Living the Fit Life with The Fojtik's : Vegan Week One

Hello Fit Friends!! I'm excited to say I have now made it 7 days as a vegan. This week has had its ups and downs but I am happy to say that I have survived it and I am looking forward to these next 5 weeks! So you all know how day one went- recap: I was full :)

Day two I would say was a good day as well. On Tuesdays Matt and I play on a softball team with a bunch of friends. It is such a good time, I really didn't think I would enjoy it much (I had never really played softball before) but it is SO much fun. That being said, Tuesdays are really really really long days- My day starts when I get up from work at 5 am and really doesn't stop until 10-11 at night. That day I got home from work, went and did a session of HIIT running at the track at the middle school by our house (I have found that I really like to HIIT run on a track, I don't like ANY other kind of running on tracks, but it works really well for HIIT) As soon as I got back from running I whipped up this amazing recipe from OhSheGlows.com: 15 minute creamy avocado pasta. Check out her website for hundreds of more amazing recipes! I seriously spent a good 2 hours on there one day and barely grazed the surface. Here is a pic at my attempt at this fabulous recipe (I added mushrooms because I just LOVE mushrooms and Matt was adding chicken to his so I felt like I needed something extra too)

Not the prettiest dinner you've ever seen but it was delicious! I will say this though, the recipe calls for 1-3 cloves of garlic-- I LOVE garlic so I put 3 in there and it was a taaaadddd garlicly- I will probably only do 2 next time. It made about enough for 2 servings however we could have stretched it to three probably.

After we ate dinner we went straight to our softball game. Now let me tell you something else I've learned that I love about softball, I burn A LOT of calories during a softball game. Anywhere from 400-800 calories depending on how many times I get on base. I think part of it is that I am nervous a lot of the game(as I said I haven't played much) so my heart rate is elevated for almost an entire hour. So after our game I had burned (with exercise) over 1200 calories that day. This doesn't include the 1700 or so calories my body naturally burns just by living (breathing, digesting, temperature regulating etc) each day. So after the game I was FAMISHED! We stayed for a little bit so Matt could drink some beers with the guys but around 9 o'clock I demanded we leave because 1: It was now my bed time and we had a 40 minute drive home still and 2: I was turning into a "food diva" because I felt like I was dying of starvation. So we got home and I ate a left over black bean burger from the night before w/ some salsa...annnnd a half PBJ sandwich (oops!) all still vegan but probably not the best choice :)

Now onto wednesday... Let me say this... Wednesday....was...ROUGH.... I almost gave up wednesday because I felt like I was dying. Let me preface this by saying that I had been having a pretty consistent headache since about Friday night. I don't know what was going on but it had been there and I had kind of just been trying to ignore it. By Wednesday I had reached a breaking point and I thought that I was doing something wrong. I thought I wasn't getting enough protein, or iron, or something that was making my body feel this way. If y'all know me you know that I suffered from chronic headaches for a good 5 years until my stubborn self finally went and got allergy tested and found out that I was allergic to hmm...every seasonal allergy that exists in central Texas. But my headaches have been pretty controlled with allergy mediation for the past 18 months so it was really strange that I was going on 5 days feeling this way. I was also dizzy, nauseous, fatigued and on wednesday night I even ran a slight fever. I thought I was either 1: doing something terribly wrong to my body or 2: actually coming down with the flu or some other illness.

That night Matt and I made vegan fajitas using portobello mushrooms as our "meat" (well technically Matt actually ate real meat) and they were delicious! We also made homemade corn tortillas. Side note: homemade corn tortillas are so easy to make. You literally just have to have 4 things. 1: corn masa (you can get it at any store, we got ours at HEB) 2: water (who doesn't have water?) 3: a tortilla press (honestly you could probably use a heavy book) and 4: a stove. BOOM homemade corn tortillas! They are wonderful and don't have any of the nasty preservatives store bought ones can have. (and they're gluten free!)

Here's a pic of our portobello fajitas on our homemade corn tortillas topped w/ avocado and salsa:

After we ate dinner I pretty much felt like death so I went straight to bed. I woke up Thursday morning still feeling pretty crappy. I had a bad headache, I was dizzy and really fatigue (even though I got a good night sleep). On thursday morning at work I text my dad's girlfriend Donna, to tell her that I unfortunately wouldn't be able to come over that afternoon to say goodbye to her daughter, Stephanie (who was leaving for college the next day) due to me feeling so badly. She then told me that I might be going through a "Healing Crisis" from changing my diet. I then quickly googled "healing crisis" and was so relieved to find out that this was EXACTLY what was happening to me (Thank you, Donna!). Basically a healing crisis is when you change your diet in a way that causes your body to expel all the toxins it had in it prior to the change. This can last anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks (or longer) depending on each individual person. Now, I was eating a pretty healthy diet prior to going vegan, but I was also carb backloading which allowed me to eat (some) junk. It expels the toxins anyway it can, though all your major organs which then causes the side effects of : headaches, nausea, malaise, fatigue, and fever. Bingo! Once I realized that this is what I was going through and that I wasn't doing something wrong I instantly felt more motivated to just push through these few days so I could start feeling great again. I drank a TON of water on Thursday hoping to expel the toxins that way and when I got home from work instead of working out (like I normally would) I took a 1.5 hour nap to really rest and re-set my body. I woke up feeling 100x better and made this for dinner:

A mixed green salad w/ sliced strawberries, blueberries and almonds (no dressing)

Portobello mushroom and eggplant (from our local Bastrop Farmers Market!) sauteed in olive oil with a side of baked sweet potato and quinoa.

I actually ate the salad while I was cooking the other stuff because I was really hungry when I woke up. Side note: I mentioned I ate my salad w/ no dressing. I actually eat MOST of my salad's w/ no dressing. To me if a salad has enough good tasting stuff in it I typically don't need dressing. If I am going to have dressing I will use a balsamic of some sort. We got two delicious balsamic vingarettes from Con'olio here in Austin, super cool place (Thanks, Kathy for recommending that place to us!)

Friday was a brand new day for me and I felt like a brand new person. I had pushed through my bodies healing crisis and I felt FANTASTIC! On Fridays my friends at work and I always go out to eat so this week we went to Torchy's and I got their "independent" w/ a few modifications. This taco usually comes w/ fried portobello mushrooms (I just had it not fried) and it usually has cheese on it, I just got it with no cheese! I was so delicious!

Tip about Torchy's that my friend Katie taught me: If you order your taco on corn tortillas (which I always do because I prefer corn) They will give you two tortillas for 1 taco. Also, they always give you enough "filling" to make 2 tacos. This is what I did here. What you see is actually one taco split into two. Awesome, right?!

Friday night Matt was working so I just had left overs from the night before. Saturday his sister and dad came to town for the afternoon so after we made a stop at our local farmers market where we got amazing organic pretzel and whole wheat bread, locally grown bell peppers, egg plant and jalapenos, and Matt got the "best gumbo he's ever had" (cc: our friend Josh's parents: hereslebouefcatering.com - check them out!!) We then went to lunch at our favorite local restaurant Bastrop Brewhouse. I ordered a spinach salad w/ strawberries, blue berries, apples, pecans and tomato and again had it w/ no dressing (there was no need!) I forgot to take a picture before but wish I would have taken one after because there was NOTHING left on my plate(Clean plate club!!!). This was the first time I have ever eaten an entire salad at a restaurant. Later that day after I worked out I had my first protein shake w/ my new protein: I got it at Whole Foods, but I also saw it at Sprouts (for cheaper) later that day! (bummer!!)

One: that protein is delicious

Two: yes that is a green protein shake made w/ chocolate protein

Ingredients:

1/4-1/2 cup of coconut milk

1-2 cups of spinach

1/2 cup of kale

1 tbs peanut butter

1/2 banana

1 tsp ground flaxseed

1 scoop chocolate plant fusion protein

I cannot express how much I have been loving my green smoothies. My morning ones are different than my post-work out ones. The base is always the same:

1/4/-1/2 cup of coconut milk

1-2 cups of spinach

1/2 cup of Kale

1 tsp ground flax seed

But then I add:

1/2 banana

1/2 cup frozen pineapple

1/2 cup frozen mango

1 tsp of mango strawberry spark

1/2 cup of ice.

I always bend the coconut milk and greens first (I found it works better this way) and then follow it up w/ the banana, flax seed, and frozen fruit/ice.

It is like drinking a tropical paradise!! I LOVE it!.

Well guys thats week one.. So far I LOVE being vegan and will continue it this week. I have not missed eating meat at all. I honestly haven't really missed dairy that much either. Plus all the benefits out weigh sacrificing these simple things from my diet. I have so much more energy. I don't get sleepy mid afternoon the way I used to. My skin looks better. My digestive track seems healthier. I never feel bloated or have tummy aches (unless I eat too much but that quickly goes away) I am not worried about how many calories I eat because I know that the foods I'm eating are way less calorically dense then the ones I was eating before. I have lost 1 pound (not my goal but a great side effect) and overall I just feel better.

Today I plan on working on some vegan baking recipes that I have either found on pinterest, from ohsheglows.com or from the new "healthy deserts" book I bought from Muffin Topless (muffin-topless.com) I'll let you know how that goes!

One last thing I though I'd share. It was cool outside this morning so I decided to take my laptop (and my fur babies) outside to blog. Here's my current view: I LOVE our deck and our yard. It is so peaceful and quiet :)