Trying to become vegetarian

Okay, about two weeks of hardly eating meat have passed. Once I told myself that it does not have to be 100% vegan, but also vegetarian, and occasionally even meat (when there are no other tasty options), it actually was not that hard. In the end I ate chicken soup once, and sushi maybe 3 times during this time. I also switched to soya milk completely and with no pain (the vanila one is super tasty, not sure if that healthy though:P).

But now, to the point.. I guess I should start watching what I eat, not to make my body lack some basic nutritional elements, right.. like.. protein? :P

Disclaimer: all pictures are from an awesome Polish page called Ile Waży (http://www.ilewazy.pl/). It tells you how much each product weighs and its nutritional value, together with a photograph of how much it actually is :)

Protein

So, how much protein do I need per day?

According to here, it should be "0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight", which means 47g for me. That is 325g per week. How much do I eat now?

Soya milk - let's say, I drink maybe 2 glasses of that per week. That, according to Google, is:

16g soya milk

Then, I also eat oatmeal with it, which in my case is maybe.. 100 gram of oatmeal, 4g of flax seeds and 4 gram of quinoa seeds per portion.. which is 13g + 0,8g + 0,8g = 14,6g per portion, so per week it will be:

29,2g oats

Getting close to daily intake, but I'm actually calculating the weekly one :D

Pasta, I must eat pasta at least 2 times a week, or maybe even 3 times. Accroding to this amazing Polish website, a portion of cooked pasta could be sth like 1,5 * 10,6g = 15,9g, which would be 3 * 15,9g per week, which is

47,7g pasta

If there is pasta, there should be rice. Also 3 times per week, that is 3 * 4,2g, that is:

12,4g rice

Great, what do I eat on other days. I guess half a pizza could happen at least once. Accodring to here, that could be sth like 65,7g / 2 = 32,85g.

32,85g pizza

Bread, maybe 5 slices per week. Again, looking it up, that will be 2,5g * 5 = 12,5g.

12,5g bread

Chocolate :D let's say one chocolate per week

6,6g chocolate

Sushi :) once per week, the regular size is 8 pieces, 8 * 2g = 16g

16g sushi

Sour cream, because whenever I eat out they must be adding it to anything that has a sauce like consistency.. so that maybe 6 spoons per week? this is 6 * 0,6g = 3,6g.

3,6g sour cream

Falafel, that would be, according to Google 13g, so:

13g falafel

Eggs, 2 per week, that is 2 * 6,3g = 12,6g

12,6g eggs

I did not know that there is such huge difference between pasta and rice regarding protein. Salads, beer and similar stuff I don't count of course :) In sum this is 202,4g. 325g - 202,4g = 122,55g is missing.

Let's see what would happen if I added meat on every day:

Chicken, 3 days: 17,5g * 3 = 52,5g
Pork, 3 days: 19,5g * 3 = 58,5g
Ham 3 days, 2 slices: 6 * 2,4g = 14,4g
And I should remove the falafel, as then I would rather eat chicken kebab, that is -13g.

Allgother that would be 112,4g. Pretty close to 122,55g, so it makes sense!

That means I am currently missing between 112 and 122,55 gram of meat per week. Let's make it 117g, to make it easier. That is about 17 gram of protein per day is missing, out of 47g.

Protein replacements

This blog seems to have neat overview of which protein types are neccessary in the body and frequently missed in vegetarian diet :) So, after removing the weird stuff and spinach (because they write everywhere how useless it is, containing self inhibiting ingredients), it seems like:

Egg white is source of all of the important proteins. Apart from eggs: sesame flour, sunflower seeds and kidney beans contain most of the important proteins, one protein is contained only in tofu or cottage cheese (out of the ones I found and consider available), one in sesame flour only, one only in kidney beans. Also asparagus and mozarella contain some random stuff.

I guess I could replace flour with sesame flour.. whatever it would mean. Sunflower seeds - that is easy, just put it in a salad (or eat alone:D), kidney beans - it is easy to add it to cooked lunch once in a while, I will have to find out how to prepare tofu (or start ordering it in a restaurant), and consider eating more eggs. Even though the poor chicken.. Okay, so:

100g of sunflower seed per week, hopefully I will find a pack that contains 100g or 200g. That is 24,4g.

24,4g sunflower seeds

Kidney beans, in this page the serving size is 256g, I guess it is ok, and that has 13g of protein:

13g kidney beans

Cottage cheese - let's start with eating one package per week, that is 22g.

22g cottage cheese

Eggs - let's add 1 egg per week, so now 3 eggs per week - that is an extra 6,3g:

6,3g extra egg

Extra egg sounds quite funny :P Sesame flour, I will buy it, and do something with it.. I don't know, let's say a glass.. I can eat pancakes each weekend.. oh that has a lot of protein!

71,9g sesame flour

I guess that would be it. Now I have extra 137,6g, I guess that is enough. Or more than enough. I guess I will not manage with the sesame flour every weekend, so every second weekend could be also fine (and more affordable:P) :)

Other macro micro somethings

I guess also other stuff than protein is missing in vegetarian diet. Let's just use this first Google search result page, it seems to be talking about the right stuff. Soo, that is:

1. Iron - okay, makes sense. They say I should not drink tea or coffee (great), and not eat spinach, nothing more useful. But here they have some list, good I will cook lentils, I like them :)
2. Zinc - eat soybeans, cashews, and sunflower seeds, wash stuff before eating (oh good that they pointed that out :P) - am already adding a lot of sunflower, I guess I could add some nuts to my oatmeal mix.
3. Calcium - since I would like to stop milk and milk product in some future, that could be tough. They say I could also eat "soy yogurt, tofu, beans, almonds, and calcium-fortified foods". Again, adding almonds to my oatmeal and snack mix.
4. Vitamin B-12 - well there's basically 2 things to do: buy supplement from pharmacy, and look for anything with B-12 on it while shopping. Got it :)

To sum up, what I need from there is: some pills with B-12 and iron, almonds, cashew nuts, lentils, and yoghurt (can be soy yoghurt).

Summary

So, it was not that hard :) I will try to go with the plan and in another few weeks I will try to research how much of each ingredient do I actually need. For now it is more important to include them in the diet, and get used to them. I think this way will be easier.

Mallorca trip

It's the second year I found myself booking last minute short trip in April. Again it did me good I think. The original motivation was to lie down on the beach for two days not giving a shit about anything. I learned something though - now it's still too cold to bear laying on the beach without actually wearing more clothes than just a swimsuit :D But instead I did a small overview of the island, by car.

Yes, the places that have palm trees can look like this too.. 

I don't think I managed to see the best of it (in the end I had just two days, and no time before to do the preparation), but at least I know some places that are not worth to go to.

There is nothing interesting on the southeast side for example, this one I could have skipped entirely. Maybe except a small city on the coast with a lighthouse, called Cala Marcal. I was lucky to see a very beautiful sunset there, with a lot of pink and violet (even though the coast is facing more east than west), but I guess that was just luck. The city seemed quite nice too.

The natural park Mondrago is on same side of the island, but the area around it consists of a net of very narrow roads with private properties around. Maybe navigating towards the park's tourist information office would have been better idea than brute force using GPS location of the geographical middle of the park :P I never got to the park, but it didn't look too promising, with all the fences around.. later I read on the Internet that it is actually almost completely privatized nowadays - well, that makes sense now :)

Mondrago natural park..

Cove de Drac - a cave. Oh yea, there are also caves on eastsouth side (acually many other sides too). Many of them you access from the water by boat (ahh that would be too much hassle for me), but that one was accessible forom the land. It was okay, at least it was warmer there than outside. But the classical music concert inside it, played by musicians floating gently by on a lit up boats.. that was a bit over the top..

Next stop, Castell de Capdepera. Just because it looked nice from far away :)

I forgot that looking nice from far away, will not look same once I'm there. But the panorama was ok too ;) And weather got a bit nicer, finally.

Next, I decided to check out the viewpoint marked on my map, between Cala Mesquida and Cala Torta beaches. And also check out the Cala Torta beach, as it seemed that there is no road leading there, only hiking path. On the way there was actually the first nice view of the coastline.

Cala Torta

Hiking trail markings

I also saw, for the first time, the real trash thrown by the sea..

The beach itself turned out to have a connection with the road (not marked on my map grrr), and actually there were surfers in the water. But almost impossible to stay on the beach without full clothing, because of wind, and well still not so high temperatures.

North side: Can Picafort and Alcudia. Finally the touristic places. Few years ago I we went on vacation with my mother and sister in Can Picafort, and I was struck by how much it felt like German speaking place not Spanish. Plus there was literally nothing else besides the main promenade along the beach and restaurants there (German speaking), as if the regular inhabitants of Mallorca didn't live there, didn't need to go out or simply have a beer somewhere. So I was curious to check out the nearby bigger Alcudia.

There is a lake in the middle of Alcudia, and actually it did look nice (if you didn't look at the shore that was full of seaweed).

The city was more Spanish sounding.. it's bigger, but still, of course touristic. It is dirtier. The food in restaurants is cheaper and there is more choice (maybe it seemed cheaper because there was more choice;)). There is more of those big hotels complexes with all inside, parks, minigolf, shops, restaurants, outdoor pools, slides, karaoke bars, etc.

I actually stayed in one such big hotel complex, as the last minute price for one night was the cheapest in the area. And that was, a disaster. Fist, no heating, as of course, this is for summer season, when all you could wish for was air conditioning. But not when the temperature at night is around 10 degrees Celcius. Second, dirty. They didn't even bother to clean it properly. Third, everything was old. Like 10 years old at least. Mouldy bathroom. White paint on the door became yellow already. Outside it was beautiful, but inside I had to struggle not to puke. Now I think that Airbnb is far better choice for Mallorca. It those huge hotels they can simply afford not caring.

The promenade looked a bit more modest there as well, though it was painted blue, which gave it an interesting effect.

To compare Alcudia and Can Picafort - Can Picafort is a bit of an artifical place, but it has high standard. It is neat and clean, and a bit overpriced. All you can do there is go to the beach and back, or buy an overpriced meal or drink at the beach. And everything is in German. Alcudia is more of a real place, but also loud and dirty. I think it would be best to stay in Can Picafort and travel to Alcudia from time to time (it's just ~10 km distance).

Ah, and in April the beach in Can Picafort was completely not maintained. I did not know how a non maintained beach looks like before, but now I can say: well it would not be possible to swim there, even for me :D

This is how an unmaintained beach looks like.
Full of.. something that looked like scobs mixed with seaweed.

Far the Cap Formentor - this is the place that is a must see, best during a sunset. About 30 km from Alcudia, it's a piece of headland that goes very high and very far into the sea, with a lighthouse at the end of it. There are many other lighhouses around the island, but this one is located in a realy good spot.

I did not make it to the lighthouse before the sun was gone, but I presume that the view on the lighthouse (well, direction of the lighthouse at least) must have been better than the view from the lighthouse itself. There was also one path up from the place where I took the photo, to some kind of fortification, and I think that place must have had the best view - but it was simply too late at the time I arrived. It was actually funny to see all the people arriving late and running towards the viewpoint, hoping to see at least a bit of the sunset. Many of them were too late :P

The way up there is not the easiest, it's rather steep and on the way back I saw a rock falling off the cliff right in front of my car. But it was definitely worth it :) Pity I didn't arrive a bit earlier.

West side and Sóller. I read on some webpage that Sóller is the home for hikers in Mallorca. And I should have probably arrived there ealier. Many hiking routes start from around there, and they are actually marked, marked in the way you would expect a hiking route to be marked :D It was crazy to park the car there, apparently the infrastructure does not follow the people's interest in the place fast enough.

Coming back from the hike, some cars have gone

The views were cool: mountains plus sea next to it. Plus those funny kind of trees that made the mountains look as if they were covered in some kind of green cotton wool pads.

I managed to do only 1/4 of the whole route as the day was ending and I had to return the car. But I am sure the views would be amazing from top. As it turned out later, I was also doing this hike with ruptured cruciate ligament in my knee. I was happy to get into the car where all I had to do with my lelt leg was moving the foot occassionally.

I am actually happy I did this trip, there will be not many trips now, after the knee surgery :D