Day one and green smoothie.

How does this look appetizing?

First day of my seven days vegetarian diet challenge. I woke up feeling pretty good, and not particularly hungry. A family member brought home some pies, and instead of whatever breakfast I had planned, ate half a mushroom pie. That filled me up pretty well, so I only made myself my first ever green smoothie an hour or so later. I've heard so much about this green smoothie hype, but whenever I looked at the ingredients list I almost always felt that nagging doubt and then quickly abandoned the idea. I mean spinach? broccoli? all blended into some unappetizing bright green color? I can't imagine how that could taste good. But I do have some pea shoots sitting in my fridge waiting to be used up. I was going to use them in salad, but after chewing on a couple of them decided that I probably wouldn't like it. So into the blender they went. My mother got me a high-power blender about a month ago. It is not the vitamix, which seems to be the blender of choice for most people (that or blendtec). It was, however, similar enough in design and spec that I just use the recipe from vitamix users and everything so far had turned out just fine. Back to my first green smoothie. I decided not to push too far, so I used one cup of pea shoots, half a grapefruit, and about half and half of green and red apples, blended them all down with some water and ice. My first thought after I popped the lid and got a whiff of the juice was that I might regret this. After a very hesitant gulp, I decided that it wasn't too bad. Half a glass later, it could have been a whole lot worse. Another hour later I was feeling hungry again, so I just ate some cherries, and that tided me over til lunch.

For lunch I had half a steamed potato with a big spoonful of greek yogurt and blackpepper, along with a salad of mushroom, zucchini, and tofu. I had often made the mistake when I tried to have salad as a meal by not having enough protein or carbohydrate in it. It usually made me hungry within a couple hours afterward and then I would eat whatever happened to be there, and that was usually something sugary and unhealthy. After looking up a lot of salad recipes later, I tried adding more protein/carbohydrate in the salad. I tried quinoa, pasta, chicken, fish, etc, and found that it kept me feeling full a lot longer. Since this is a vegetarian challenge I skipped the chicken and fish and went for cube of tofu instead. It was very tasty, which was not surprising, since I've always been a fan of tofu. The whole meal over all was very delicious and filling enough that I didn't feel hungry a few hours later. 

The idea of replacing my daily cup of coffee with a healthier green smoothie was no doubt a good one in theory, but in practice it was not so successful. I felt a general lack of energy earlier during the day, and a dull headache coming on slowly as the day went on. A couple hours after lunch and I was really craving that cup of coffee. So I went online and read up on why coffee is bad for me. At the end of a lot of looking around, I came to the conclusion that one cup a day really isn't going to kill me, but four or six just might. Since I tend to limit myself to two at the very most, I decided what the heck and made myself a cup. Now I feel better. 

Oh, by the way, I work very odd and awkward hours, so I don't always eat three meals a day. It also really depends on whether I've been good or not, and whether I've been paying attention at what I'm putting into my body. Sometimes I eat two to three healthy meals, at my worst (which was recently) I eat four to five unhealthy meals. I indulged and had a small piece of stroopwafel with my coffee, and I might not eat much for dinner before I go to bed. I am feeling pretty good so far, tomorrow, I might stick to strictly home-cooked meals and skip that stroopwafel. But then again, it's stroopwafel, and it's so good.

EDIT:
Went to bed later than I thought I would. Had a toaster tart from Health Valley and small lettuce salad for dinner. As I was eating the toaster tart I thought I really should avoid the refined sugar and processed food. Well, try harder tomorrow!

Photo credits: http://www.52kitchenadventures.com