Day 7 of 21…

So as of Sunday it has officially been one week of my Vegan challenge and so far so good! I am really loving it so far, I have had a lot of energy and feel great. I thought that it would be much harder for me to give up cheese since I literally ate mozzarella like every single day. Honestly I really don’t miss it at all, however it has been a tad difficult making substitutions to certain recipes. I could not believe how so many products that you would never think had dairy actually contain dairy or dairy by-products. The most shocking so far was Italian bread crumbs who would have thought? It does get a bit annoying having to read the thousands of ingredients on some products like bread, why do there have to be a hundred different chemicals in a simple loaf of bread when you can make it with literally flour, water, yeast, and oil. But that’s a whole other issue!

I have been eating a lot of fruit and veggies if I am starving I will just grab something quick because its easy and I know the ingredients of bananas and grapes! Some of my go-to recipes have been my veggie chili, and veggie soup, I have just been omitting the cheese and they both still have so much flavor that you can’t tell. I have also been obsessed with pineapple for some reason it has been delicious down here.

pineapple and Dates rolled with raw almonds, these literally taste like candy I found them at BJ’s and am obsessed with them!

We still had our family pizza night and I have to say I wasn’t sure about this one, how can you have pizza without cheese? No it wasn’t as amazing as your traditional cheese pizza which usually have around 200-300 calories for one slice, but it was really good and had a fraction of the calories. For two individual pizzas it was just under 200 calories and I was definitely full after eating two of them!

Pita rounds (60 cals each) with marinara, baby spinach, and mushrooms, put it all together and cook on 375 until its crunchy on the bottom!

Salads are always a great idea, but sometimes I just don’t feel like eating lettuce and you have to really read the ingredients for salad dressings. Many contain cheese, yogurt, or other by-products. My go-to dressings have been homemade Italian which is basically olive oil, balsamic, and Italian seasonings. I also came up with an avocado dressing which was really easy, creamy, and delish!