Snack time y’all

So if you are like me you like a good snack. I love savory things mostly but let’s be real, some days anything will do. So in order to make a few of my favorite things vegan I had to do some work but it was totally worth it.

1.       Cheesy popcorn. You can easily get vegan friendly butter. I use earth balance butter (specifically the soy free one). The butter is really good. It melts well, you can use it to bake, on toast, melt it onto popcorn, and use it any kind of cooking. The other part of the popcorn is nutritional yeast. Yes. It looks weird. The tasty is very cheesy though and I use it to top pasta, to make mac and cheese, and use to season popcorn. So go look for nutritional yeast y’all. Super good. (Nutritional yeast: It is a source of protein and vitamins, especially the B-complex vitamins, and is a complete protein. It is also naturally low in fat and sodium and is free of sugar, dairy, and gluten. Sometimes nutritional yeast is fortified with Vitamin B12.)

2.       Tortilla roll ups. I use whole grain tortillas, tofruti cream cheese (a cream cheese that is made from tofu and taste like cream cheese y’all), then I add slices of tofurky lunch meat, some spinach and roll it up. Now you can eat it like that or if you want to use to for an appetizer at a party you can roll them up, wrap it in plastic wrap, let it sit overnight, then right before you are ready to serve slice it into pinwheels. Super tasty and easy.

3.       Ranch dip and chips or veggies. So to make ranch dip I use ranch mix (easy to make your own) and tofruti sour cream. Easy y’all.

4.       Hummus and pita, hummus and veggies, hummus and pretzel chips. Hummus is such an easy go to. I love it piled with red peppers or garlic and olive oil.

5.       Trail mix with vegan friendly dark chocolate and dried fruits and nuts. Easy to make your own and you can buy it in the bulk section of a lot of stores. Also, you can make it your own and add what you love and leave out what you don’t. Better than picking through things and paying for a big bag of trail mix and not eating it all.

What are some of your favorite healthy snacks? What are some not so healthy snacks that you made your own and made better? I want to hear y’all. 

what i eat y'all

hey you guys if you have instagram check me out there @laurenlovesjared and you can see what i eat and what i wear and what my dogs are doing.

since not everyone has seen that yet i wanted to post a few ideas here for you.

lunch this week has been really good but my favorite is chinese orange 'chik'n' with veggies and jasmine rice, fruit salad, and peanut butter cups. i made the chinese food by first cooking up my rice in the rice cooker with vegan (earth balance non soy) butter and a veg bouillon. next i steamed up some broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. then i baked some really good vegan chick'n and tossed that in the orange sauce. you can buy the chick'n ready to go with sauce in a lot of grocery stores. check out the natural section and then go through there frozen vegan/meat free products. i also had fruit salad (we buy pineapple, picked blue berries and bought grapes to make this mix. lastly i made protein packed peanut butter cups. i found the idea on pinterest so go check out my boards. i just made sure to buy and use vegan products to make it and when it called to add graham crackers to the peanut butter i added pea/brownrice/quinoa mix protein powder. personally i can tell you that you do not taste that. 

enjoy y'all

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healthy snack drawer ideas




even vegan's can enjoy chicken salad. i use meat free chicken and tofruti sour cream in this recipie along with some yummy vegan cheese. make it your own. that is what it is all about. 



this site made meal planning a snap. it is vegetarian and a good place to start your meat free journey. check it out. 

junk food junkie

did you know oreo's are vegan? did you know that most potato chips are vegan? what about some soda, some french fries, some cakes? 

listen when it comes to junk food i know my stuff. that is where i live and breath. or where i used too. slowly i am letting go of tatter tots. in all honesty let me tell you in the last three weeks i had them one time. i used to eat them almost daily. also, after i ate them i felt like shit. will it stop me forever? doubt it. but it was a wake up call. 

i think that with responsibility comes a certain amount of awareness to a situation. i chose to go vegan for health reasons (though the animal rights part makes a lot of sense to me now). but with the choice to eat vegan i have to be aware that i can still make terrible choices. i could be a french fry and coke vegan and still be overweight and unhappy. 

make a change. own it. be aware of it. if you fail to meet your goal for a meal or a day you can start next time. failing once isn't failure forever. i think our society puts people into two categories. fat or skinny. if you aren't skinny you are fat and if you aren't fat you are skinny. but neither of those labels have anything to do with health. so just try. take a step forward. look for help where you can. also eat an oreo every now and then. listen if i restricted myself all the time i don't know what i would do. i think that with some moderation i make better choices. when i say no to everything eventually i want junk food and i want it bad. so i binge. which makes me feel worse. which starts the cycle all over again. 

so just try. that is all any of us can do. 

the food pro

so i went to a dietitian.

so that was weird.

i don't know. i think i went in with the assumption (yes i know right there is a problem...assuming) but i thought she would be this very food knowledgeable person who would understand being vegan/vegetarian. she recommended great snacks (which i had to make vegan which is totally fine). she helped me to refocus my energy about food from three meals a day to 5-6 small meals. eating every 2-3 hours. now, let me be honest. i could eat 6 times a day and eat a lot. that is the way i have always been. there is no off switch in my brain that says 'hey you are full girl slow your roll'. so that part i was super pumped about. then she told me the calories to shoot for and calculated how many i am most likely eating to maintain my current weight. people. i almost fell over. listen a few days ago i also calculated my BMI and thought i was going to have a stroke. i did walk away with a lot of good information and she did tell me she would do more research for me to help me on my journey. so i am hopeful that is going to happen. 

now the big challenge is buying the foods and eating only them and not making easy snap choices out of being lazy. i saw something on pinterest that said if you buy healthy food you will eat healthy food. lets be real i can drive down the road to buy fries and a coke. you have to do more than buy the food. you have to have a plan. goals. challenge yourself. build up your support system. 

i hope to have more from the diet/food pro soon. 

oh snap

i know i touched on a tiny part of my journey yesterday and today i want to continue. 

i can tell you that my food growing up was not carefully thought out. it was not organic. it was not vegan/vegetarian. it was mostly grilled cheese and tomato soup, spam and chips, pizza, salad with loads of cheese and ranch, and any little snack cake or coke i could get my hands on. i was overweight and sad for years. i went to high school and thought being funny would change my being sad. but it did not. i went to college and i thought drinking and partying would make me happy. it did not. what did make me happy was cultivating my friendships and learning about myself. 

fast forward to 2011. i was at my heaviest. i was married to the man of my dreams and i was still overweight and unhappy. so i started my journey into new foods. now don't me wrong the changes in food helped but i knew i needed more. so in 2012 i started therapy. now i am not going to go into depth about everything i discussed there because then it would somehow not be the safe place i hold it up to be. however, i will tell you that one of the best things i ever did was go. i was lucky that i found someone who i clicked well with even if we are polar opposites. this person allowed me to safely explore my feelings about food and how i used food as comfort instead of fuel. i used it as a reward and as a punishment. i always felt this food coma high after a really good binge. now though. now things are different. am i fixed? hell no. but do i feel more in control? hell yes! i think when you are on a journey to self discovery and health you can't do it alone. there are so many options for people. weight watchers. therapy. blogging community. friends. family. over-eaters anonymous. look into your health insurance to see if you can see a dietitian. mine allows four visits a year and i wish it was more but it is better than nothing. go get established with a primary care doctor. have your blood drawn and make sure your vitamins are normal. make sure your hormones are normal. make sure you are not looking at diabetes. this isn't a medical professional opinion this is common sense. this is something everyone should do to take charge of their bodies.

next on deck to discuss. 
the dietitian. 

how i became the phat vegan

so over the course of the last two years i have spent a lot of time watching documentaries, reading articles, looking over blogs, and searching #vegan on instagram. here in arkansas that is really not as common as you would think. (i joke) people here want things smothered, covered in butter, gravy soaked, and lets be real who doesn't love bacon? but i was fat, tired, depressed, and ready for change. so obviously after about ten years of crash diets i thought about making a life style change and became vegetarian. at first, it worked. i was thrilled week after week i lost weight. but then after about 60 pounds (yes i had 60 to lose and to get real about 60 more to go) after 60 pounds everything came to a halt. i was tired again, i did not want to work out, my skin was terrible, i was depressed, and so upset with my body. i thought my body was rejecting the idea of giving up meat. i thought my body was trying to defeat me before my battle was done. so i went back and forth a bit. ate some chicken, then felt guilty, then at some spinach, and still felt like shit. i knew i had to make life style changes and knew that i had to be honest with myself. i started therapy. that was weird. but that is a topic for another day. after going through every food documentary on netflix i knew what i had to do. i had to cut out cheese, cows milk, eggs, and meat. cut it all out. i certainly will not lie. this was not easy. i cried about cheese. i want that last statement to sink in. i cried over cheese. i cried over cheese dip. i cried over all things processed that i wanted so much. but slowly i felt better. slowly i was learning to adjust. i found out there were things called spaghetti squash, i learned about leeks, i read about the pros and cons of soy. i learned about the best way to take care of my body. my journey is still at the beginning. everyday i have to fight the urge not to binge on chips. not to drink so much soda (which i am currently trying to give up). to learn to eat to live not live to eat.

with this blog i want to share my journey, give away helpful tools, show you that you can make biscuits and gravy (vegan style...yeah i said it), and hopefully meet a new community of people who want to get healthy and maybe save a chicken or two. 

there is a lot more to my journey so please stick around and look out for more on how i became the phat vegan.