I don’t feel I’m missing out. At this moment I do plan to try to keep up this kind of healthy eating when the challenge is over.
Breast feeding my daughter for a year was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was nerve wracking because I was neurotic about whether she was getting enough milk, even though she was always a healthy weight. I also had to avoid certain foods, caffeine, almost all prescription and over-the-counter drugs, etc. That said, I believe it was the best thing I will ever do in my life.
You’re doing great, Pattie. I’m in awe.
Thanks Laurel! I know breast feeding isn’t as easy or intuitive as we’d all like to believe. There is a part of me that hopes I’ll get the chance to do that.