Debbie - Day 22

Running out of the house to an early meeting on Monday, so no time to cook oatmeal.  I had three pieces of whole wheat toast with peanut butter, and coffee with soy milk.  527 calories.

Lunch was an apple and a pear, some pumpkin cranberry tortilla chips I found (yum!) with peach salsa, steamed broccoli, and some green olives.  420 calories.

As a "snack" I stopped at Starbucks again (not really my habit) and had another soy milk iced coffee. 125 calories.

Dinner was a vegan Indian microwaveable dinner that was fast (had to eat at office) and very good -- Tiger Tiger brand Tadka Dal.  I also brought a small head of broccoli and steamed that in the micro to add to the bowl.  Iced tea with no sugar.  382 calories.  My calorie tracking app allows me to input nutrition information from any packaged food by scanning the bar code.  Sweet!!

Total calories 1454.  I forgot to offset yesterday's calories with my three hours of gardening, so I wasn't too concerned with being a little over calories today.  And once again I forgot to note my protein for the day.

Coming down the home stretch!

I am starting to think about what I will do on day 31.  Part of me wants to have some kind of indulgent, large serving of meat, like a Five Guys burger or a rack of ribs.  Part of me wants to have an ice cream cone.  Another part of me is pretty torn about getting hooked on meat or dairy again after all this effort to maintain a vegan diet for four weeks.

My prediction is that I will have some sort of non-vegan food in a reasonable quantity soon after the 30 days, but not necessarily right away.  I also predict that I will attempt to stay much closer to a vegan diet for the rest of the summer, and perhaps for years to come.  It certainly is healthier, and if I do achieve my weight goal (I plan to weigh in again on Saturday), it will be easier to stay at that weight if I don't get re-addicted to meat and dairy.

I am pondering some kind of long term goal for myself, such as a flexible weekly limit on amount of animal products in my diet, like an average of X number of servings per month or less.  So if the limit is 8 servings per month, and I have three in one day, I will go vegan for the rest of the week and only have one animal food serving the following week.

I want to have a firm limit, and a fairly restrictive one, but also build in some flexibility so that I can more comfortably participate in special occasions.

Hmmmm.