30-Day NEURO Plan, Days 7-8

Here's a recap of my first weekend on the 30-Day NEURO plan from The 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution book. This plan is all about unprocessed, whole plant foods, no sugar, limited booze, restorative sleep, meditation and yoga, and brain challenges.

On Saturday morning, I had a 10-mile run on the training plan, so I woke up and had coffee and a bowl of white rice with Bragg's and sesame seeds. They Sherzais, the authors of the plan, don't recommend white rice (they prefer whole, intact grains like brown rice). But I'm making exceptions for pre- and post-run fuel. Simple carbs, like white rice, offer quick energy and are easier to digest before hitting the road. 

During my run, I fueled with Plant Bites, which are made with just fruit! So that was plan-friendly. And after my run, I had this Berry Amaranth Smoothie Bowl from the book. The base has cooked amaranth, mixed berries, almond milk, chia, orange zest, and cacao, plus I added some Complement Protein. It's topped with puffed amaranth (which I popped myself!), sunflower seeds, and fresh strawberries.

That smoothie bowl was my lunch, so I didn't eat again until dinner, when I heated up some of the leftover Creamy Mushroom & Radicchio Pasta Bake with some steamed kale. Sorry for the crappy pic! These are the kind of pics food bloggers don't want you to see. But real talk ... this is just what the plate looks like sometimes. 

Although I'm allowed a little red wine on this plan (they don't recommend drinking but say you can have some red wine if you must), I'm attempting to avoid booze as long as I can. If a social situation calls for it, I may have a glass. But for now, I'm experimenting with n/a craft beers. I found a good selection of them at Joe's Liquors. This Well-Being Sports Brew was really good! N/A beers have come a long way!

On Sunday morning, I got my one-mile run in for my run streak on the treadmill because it was rainy. I don't mind running in the rain, but I didn't want to shower right after. So I stayed dry by running inside. Afterward, I had some Zucchini Chickpea Pancakes from the book. These were like pudla! Made with chickpea flour, shredded zucchini, and chopped jalapenos. I served them with Spicy Green Hummus and avocado.

I had a late breakfast, and Paul wanted to go see the new Spider-Man movie in the theater. So for "lunch," I made a big bowl of popcorn and snuck it into the theater! I popped it with olive oil because the plan doesn't allow for coconut oil (due to the saturated fat).

When we got home, I whipped up a big bot of Spicy Yellow Split Pea Soup with Pomegranate and Spinach from the book. This was as tasty as it looks!! It was a beautiful dish, and it tasted that way too!

30-Day NEURO Plan, Days 5-6

Here's a quick recap of Thursday and Friday of last week on the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution NEURO plan for brain health! 

On Thursday morning, I did my Yoga with Adriene video and then had some leftover Mediterranean Tofu Scramble with Sprouted Grain Toast spread with Spicy Green Hummus. The hummus recipe is in the book, and it is loaded with cilantro and jalapenos!

Morning snack was Apricots and Almonds.

And lunch was a big salad with leftover Taco Quinoa.

I had an evening workout class at my gym downtown, so I got home kinda late for dinner. In the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution book, they say that you shouldn't eat within a couple hours of bedtime for optimal sleep. But if you must eat late, avoid high-energy foods. They suggested oatmeal because it's easy on the digestive system and promotes good sleeop. So I had a bowl of protein oats (with Complement Protein) for dinner!

On Friday, morning, I did another yoga video (plus my one-mile run for my January run streak) and then had the last of the scramble for breakfast. 

Morning snack was Blackberries & Almonds.

And lunch was another salad topped with the green hummus!

I typically have a glass of wine after work on Fridays to kick off the weekend, but I'm trying to avoid alcohol on this plan, so I found this Simple Truth Zero Sugar Kombucha! I had no idea that was even possible! I'm also avoiding sugar on this plan, so this was a great find. It tasted great! It was sweetened with erythritol, which is all-natural and my favorite sugar-free sweetener so far. 

Dinner was fun! I had my long run planned for Saturday, so I selected a pasta dish from the book for carb-loading. I made the Creamy Mushroom & Radicchio Pasta Bake. But I couldn't find radicchio anywhere (looked in three stores!), so I subbed Belgian endive. This also has mushrooms, chard, and a tasty nooch sauce.

I'll check in with Saturday and Sunday eats tomorrow.

30-Day NEURO Plan, Day 4

Wednesday was my fourth day on the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution NEURO Plan. I started my morning with coffee (sweetened with monkfruit!), a bowl of pineapple, and a handful of walnuts. Then I did a Yoga with Adriene yoga video (I'm doing her 30 January challenge), followed by a 5-mile tempo run.

After my run, I had a Berry Cocoa Green Smoothie. This has unsweetened almond milk, strawberries, banana, cocoa powder, flax, spinach, monkfruit powder, and Complement protein. Not a pretty color but tasty!

Morning snack at work was a handful of Dried Apricots and Raw Almonds. 

And lunch was the last of my leftover Pinto Bean Quesadillas with Steamed Kale. The quesadillas were stuffed with pintos, bell peppers, corn, spinach, red cabbage, and cashew queso. I'm sad to be out of quesadilla filling.

In the afternoon, I had more Dark Chocolate Orange Pistachio Truffles. And then dinner was more leftovers! I had some leftover Taco Quinoa on a salad.

Not as exciting of a food day, but it was definitely an easier day in the kitchen since my meals were based around leftovers. I'm trying to make sure I have enough of each dish to last for a few days because, in the past, I've done meal plans where I was cooking new dishes every night, and that was exhausting. I also go to bed so early now (8:30 pm) that there isn't much time to cook or meal prep on weeknights.

This challenge is not just about the food though. It's also focused on exercise, unwinding, restorative sleep, and optimizing the brain. For the unwinding part, I'm working on increasing my time in meditation. I've meditated for five minutes a day for several years. But I'd like to get up to 10 minutes before this challenge is over. So each week, I'll be increasing my meditation time a bit. I'm also committing to putting my phone away during meal times. Instead of scrolling through Instagram, I'm reading magazines or books during my meals.

The sleep portion is still a struggle. I get to bed most nights at 8:30 pm (and wake up between 4:30 and 5 am), so I'm working on putting my phone away 30 minutes before bed. I'd also like to invest in a better white noise machine. Right now, we use Alexa for fan sounds at night, but my wifi is crappy, and it typically cuts out for a few seconds in the middle of the night and shuts Alexa off. That always wakes me up. Definitely something I need to look into!

30-Day NEURO Plan, Day 3

I'm 3 full days (and then some) into the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution NEURO Plan! Here's what I ate yesterday, on day 3, on this whole foods, plant-based, sugar-free meal plan. 

My gym just started offering morning classes again for the first time since March 2020! They moved to virtual during the "stay home" part of the pandemic, and they started doing outdoor evening classes. And lately, we've been doing evening classes indoors, but they finally added a morning class! I much prefer morning workouts. So I went to the first 6:15 am body burn class on Tuesday morning (fueled by a cashew cookie Larabar). After the gym, I came home to this beautiful Mediterranean Tofu Scramble that I prepared the night before (with a side of almond butter toast).

The scramble is from the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution book, and it's amazing! It has sundried tomatoes and green olives, so it's got lots of great umami flavor. I'm glad the recipe made enough for a few more days!

Morning snack (back at work!) was a bowl of berries and walnuts and a second coffee from French Truck Coffee. The Sherzais, the authors of the book/plan, say coffee is brain-boosting, but they just don't recommend drinking it after 2 pm because it affects sleep. Because I go to bed so early (8:30 pm), I try to avoid caffeine after noon.

Lunch was a salad topped with leftover Taco Quinoa and some leftover South of the Border salad topping (black beans, sweet potatoes, corn, bell pepper) with leftover avocado dressing.

I had some more Dark Chocolate Orange Pistachio Truffles for my afternoon dessert/snack.

And then dinner was another Pinto Bean Quesadilla stuffed with pintos, bell pepper, spinach, corn, red cabbage, and cashew cheese. So far, I've managed to eat avocado daily (sometimes twice a day) on this plan, so I'm digging that!

30-Day NEURO Plan, Day 2

Monday was my second day on the NEURO plan from the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution book. You can read more about that plan here, but the basics are whole foods, no sugar, daily exercise, meditation and breathwork, restorative sleep, and brain challenges. Here's a recap of Day 2. I woke up and had some pineapple and walnuts before my 5-mile run. I've been fueling my runs with high-glycemic fruits lately, and it's been working well. 

After my run, I had a Mango Banana Protein Smoothie with almond milk, banana, mango, flax seeds, stevia, turmeric, and Complement Protein powder. Although protein powder would probably be considered a processed food, Complement makes the cleanest protein, and I feel like it's important for me to have that post-run protein.

For my morning snack, I had Strawberries, Blackberries, and Almonds (plus, green tea, which the plan recommends daily). I enjoyed this at my desk at home because we got a surprise "work from home" day on Monday while our organization figured out how to deal with Omicron. Was hoping we'd be working from home again for the long term, but we were back in the office today with some new safety protocols. Oh well. I REALLY enjoy working from home.

Lunch was another South of the Border Salad with avocado dressing. I had this on Sunday for lunch, and the recipe made plenty for leftovers. It has black beans, sweet potato, bell pepper, and corn, plus a garlicky avo dressing.

I had some more Dark Chocolate Orange Pistachio Truffles for my afternoon snack with a cup of moringa tea. You can see those in yesterday's post.

Dinner was Taco Quinoa with Steamed Kale, Pinto Beans, Baked Corn Chips, Guacamole, and Salsa. The taco quinoa recipe is from the book, and it's so yummy! You boil and then bake the quinoa so it gets a little crunchy, and it has lots of chipotle, nooch, and chili powder. The recipes in this book are so flavorful! For the chips, I just air-fried from corn tortilla wedges. 

That's it for day two! So far, I'm feeling great on this plan. I don't miss sugar at all (but I was never a daily sweets eater), and the recipes have been so tasty. I did notice that I've gravitated to mostly Mexican-inspired dishes so far, but there are many other types of dishes in the book. That's just what sounded good when I was meal planning!

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!

Hello, 2022!

Happy New Year!! This was the first year in a long time that we didn't do much for New Year's Eve. But we didn't get invited anywhere, and Omicron is everywhere in Memphis. So we decided to check out a new brewery, Soul and Sprits, that has lots of space to spread out. There weren't many people there, so we had a whole section of the brewery to ourselves. Fortunately, it was the game section with giant checkers and giant chess.

I don't know how to play chess (though Paul is pretty good), so we played giant checkers and enjoyed a beer. I tried the Coffee & Cigarettes Smoked Coffee Porter. The brewery closed at 8 pm for NYE, so we grabbed a 4-pack of pints to go and headed home to await midnight by our new firepit.

We both really struggled to stay awake until midnight, but we made it! I popped some champagne for a toast while we watched the New Year's Eve programs on TV. Then we went to bed.

Since we got to bed so late on New Year's Eve, we slept in pretty late, and then I headed out for an 8-mile long run. It sucks having a long run on the plan the day after NYE, but hey, you gotta do it! I'm also doing a 31-day running streak in January, so this run was a must. After the run, I made Protein Pancakes with Complement Protein and the last of my Fry's Breakfast Links. And mimosas of course!

For dinner, we had the obligatory Blackeyed Peas & Cabbage. I cooked the fresh peas with canned tomatoes and veggie broth, and for the cabbage, I used my recipe in Cookin' Crunk, which involves a long, slow caramelization. We served our good luck meal over rice.

Today (Sunday), I started the 30-Day Alzheimer's Solution plan as my January reset. I'll post about my full day of eats on the plan tomorrow!