Today was the last day of the week of diet experiments.  As planned I finished up the week with a nice, easy Mediterranean diet.  By far the most liberal of the diets I have planned is the Mediterranean diet.  Having part of my ethnic heritage hailing from that part of the world also makes this diet very easy for me.  Almost any of the traditional foods I’d eat, with some tweaking for whole grain over traditional versions of some foods, fit the mold.  As a lover of wine, the prescription of 1-2 glasses a night, assuming that works for you, is also a nice plus up.  While I enjoyed the food, over-eating on this diet seems easier than on other diets.

The day of Paleo was overall quite easy to hit, in terms of what I had planned to eat.  I had a small divergence at lunch but the big problem was the temptations. The number of my foods that are grain or dairy based is astounding!

To recap, today approximates what would be the pescatarian diet option.  That’s all of the lacto-ovo vegetarian option with fish added into the mix.  That’s a pretty liberal diet with just the meat and poultry missing.  I would have thought that as the diets get closer to my regular diet, which is sadly too close to my SAD diet, that it would get easier.  Unfortunately I was wrong.  It wasn’t that following the diet was hard, it’s just that I was pretty damn hungry by afternoon!

I was expecting the vegetarian day to be pretty easy to do, and I wasn’t disappointed.  I should say that by “vegetarian” I mean a lacto-ovo vegetarian. I should also say that the level of experimentation is less and less exotic as the week goes on, but I figured I’d analyze and write about it nonetheless.

Day 1 of the experiment is over and I can’t say that I’m glad that the first day is completed.  This isn’t my first hand eating a vegan diet.  For several months a few years ago I used to do a “Vegan Tuesday” with some other people.  I generally stuck to health bars, big salads and soups.  This was different however.  This was me trying to emulate how I was going to eat vegan for every day for a three month period of time.  That made it more challenging and daunting in many ways.  The end result however was a quite enjoyable food experience, and one that I can see going on for some time.

Another Engine 2 Diet recipe I’ve been dying to try since I first picked the book up years ago is the Raise The Roof Sweet Potato Lasagna. The idea of having a vegan lasagna sort of broke my mind. I’ve had vegetable lasagna, but that still had tons of cheesy goodness, and often used a meat-based sauce as well. My favorite lasagnas are still the ones loaded with different kinds of meats, cheeses and then topped off with even more cheese. Could a low fat vegan lasagna be up to the challenge; or actually could it even be edible? With tons of good reviews online I just had to try it for myself, and overall wasn’t disappointed!

Meal two for me trial vegan day came in the form of another Engine 2 Diet book recipe, the Candle Cafe Brown Rice and Lentil Burger. I’ve really enjoyed some good black bean burgers, even when I am in full on omnivore mode, so I was looking forward to trying this recipe out. While made as is it wasn’t bad, I think with some tweaks I could turn this into something I’d go to on a regular basis during my vegan phase.

As a fan of eating in bulk, for better or for worse, I was always looking forward to trying the “Rip’s Big Bowl” breakfast from the Engine 2 Diet book.  Rip provides the full recipe description on his website. So I don’t mind sharing the full details of it here.  This breakfast is basically an assortment of various cereals and fruits with a good dose of your favorite milk substitute (or milk if you are not vegan).  I found it quite tasty and filling, although I did make some modifications.  Bottom line, I would totally eat this again!

I have been thinking, and tweeting, that I should do a mini-experiment week that mirrors the full size experiment.  I want to get a mini-taste of even just a single day in the life of the various types of diets: Mediterranean, Paleo, Pescatarian, Vegetarian and Vegan.  So, next week I will take the plunge and for each day I’ll do a different diet.

In my quest to plan out my “day in the life” experiment on eating, I have started devouring (no pun intended) books on the various diets to pull out some sample meal plans.  I just need one day for each of the diets that week, so I don’t have to get too dramatic.  I got out my Paleo and Vegan books.  Most of them have meal plans in them.  From that I can make up most of what I want for vegetarian and pescatarian too. The SAD diet is easy, that’s just what I eat now for the most part.  Mediterranean was the sticking one for me.  I could guess at what it looks like based on the rules of the diet, but like Paleo and Vegan I would like to follow a sample meal plan.