Vegan Diet.

Happy Saturday beautiful people! I pray this finds you well. I just wanted to stop in and talk about my first day deciding to try a completely vegan diet — or maybe the better term would be plant based? Either way, I’m going to completely eliminate all meat and dairy products from my diet.

As some of you may know, I’ve been transitioning into this for the past two weeks. On May 30th, I wrote my first journal entry and noted that I’d be partaking in a few other personal challenges over a 30 day period; not eating meat was one of them. Since then, I’ve really been sticking to it! I only had seafood once, in a crab ragoon, when I ordered Thai food; and I’ve only ordered takeout twice, both vegetarian. Overall, I’ve been feeling and moving better. My blood pressure dropped from 160/100 (crazy, I know!) to 132/90; which is still high but much better than before. I feel accomplished because I didn’t give in and I didn’t quit.

Now, it’s time to completely eliminate dairy! I didn’t go out of my way to buy dairy products, but we still have eggs and non vegan cheeses in the fridge. So, I ate those occasionally with breakfast and lunch when I didn’t have to. Moving forward, I’d like to stick to eating complete and whole, plant based foods and minimize the processed foods — hence the reason I said that maybe this should be titled my “plant based” diet instead. Although lots of things are vegan, they’re not all necessarily healthy.

In these two weeks, I included meat substitutes, some vegan snacks (chocolate cookies), and even made vegan cupcakes/cake. And though those things are exciting, and will be cool to include in my diet sometimes, I’m not in a place where I can do that yet. My goal is to achieve ultimate health and get these pounds off. So, I really have to hone in on what I’m eating, how I’m moving and how I’m resting. The vegan cupcakes I made were bomb, but they were made from flour, cane sugar, butter, almond milk, vanilla extract and powdered sugar. Sounds like way too much sugar, fat and a whole lot of processing!

So here’s to the weeks to come! I’m excited to take on another challenge and share my results with you guys. This change will be interesting because I’m returning to work on Monday, after being at home for 2 weeks, and can’t just run to my fridge/pantry when I want to eat/snack. My meals, and even meal times, will require much planning, but it should be fun! If you guys want to follow along in more detail, check out my Instagram page, @thelivingblackgirl. I post daily pics of what I eat in a day, some quick recipes that aren’t on the blog, and health facts that I find online/in books. Also, if any of you have any recommendations, feel free to write those down below!

As always, thanks so much for reading and I can’t wait to catch up with you soon. See you guys in the next post!

Lynella 🖤