Accidental veggie January

It’s funny, I don’t tend to set New Year Resolutions as I prefer to keep working on a continual improvement to living a healthy, happy lifestyle, but my January has gone in an interesting, unplanned direction. Of course, life works in cycles and sometimes I go a bit backwards with the whole continual improvement, but for me personally a fitness-related goal always gets me focussed. The rowing goals in December got me super fit but didn’t do great things for my weight (being light is not an advantage on the rower) but now that my next goal is the London Marathon (100 days today!) I need to shift about 10lbs of weight which my body really doesn’t need to be carrying around, particularly when I’m running.

Like many others, I’ve been eating clean since 1st January and have used my new book Deliciously Ella for inspiration for my recipes. I LOVE her philosophy and her recipes are superb. She is a gluten free vegan, which I could never be, but I have found that eating very clean has left me not wanting meat. I’ve had salmon a couple of times (from FISH – just amazing and cheaper than supermarket fish – if you’re in Brighton/Hove then you should only ever buy your fish from there) and I love eggs, but I don’t even fancy chicken which is very unlike me. For now I’m big into my quinoa (with tamari, lime juice and either avocado or tahini – yum!) and puy lentils (with onion, red pepper and feta) and look at this for my go-to pudding:

A banana, an avocado, a spoonful of cacao powder (different to cocoa powder, but you could use that too) and sometimes I add some ground cinnamon and/or vanilla extract. Whizz it all up and devour. Amazeballs.

Ok, so this looks a bit turd-y but it tastes amazing and totally ticks the “I need something sweet” box. And it’s ridiculously healthy too.

So we’re half way through January and I haven’t eaten meat. I’ll keep you posted but I reckon I’ll stick with it for now.