I thought I would have a not-very-exciting Shake It Up day, but boy, was I wrong. I originally thought that it would suffice to wear a new pair of pants that I finished sewing yesterday, and I was ok with that. So when I was getting ready in the morning to make the same breakfast that I eat almost daily — oatmeal and 2 poached eggs — I was trying to decide if I was going to add my black and red pepper or my cinnamon — I decided that I really didn’t want to have the same breakfast this morning. For me that is a big deal.

So when I went to the grocery store this morning on my way into work I decided that I would get something different to eat for breakfast, and it just took off from there…….

I ended up deciding that everything I would eat today would be different from my usual. What did I learn? It is really tough. More challenging than I thought. You might think what is the big deal, but think about how many things that you eat or drink just as a routine — such as coffee with whatever you put in it, or whatever kind of tea you drink.

Here is how it went:

I stop at the grocery store in the morning to get my coffee or tea, my lunch, and fruit for a snack. Instead of my English Breakfast tea (my current favorite) with soy milk, I decided that I would have coffee with soy cream. Not a big change there, so I decided instead that I would get a different kind of tea from the drink bar with soy cream. But no, I realized that the creamer was too similar to what I would usually have, so I put in honey instead. Wow — honey — now that is something that I haven’t done in ages. And it was delicious….

How to start the day happy.

Then breakfast turned out to be a protein shake — something I would rarely get. And here is the funny part — when I getting ready to drink it, I looked at the label on the back, and what did it say? “Shake It Up!!” How amazing is that! If they only knew….

Shake It Up!!

I almost always get a salad for lunch, and not surprisingly I almost always put exactly the same vegetables on it — I will spare you the details, but I can tell you that it always has one of two kinds of tofu. So today I made a conscious choice to get totally different ingredients. Not a single vegetable was the same. I did put tofu on, but it was a different kind. (My friends that I eat lunch with said that doesn’t really count as different, but there is only so far I am willing to change….).

My afternoon snack (yes, I pretty much always have one) was watermelon instead of berries.

The challenge was going to be dinner. How can you have something different when everything that you have in the fridge or freezer is something that you put there? Almost by definition you only have foods that you generally eat. My lunch friends tried to come up with suggestions, but it was hard to come up with anything. When I got home I found a unopened package of veggie burgers that we bought at Costco, which I had not yet tried, so I figured that would work. I had a grapefruit in the fridge that had been there awhile, so I figured that would also work. And I rounded out dinner with a tasting of various chocolates — the 60% bittersweet Ghiardelli baking chocolate won by the way.

How to end the day happy.

So it actually took a good amount of thought to come up with totally different foods for a day, but it was enjoyable and all around delicious.

It will be interesting to see what I have for breakfast tomorrow……

🙂