Many years ago Kate Moss got in a world of trouble for making the statement, “Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels.”  The gist of her comment was she’d rather be skinny and not eat certain foods, or much food at all, than be fat and eating all the stuff she craves.  While I couldn’t condone the anorexia and eating disorders surrounding that mantra, I thought that with a slight twist it could actually be a very positive statement.  So I’ve changed it to, “Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.”

During my vegan experiment week one of my favorite new recipes was this delicious concoction that I found on Vegangela. The blog is a treasure trove of tasty looking vegan recipes. My friend Eric was nice enough to direct me to the site and afterward I had a field day looking for my next recipe. This Oven Baked Mexican Quinoa Casserole is exactly what I was looking for.

With all the data collected about my week of eating vegan, plus my own direct personal observations of how things went.  I thought it was time to take a look at how things went and if there are any lessons learned from it.

Do you hear a repetitive dialog in your head going something like, “I know I should do [insert idea here], so maybe I’ll start [tomorrow, next week]…”  So something like, “I know I should stop eating donuts for breakfast, so maybe I’ll start eating healthy tomorrow.”  Or, perhaps something like, “I know I should work out more, so next week I’ll start using that gym membership that has been unused for the past three years.”  When I get in these ruts I always wonder what it is that has me stuck.  I honestly think it’s just a case of self sabotage being done subconsciously.  Maybe it all it takes is thinking about the situation from a slightly different perspective to get the ball rolling towards doing rather than wishing you had done it already.

The final day of the vegan week experiment is over.   As promised, it started humdrum but ended with some good experimentation and flare!

The fourth day of this experiment was one where I was really close to breaking it. Stress always requires release, and we want to fall back on our crutches.  That’s booze for some, drugs for others.  For me it’s food.  Combine that with some lack of preparation and I narrowly averted breaking the plan.  I didn’t though, and got the chance to try another new dinner option concocted by my friend.

Third day of the vegan experiment went off without a hitch.  Preparation and familiarity is the key, but ending off with the best vegan “burgers” I’ve made yet was perfect.

Day 2 started off and ended better than Day 1 did.  I was certainly a bit more prepared, but it was still a bit trying due to a heavily compressed schedule.  What I’m looking forward to is trying tomorrow’s new vegan burger recipe, but today’s food was certainly tasty nonetheless.

Maybe I didn’t pick the best day to start Vegan Week, but it is what it is.  I know I didn’t prepare enough for it which is going to make things ever more interesting through tomorrow.  Despite all the problems I actually got through mostly okay, minus one slip up….