Sitting down for lunch with a bowl of canned black bean chili and some sesame blues corn chips. Corn is one of the things that I am minimizing but this is organic gmo free blue corn, so I’m having a few.

And can you guess what I am craving? What non-vegan thing goes so nicely with chili? Yes, CHEESE!

Some grated Cabot Seriously Sharp cheddar would be SO DELICIOUS on top of my chili!

Or would it? I have to say, I really am feeling good. Light and clear already. No stomach discomfort at all, which is something I have been plagued with to varying degrees over my life. Cheese being one of the culprits in that.

So in my mind I have this idealized perspective on how good cheese can taste, especially at certain times and with certain things – but it’s never really sat well in my belly.

Speaking of my belly, it’s gotten flatter, firmer, more toned – and I haven’t even been exercising. I had been doing the Insanity workout before I started my vegan experiment. For those of you not familiar, Insantiy is a hardcore, jumping, sweating, calorie burning, metabolism revving workout that brings about cardiovascular and core muscular fitness pretty quickly.

I decided I was better off without it since I’m already challenged enough to get sufficient calories into myself without making it more challenging by burning extra. I’ve been doing a little yoga instead.

I noticed yesterday morning that my pajama bottoms were falling off me. I don’t have a scale and generally don’t weigh myself so I don’t really know how much weight I’ve lost. Losing weight isn’t the point of this experiment – in fact, I would prefer NOT to lose weight. What I’m most curious about is the effect of this kind of eating on how I FEEL.

**********************

So, when it came time to make dinner, I wasn’t hungry. I realized that today is the first day that I’ve eaten beans since I started this, and while I’m happy for how long they spelled me for (I didn’t get hungry until about 8 o’clock, but I was in the middle of watching my son’s high school play so there wasn’t much I could do about it), I actually felt a little indigestive and bloated by the black bean chili I had for lunch at 12:30 (even without the cheese!).

Maybe the more you eat beans the less they bother you? I also vaguely remember from when I was on a macrobiotic diet 20 years ago that cooking them with kombu makes them more digestible – but when you buy canned chili you can’t do much about that.

So, while I should have been making dinner for myself, I was actually having an inspired moment and making dessert. Have you ever had those Hail Merry coconut macaroons? I had a bag on the counter and had eaten a few earlier in the day. I picked up the bag and looked at the ingredients and realized that I had all the ingredients in it on hand: shredded coconut, maple syrup, almond flour (well, I actually had the almond meal leftover from making almond milk) and coconut oil (except I used this coconut butter that I got that is amazingly delicious). I threw in some chia seeds too, because they just happened to be sitting on the counter.

I came home from the play and had a few macaroons. I don’t feel like eating a meal at 10pm, so I am going to bed kind of hungry. Tomorrow is Sunday. I will probably wake up craving eggs benedict…