Whole30:Vegan

My Sister is pretty cool. 

But she's going to kill me for this. 

She has been getting into eating paleo for a while now and recently started a Whole30 program. For those of you who don't have a cool sister to teach you about these things, the Whole30 program is a program designed as a nutritional reset to calm, heal and restore your body and to help you create a healthy, happy relationship with food.

Happy Food

Now, this nutritional reset is based on the paleo diet. While I am not paleo and don't really endorse the paleo diet (for reasons we wont go into here), there are some things I really like about the paleo mindset and about this program in particular. I love the idea of eating cleanly, of eating in a way that is most healthy for your body and of eating so that you feel your best. Although whole foods plant based campers (Campbell, Esselstyn, Fuhrman, et. al) and paleo campers usually get there different ways, we both are of the healthy lifestyle camp and are striving to live our best lives with optimally functioning bodies.

My sister has been raving about how great she has been feeling during her Whole30 experience. She has also enjoyed expanding the idea from a purity of body to a purity of body AND mind experience by committing to limit her "plugged in" time by not watching TV and by refraining from using technology after a certain time. Listening to her got me thinking - there's no reason that this same concept of committing 30 days to reset and focus on obtaining a pure mind and body couldn't be applied to a vegan diet, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I made up some goals to aspire to for the next 30 days:

1. No alcohol

2. No peanuts, soy, gluten or refined oils

3. No packaged foods, frozen foods, imitation meet or cheese

4. No added sweeteners

5. Aim to make as much from scratch as possible

6. Buy local and organic when possible

7. Consider limiting or eliminating legumes and grains

8. No TV

9. No technology after 9:00 pm

10. Exercise for 30+ minutes 5 times per week

11. Drink 64 ounces of water

12. Meditate at least once per day

13. Eat when you're hungry

14. Stop when you're full

15. Maintain a pure whole foods plant based diet

Here we go!