In February, I baked about 12 cakes and I managed to blog and schedule them for March. It would be a cycle of baking cakes and trying to finish it up… and then baking again.
It got to the stage I did not want to eat cakes anymore. So I took a break from baking cakes and blogging.
Healthy Eating Challenge
And then I decided to do a 1 month trial of a plant based diet which included
- Reduce refined carbohydrate
- No added sugar (and no artificial sweetener/ sugar alcohol)
- Dairy free: no cheese, milk or butter
- Maintain 5 a day and aim 10 a day (fruits, veggies, pulse, mushroom)
- Reduce meat products
I also monitored my calorie intake and macronutrients for the first 2 weeks. I think the challenging part was preparing myself up to cook 7 days a week and to not eat out (no takeaways).
Healthy Eating Challenge Week 1
During the first week, my diet consisted of mainly fruit, veggies, egg, fish, minimal processed oil, reduced salt.
After the first week, I used more oil (sunflower oil) and salt for stir frying as the food tasted a bit bland.
Healthy Eating Challenge Day 10 (Lockdown Day 1)
However, Malaysian government announced a lockdown after 1 and a half week into my trial diet so I thought that I might give it up as we might start rationing. I had 1kg of cream cheese, 1kg of butter and 1.4L of whipped cream in the fridge so it would make sense to start consuming dairy. Surprisingly it turned out fine with my grocery shop so I continued with my healthy eating challenge.
Fridge Supply: Soy Bean Milk, Luo Han Guo Crysanthemum tea, Kimchi, Eggs, Tofu, Fruits, Vegetables, Mushrooms
Piglet had suggested for us to cook all vegetables including cucumber and lettuce and to remove the skin or outer layer of fruits as there were suggestions that Covid can remain on surfaces up to 3 -5 days.
The area we live and do our grocery shop in was a hotspot area for Covid cases. Hypermarkets were squirting alcohol gel onto Piglet’s hands upon entering and recommended face mask. Some even handed out plastic gloves for shoppers.
I used basmathi rice, added cashew nuts, raisins and mint to the rice.
I had egg instead of pork for the bosam (pork wrap).
Rice
My plan was to reduce refined carbohydrate but had few kg of Calrose rice and Basmathi rice. Calrose rice has a higher glycaemic index compared to other rice e.g. Basmathi, Brown, black. So I added in barley or black beans into my rice mix.
Cakes
I had no cravings for cakes. I even baked a lemon drizzle cake for Piglet but did not taste it.
Sugar
The sugar/ sweetener I had in my pantry were sugar, icing sugar, stevia, xylitol, honey and monk fruit sweetener erythritol. Surprisingly I had none of it for that month.
I ate fruits including raisins and added red dates and goji berries into soups. I also used a dried monk fruit (luo han guo) for luo han guo chrysanthemum tea.
Bread
I added sunflower seed, pumpkin seed, wholemeal flour, rye flour to the bread dough and used a sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast.
Meat Products
During the first week, my main source of B12 was eggs and fish.
As for the following weeks, it was a meat dish for 1-2 dinners and bone broth soup. The other days I had mainly fish, eggs and tofu.
I did cook meat though for Piglet on some days as it wouldn’t be fair depriving him.
How was it?
It was fun using various ingredients to cook and eat healthily. Due to the lockdown, we were not able to source our ingredients but had to make do and plan ahead before grocery shop.
I ended my healthy eating challenge by celebrating it with a sourdough sandwich loaf that contained all purpose flour, butter and milk powder. And I have started adding a teaspoon of sugar to my meat stew.