I have mastered setting up my home environment for success and as long as I’m in my usual routine, life is easy. This week I had two birthday parties to go to and indulged in lots of vegan restaurant food along with some drinking.

Drinking is definitely not calorie free so drinking can make it difficult for me to lose weight. I am not a huge drinker and do not regularly drink, we don’t even have alcohol in our house, but I will partake socially once in awhile.

Let me be honest. I find eating out vegan really easy!! Even if a restaurant doesn’t have a specific vegan marked menu item, I can look over the menu and find ingredients to make a meal. Vegan food is SO delicious and accessible, I have not had an issue finding it when I eat out.

The issue I have is trying to find take out/restaurant options that are whole plant food without oil. Restaurants are notorious for using oil and dishes are often loaded with fat. It’s those hyperpalatable foods that keep us coming back after all!

Oddly, with all of my indulgences this week, I am somehow down a pound, but I am skeptical of this and half suspect my weekend decisions might catch up with me next week. This is why I don’t stress too much about the scale, it all works out in the end if you stay on track with your habits and sustainable lifestyle. KEEP GOING is a mantra I regularly tell myself.

Sometimes I lose weight and think HOW?! and sometimes I don’t lose weight after what I perceive to be a perfect week and I remain neutral or even gain. Weight loss is complex, the scale is just one piece of the puzzle and should never be a tool used to beat yourself up or feel bad.

WEEKLY CHECK IN: down 1 lb | 31.6 lbs to goal

There are no quick fixes. This really is a complex problem. Please be compassionate and kind to yourself and/or others in your life on a similar journey.

If you overindulge (for lack of a better word), become your own investigator and look at why that might have been WITHOUT JUDGMENT, tweak your plan if needed and/or come up with strategies for success for dealing with future obstacles and then move on. In my case, these were planned indulgences and I’m ok with that!

I did not arrive here in a perfect straight arrow and I will not reach goal in a perfect straight line either. My journey has been a succession of constant learning and adjusting as I learn about myself and what works for me.

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 😊

p.s. Do you get regular bloodwork? While it’s not the full picture, regular bloodwork has been a real motivator to have data to track my success. There have been times where the scale wasn’t moving and yet my bloodwork showed significant improvement. Animals contain cholesterol but plants do not and your liver produces all the cholesterol you need so even when not losing weight, my cholesterol keeps going down since I’m not consuming animals.