What I Eat in a Day to Stay Lean, Strong & Vegan

All right, good morning everybody. So welcome back to another video. I'm starting the day here in the garden because this is my favorite place to start the day in the summers. And I also have to water it every day or else your stuff's gonna die. So I have a bit of a different garden this year. It's like more herbs, a little bit of kale, and some flowers. I'll tell you more about it later in the video but it's been really good because I've been able to use it so much for my cooking. I've come to learn it's hard to grow calories so I don't even really bother with that anymore. I just grow things that I like to have on hand. So one of the reasons why I like to do these videos is to show you that healthy plant-based eating doesn't have to be difficult. It's not weird. I'm not spending all day cooking my food or spending a ton of money on groceries. Like you'll see the meals that I make. They are delicious. They're healthy. Lots of protein in them to build muscle. Don't have to worry about that. And I'm especially hyped today because by the time you're watching this video, my easy vegan meal plans should be available to purchase. So Crystal and I have been working so hard on these for the past months and we wanted to make them as good and helpful as possible for people. So whether your goal is like building muscle, losing weight, or just maintaining where you're at and feeling like a ton of energy and feeling amazing, I have got you covered. I'll tell you more about them later in the video because I don't want to blast you with that right off the bat. But right now I got to finish watering the plants, smash some pre-workout, get to the gym, and get working out. Crystal and I are going to the gym together today so that means no motorcycle riding for me. We're taking the old rav4. So because it's so hot in the gym these days, I have been just getting through my workouts really quickly. So I always start with a few good compound movements and don't worry, Crystal is still around. There's a quick shot of her there to prove it. I like to combine calisthenics and weight training. I think it's a powerful combo. You get the benefits from both and it keeps it really fun for me as well. Calisthenics relies on big compound movements where you have to control your own body weight moving through space. Weights make it easy to isolate lagging muscles or overload them for leg days. And then what a nice surprise, Crystal was given a piece of banana bread by a fellow gym goer, one of our friends that are there too. We have such a good community at this gym so of course I had to have a bite too. I don't know about you guys but I have to wash my hands like three times after I get home from the gym. It feels so gross but man, it feels so good to get clean hands. For my post-workout meal today, I'm gonna make something you just cannot beat. It's so fast, super nutritious, tons of protein, good carbs. You can choose exactly what you want to put in there. It is a smoothie bowl. I've been having smoothies and smoothie bowls after my workouts for like the last seven years and they always make me feel absolutely incredible. So today I'm starting with, it looks like frozen mango but look at this, surprise, surprise, some frozen banana in there. I just chopped some up and threw it in there. A good smoothie bowl always has a bunch of frozen banana and then some frozen mango too. A couple medjool dates. I love my smoothies and smoothie bowls sweet. Some flaxseed for the omega-3s obviously and all the antioxidants and other benefits that flaxseeds give you. And then I need some greens and we're gonna go to the garden for that. Some parsley, a couple leaves of kale and some more parsley. I'm gonna wash the bugs off because I do grow organically and we try and keep it vegan around here. Don't want any of those in my smoothie. Last stop before the whole blender express, a scoop of vanilla protein powder, some creatine, some spirulina. This is going to give it such a beautiful green color and then just a splash of soy milk. You don't want to make it too thin because then it's a smoothie, not a smoothie bowl. Yeah, I'll admit it doesn't look the best. There's probably a lot of you on the other side of the screen right now being like this guy is freaking crazy. Honestly, it tastes amazing and it's made me feel incredible for like a decade now. So this is just what I do after my workouts. Don't knock it until you try it. A little bit of granola, some blueberries and some hemp seeds and that's it. Pretty proud of that actually. It looks good. I understand why people think vegans are crazy but honestly, it's so good. And I thought while I'm out there maybe I could tell you a little bit about my garden, what I have grown this year. So I said it's so nice out here. It's actually overcast today but it's kind of a good thing because we've been having like a heat wave. It's been like 30 degrees out here and yeah, it's kind of a nice change. This year what I've done is I've planted a bunch of herbs, a little bit of kale and then a bunch of flowers around the garden and it just makes me so happy. And some of these flowers are actually even edible. These calendulas are edible. I think you can eat the petals and they call it the poor man's saffron. You can actually use it to color rice with. Spicy oregano, some nasturtiums, a huge parsley plant, flat leaf parsley, my olive plant. It's so weird. It like smells like olives. It's also gone to flower. I let my herbs go to flower. These are oregano herbs that have gone to flower and the pollinators seem to love these flowers more than like these beautiful more sort of ornamental flowers. They just absolutely go crazy for these. So that's why I like to let them go to flower and not cut it out. And then this one here is lovage, I think. Yeah, I don't even know what to use it for. It actually kind of smells like motor oil. I'm not sure why. That is a weird one. Some more flowers here. We got a little bee bath right there. Insect bath. Hopefully it's not too overflowed. There you go. No one's died in there yet. This one here, a cola plant. It smells like Coca-Cola. It's so weird. I don't use it for my cooking because it's so bitter, but I love having it around. Curly leaf parsley here. Some green onions over here. Cilantro right here. This cilantro has gone to flower. And then here I have a couple different types of basil. I haven't quite figured out how to grow basil very well yet, but I'm learning all the time. The insects really love it too. So I know that I'm growing good stuff. And then thyme. This plant is probably like eight years old, nine years old. It has been here for so long and it just keeps living throughout the winters. The oregano, the thyme, and the olive plant and the cola plant all live through our winters here. So it's really cool. And I'm hoping that the parsley does as well, but apparently like second year parsley doesn't do so well. So we'll see anyways. So that's my little garden. I hope you enjoyed the little tour. It's not a lot. And I just really like growing this because, you know, it works with my cooking. I'm able to use a bunch of these herbs in that. And it just really helps to connect me to the food that I'm eating. And you realize how hard it is to grow food. And it really makes you thankful for the farmers that are growing our food because yeah, it isn't easy between like, you know, the sun and watering and pests and all that. It is not easy. So thank you farmers. So I'm going to finish this up, do some work. And then I guess I'll meet you back probably in the kitchen for lunch. Unless something else exciting happens along the way. She's on someone else's trampoline. Come on. All right. It is lunchtime and I want something quick because high tide is at four o'clock, just a couple hours from now. And I want to go down to the beach and have a quick swim. So I'm going to make a warm chickpea and veggie bowl. So chickpeas into the pan, some frozen and diced vegetables, and then just some garlic powder, onion powder, and a few other spices. Okay. So that should only take a few minutes to cook. And while it does, I just want to take a minute to tell you about the easy vegan meal plans because I am so excited about these. I worked so hard on them. So did Crystal. And I think they're going to be so helpful for people. There are six full weeks of meals and you get seven different calorie levels. So you can choose one that best supports your goals. Whether you're looking to lose weight, maintain your weight and just get more energy or build some muscle and some mass, we have got you covered. All the calories and the macros are worked out for you. The meals are high in protein and each week comes with its own shopping list, like a grocery list. So you know what to shop for at the beginning of the week. There are also planned batch cooking days and leftovers built into the plan so that you're not cooking three meals from scratch every single day. And don't worry, these are not like boring diet plan meals. These are colorful, filling, delicious, high-protein, nutrient-packed meals. The kind of meals that I have been eating for over 15 years to help me crush it on this plant-based diet. Basically, we just did all the annoying planning and calculating and all that. So all you have to do is get your food, cook it, eat it and crush your goals. So if it's something that you think might help you out, definitely check out the link down below in the description box and pinned comment. And I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope it helps a lot of people. And I burned it. It's not that bad though. Just burned to the bottom a little bit. So this obviously needs a quick sauce. I don't have anything in the fridge but I'm going to make something really fast. Water, tahini, some dehydrated oregano from the garden, some finely chopped parsley also from the garden, some spicy brown mustard, some seasoning, salt, some rice vinegar, a little maple syrup for some sweetness and then shake it up. And that's it. Just pour the sauce over, finish it with a little green onion, some sun-dried tomatoes. And that's a pretty quick and tasty looking lunch if you ask me. Chickpeas have to be the best. Like you can make them, first of all, you can make them hummus, but they cook up so quickly. They're so tasty and like that creamy, like buttery texture of them is just unmatched by any other beans. All right. So lunch is done. Work is done-ish. Never fully done. I want to go for a swim and I need some ingredients for tacos tonight. So I'm going to rip the scoop into town and see where the day brings. All right. So here we go. The tide is high. It's hot out here and I'm ready to swim. So it's important to time your swims here because it is so low in this whole bay. I'll put a video actually over top here because I filmed it the other day and you should see how far out the tide goes. So sometimes you come here and you want to swim and the tide's like two kilometers out there. Yeah, you're not swimming. But yeah, look at this beautiful bay to swim in. It is so nice here. This is actually usually where I swim, kind of just like around this zone here. Way over there is for the tourists. So this stuff here is actually really cool. It's sea asparagus. Check it out. So this is actually like edible and I've had it before. I've cooked with it. It's really good. It's super salty obviously because it grows out of the ocean water. You can eat it raw like this and yeah, it's just like salty, crunchy, really salty. But how you cook it is you either blanch them or you soak them in ice water for a little while and it draws the salt water out of them and then you can just saute them like another veggie and it's really good. All right. This looks like a nice spot to chill other than this, which I will definitely be throwing out when I leave. You guys do that too. I never forget my mom saying to me, are you part of the problem? Are you part of the solution? When I was younger and that always sticks in my head when I see some garbage or something on the ground. So I don't pick up all the garbage all the time. Look at that. There's more right here. If it's easy and convenient for me, why not? Right? What the heck is this now? Some sort of, I don't know what that is. Just get that out of the shot. All right. Really nice swim. And now I've got a snack. So a bunch of you saw this in my last grocery haul video that I got this at Costco. Sour dates. They are absolutely incredible. I love sour candy. I'm so sour. So sweet. Unbelievable. All right. You got to keep moving here. Let's go to the grocery store, get some stuff for tacos tonight. All right. So time to make some tacos. Let's do this as quickly as possible because I want to eat. All right. I've already got some cashews soaking because I'm going to use this for like a creamy cilantro lime sauce right at the end, but I am going to prepare the meat of this dish and it's going to be a crumbled tofu. So if you don't like tofu yourself, or you're cooking for somebody that says they don't like tofu, this is the easiest way to make it enjoyable for everybody. It's not that tofu has a bad flavor. It's just that it needs to soak up the flavors of seasoning in order for it to be tasty. So I'm just going to add this seasoning here. They got me with their marketing at the store the other day. It looks so cool. I was like, I got to try it. So I make some taco seasoning in there. Some frozen bell peppers. Of course you could use fresh if you want. The frozen veggies work really well in here because as they're thawing, as everything is air frying, they kind of like release a little bit of moisture and then everything just kind of like cooks together and all the flavors blend together. It's so good. So yeah, just going to mix this up like this. And then this is just going right into the air fryer. And then while that's cooking, I'm just going to heat up some refried pinto beans on the stovetop. So I have some salsa and some guacamole for this. So I don't really need another sauce, but having like a creamy cilantro lime sauce with tacos is just too good. And I've got time. So let's make one. So into the blender goes the soaked cashews, a handful of cilantro from the garden, a couple of cloves of fresh garlic. So I'm going to put some lime juice in there. But before I do that, I'm actually going to take some of the peel off of it with this rasp, because this is going to give it a really nice limey flavor. I almost said lemony. And then just some onion powder, some cumin and some salt, and then just a tiny splash of water and blend it up and more water as you go. Oh, that's good. Wow. So this turned out really nicely. Again, kind of like my smoothie bowl this morning. Not the prettiest color, but it's going to be good. So right now I'm actually just heating up these flour and corn tortillas. So you can eat them like raw. Well, they're not raw, but you know what I mean? But they are so much better if you just fire them onto the stove for a minute or two, and you'll see that they puff up. And I don't know what's happening to it when it puffs up, but man, it makes them taste so much better. All right. So that tofu crumble just finished and it looks pretty good. I do have to say so myself. I overcooked it a tiny bit, but it's not too bad. Salvageable for sure. Let me try it out. Got a nice crunch to it. All right. So I think everything is cooked and now I just got to put the bowls together. So I'm going to make two different bowls because Crystal doesn't really like tacos as much as me. So I'm gonna make her a taco bowl and then me some tacos. All right. So the bowls are all finished. You're going to have to tell us, are you a team Crystal and the team taco bowl? Are you team Derek with the actual tacos, the official real tacos? What is that? All right, here we go. Let's taste this and see how it is. I'm sure it's going to be pretty amazing. Yeah, they're incredible. I'd be happy to get this at any restaurant. Unreal. So the tofu is nice and crispy, really well flavored. The sauces just bring like so much flavor to it all. And then the tortilla shells, when you cook them like that, they have like this really nice chew to them. They're so good. This is unreal. Now, when you can make food that is this tasty, really not that difficult to make, there's no animal products in this. I'm in lots of protein, clearly still building lots of muscle and everything like that. Got tons of energy. I mean, what is there not to love about this? It's so good. And one last reminder, my easy vegan meal plans are available now, so definitely check them out if you want help taking the guesswork out of knowing what to eat to reach your goals. I hope you all enjoy the video. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. Like the video, subscribe so that you can see more from me, comment down below, let me know what you thought of the day and what kind of videos you want to see next from me. I'll see you soon in another video. Bye-bye.