Days 14 & 15: Eat plants & be scared!

Yesterday and today’s challenge from VegNews‘ ‘31 Changes in 31 Days‘ focus on health: Eat plants (Day 14) and get scared (Day 15.) Strangely enough, I didn’t have a salad yesterday, although I ate the heck out of some steamed edamame… yum!

Yesterday was a super busy day for me – I skipped the gym (that was a much needed rest day!), had a meeting with my student group at an “Asian fusion” restaurant, then had a group meeting and finally class. In between, I was slammed with the homework I didn’t do over the weekend (oh, the perils of having a social life!) but I’m sure you’ll be happy to know I did not break any of my “rules” (basically, don’t eat anything not vegan). Yesterday I also I didn’t eat a ton of plants, which was unfortunate… :-/ It was just a “eat quick meals” day – oatmeal for breakfast (with blueberries!), a rice bowl w/ grilled tofu and steamed broccoli for lunch, and a peanut butter and banana sandwich for dinner. Yeah.. it was one of those days!

Today was equally busy (homework, lunch date with a friend, class, more homework), but I kinda-sorta enjoyed some greens!

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Mad Greens, that is! Apparently, Mad Greens is only here in Colorado, which is unfortunate, but it’s pretty much just like the “Choice Greens” shops we have in Arizona. So good! I got the Mediterranean salad, which is a pasta salad, vs. a traditional salad, plus a side of tomato soup. I checked to make sure the tomato soup was vegan (it was more like minestrone, without the pasta) BUT I forgot to check to see if my salad dressing was vegan… it wasn’t I only noticed after the lady had put the dressing on… fail! Raspberry vinaigrette, how dare you do me like that!

However, the lunch date with my friend was amazing, and we got caught up on each other’s lives. Sometimes you just need to take that break, get out of the house (or work) and catch up with a friend. I really felt great

Oh, speaking of not feeling great… it took all of my willpower (and all of bf Blake’s text-motivation) to get me out of bed and to boot camp this morning. You see, Tuesday is when we run the STAIRS.

I'm going to have nightmares about these stairs, for real

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These stairs look a lot nicer than the stairs we run… we run the hockey arena stairs which, to my calculation, are something like 14 flights of 20-25 stairs per flight… and that might be conservative. I stop counting/black out around flight #10… haha, I don’t really black out, but sometimes I want to!

Today I was proud of myself though… I did all the flights except one (last week, I skipped 5 flights) and I only went over my time by 2 seconds. Huge improvement!

After the stairs, we completed the following exercises:

• Sway push ups (3 sets of 12)
• Reverse lunge flies with light weights (I used 4 lbs.) (3 sets of 16)
• V-up curls (3 sets of 15)
• Bent over row with tricep kickbacks (3 sets of 15) (I used 7.5 lb weights)
• Hinge with lateral raises (3 sets of 12)
• Plant tap outs (2 sets of 20)
• Back extension twists (3 sets of 18)
• Bicycle crunches (3 sets of one minute each)… 3 min. of bicycle crunches… ow!!

Although I hate the stairs, I felt super pumped afterwards, so (although I’m loathe to admit it), I’m glad I went!

All right, so today is Get Scared, and I feel as if I haven’t scared you enough. However, this is a long post and I have to get back to homework, so here’s a recap from VegNews:

• If trends in the US continue, “half the population will be obese by 2030, which could result in an additional 8.5 million cases of diabetes” (I blame you, Paula Deen) and “7.3 million cases of heart disease and stroke, and 669,000 cases of cancer.” VegNews then tells you to imagine the ones you love, stricken with these diseases. Get scared!

And here’s an excellent recap by the Vegan Consultant, who shares videos from world renowned doctors and leaders on the health benefits of a vegan diet.

I promise a more in depth look at the health benefits of a vegan diet (because I do enjoy scaring you all very much), but I really must finish this paper, so I leave you with my favorite comic by Vegansaurus!

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