Yesterday's exercise.

Holy crap, I'm slacking here. I got exercise in on Monday and Wednesday nights.

Monday: 30 minutes - elliptical + leg and arm weight training.

Wednesday: 60 minutes - elliptical + leg, arm, and back weight training.

Food side of things I have a hard time remembering right now, but I pretty much stayed on course. Need to get better at breakfast on weekends, but overall, I'm still doing well in that aspect as well.

...ok can we talk about this?

Vegan whole grain lasagna just out of the oven

I haven't had lasagna in ages. It used to be one of my favorites. Thing is, it's a pain in the ass to make sometimes. Then, a couple years ago after going vegan, I just ruled out eating lasagna ever again...

...until tonight. Look at this. I made it. Whole wheat lasagna noodles, broccoli, corn, carrots, onions, garlic, mushrooms, sweet potato, tomatoes, tofu, spinach, cashews (more on that later), spices, and two jars of sauce later and we were in business.

On the plate

So, on the top of it is what looks like cheese, for those in the know with me, it's not. It's ground cashews. You put it on the top of the pan for the last 15 minutes. It gets a little toasty, but it doesn't smell burnt. It tasted like what I remember to be cheese.

 The tofu served as a type of ricotta in here. I used extra firm and just crumbled it up. Up at the top is a sweet potato mash that seemed to hold everything together. 

Next time, I think I need to make a bigger batch. All in all, this took about two and a half hours to get done. It was well worth it. I have leftovers for a while now.

Om nom nom nom.

I wanted more like NOW, but I know I'll just get over full.

Food and exercise log - 2/15/2012

Exercise: 1 hour on the glider today. I don't like the one I used today. It kept resetting in the middle of the run. I listened to a lot of good stuff to keep me going. Mudvayne, Prodigy, Combichrist. I need to get some other stuff in there too. But it was still an hour solid at least. I do need to find better shoes. My toes go numb after about 30 minutes because of my stride and my knees.

Food:

Breakfast - banana and yogurt
Lunch - Salad
Dinner - Pizza (had to use the last of the ingredients we had before they went bad)

Food and exercise log - 2/14/12

Exercise: no real intense exercise today. I did change up my work space so that I am always standing. So, I think that should count as some sort of exercise.

Food:

Breakfast - cereal and fruit
Lunch - small salad
Dinner - big salad

Tuesdays are school days so it I have to bring something with me. This day, I just packed an extra huge salad and portioned it.

Food and exercise log - 2/13/12

Exercise: 1 hour on the eliptical.

I'm finding major inconsistencies between gliders. Yesterday, it said I went 3.9 miles. The one I used today was 11. Odd.

Food:

Breakfast - big container of fruit (strawberries, blackberries, green grapes) and a banana
Lunch - my usual salad.
Dinner - Crispy "chicken" covered in marinara sauce with greens and peppers on toasted whole wheat bread with sweet potato fries.

This exercise thing is getting addictive. I love it.

Food end exercise log - 2-12-12

Exercise - elliptical - 64 minutes - 3.95 miles.

Food:

Breakfast - French toast, berries, orange juice.
Lunch - salad
Dinner - Pizza with whole wheat crust. Got so much vegan mozz I don't know what to do with all of it.

Weight: 187

Food and exercise log - 2-11-12

Exercise: early morning yoga!

Food:

Breakfast: big bowl of cereal with fruit

Lunch: Totally missed lunch due to falling asleep and waking up too close to dinner.

Dinner: Loaded Veggie burgers with home made rosemary/dill potato puff fries.
Snack: baked corn chips. Berry and OJ smoothie.

Food and exercise log - 2-10-12

Exercise: Cleaning the storage room at work - 6 hours.

Food:

Breakfast: Banana and some orange juice (ran late that day)
Lunch: my usual favorite salad.
Dinner: Veggie fried rice ad buddhist delight.
Snack: chex mix

Food and exercise log - 2-9-12

Day 2 - 2/9/2012

Food :

• Awesome breakfast as stated here
• Big salad for lunch with assorted greens, carrots, cucumbers, baby corn, broccoli, red and green peppers, sunflower seeds and pepper
• Dinner: pasta with chicken substitute and minimal amount of sauce.
• Snack: Chex mix/mint cookies

Exercise : Didn't hit the gym today. My body needed the night off as my knees are not all that great. They still burn. Today (Friday) I'm kicking it in to gear again.

Note: I get that some of you probably don't care what I'm posting here. This is for me. I need to keep track of this and it makes me feel better.

Food and exercise log - 2-8-12 - day 1

Today was the start of the food and exercise change over.

Food :

• Awesome breakfast as stated here
• Big salad for lunch with assorted greens, carrots, cucumbers, baby corn, broccoli, red and green peppers, sunflower seeds and pepper
• Dinner: pizza.

I know what you're thinking. Pizza? Awesome dairy free crust, we put some meat substitutes on here and a very conservative amount of cheese alternative. It was nice. Plus, it's not like I ate a whole one like I used to.

Thanks to school work I didn't get to hit the gym until almost 9.

Workout : 

• 25 minutes on the elliptical. It's was the most my knee could handle.
• leg lifts/crunches/back extensions/curls on the matrix machines
• 6 lengths of the pool.

All of that took me just over an hour.

It was a good day. I completely forgot to weigh myself. I will get that tomorrow.

Tomorrow is yoga day followed by 30 minutes in the cardio theater.

I started eating a good breakfast again...

I'm on day one of the "make my body better so I am around longer" plan.

Those who know me are familiar with me never eating breakfast. I am quite the zombie in the morning. Yesterday I even left the house without my glasses only to notice ten minutes after I left the house.

I'm following a plan that has me eating a lot less processed foods.

One of the things I read and saw was a interesting cereal mix. It contained four different whole grain cereals, ground flaxseed meal, walnuts, almond milk, and fruit. I opted for a banana. I might put kiwi in as well tomorrow for a little bit of a bite.

It was pretty good. It is kind of odd not having any added sugar in my cereal (Lucky Charms are amazing) and it tasted good.

Lunch is going to be a salad. I think I'm doing some sort of pizza for dinner.

After that, time to hit the gym. Upright cardio on the elliptical followed by a few laps in the pool.

I'll update later with the start weight of this adventure. Pictures will follow at the start of each month in a sort of timeline fashion to show any changes.

note: I've had some doubters about my new journey here. I'm doing this for health. As I get older, I want to be around for the people I love, see them grow up, get old, and have great experiences with them. I can't do that from six feet under.

...I decided to set the record straight.

You can stop asking
"What do you eat?" now.

Over the weekend, I had a good friend of mine tell me that he wanted to have a discussion about me being vegan. He wanted to do it another time as it was late, but I said we should do it now. This would be the second time of the night that I would be explaining this.

During both discussions, I made it perfectly clear that I started this path, on my own, for health reasons. That's why I started it. As I have grown in to it, I have a greater passion to protect animals, no matter which ones they are. I also let it be known that I will NEVER push this on to anyone. If they ask, and want advice or mentoring because they want to do this as well for the reason I am have, I will be more than happy to do so. I'm not going to go and tell someone else what is right for them. That is their choice and theirs alone.

I have a couple friends who are vegetarian and vegan. My girlfriend is also vegan. Now, it was in my second conversation of the night that I had the question posed to me : "did you go vegan because of your girlfriend?"  This pissed me off to no end for the rest of this weekend. My friend, who at least had the courage to ask me, let it be known that it was something that was mentioned to him by other people I know and in conversations in general about me, without me there. I would like to state right here so that anyone reading this gets it straight.

I did NOT decide to be vegan in order to start dating my girlfriend. 

No matter what you hear from anyone else. I did it for ME. When I started on this, it wasn't even with her help. I had the assistance and guidance of another friend of mine. Grow some balls, stop spreading assumptions and rumor, and ask me.

Or, you can read this and know exactly why I did it.

I -=DID=- decide to change my lifestyle for the following reasons.

• I hated feeling like hell 20-30 minutes after I drank milk or ate any dairy product
• I hated feeling like I was going to die when I needed to use the restroom
• I hated not knowing when that sudden urge to use the restroom would happen and then I would get that urge to die as mentioned above
• I watched Food Inc. and was disgusted by our food industry and how animals that become food are treated
• I hated that my weight was ballooning out of control at a rate that I realized was not good at all, even when I decided to start eating a "healthy" omnivorous diet.

I have been vegan for over a year now. I feel better now that I have in a VERY long time. My weight is to a manageable 187 instead of 220+ at my largest (and I haven't fully killed my flabby belly yet). I've come to a point where I am not buying anything made of animal product. Food, clothing, or furniture. Guess what? That's my choice. Talk to me about it. I don't push it on to people as some sort of "agenda". I'm not a crazy PETA activist. I'm not going to run around and call you a sick person for eating meat/fish/dairy. My kids still eat meat when they are home with their mother. They understand why I did all of this. They get it. They even decided to cook with me and eat what I eat when they are here.

Now, I can fully respect people living life the way they want to... so why can't people respect the way I want, and need, to live mine?

...it was daddy/daughter time once again.

The other day I took her shopping for a dress and got her hair cut. Tonight we went to dinner. She insisted on Chinese. Who am I to say no? I love my Asian foods.
I have been spending the last few days with her which took away from writing, but I  think it's fair trade off. This will get back to a more regular posting starting tomorrow night.

...I had dinner with my lady at #AJBombers.

I had dinner at this place tonight. Decent food. They have vegan stuff too which is awesome for me and the lady. The Black Bean burger was great, so were the sweet potato chips. Amazing stuff. I always like places that encourage writing on the walls... as long as you're not drawing boy parts.