Day 29 of plant-based challenge

      Yesterday I did more exercising and I spent some time in the kitchen making some treats. I tried out 3 new oatmeal cookie recipes. I Googled "no sugar low fat oatmeal cookies" and one of the first hits was a site called Yummly. The page had a lot of recipes. I picked out 5 recipes I liked but I only had time to try 3 of them.

    I wanted to find oatmeal raisin cookie recipes that contained no added sweeteners, low fat, vegan, gluten free, and tasted good. It turned out that the recipes all use banana as their base ingredient. Two of the recipes were under 30% fat, but the third one was 38% fat. This is a little higher in fat than I like, so I will tweak the recipe a little to cut some of the fat. Some of the recipes called for vegetable oils. I used extra virgin coconut oil.

These are called Healthy PB + J oatmeal cookies. Its a super easy cookie to make. They only have 4 ingredients; oatmeal, peanut butter, bananas, and jelly (if you want). I used strawberry preserves and wild berry preserves. These were probably my favorite but the running was really close. These are 25% fat.

Link to the recipe

This is how mine looked. They didn't last long. All gone in a day.

These are Banana Oat Breakfast Cookies. These are really tasty and only 22% fat. They are also easy to make. In fact all three recipes are super simple. I baked these for about 40 minutes to dry them out. 

Find the recipe here

Fruit and Oatmeal Cookies. These are like a soft trail mix. Crazy good! They aren't hanging around long either. The only problem is that they are 38% fat. All three cookie recipes have raisins or other dried fruits which are pretty high in sugar. 

Here's the link to the recipe

I had quite a few calories yesterday and most of it was from the cookies. Oh the things I have to put myself through for self experimentation. Its rough. You can look at each cookie in the picture and see the break down for their calorie count. 

    Treat or meal replacement cookie? I'll let you decide how you use them. If you have these on hand you don't have to make oatmeal in the morning. Just grab a cookie. My problem is I grab 4 instead of 1. But they are plant-based. I did nuke them in the microwave this morning for 20 second, yum.

    I taught Kickboxing yesterday and I wore my HRM while I took the class. I also ran a little over 6 miles.

I used my Polar Flow software during the Kickboxing class to record my heart rate. My heart rate stayed in fat burning zone most of the time. It estimates I burned about 475 calories.

Me or my phone messed up yesterday and we didn't record the path or distance yesterday. All I have is the time and my heart rate for the run. I ran the course I've plotted out near my home. The distance is a little over 6 miles. It took me just over an hour to complete.

I ran mostly in zone 5 yesterday. I felt really good and I started off fast. But it was hot and I think my heart rate reflects that more than my effort.

    Today is day 30 of my challenge. Yay!!! I weighed less today than I did yesterday. Check back tomorrow and find out my final weight after 30 days of a mostly plant-based diet. I'll also be starting a new challenge! See you tomorrow.