It’s Becoming a Habit! (by Lynne)

They say following something for 3 weeks, turns it into a habit.   It’s now been 3 weeks since I jumped onto the vegan bandwagon and the experience, so far, has been much better than I expected (and it does, indeed, feel like a new habit!)!  I’m really enjoying all the new and interesting foods, and have been learning A LOT!
My daily companion has been my new Blendtec high-speed blender:


This has been my favorite breakfast smoothie most mornings (modified from the excellent Whole Foods Recipes iOS app):

• 1 cup non-sweetened Almond Milk
• 1 TB  ground flaxseed
• 1 banana
• 1 handful of fresh kale (without stems)
• 1 handful of fresh spinach (without stems)
• 2 or 3 Medjool dates
• 3/4 cups of frozen fruit

In less than a minute, the Blendtec spins it into a creamy green milkshake.  While I’ll admit, the color looks pretty gross, the taste is sweet, smooth, and delicious—just like a fruit milkshake.

I’m finding that this single smoothie alone will usually sustain me pretty well until lunchtime, but if I crave a crunchy snack between meals, I’ll have a handful of baby carrots, an apple,  or some celery with homemade hummas (also made in the Blendtec!).
For my lunch and dinner meals, I’ve tried to ensure that one of them focuses on raw veggies (such as a large green tossed salad), and the other focuses on a meal with cooked veggies or homemade soup (creaming soups is yet another use for the Blendtec).  With either meal, I try to also include a protein source such as chickpeas, black beans, walnuts, cashews, or tofu.
If I need an after-dinner snack, I’ll have some kind of fruit again—either whole, or as a fruit smoothie or frozen sugarless fruit sorbet (yep, yet another use for the Blendtec!).
For the next few months, my goal is to continue this strict initial phase of the Eat To Live book as much as I can in order to maximize weight loss (this phase minimizes starches and grains, and avoids nearly all sugar and oils).  My health goal is to lose a minimum of 50 lbs (so that I reach the “normal” BMI range), and by doing so, also hope to see my Glucose and Cholesterol levels decline back into normal ranges as well.
With any other diet, achieving these kinds of numbers would have seemed virtually impossible without severe starvation or extreme exercise.  But with this one, I’m actually eating more than I used to, am not counting any calories, and have not even started exercising yet (mainly because I wanted to see what kind of results I could get from just the diet-change alone).
Well, I’m happy to report that as of today (and with only the diet-change alone!), I have now lost 10 pounds!  10 down, 40 to go!

Lynne