Do you struggle with your Plant-Based Diet? You are not alone. I hear from people all of the time who are having a hard time sticking to (or starting) a plant-based diet.
21 Day Plant-Based Healthy Eating Challenge
Starting November 1st I’ll begin a 21 Day Plant-Based Healthy Eating Challenge and I’d love for you to join me.
The Guidelines
There aren’t a lot of rules but there are guidelines. They can be adapted to meet your particular needs. For example if you can’t tolerate grains then adapt this to your needs. If you are like me and thrive with grains eat more. If you need more calories eat nuts, seeds, avocado, etc. If you need to lose weight omit those high calorie plant-foods.
“Headquarters” for the Challenge will be at The My Plant-Based Family Group (not the page).
Each day I’ll create a thread and you’ll report in and tell me how many points you earned for the day. I’ll keep a tally and each week I’ll (discretely) post the rankings for example John S., Suzy Q., Jane D. I’m working on arranging giveaways from sponsors for participants.
If there is an interest we will have weekly Video Chat using Google Hangouts where you can ask questions and get support.
About the Food
How can I eat that much food? For the purposes of this Challenge consider 1/2 cup to be a serving size, except for raw greens (those are 1 cup serving size). Let’s look at one possibility of a typical day.
Breakfast
1 cup of Oatmeal, with 1/2 cup of blueberries
[2 servings grains, 1 serving fruit]
Mid-Morning Snack
A Banana
[1 serving fruit]
Lunch
Burrito Bowl with 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup black beans, 1 cup lettuce, 1/2 cup diced tomatoes/onion/peppers (salsa) and one apple
[1 serving grains, 1 serving beans, 2 servings veggies, 1 serving fruit]
Mid-Afternoon Snack
1 cup raw veggies like carrots, peppers, cucumbers etc. with 1/2 cup (oil-free) hummus and 1/2 cup of grapes
[1 serving veggies, 1 serving beans, 1 serving fruit]
Dinner
Chickpea Noodle Soup, side salad and a baked Cinnamon Apple
[1 serving beans, 2 serving veggies, 1 serving fruit]
This menu is roughly 5 servings of fruit, 6 servings of veggies, 3 servings of grains and 3 servings of beans. Our goal will be to eat 90% unprocessed plant-based foods.
To “sign-up” simply Join the My Plant-Based Family Facebook Group. There will be a post “pinned” to the top, read it and comment appropriately. Each day you’ll report in and I’ll dispense information via the group. If there is an overwhelming amount of people not on facebook that want to participate I’ll consider a Google+ group for the Challenge.
Please note that I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. You should consult your doctor or registered dietitian for nutritional advice.
For those of us that are visual learners, you might point them to this site to see what sizes look like (although the sizes are not always the same as your recommendation).
That is a good site. It’s hard to remember what constitutes a serving size with different foods.
I figured keeping it 1/2 cup for pretty much everything would be easy enough, even though I don’t measure out all of those when I eat, I just estimate.
I think the challenge is going to be a lot of fun!