Week One a Success

The first week of my 29 day challenge has been a success.  I love my spinach smoothies every morning and I have some amazing snacks.  The kids and Thad have been eating them with me.  Lunch and dinner have been a little harder.  We have found a number of items that I can eat but full meals took a couple of days to figure out.

Here are some of my favorite snacks:
Larabars - I love the apple pie and the chocolate coconut
Funky Monkey - Freeze dried fruit
Beanitos - black bean chips, delicious with fresh salsa

Since I had melanoma a couple years ago and since then I had basal cell twice, I am really concerned about how my diet affects cancer growth.  I have never been a huge meat eater. I actually stopped eating all beef for about 10 years.  My reason was not as an animal activist.  I lived in England during the Mad Cow scare.  Ever since then I have not enjoyed beef.  I still ate chicken, turkey and fish.  After Aiden was born, I realized how my diet affected him.  He refused to eat meat.  This made me worried so I started eating beef again when I became pregnant with Taylor.

My downfall is dairy products.  I love milk and cheese.  I have missed these the most on my diet along with breads.  However, last night at my weekly 29 day challenge meeting we had a vegan mac and cheese.  It was really good.  They used nutritional yeast instead of cheese.  I am going to try and make it for my family this weekend.  I am not having the kids or Thad follow the diet as strictly as I am.  They both have daily products and occasionally chicken.

Last night I watched the movie "Forks over Knives".  It was very interesting.  It promoted a vegan diet to help prevent and treat a lot of diseases including heart disease and cancer.  FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods. If you are interested the movie is streaming on Netflix. 

Week 1 Stats:
Lost 2 1/2 pounds
Lost a total of 2 inches