Cheat Day, Treat Day...

or just a day?

If you’re new here, welcome. This newsletter combines sharing my journey on a path towards a healthier diet and lifestyle with a monthly illustrated recipe and a monthly Veg Letter which covers a different edible plant each month, with illustrations, nutritional facts and ideas for snacks or meals that incorporate that particular plant. If that sounds good to you, why not subscribe?

In the past, I have tried quite a few diets of varying kinds, sometimes to just get healthier, but more often to lose weight. I’ve tried detoxes, calorie counting, low GI and a few variations on these. I have also tried to go vegan every few years since I was a teenager (when I lasted four months – until the Dieppe trip with school when I caved because I wanted crêpes and hot chocolate and to buy a particularly nice pair of suede boots). I never stick to any of them. The diet that I stuck with the most was the low GI diet, because it was based largely on the type of diet I preferred, except for the need to cut down on pasta (I really really like pasta, and never enjoyed corn pasta or lentil pasta, and so on).

So… now I am not doing any of this, but I am instead aiming for a predominantly plant-based diet and a mostly healthier lifestyle and diet, along with reducing (but not banning) the amount of ultra-processed food I eat. I am not trying to keep within a specific number of calories. I am not forbidding myself from any particular foods (though obviously, while aiming for predominantly plant-based, I am definitely looking to cut dairy).

The biggest point here is to avoid the points where I have failed and failed and failed again. Because there is no failing. If I put some grated cheese on my pasta, it’s not a failure. When I put dairy milk in my tea, it’s not a failure. When I eat some sweets on the train back from London, it’s not a failure. I am not kicking myself when I have a mid-week drink.

Because if I treat any of those as a failure, I will (if my history is any indicator) slip back into really bad habits, even though they’re not my natural place to be. I don’t want to eat frozen pizza all the time, or takeaways. I don’t want to drink three cans of Coke Zero a day and guzzle large packets of crisps. I definitely don’t want to eat McPlants or Dominos PepperoNAY or Greggs vegan sausage rolls (grateful though I am for the normalising of rejecting meat). But when I’m either on a diet or in a vegan phase and I slip – I slip waaaaaay too far. And it takes me months to get back to the default reasonably healthy lifestyle that is my natural base.

And it’s working really well. What is happening now is that if I make an unhealthy (or unethical) choice I accept that that is all it was – an individual choice, rather than a failing or THE END of this particular experiment. So, a few days ago I had fried eggs on toast for breakfast. But that didn’t mean that the rest of the day was a total right-off. It meant that at lunchtime I made myself a salad and, when I felt like something snacky and sweet a bit later, I had an apple and a handful of nuts. Both of which I enjoyed far more than the fried eggs. But, even if I had enjoyed the fried eggs that would still have been fine. Because this isn’t a test or a game. It’s just a journey and an ethos to live mostly plant-based and predominantly healthier.

I know people who have a ‘cheat day’ – maybe after a big exercising session the day before, or maybe because they have a day full of meetings. Or others who eat super healthily (more healthily than me) but have a ‘treat day’ once a fortnight. But I am turning away from that way of thinking. Because I don’t need a treat day, when all the food I’m cooking and preparing for myself is delicious. And if I choose to eat something that’s not particularly healthy, I can make the next choice a healthy one. Or the one after that. I don’t need to wait for the next day and fill this one day with all the bad things.

I am genuinely enjoying the healthier choices much more than the unhealthy ones – adding a pile of rocket and a handful of seeds to my aubergine pasta, instead of a handful of mozzarella; having just one piece of toast and topping it with hummus and salad leaves and raw vegetable sticks that are chopped up waiting in the fridge, rather than frying some eggs. There are still a few unhealthier choices that I could do with finding healthier choices that call to me (ice cream seems to be the one that I am falling on the most at the moment), but I am happy and confident that I will find some choices that I’ll want to go for more instead. And, in the meantime, if I have an ice cream in the evening? That’s fine. Tomorrow is another day, ready for more delicious healthy food!

Are you happy fully embracing a healthier and/or vegan or plant-based lifestyle? Have you experimented with different diets? Do you enjoy cheat or treat days? Do you have no trouble whatsoever in eating healthily/ethically?

Or maybe you just enjoy all and any food and don’t worry about either of these things? That’s obviously a very valid choice. I think I’ve said it before, but I am absolutely not here to police anyone’s (or my own) eating habits. If you’re just here for the pretty pictures and the occasional new recipe to try you are as welcome as everyone else.

Thanks for stopping by and reading. If you enjoyed this, and don’t already, do consider subscribing. And, just a little reminder that there’s a launch discount on at the moment with a full 50% off all paid subscriptions. All! Even the super special printed goodies subscription where you would get sent printed foodie pretties in the post.

OK… enough with the sales pitch. Sorry. That’s not in my comfort zone. I am definitely not a natural salesperson.

Oh, but… if you don’t have the funds to subscribe, I totally get that (and you still get at least two free newsletters – like this one – each month), but maybe you want to share instead and tell others about this newsletter.

Next week will be an illustrated recipe for paid subscribers only. I am pretty sure it will be a salad this time. Because that’s what’s calling to me the most now the weather has finally warmed up.

Hope to see you here next week – and if not, we’ll catch up the week after.