Thrive Forward, Day Seven

One week down! Three more to go!

Here's what I ate on the last day of week one of my 30-day Thrive Forward cleanse. I had a Direct Fuel Bite this morning before my weight training session. Then I had a bowl of Toasted Apple Cinnamon Cereal with almond milk from Thrive. I've showed it before, but here it is again. This recipe made lots:

My morning snack was more Raw Pizza Crackers. And then for lunch, I had this Cucumber Pesto Salad with Tomato Basil Dressing from Thrive:

There's baby romaine, grated cucumber, chopped garlic, ground sesame seed and nutritional yeast topping, and a homemade tomato basil dressing. There were supposed to be pine nuts atop this salad too, but I totally forgot them today! I realized after I'd eaten the whole thing, so I ate the pine nuts by themselves. Sadness.

And yes, I had to bring a toothbrush and toothpaste to work to make sure I could get rid of the funky garlic breath!

My afternoon snack was another Ginger Pear Smoothie (pear, banana, ginger, hemp protein, and flaxseed).

Now I don't typically have a second afternoon snack, but I had to attend an animal shelter board meeting for work after-hours. So I knew it'd be a long time before I'd get to eat dinner. That sounded like the perfect opportunity to break open these Rhythm Superfoods Texas BBQ Kale Chips!

Rhythm Superfoods sent me samples of these and some Kool Ranch kale chips yesterday. I adore kale chips. In fact, if I could afford to eat kale chips for every meal, I could totally be raw. Of course, I probably wouldn't get all the micronutrients I need eating kale all day, every day, but so what?

Anyway, these Texas BBQ Kale Chips were amazing! The BBQ flavor was almost exactly like the flavor of BBQ chips, which are my fave. I can't say that I'm missing BBQ chips one week into the cleanse since I don't eat them all that often anyway. But these kale chips fulfilled a craving I didn't even know I had.

I also had a tangerine before the meeting, but I was famished by 7:30 p.m. The meeting was still dragging on then, but I made my escape as it was winding down and headed to my usual Wednesday dinner spot — Imagine Vegan Cafe.

I've eaten there every Wednesday for over a year, but it's not the easiest place to eat when you're off gluten, sugar, and faux meats. I mean, Imagine is the home of the vegan chicken fried steak, peanut butter plant-milkshakes, and the best vegan cupcakes in the city after all.

But there are a FEW veggie-based dishes that are cleanse-friendly — one of which is the Vegetable Soup:

I practiced restraint and didn't eat the crackers since they're made with white flour (a big no-no on my cleanse). But the soup was delicious. It was served piping hot, so it really hit the spot on this cold, rainy night. I ordered a Side Salad with Balsamic Dressing as well:

No late night snack tonight, since I had such as late dinner. See y'all tomorrow!