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As I write this up, i’m just finishing up my 10th day of Vegetarianism. I’ll say so far that I’ve zero problems adjusting food-wise to my new lifestyle. I’ve enjoyed trying new foods like quinoa, and trying new combinations of food together. I think I’m starting to develop a slight obsession with fresh cilantro. Tonight was made another nice concoction of food goodness tonight. Lucky for you, I’m going to tell you all about it. I saw a recipe on line called “Mexican Pasta”. I thought it looked yummy so I book marked it and saved it for later. After my run tonight I wanted to make an actual meal, and I thought his would be a good chance to try this one out.

I boiled up some shell pasta, and “browned” up some Boca meatless crumbles. The recipe called for black beans, but I have already eaten up all the black beans I had purchased, so this would be a good substitute as well as try another new product. While those were cooking, I cut up a green pepper and some fresh cilantro. I was lazy and just bought a can of diced tomatoes. Basically, take all those ingredients, combine them together, as well as mix in some peach pineapple salsa. Then I topped with some cheese and went to town. One thing to note: If I had a larger pot, I would have combined them all together in said pot and it all warm up together. I had to nuke my bowl to warm it all together.

It turned out pretty great if you ask me. I made enough for lunch and probably and easy supper tomorrow night. Yay planning ahead! We washed it down with some freshly made peach tea. A serious weakness of mine.

If you remember early on, when I was kicking around the idea of trying this out, I had planned on not keeping the diet after my challenge. If I had to give an answer today, I think I would say that I was going to keep it for the foreseeable future. I like this change in my life right now. Physically, I feel the best that I have in a really long time. I’m struggling a little bit with my physical strength though. I feel like I haven’t as much energy lately to be doing my planks, push-ups and arm curls. I’ve been still running on days that my son isn’t with me, and been pushing myself on those days while running. I just feel like I don’t have the strength be working on my muscle building exercises. Some days are better than others. I’ve made sure that I’m getting plenty of protein and iron in my diet, so I think my body is just adjusting to those changes yet.

As far as running goes, things are getting better and faster. I ran into some knee pains during a run Monday night, so I had to cut the distance shorter than what I had wanted to. Tonight, I wanted to keep pushing down my two mile time. I’m happy to report that I broke the 16 minute mark that I was striving for. I was able to finish in 15 minutes and 47 seconds. I want to see how fast I can push myself for a mile now. A few months ago I was able to run a mile in seven and a half minutes. I wonder if I could get that down to or under seven on a good day? Maybe you’ll find out.

I’ve decided with all this running and training, I want to start running 5Ks this fall. There’s one next month in North Liberty I’m looking at and in October in Cedar Rapids. I don’t think it’s for any real purpose other than just something to do for myself. I’m by no means wanting to become a competitive runner. I’ve been running so that I can become more comfortable in my own skin; I’m almost there.

I’m still watching the fluctuations in my weight on a daily basis. This week I’ve been around 193 most times of the day. I set an arbitrary goal of 190 pounds as my weight when my challenge was up. This was basically 10 pounds lighter than what I was when I started. If things continue going as they are now, 185 might not be out of the question. I’m not sure where I want to be for my ideal weight. I’m working building more muscle on my frame, so we’ll see where everything’s at in another 20 days.

This week has been long and especially hard. Mentally draining. Physically draining, and even sometimes emotionally draining. It’s what my life is right now.

I had a successful trip to the grocery store to stock up on vegetarian meal options. I broke down and bought a food processor (thanks for the birthday money Dad!! <3) as it seems like most recipes call for combining a several ingrediants together, then using the food processor, mash them up together. I’m going to need one if I want to try to make my own hummus anyway! I chopped up an onion last night. It works pretty dandy, and saved me a lot of time! The other highlight of my shopping was finding quinoa in rice/grains aisle at Target. I was surprise it was even there. It’s pretty expensive, but it should also last me a while because I’m not going to be making it at every meal.

Although, my big bonehead move of the night was realizing when I went to make supper last night, I actually didn’t have a can opener or a strainer! At least the MacGuyver (or McGruber if you will) is strong in me and I was able to get a can of black beans opened, rinsed and strained. How you ask? Well just so happens I’m going to share my secrets with you. I randomly found in my kitchen drawer (yes, I actually a single drawer in my tiny kitchen), and I found a “pop top” can puncture thing. The kind where you punch two holes in the top of a big can of juice (tomato or old style Hi-C), and I was able to puncture enough holes in it to make a nice starburst shape that came out. From there I just took a plastic container you get deli meat in, and put a bunch of holes in it with a knife. That created a make shift strainer, albeit very slow. Needless to say it got the job done.

Mission with the kiddo this weekend, venture to the dollar store to pick up can opener and strainer (among any other cheapie kitchen stuff I might find ususal for cheapie plastic prices).

I made a mixture of Quinoa (typically pronounced KEEN-wah), corn, black beans, and onions seasoned with cilantro and ground cumin. It turned out pretty awesome if I’m being honest. The quinoa was awesome filler in my dish, and it’s actually a superfood full of all kinds of good stuff including a boat load of protein. That is something very important that I need to make sure I keep getting by cutting all the meat out of my diet. Warm up a torilla, toss on some cheese and sour cream, and you’re all set! Photo of goodness below:

I was quite impressed by the taste and how full I was after the one burrito I had. I’m looking forward to trying other quinoa recipes in the future.

I’ve taken it pretty easy on the exercise front. I ran twice this week for only two miles per run; however, I’ve kicked up my pace on my two mile run. Wednesday night I finished in 16 mins 37 seconds, then the following night I pushed myself a bit more and came in at 16 mins 9 seconds. If I could keep an 8 min pace for two miles, I would be extremely happy. My shoulders and biceps have been pretty sore too, I haven’t done much in the planking, push-up and arm curl department either.

With that being said, I’m still holding steady at a 195 pound average. Looks like 190 should be easy to get to with a little more work. Obviously, I want to be gaining muscle too, so we’ll see where I’m going to end up at the end of my journey.

Looking forward to the weekend with my little guy, so I might just be writing up a summary of the weekend some reflections on my first week of my challenge.

Today’s entry is going to short and simple again today. Life is getting pretty crazy busy and hectic. These times could make it hard to stick to my diet and hitting up a fast food joint, instead of doing things at home. Home is cheaper and better for you, so I’ll have to make sure that I’m sticking to that as best as I can.

Today was a pretty simple for meals. I had the same peanut butter toast this morning as I had yesterday. For lunch I made a black bean burger with cucumbers, green peppers and lettuce on the sandwich. I also made a small side of hashbrowns to go with it.

Tonight I tried something based on a recommendation of my sister. Grilled cheese with hummus with some cottage cheese on the side. Basically you make a grilled cheese, but also spread on hummus between the cheese and bread. For good measure I put some yellow and red peppers inside as well that warmed up nicely in my sandwich.; Havarti was the cheese of choice tonight, and I recommend this cheese highly. Ironically it was the same sister that brought this cheese on a trip we took earlier this summer. Thanks sis! I then had some moo juice to wash it all down (obviously in a Black Label Society glass). You can see this in my image down below. It was pretty tasty.

For exercise tonight, I played league sand volleyball with my co-workers. After I got myself and my sandy kid all cleaned up, I did some planks and some push ups. My arms are pretty sore from some resistance bands from the previous night. Tomorrow I have a full schedule for the day, so I highly think that a run is out of the question.

Wake up weight: 196. Bedtime weight: 196. Looks like I had a pretty well balanced day today. We’ll see if this trend continues. I’m pretty much running on fumes grocery wise at home, so tomorrow I’ll probably talk about what I’m going to get and what will be on the menu.

There has been some major changes to my life recently; I’ll spare you any deals as it’s completely a different story. Over the last few months, I’ve had a chance to explore who I really am, and who I want to be, and where I’m going with my life. One of the changes I’ve made is within my daily food consumption. I’ve never really been a picky eater, but I was always hesitant to try new food, especially from different ethnic backgrounds. Sure, I’ve been a fan of Chinese (Americanese) food a long time, but would rarely verge out of my comfort zone. I grew up on farm in the Midwest (Monticello, Iowa) for the first six years of my life, then moved off the farm, but still living in the country with a ‘meat and potatoes’ family. I’ve always enjoyed most vegetables, but never really gave myself to really explore with them much.

Now we can fast forward to today, I’ve discovered many ethnic food backgrounds that I enjoy an extreme amount. Indian and Mediterranean are two of my favorites today and eat them with any chance that I get. I’m pretty much obsessed with chickpeas, lentils, paneer, and hummus. Now that I’m stocking my own fridge, I keep a good assortment of veggies including green (yellow and red) peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, snap peas, lettuce and others. In a week I typically go through three peppers, a cucumber, and a few florets of broccoli. I’ve come to some realizations that I’ll sometimes go a few days with out eating any sort of meat. Typically, it’s because I enjoy Garden Burgers, and recently tried some Black Bean Burgers. Those were really tasty by the way. My meat consumption is usually deli sandwiches on my lunch break or turkey burgers, but rarely red meat. I like to make Tator Tot Casserole with my kid is with me, as he enjoys that. I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy that goodness?

Since I’m not frequently eating meat already, I want to try a 30 day challenge and be vegetarian for that time period. On top of that I’m becoming a four-to-five times a week exerciser. This past spring, I ran (literally) into some knee issues that caused me to attend physical therapy to correct the issue for a few months. Since I had to start doing exercises on my own, I started getting into a daily/bi-daily routine of doing exercises to strengthen up my leg with the crudder knee. Now that everything is fine and dandy again, I’m able to run again without any pain. I’ve also begun a push-up program on the quest to being able to doing 100 continuous push-ups. One of the bands I was sent home with for leg exercises now is being used to do arm curls as well. I’ve recently started doing planks to trim and strengthen my core too. Simply put, when I’m not with my kid, I’m running and/or doing other exercises. I’m doing this all with out the use of a gym or much equipment, save the balance ball I purchased. I would also like to start doing pull-ups too, but it’s not currently in my tight budget to purchase anything. Sometimes when I’m playing at a playground with my son, I’ll do some pull-ups on the park equipment.

By now you’re probably thinking “quit rambling you bum, and get to the point”. What’s the goal of this you might ask? And why the heck would I be doing something like this? I want to be more cognizant about healthy living in regard to what I’m eating and putting into my body, as well as physically and being more active. I’m going to start journaling my daily (or bi-daily) meals and snacks, how hard it’s for me to adjust at home, how hard is it in public or at other’s houses for meals, among other things. I’m also going to start keeping a closer tab on my body physically. Ideally, I would like to be in the 190ish pound range, weight wise. I currently fluctuate between 196 and 202, depending on the time of day, how much I ate that day, and if I exercised and for how long. I’m not out to prove anything to anyone or anything like that. I want to be more comfortable with where I’m at life physically, and what I’m eating.

Will I keep this life style after these 30 days are complete? Probably not; I’ll most likely always be an omnivore. I would like to find the balance that fits me and my lifestyle best in regards to meat vs non-meat consumption. Do I feel bad about eating animals? I don’t to simply put it. I be the first to admit that I like to have the ignorance about how most of the meat industry treats the animals and how things are processed. It’s kind of a “gray area” that I just try not to dwell on. I guess what I mean is that I love animals, but some are pretty tasty too.

I don’t plan on jumping in full bore into vegetarianism this very second. I’m a very, very analytical person, and I like to think things through and usually have a very well thought out plan of attack. I talked briefly with a vegan friend of mine to pull some incite on how she’s approached her lifestyle change and challenges that arose. She just passed her one year as vegan. Go CC! I’ll look into people other experiences, stories, how they approached their weekly menu, and what other information I can drum up on the internets.

I hope you’ll find my experiences and stories useful and/or enjoyable. I’ll try to be posting pictures of my journey too, but of me and what I’m eating! My goal now is to start next week. That gives me a few days and the weekend to get a game plan in place (and eat any meat I have in my house for me). I won’t be changing my son’s diet to ad-hear to my own. He’ll still have is dinosaur chicken nuggets, fish sticks and other things kids like to eat.