Before you get too excited, this one doesn’t involve movies. And probably not lots of updating. It’s more of a stay healthy challenge and I’m figuring sharing it here might help me actually stick with it.

Generally, I’m pretty healthy. The being a vegetarian obsessed with food helps with that. I love going to the farmer’s market and cooking is one of my favorite stress relieving activities. I also started working out regularly over the summer and that helps keep me healthy too.

But I’m not as healthy and all that as I should be. Much better than I was a few years ago when stress and crazy hours and travel and lack of exercise had taken their toll. And I ended up feeling exhausted, out of whack, and with shingles. It was awesome!

Or not.

So anyway, since then, I’ve tried to stay pretty healthy and eat well and at least pretend I’m going to get enough sleep. But holidays are hard for those things. And while I’m not going to give up my pie (HELL NO!), I am going to make an effort to do this healthy thing.

Let’s do this!

Here’s my challenge to myself:

1) Keep exercising. It’s super easy to fall out of the habit with the traveling and people visiting and days off of work. But I’m going to do it. At least 3 times a week.

2) Cut the snack food. If I’m going to eat lots of pie, and we all know I’m going to eat lots of pie, then I can at least cut out the other snack food calories. Or at least replace them with better ones. Like, an apple instead of the trail mix. Or whatever.

And this is the big, hard one. Cause those two are pretty easy…

3) Go vegan. Man, I can’t believe I’m even saying this. I appreciate the vegan thing, and honestly I’m not really that far from it in my normal, daily life. I don’t drink milk, I rarely eat eggs. It’s just, well, I love pizza. Like, it’s one of my favorite things ever. And obviously you can do vegan pizza and I’ve even had some decent ones. It’s just not the same. And… oh I need to stop talking about pizza. I’m gonna miss my pizza.

With this whole thing, the no cheese is going to be the hardest part. I’m not doing a strict vegan thing. If I eat an omelette one day, then I eat an omelette. It just won’t be a cheesy omelette. I’m going to be strict with the no dairy. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while and this just seems like a good time to try it.

It’s kind of funny, but when I decided to do this I didn’t think it would be that big of deal. Like I said, it’s not that far from my normal diet. I started on Friday and the weekend was pretty easy at first. But then I had lunch at sandwich shop yesterday and it was actually really awkward to order! I mean, they were really nice and ended up helping me customize one of their sandwiches. But it took a few minutes. And then last night I grabbed a small salad from a coffee shop and that ended up getting all complicated too! First they didn’t have the one real vegan entry on their menu, then when I ordered the salad they were out of the dressing it was supposed to come with, in the end they ended up finding me some honey mustard which was fine cause I’m not being so strict “I won’t eat honey” vegan. I love honey. And honey bees. And the guy from my farmers market who makes the most awesomest, delicious honey that I love.

In both cases everyone was really nice and helpful and went out of their way to accommodate me. I guess I just hate making situations where people have to accommodate me. And I’m so used to ordering vegetarian and having it be super easy (this is LA after all) that I just wasn’t expecting it to be much different going the extra step of taking away the cheese.

If nothing else, this month promises to be a learning experience.

That’s it. Wish me luck. Here’s today snack!

Snack time.

Oh yeah, and lunch was a homemade chili. Which will also probably be dinner. And lunch and dinner tomorrow too. Woo one pot meals!