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Saturday, April 9, 2011

What is this dark magic?

Hello, lovelies. It's the ninth day of April and I still want a pizza. For those just tuning in, I'm taking on a 30-day challenge to give up dairy products. It's not a weight loss thing; I'm just curious about the rumored health benefits all my vegan friends rave about, so I'm forgoing milk in addition to my vegetarianism. The first five days were nothing-- a lifestyle full of salads and extra energy felt plausible-- but now, officially, my cheese-craving-angst runneth over and I feel like this:
After a breakfast of Cheerios with soy milk and a Panera lunch made of 75% bread, I still spent most of my evening hungry. Everyone's giving me very kind advice (add more variety to your diet, push through because the first week is the hardest, just scarf down a block of cheddar in the middle of the night and don't tell anyone...), but I still feel GRAWR! I am a lunatic, raging with all the firey passion of my white, first-world, middle-class pain. I will prevail. But I will prevail at your expense, Readers of My Daily Complaining.

In cheerier news, I had fun today. Needing a break from our college town, my friend Carina and I went on a mini roadtrip to a mall, about an hour and a half away. We didn't buy much, but we had a good time giggling about the inadequacies in our educations about makeup (how do you do that thing where you, like, put colored powders on your eyelids? What is this dark magic?) and browsing the big Barnes & Noble for books about women escaping the confines of polygamy. In terms of a Saturday afternoon: productive.

Regarding your comments on yesterday's post, again, guys, you crack me up. Your elementary school motivational quotes were... maybe not helpful, but at least very amusing. I'll end tonight's post by returning the favor, as best I can: Reach for the stars. Shoot for the moon. Dance like nobody's watching. If at first you don't succeed, give up and buy mozzarella sticks.

No. Not that last one.


Chipotle burritos this year: 5
Subscribers: 48,421
Nail color: "Samoan Sand," OPI

35 comments:

Unknown said...

I wish I wish I wish there were a Barnes and Noble near my college campus. Even in the nearest town with a mall there isn't one. Sadness abounds.

That sucks that being dairy-free sucks. Hopefully once you break through this wall/slump/whatever running analogy thing I'm trying to use but fail at, it will get better!

Jaine said...

I was actually going to give up dairy a few weeks ago, but because I was going on a spring break vacation I decided to post-pon it. Starting monday I will be joining you with the dairy free life style. I hope it gets easier.

Carina Belles said...

Yeah except all the polygamy books were NOT EVEN THERE and now i wish i had that sociopathy book. also i don't know how to use blogger

Craft Teach Repeat said...

TOO FUNNY! I said I was going to give up caffeinated pop and I went a full week without drinking the poison with no warning labels on it. I fail at life.
Show me what true perseverance looks like Hayley~

Carolyn said...

Have you thought about trying a cheese substitute?
My Mom is gluten and lactose intolerent and she has found substitues for them.
Also, use google to see if resturants serve pizza with none dairy cheese. You'd be surprised to see that some places do! It might not be as good as real cheese, but it can help with the cravings!
Keep up the dairy free!

Anonymous said...

Hayley: Can you still eat Chipotle burritos!!?

Christina said...

Well if it helps, Hayley, I too had been craving pizza for the past week or so. Not following a dairy-free diet, I finally had some today. It was actually really disappointing. And I'm not just saying that to make you feel better! The pizza in my mind and the pizza in my mouth were not one in the same. :/

kyle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
kyle said...

The first week is the worst? lol no. At least not from my experience (I was the one @replying you on twitter about having no solid food for five weeks). The last week was by far the worst. Not because I was expecting it to be over really soon, as I thought it would be 6-8 weeks. But just from wanting something like chicken (you're a vegetarian, I'm generally a carnivore). It was driving me crazy, and as someone who's abnormally calm, this was one of the most unnerving things I've experienced.

Hopefully it's somewhat different in your case, as you still have more variety to go on than I did.

Oh, "motivational" quote I just remembered. It was on a poster in school. It was something like "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" with a picture of a basketball. That always bothered me because the percentage of shots made is 100*(x/y), or in this case 100*(0/0), which is either infinity, undefined or zero, depending on your interpretation. There's no way, mathematically or logically, for that to work out to be 100%.

(re-commenting for my inner grammar nazi)

Unknown said...

Just take off the cheese :P
Isn't that an ingenious plot to defeat the evil pizza monster? haha
Though I'm really unsure if it would be the same unfortunately.
Keep pushing through! Remember that it's only one month :D

Kaitlyn w/ a K said...

I didn't figure out how to use eyeliner successfully until I was nearly 22.5 years old. Don't feel bad.

Anonymous said...

Hayley, I suggest eating foods with healthy fats in them, like avacados. I'm a weirdo and I like to eat an entire avacado in one siting! Make sure you run before you do that, and then the avacado can be your reward (I'm a runner too...yay us!) I also suggest high fiber foods, because fiber is filling. Try Raisin Bran. We're all rooting for you :)

-Marebear

iTalYo said...

YOU GO GIRL! Seriously. You are doing awesome.

Victoria said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Victoria said...

Nooo, Hayley, don't give up! Think of the children! Ok, maybe not the children, but all the readers you've inspired with your healthy meal plan of healthiness! If you go off the deep end, who'll be left to keep us on track? It'll be madness - riots in the streets, looters armed with that spray-cheese stuff, fighting for the last cheese fry! The world needs your will power. Actually I do, but "the world" sounds much more dramatic.
@Kaytlin: Eyeliner has always looked kind of scary to me. How do you manage to put it on and still keep both your eyes? That's some secret Jedi knowledge.

Anonymous said...

Just wondering, what ever happened to Presence? Is it living in blog heaven?

Kristen said...

Some soy and almond cheeses out there are actually pretty good. Once it's melted in a grilled cheese sandwich, you don't notice the difference. Sure, it's processed all to hell, but fake cheese is better than being a dairy monster, no?

apples_and_pancakes said...

again, there's Daiya and Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet and other cheeses but I've never tried them. I've heard sheese is good (just the cheddar kind, I think) but doesn't melt and I hear you can make some really good mozerella sticks with Teese, though I don't know if that could be done in a dorm.
It's worth a try to give the cheese alternatives a go.
And yes, anon, Chipotle burritos can exist without sour cream or cheese.

apples_and_pancakes said...

Okay, I looked it up and I see that Teese already sells mozzarella sticks. http://www.chicagosoydairy.com/breaded_mozzarella_teese_sticks/
I don't know where you'd be able to find them though. Also the tofutti pizza seems well liked. Never had it because I never even saw it at the grocery store. Perhaps you will have better luck with that.

RhianonLives said...

I look forward to the days in which you change your nailpolish color. How sad/creepy is that? Anyway, I hope it gets better. Might amuse you to know that there's a person in Portugal who thinks of you every time they eat cheese. :)

Sarah said...

I love bookstore adventures. They are always awesome.

Good luck with the rest of your dairy-free diet! Cheese is the ambrosia of our mortal world.

Also I think I know your friend Carina (kind of not really...this sounds creepy). We were both on a HP crack roleplaying community. I say crack because one character was named Chuck Bass Potter.

Anonymous said...

You know, I've had vegan cheese pizza before, and it wasn't terrible. Just weird.

madhu~ said...

one and a half hours to the mall?
well no wonder you dont know how to put make up on---you dont even have easy access to the materials!

i have no idea what im talking about because i dont even wear makeup

ill go shower now....you're awesome
cheese sucks---a lot of people are allergic to it. pretend you're allergic.

Norman said...

Here's one. "Keep a stiff upper lip."

Shelby Ostergaard said...

So, did you find any books? and what were they?

Anonymous said...

Did you find and read Escape by Carolyn Jessop? A friend randomly loaned it to me a few years ago, and I learned a lot from it.

Maya said...

every day I read your blog and laugh at how hilariously non-vegan my diet is in comparison to yours... even though I'm eating cheese and you're not, I feel your pain. I gave up youtube, facebook and twitter for lent and easter is still two weeks away and I'm kind of going crazy in a similar, deprived way. but we can do it! hang in there.

apples_and_pancakes said...

I'm commenting once again to advice that if you see Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream at the store save your money. It's not better than sour cream by any stretch of the imagination. I'm mentioning this because I've already recommended their cream cheese and pizza and someone else recommended their ice cream. I say eat that all you like but stay away from the sour cream.

Manar said...

They make vegan pizzas! With, like, soy cheese! If that's a thing! Eat those!

Anyway, reading about your diet is riveting as usual. :)
(That says a lot about your skill as a writer.)

JJC1138 said...

In my opinion pizza without cheese works pretty well. I guess there's a chance that it would just make the lack of cheese all the more evident, but it might help alleviate the craving?

I make vegan pizzas just with a supermarket pizza base (fresh, not preserved), pizza sauce (tomato and herb pasta sauce works too) and mushrooms, peppers and onion toppings, but restaurant/takeout places are usually happy to leave the cheese off if you ask (and the more "Italian-style" pizzas work best I reckon).

You can also get vegan cheese-like concoctions in various styles (chedder-style, mozzarella-style etc.) from health food shops. Some of them are awful, but some of them are alright. I used to use the "Vegerella" brand on my pizzas, but these days I don't bother and just go cheese-less.

Anyway, hope that's of some use. I'm enjoying reading about your experiment!

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you won't be disappointed.

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