Continuing on yesterday’s post about my plans for the rest of the year, I should probably figure out what I’m doing with my diet as well.

I recently purchased a program called Lean & Lovely by Neghar Fonooni.  In order to try out the program fully, I intend on following both the dieting and training aspects of her program.  Of course the big elephant in the room is that the end of the year is a bit difficult to stay on any eating plan!  My birthday is in September, Halloween in October, Thanksgiving in November, and of course the winter December Holidays!  So while I know it’ll be hard to make any progress during this time, I’m hoping at least of offset any damage the holidays will do to my waistline!

I plan on using August as a time to fully read up on the Lean & Lovely program so that I can hit the ground running in September.  In the meantime, I’m using John Berardi’s Precision Nutrition system as my guideline for August.  Honestly, I wouldn’t be too shocked if the two eating plans were very similar, so I’m not expecting a huge change in habits between August and September.

My guidelines for August are:

• Eat every 2-4 hours.
• Eat a higher protein food with most meals
• Eat vegetables and/or fruit with every meal
• Whole grains should make up less than 25% of meals, except after exercise.
• Emphasize healthy fats from whole foods, every day.
• Drink beverages with few calories except non-dairy “milks”.
• Eat mostly whole foods but don’t be afraid of supplements.
• Plan ahead and prepare food in advance
• Build in variety.
• 85% compliance.

Here comes my big issue.  I’ve been vegetarian since 2007, and I’m finding it’s harder and harder to eat higher protein foods without always resorting to veggie “meats” like Gardein, Morningstar Farms, Field Roast, etc as well as eating a ton of egg whites, greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and protein powders.  Frankly, I don’t really like my reliance on Franken-foods, and I’m getting tired of eating all the same foods over and over!  I may decide to start eating meat again if I get tired of my usual rotation of veggie alternatives.  The danger with boredom is that, for someone who is food-centric like I am, it’s easy to stray if my food doesn’t interest me!

We’ll see.