First week of octo-lavo-vegetarian diet

Hello, friends,

This was my first week of no meat meals. I was never really fond of meat but starting with January 1^st I took a major decision in my life: to try a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet for at least a year.

It was a difficult decision to make since my boyfriend’s parents raise animals in a small farm and always send us free fresh meat, but I needed a change in my life. 

Since September, I gained 15kg in just 4 months due to high stress levels. Unlike other people that lose weight when they found themselves under high pressure, stress makes me to eat uncontrollably. 

Therefore, I took the decision to change my eating habits completely: trying a new diet that excludes meat and using a meal prep app. I chose MealPrepPro (I know that it is only available IOs, but I hope they will change that aspect soon). I added some screenshots from the app so you can see how the interface looks like.

MealPrepPro Advantages

My daily menu last week

My first week of vegetarian diet menu consisted of the following dishes: 

Sunday and Monday:

• Breakfast: pesto and roasted pepper breakfast sandwiches
• Lunch: quinoa veggie soup
• Dinner: lentil and sweet potato stew (my favorite dish from this menu)
• Snack: caramel and almond rice cake 

Tuesday and Wednesday:

• Breakfast: balsamic glazed mushroom crepes (my favorite dish from this menu)
• Lunch: veggie Greek orzo salad
• Dinner: spinach and goat cheese frittata
• Snack: mango froyo 

Thursday and Friday: 

• Breakfast: egg and potato bowl
• Lunch: slow cooker green bean and cilantro chill
• Dinner: Portuguese caldo verde soup (my favourite from this menu)
• Snack: tomato and basil open sandwich 

Conclusions

After seven days of skipping meat completely in my meals and planning my food my conclusions are:

• It doesn’t take that much time to cook, especially if you cook small portions often;
• The more often you cook, the more food you waste, but at the same time you can reuse leftovers from a recipe in the next one if you plan properly; 
• Getting the necessary calories per day when you are not eating meat, sweets and juices takes a lot more quantity of food than you might be used to eating; 
• There are so many delicious vegetarian recipes except the classical salads. 

For more inspiration on recipes, try also to read this article about how to include fresh spring vegetables into your menu.

What do you think about this menu? Would you like me to post detailed instructions on cooking any of the dishes I ate? Please let me know in the comments below. 

Hits: 22