Welcome back! We’ve officially completed four days of being completely vegan, that means that we haven’t had any dairy or meat for over 96 hours- longer than ever before. Kyle’s started taking a vegan protein supplement and is absolutely hating it, and I’ve realized that my go-to snacks and lunches are basically cheese and scrambled eggs. Read below for our full thoughts on being more than half-way through this challenge.

Breakfast. Green Juice for Beginners

Green Juice for Beginners is DELICIOUS! It even got me to eat kale!

Be sure to check out my full review from all seven juices that I tried this week.

Lunch. Leftover Black Bean Chili.

I was so bummed that I forgot to pack some Fritos to have with my chili for lunch today. But it reheated really nicely. Check out yesterday’s post for our full Vegan Black Bean Chili Recipe.

Snacks. Banana • Hummus + Carrots • Ritz Toasted Chips • Bread

I didn’t really want to share all of the snacks that I had today, but I promised myself that I would never fake something just for social media.

The baked version of one of my favorite “crackers” is completely vegan-friendly! Ritz Toasted Chips are so delicious, salty, crispy, and the perfect snack for someone who’s craving the crunchy saltiness of goldfish.

Check out Vegan Week Challenge: Day 2 to read more about how Kyle makes his hummus.

Dinner. Cantonese-Style Tofu, Pine Nut, and Jicama Lettuce Cups (San Choi Bao)

Kyle found this awesome recipe from Kenji/The Food Lab on Serious Eats of a tofu alternative to lettuce wraps!

As you know, lettuce wraps are a big part of our regular menu, they’re easy, freeze well, and *surprise* I can actually make them! So finding a lettuce wrap alternative was amazing! On top of that, these were delicious. This recipe was super easy to follow, and left us with enough leftovers for lunch. The metric seems to be would we eat this if it weren’t challenge week? The answer here is simple YES! I would 100% eat this again nd highly recommend that you try it out ASAP.

This whole pot has about 4 servings, with a total of 1200 calories & 39 g protein.

*click here to see how to use your tofu lettuce cups the next day!*

Dear Diary,

I felt much more awake today. I wasn’t tired and didn’t feel the need to take a nap at all! Now whether that’s because my body is adjusting, or because, until about 5:00, I hadn’t had any grains, who knows. BUT, I feel so intestinally unwell… I feel full, like stretched and bloaty and nasty.

I hit a wall today. I MISS CHEESE! I realize how many of my snacks were cheese and milk, and it’s been really difficult to find snacks that I don’t have to assemble. Also- I was interested to try this because I was wondering if my general bloaty-ness was caused by my dairy intake. But since switching to this vegan diet, I feel just as icky, if not more-so. So I can take comfort in the fact that I can continue to eat dairy normally when this is all over and it’s something else making me feel wonky.

Kyle says:

I feel really unwell. Everyone says: “I stopped eating meat and switched to a plant diet and now I feel awesome!” I expected sort of that to happen too. But, I think that those people were eating bad food or eating poorly before switching. When I started eating well and working out, I started feeling great too! I thought I would get some of that here, but I’m not, I just feel bloated and gross. Confirmed- I smell weird, not bad, not worse, just different.

To read more about our Vegan Week Challenge, click here.

To read about one of the big reasons why we did a Vegan Week Challenge, click here.

Read about Vegan Week Day 3 • Read about Vegan Week Day 5