July Challenge Day 1 – Vegetarian Meal Planning Resources

Good morning!  It’s Day 1 of our July Challenge.  Hopefully you’ve already visited the main Challenge page and downloaded the July Exercise Calendar, checked out the challenge details and taken a look at the resources I posted there.  Also, today is the first day that our contest is open for entries.  One lucky person will win a Nutribullet, so make sure that you enter to win.

I know that many of you are looking for resources on how to put vegetarian and vegan meals together.  One of the main concerns that I’ve heard about is that ladies want to make sure they get enough protein.  There are a lot of great vegetarian protein sources.  Here is an article that breaks down 21 sources.  In terms of your meal planning, you want to focus on more than just protein.  Focus on having a balanced diet that provides your body will all the nutrients and vitamins that will help you to be healthy and lose weight.  Lack of nutrients is one of the problems with the standard American diet, junk food and fast food.  So much of the food we eat has very little nutritional value when you look at the amount of things like vitamins and fiber that the foods contain.

Here are some great meatless meal planning resources you should check out:

• Eating Well has done the work for you – “EatingWell’s 28-day Vegetarian Meal Plan provides an overall healthy-eating program that meets the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans at three different daily caloric levels: 1200, 1500 and 1800.”

• VeggieMealMaker – Download their free eBook, “The Beginners Guide to Vegetarian Meal Planning” for recipes and basic vegetarian cooking tips.
• PETA has a great 2 week Vegan meal plan available for free online.
• Vegetarian Times Magazine has a great 4 week guide that they developed with nutritionist Dawn Jackson Blatner, RD, LDN, author of The Flexitarian Diet.

• Fit Sugar posted this high-protein Vegan meal plan.

Just a few more resources to get you started with meal planning and finding new recipes for this month!  Eat well and you’ll have the energy you need in your workouts.