Hello there! I’m back, and once again I’m going to give you my second week’s report on the 22 Day Revolution Challenge.
I’m going to be really honest with you; I must say that during this week, I wasn’t able to follow the menu plan exactly how it is organised, and I’m going to explain why. Since I started living a healthy lifestyle, I was really attracted to calorie counting. At first, I did it to control what I ate, and make sure I was having the macros I was supposed to. Later on, it became kind of an obsession so I deleted every app I had for counting, and tried to forget about it. When I started my process with my nutritionist, they offered and app in which you did not track macros, but you did control “exchanges” of food, which is a way of making sure that you eat what you are supposed to. It was in this process that I understood that underrating can also make us gain weight, because our bodies feel like they are on “starving mode” and store fat in order for us to survive.
The reason I’m telling you this, is because when I decided to do this challenge, I checked on a calorie tracker app about how many calories I was going to be eating each day, and you must know that most of the days summed up to less than 1000 calories. I’m not a specialist, or a nutritionist, but I know that at least for my body this is not a healthy or sustainable diet. That is why, during the second week of the challenge, I decided to keep eating a plant based diet, make an effort to keep eating three meals a day plus one snack if I needed to, and abstain myself from having dessert.
This was how my daily menus looked for the past 7 days:
As you can see, each meal was completely plant-based, and really colorful. I have learned that the more color, the more nutrients, and the better we will feel with the foods we eat.
Some of my favourite dishes during the week were:
- Blueberry smoothie bowl
- Textured Vegan Protein with Sweet Potato
- Mango Salad with Crispy Sesame Tofu (from an Asian restaurant in Bogotá called Wok)
- Oatmeal Blueberry Vegan Cookies
After another week trying to accomplish a challenge that I wanted to complete as a way of proving to myself that I can follow a plan, I can say that I really don’t think this kind of menu plans are designed for us to create lifestyle habits. To be honest, I think that they are yet another strategy industries use to get money from us “health” lovers and enthusiasts. This is not criticism, or me saying that it doesn’t work. I just believe that lifestyle changes have to come from within ourselves, and we will only be able to adapt to them when they fit into our life and our daily actives, but most importantly, if we do them as a task and not as something we enjoy, change will not come.
So, these are my Week 2 conclusions:
- Following a meal plan is not natural, and imposing something that is not natural will only make us feel obliged to do something, instead of doing what is natural to us
- It’s NOT necessary to have a midmorning snack. It’s okay to have one, but not NECESSARY
- Dessert should not become a habit, or a necessary craving we have to fulfil. If it does, we are only feeding our anxiety instead of eating for nourishing our bodies. Dessert should be something we have once every other day, so that it doesn’t loose its extraordinary characteristic (as in “out-of-ordinary”)
- Learning to eat until we are satisfied and not FULL is hard, really hard. This is something I want to keep on working on for the remaining days of the challenge
- Keeping it creative in the kitchen is key for being able to stay happy and motivated when living a plant-based lifestyle
Until next week, lovely readers! Love and happy vibes.
P.S. I started practicing Hot Yoga (post coming up) and also started reading a new book, The Metabolism Plan by Lyn-Genet Recitas (another post on it when I finish reading).
Grumbling Bellies 