I love yoga.  It is my new favorite form of exercise.  I get a good workout and I find peace of mind on the mat for 75 minutes at least 5 days a week.  I focus on balance and concentration.  It helps me look within and figure things out. It is time well spent for development of a healthier mind and a healthier body.

And it was because of my newfound dedication to yoga, and a recent retreat I attended, that I started to think about what I eat. The teachers at my yoga studio encourage looking at what we eat in relation to how we care for all beings; they promote a vegan diet, so I decided to give it a try for 30 days.

I didn’t eat a lot of meat before this anyway, but I did add grilled fish or chicken to my salads. Frankly, I always thought of salad as boring unless I spiced it up with fish or chicken.  Now, I needed to learn different ways to make salads interesting and also filling enough for a full meal.

Since I shop at Hiller’s, it wasn’t hard. The selection of fresh fruits at Hiller’s encouraged me to add color and flavor to salads. Now, I buy more fruit – apples, pineapple, bananas, pears, fresh figs.  Dried fruits, too, like cherries, cranberries, dates and also unsalted mixed nuts.

I like olives and beets.  Black olives are good for the heart and beets are a blood cleanser. I’ve thought about adding carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, even onions. And at Hiller’s, there is such a nice variety of cheeses and seeds to sprinkle on my salads. I like golden raw flax seeds (good for hair!). With all that on my plate over a few baby spinach leaves, I don’t need salad dressing – a bit of honey mustard and wow, what a meal.

The only problem is that when I add even the littlest bit of each of these ingredients, I end up with a very big salad.  It fills my plate.  So, I am learning how some things go better with others, mixing and matching to make my salad colorful, tasty and fulfilling.  I cut fresh figs in half and place an almond in the middle to make it beautiful.  With a hot cup of light soy milk, it is a wholesome meal.

I didn’t have any major problem being vegan for 30 days, but I did miss a nice omelet in the morning sometimes.

So now, I enjoy my omelets some days, though my breakfast is usually a cup of tea and a small bowl of whole grain cereal.  I eat salads in the afternoon and for supper.  I sometimes add grilled salmon to my salad when I eat out, which is not a lot.  Overall, I am more aware of what I put on my plate now, and in my body. I still drink soy milk.  I like it better and it’s good for skin, too.

I am a mother of two wonderful boys, a business woman, a runner, a yoga fanatic and a writer who loves life and want to enjoy living it.  I am learning that I am happy as long as I keep improving and being kind to myself and the environment.  Hiller’s make it easy to do all of this and more.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.