I’m always curious as to what people eat in a typical day. Yep, I’m one of those people who has a Youtube history full of “what I eat in a day” videos.  I’m also one to be eating at pretty much any given time of the day. What can I say, I love me some good food!

One of the most common questions I get asked as a vegan is “so like... what do/can you even eat?” Well, it’s varies from day-to-day and depends on how much time I have. What I will say is that I do place high priority on food because if you think about it, this is what you’re consuming to be used as fuel. It’s literally going into your body and it’s so important that it’s nutritious. When this shift in priorities came about, it totally changed my perception of food. Yes, meal prep can be time consuming, groceries can get pricey, and it does take a little effort, but for all the right reasons!

As a person who has a wake up call of 6AM Mon-Fri, I need to think ahead and plan what I’m going to be eating the week before. By Friday, I’ll usually start thinking of what I want for lunch for the following work week. This is because it gives me time to look up recipes and make a list of what I need when I go grocery shopping on Sat/Sun. Sunday is usually the day that I’ll wash/prep my food, and each weeknight I’ll actually assemble my lunch so it’s ready to grab and go the next morning. I generally base my shopping around what I need for lunch since all other meals/snacks, except for dinner, generally rotate between a few recipes.

Here’s what I’m eating this week...

Throughout the day: Lemon water

To rehydrate my body from a “long” night’s sleep, I like to drink lemon water when I first wake up. (“Long” is in quotations because I’m awful at getting enough hours in). There are so many benefits of drinking lemon water e.g. aiding in digestion, boosting your immune system, increase in metabolism, etc. so why not? The taste bugged me at first because I wasn’t used to the sour taste, but now I crave it!

Pre-breakfast (6:45AM): Kombucha

Kombucha is basically fermented tea. I started making my own back in September when I got a couple scoby’s from a friend. Every morning before I eat, I’ll take a few sips of this stuff. It also promotes digestion, weight loss, and a bunch of other health benefits.

Breakfast (7AM): Super oatmeal bowl.

I like to throw in superfoods whenever I can. Breakfast is a great meal to incorporate them for a kicker in the morning. I love having my oatmeal with blueberries, hemp hearts, unsweetened shredded coconut, cacao nibs andddd when I’m feeling super fancy, I add banana-mango “nice-cream” (which is just frozen banana and mango blended up) and homemade Nutella (which is roasted hazelnut, cocoa powder and maple syrup blended together). The nice cream and Nutella are pre-made on the weekend so I can just easily assemble in the morning.  This is DEFINITELY one of my favourite, go-to breakfasts.

Morning snack (9AM): Coffee with soy/almond milk, and homemade oil-free whole wheat zucchini muffins

I’m not usually an everyday coffee drinker, but I have been waking up much earlier in the last couple weeks so this is definitely helpful. It’s just so comforting to have warm drink on a cold morning. Also, my tummy starts to grumble at 9:30-10, so I’ll need a snack with my coffee. This week I made these zucchini muffins from the Oh She Glows cookbook – one of my faves!

Lunch (12PM): Super Salad! (pictured at the top of this post)

I was inspired by a salad that I had from Kupfert and Kim, which is this vegan, meat-free, wheat-free, gluten-free place at a food court downtown, Toronto (BTW, I’m super excited that this is an option at work!).  I got the First Canadian Place salad and immediately knew I wanted to recreate something similar. The great thing about salads is that restaurants usually list out all the ingredients so it’s relatively easy to make it yourself!

My salads are H U G E. It takes me a full hour to eat the whole thing if I really focus on just eating haha.

After lunch snack (1PM): 3 clementines. I love ending a savoury meal with fresh fruit!

Afternoon snack (3:30 -ish): Green smoothie and nuts.

Lately my smoothie consists of:

I made my own trail mix which basically means I threw a bunch of nuts that I like into a bag and snack on it. This mix usually includes:

I also threw in some pretzels and peanuts this week because I had them on hand.

Dinner (7PM): Mom’s cooking!

I’m super lucky that my mom makes home cooked meals for dinner! This is usually the typical Chinese style dinner which involves rice (we’ve converted to brown rice, yay!), a veggie dish, some protein, and a nutritious soup. On this particular day I had:

I might have fruit after dinner, and then have a protein shake after I come back from the gym which is at around 11PM.

That’s what I eat in a day! Hopefully it gave you some ideas or meal/snack inspiration. Also, I’m not always super healthy. I’ve literally almost eaten an entire bag of chips in one sitting before but keeping a generally balanced diet for 80% of the time makes that okay... right? LOL

Happy meal prepping!