It’s Over!
Well, June’s over, so the Diet Reconstruction is done!
Or is it?
I’m having a lot of fun with this vegan diet and learning new foods and trying out different meals, so I’m going to keep it going.
I’m going to knock out the meat and dairy for another month…then I have a new secret diet plan scheduled for August…it will be a very interesting experiment you won’t want to miss.
I’ve learned so much in the last month and tried so many new foods for the first time, including:
- spelt flour bread, spelt flour linguine, and a spelt flour veggie patty
- pumpkin seed butter
- organic cashew butter
- oat groats
- coconut meat
- almond milk
- hemp beverage (not so good!)
- quinoa
- ezekial cereal
- kamut pasta
But I still think I can do better. As you can see, I was heavy on the grains this month. So in July I’m going to cut back on a lot of the boxed foods (even though they are healthy) and eat more fruit instead.
So I’ll be moving away from the box-vegetarian diet towards more of a raw vegan diet, and I’ll keep pushing to force-feed myself more calories. 
I actually lost about a pound and a half in the 4 weeks for 2 reasons. First, it’s hard to eat a lot of calories when you cut out meat, dairy, all added sugar, and alcohol. The fiber-rich, low-processed food diet I was on fills you up fast. So that’s good if you want to lose weight.
Second, I got sick twice. Strange, isn’t it? I go two years without getting sick, and then I switch to a vegan diet and get sick twice in a month.
I still claim the first one was food poisoning. And the second one – my strep throat – was just bad luck. And bad timing. So I wasn’t able to eat much the last 3 days.
But I’m going to bounce back in July and gain that weight back fast. My throat is already a lot better and ready to take on more calories.
Plus, I finally bought myself a big-time blender to create smoothies. That will help get more calories in. My buddy Jay Ferruggia is the master of creating high-calorie muscle building smoothies.
Alright, so who is with me?
Who is going to continue to improve their diet for July as well?
Are you ready to give up alcohol for 4 weeks?
Going to give up chocolate for 31 days?
Ready to ban the booze from your belly for just a few short weeks?
I guarantee you’ll feel better in days just by doing it.
And yes, I know that July 4th is right around the corner…so you have two options. First, start the Diet Reconstruction on July 5th. Or second, stay strong and be loud and proud and start your Diet Reconstruction right now!
Either way, I’m proud of what you are doing…keep on striving to be a little bit better everyday!
That’s the baby-step way to success, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Let me know how this month went for you,
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
PS – Click here to discover the original diet depletion challenge