30-Day NEURO Plan, Day 1

It's been a couple years since I've done a January reset. I used to do a meal plan every January to get back on track after the holiday onslaught of processed foods, desserts, and booze. But after doing the No Meat Athlete 80/20 Plants plan a few years back, I finally found a nice balance between healthy, whole foods and vegan junk foods. And to be honest, I was doing great with that until the week of Christmas. So I really didn't need a reset, but they're fun! And I've been really into the work of vegan neurologists Dean and Ayesha Sherzai lately, so I wanted to try their 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution NEURO plan. 

I read their first book, The Alzheimer's Solution, back in November, and I got their cookbook/plan, The 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution, for Christmas. Alzheimer's and dementia run in my family, and I'm determined to not let that happen to me! The NEURO Plan is 30 days of whole foods (nothing processed) with zero sugar. The Sherzais say sugar is one the worst things you can eat if you're trying to prevent dementia. I'd already been limiting sugar after reading their first book, and I'm not giving it up entirely (you'll never pry my donuts away!), but for 30 days, I'm doing this sugar-free thing.

I started the NEURO Plan on Sunday with these Golden Waffles with Strawberry Sauce from the book. Can you believe these are sugar-free? They are! The waffles don't have any sweetener, and the strawberry syrup is sweetened with monkfruit. Monkfruit is their healthy sweetener of choice, and I like it!

Lunch was the South of the Border Salad. This has black beans, roasted sweet potatoes, corn, bell peppers, cilantro, and spring mix with an avocado dressing. A very hearty salad!

Dinner was Pinto Bean Quesadillas with Chipotle Cashew Queso. This was my favorite meal of the day! The filling is made with pintos, spinach, corn, and bell peppers, and it's seasoned with a smoky cashew cheese sauce. They recommend sprouted grain tortillas, so I used Ezekiel wraps. They don't wrap well at all, but they're great for quesadillas. I made some awesome guac, and I used some of my dad's homemade salsa for topping. I had some steamed kale on the side because they say you should get 3 servings of green leafies a day.

There's even dessert on the plan! I made a big batch of these Dark Chocolate Orange Pistachio Truffles to enjoy throughout the week. These are made with Lilly's stevia-sweetened dark chocolate, orange zest, almond flour, almond butter, and monkfruit sweetener. They are so good, and you'd never know they were sugar-free!

NEURO stands for nutrition, exercise, unwind, restore, and optimize, so there's more to this plan than food. They recommend daily exercise (I'm doing a running streak in January, and I'm doing Yoga with Adriene's 30-day MOVE plan). For unwinding, they suggest meditation, breathwork, and journaling, and the restore part focuses on sleep hygiene (they recommend 7-8 hours a night). Optimize is actually the hardest part for me. In that section, they say you should spend a little time doing a brain-challenging activity. I've decided I'm going to try to learn Spanish, so I've started a basic Spanish podcast, and I'm practicing with flash cards. 

I'll be blogging about the NEURO plan for the next 29 days! Wish me luck!