Abundance Diet, Days 12-14

It's been a lovely, relaxing weekend on the Abundance Diet with lots of yoga, some meditation, running, some eating out, and most importantly, dessert! Oh, and a little red wine because antioxidants.

On Friday morning, I went for a nice 4-mile run, and then I had the same meals I ate on Tuesday. The Abundance Diet meal plan in Somer McCowan's cookbook employs the "eat-on-repeat" technique, meaning you repeat an entire day's meals every three days in one week's time. On Friday, that meant another chia-peach smoothie (with Vega One protein powder this time!), lentil taco salad, chipotle corn chowder, oil-free hummus, and cauliflower crust pizza (my fave meal on the diet so far!).

The Abundance Diet allows for healthy desserts on Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm often going to be eating my desserts on Fridays and Saturdays since those are the real weekend nights to me. On Friday night, I whipped up this yummy bowl of Cherry Garcia Soft Serve to enjoy while rewatching The Labyrinth for the millionth time. This is just made from frozen bananas, frozen cherries, and carob chips. So healthy and delicious!

On Saturday, I mostly repeated the meals from Wednesday, except on weekends on the Abundance Diet, your breakfast is a solid food meal rather than a green smoothie. And my Saturday morning breakfast was ridiculously beautiful and delicious. Check out these Neopolitan Overnight Oats!

The bottom layer is chocolate steel cut overnight oats with chia seeds and date paste. That's topped with a layer of banana soft serve. And then there's a layer of vanilla steel cut overnight oats with chia seeds. And that's all topped with cherry-banana soft serve. It was basically dessert for breakfast, and it was the best thing ever. By the way, the recipe calls for strawberries for the top layer, but I'd already purchased a bag of frozen cherries for Friday night's ice cream, so it made more sense to use those.

I'll typically have my second weekend dessert on Saturday nights, but since this is a three-day weekend (due to MLK Day on Monday), I saved my second dessert for Sunday night. We watched an old Jane Fonda movie at my friend Andy's house late Saturday night, and I snacked on some of the gluten-free cheesy crackers from the cookbook.

Sunday morning started with one of my favorite breakfast foods — pudla!!! I often make these savory Indian chickpea flour pancakes for weekday breakfasts, but it's been awhile. Somer's Vegetable Pudla is an oil-free version chock full of spinach, parsley, onion, and tomato. So good! I ate this in my PJs while watching Lost (I'm FINALLY almost done!).

My Goddess Provisions box arrived on Friday, and while I typically devote an entire post to it, this month, I'm just wrapping it into this one since I have so many cleanse posts to share this month. It played a big role in my weekend fun! There were Still bath salts by Being (with pink salt, ylang ylang, and geranium), a vanilla-amber oil fragrance inspired by the goddess Pavarti from The Goddess Line, the most amazing lip tint by Concrete Minerals, a tangerine quartz point for releasing that which doesn't serve us, and Meditation chocolate by Yes Cacao.

My Abundance Diet cleanse is supposed to be white sugar-free. But I made small exception for the Gaba Baba chocolate bar (it has evaporated cane juice). It's loaded with GABA, kava, blue lotus, and turmeric to help ease us into a meditative state. So I ate a few squares on Sunday morning before my yoga session. It helped me relax and get into the right mindset. And it was melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

I typically go out to brunch at Imagine Vegan Cafe every Sunday, but the brunch bitches were all tied up this weekend. So, after yoga, I went solo to grab some lunch at 2 Vegan Sistas, a high-raw cafe in Bartlett. I love this place and don't get out there often enough. I had the Raw Pizza and the Baked Sweet Potato Fries. The pizza is on a dehydrated corn-based crust, and it has cashew cheese and loads of veggies. And their handmade, baked sweet potato fries never disappoint.

After lunch, I stopped by my friend Melissa's housewarming party. And it was there that I had my first sip of booze in two weeks. I didn't want this cleanse to be totally alcohol-free because I don't like feeling deprived, but I did tell myself that, if I drank anything this month, it'd have to be red wine (since it has some great health benefits!). I only had one glass, but it was delicious. 

After the party, I went home and had some more leftovers — the cowboy pasta — for dinner. And then I whipped up these Happiness in a Cookie Bite balls from Somer's book.

These have rolled oats, nut butter (I made some with almond and some with peanut), coconut, carob chips, flax, and maple syrup. I tasted the batter, and it was yummy. But I haven't had a chance to sit down and eat them yet. After I finish this post, I'll watch one more episode of Lost and enjoy my balls (ha!). And then I'll probably take a nice long bath with my new Still bath salts from the Goddess box and hit the sack. I'm off work for MLK Day tomorrow, but I have a full day of new cleanse meals ready to go. I'll see y'all then!