Vegetarian For A Week!
Happy Monday! I hope you had a wonderful weekend that left you refreshed and ready to conquer the week ahead. Today I wanted to share with you an experiment that I did that last week. I decided to change up my nutrition and go vegetarian for a week! Meatless Monday was something I did for a few weeks last year but I really wanted to take it a step further. Nutrition has been a key issue with me lately and I figured that challenging myself to have a meat free diet for a week would be a great way to include different foods into my diet!
Why Vegetarian For A Week?
Honestly, my original plan was to eat vegan for a week but with budget constraints and a last minute change in my schedule, it just wasn’t going to happen. I ended up depending A LOT on dairy last week to help me meet my protein needs. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but going the extra mile and eating vegan for a week would have meant that I needed to purchase a lot of dairy free products that I didn’t have on hand. Also, I have been working with a dietitian and she noticed that I eat copious amounts of chicken. While it’s not a bad thing, it does start to get old after a while!
Vegetarian For A Week: Meal Plan
I made it easy for myself and had most of my meals at home or prepped in advanced. Instead of reaching for chicken as my main protein, I substituted tofu in my heartier dishes. In other dishes, I made sure to have plenty of quinoa and black beans to round out my meal and give it that oomph that I was used to. Also, I applied the traditional sense of the word “vegetarian” here. I didn’t eat meat, poultry, or fish.
This gave me an incentive to stay away from packaged foods. By cooking for myself and adding Greek yogurt and cottage cheese to meals, I knew that I would be getting additional protein that I needed. For lunch, I would eat zucchini and corn quesadillas (from the Dashing Dish website) which were easy to make in advance. I paired those up with guac and a side salad full of veggies. For quick dinners, I threw together roasted veggies with sweet potato and tofu. It was my usual veggie bowl with tofu instead of chicken!
Vegetarian For A Week: Conlusion
It was very simple for me to cut out meat, poultry, and fish in my weekly meal plan. While I didn’t really notice a major change in my grocery bill, I did enjoy trying new things. Sticking to a vegetarian diet made me think outside the box and combine different ingredients to make delicious meals. However, I’m not sure that this would be a permanent change for me. I did enjoy enjoy creating more plant based meals and I will continue to make a majority of my meals that way!
Have you ever cut out certain foods from your diet as an experience? Was it easy for you?
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