Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change: Week 5 Final Weekly Review and Overall Project Reflection

 It looks like this is the last week I’ll be keeping you all updated on my SMART goal of reducing my dairy consumption to no more than 1 serving (2 oz cheese, 1 cup milk, 1 yogurt, etc.) of dairy twice weekly. This last week went fairly smooth in terms of maintaining my efforts not to eat dairy (especially cheese!). The biggest challenges I’ve faced lately is simply being mindful of which foods have dairy in them. Lately I’ve been so busy that I’ve actually forgotten that I’m limiting my dairy consumption and I’ve had to remind myself just in the nick of time (especially when I go out to eat- dairy is in SO many of the best foods). 

Also, I’m still feeling a bit sad about cutting out such a large chunk of my normal diet, but I’ve been feeling a lot better and more confident about this lifestyle change now that I know I can stick with it for a while. Also, since I’ve been mostly dairy-less for a while now, I’ve noticed I feel a lot better and more healthy. It’s a great motivation to keep going, and I plan on continuing with this lifestyle change. 

Overall I think I would definitely recommend this lifestyle change to others. I won’t lie, I found this change to be pretty difficult simply because eating dairy was such a big part of my diet and I had a lot of eating habits to break in the process of cutting out dairy. As with any change though, I found it just took a bit of time and consistent effort, and with the support of a few friends I learned it was much easier to make progress towards my goal. I feel pretty good about the changes I’ve made, not only because I feel healthier now, but because I feel like I’m making less of an environmental impact by cutting down on my consumption of mass-produced dairy products. 

For those of you out there who might be interested in incorporating this lifestyle change into your own daily lives, here’s some tips and some info on what to expect/what I went through:

• Try to get someone to make the change with you- this helps you stay strong in the face of peer pressure (not eating dairy can be difficult when everyone around you makes dairyfull foods and eats them in front of you). 
• Pack a lunch/snacks before going to school/work- this ensures that you will be prepared with dairy-free food so you will be less tempted to buy or share foods that contain dairy (it can be difficult to make rational food choices when you’re STARVING at school, I’ve noticed). 
• Try to keep a steady supply of snacks (veggies, fruit, etc) and other dairy-free food at home- especially condiments. I found that using or trying out different condiments helped keep me from adding cheese to sandwiches, crackers, pasta, and other foods. 

Eco-chic Lifestyle Change: Week 4 Weekly update

I try to keep a supply of soymilk in my fridge so
my roommate and I don't drink or cook with milk.

This past week, I was surprisingly on track with my attempts at eco-chic lifestyle change. Despite all the mouth-watering dairy-laden Thanksgiving food, I was able to stick to my SMART guidelines.

Just a reminder of my SMART Goal: I will eat/drink no more than 1 serving of dairy (2 oz cheese, 1 cup milk, 1 yogurt, etc) twice a week. 

Considering that I was surrounded by dairy all weekend long, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. I did have some difficulty resisting the urge to eat cheese (as usual) but I solved this by asking my friends and family to help me out. I learned that it's really helpful to have a few people looking out for me and supporting my efforts. 

I really want to keep up with the progress I've made this week, so I searched for some tips on eating dairy free. eHow.com had some pretty good info which I I think will be helpful these next couple of weeks.

Wish me luck!

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change: Weekly Update

This week marks the third week of my attempts to meet my SMART goal. I've decided to make a slight change to this goal based on my recent progress or lack thereof.

The goal: that I will eat/drink no more than 1 serving (2 oz cheese, 1 cup milk, 1 yogurt, etc) of dairy once a week.

The new and improved goal: I will eat/drink no more than 1 serving (2 oz cheese, 1 cup milk, 1 yogurt, etc) of dairy TWICE a week.

I think this will be much more manageable for me in my efforts to cut dairy out of my diet. Despite my no dairy jar (which accumulated about seven dollars ) I still had trouble cutting cheese out of my diet. I think this was so difficult for me, partly because I felt bad turning down foods offered to me by other people. Also, it requires a bit of advanced planning to avoid diary completely, and last week was a very busy week so when I grabbed food on the go, I didn't give much thought to whether or not dairy was an ingredient.

I think these next weeks will be much better now that I've allowed myself to include 2 servings of dairy each week instead of just one. I feel much more relaxed and capable already. I still plan on using the no-dairy jar (it's helping me save money !).

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 2: Weekly Update

Last week was the beginning of my attempts to achieve my SMART goal. The goal, which stated that I will eat/drink no more than 1 serving (2 oz cheese, 1 cup milk, 1 yogurt, etc) of dairy once a week, proved to be about as difficult as I thought it would be. Yeah, it was pretty tough. I might have slipped a couple of times here and there, mostly with cheese. For the most part I did really well and used salt, hot sauce, salsa and spices to provide more flavor in my attempts to avoid cheese. This made me feel a lot healthier but was difficult to keep up for very long, especially when eating with other people.

mmmm cheese

Luckily, I've devised a method to prevent this from happening again- For each time I eat dairy when I'm not supposed to, I will put one dollar in a "no-dairy jar". Hopefully this will give me some more motivation not to slip up.

I'd really like to continue this SMART goal and see the changes in my health as time goes on. Hopefully with the help of my friends and my trusty no-dairy jar I will make progress towards achieving my goal.

Blogged for the Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 2 hosted by Amy@Amy in the Rain

Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change Week 1: My SMART Goal

Allright- I know I put this goal up on the chalkboard in class and it wasn’t very “SMART” at the time, but I think I’ve perfected it now. 

My SMART lifestyle change goal:

I will eat/drink no more than 1 serving of dairy (serving = 2 oz cheese, 1 cup milk, 1 yogurt,  2 tablespoons of cream-based sauces/condiments etc.) 1 time/ week (7 days). 

I consider this change to be quite eco-chic. As we’ve learned in this course, animal products are mass produced and this production bears a hefty cost for the environment and the wellbeing of people (not to mention the poor animals). Many large industrial farms provide horrible conditions for their animals, use harmful chemicals, and use unnecessarily large amounts of land. Cutting out dairy products from my diet will help me personally reduce my impact on the animals and communities that are negatively affected by industrial dairy farming.

I just don’t think dairy makes a great contribution to my life and my diet. Sure, cheese tastes GREAT but when I think about the health of cows and the pesticides and other chemicals that they ingest it doesn’t seem to make that yummy taste worth it. think this will be a great change for me because my roommate stopped eating dairy recently and I think it will be much easier to really achieve this goal with a friend on board. Cutting out cheese and milk and other products from my diet will also help me eat healthier (this will definitely be a plus with the holiday season practically upon us) since dairy products tend to be pretty high in fat and calories. 

I ate a yogurt today so I guess that’s my dairy for the WEEK. This might be tougher than I thought. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Welcome to Eco-Quest with Emily

Hey there! Welcome to my blog. My name is Emily and  I'm a senior at The University of Minnesota-Duluth pursuing a degree in Health Education (Community) with a minor in Spanish. I've created this blog for my Environmental Health course and I will be updating it periodically as I explore and learn more about the environment.

There will be 6 possible types of  posts in my blog:

1. Advocacy Project
2. Eye Openers
3. Reflections
4. Eco-Chic Lifestyle Change
5. Read 'n' Seed
6. Share and Voice

If you notice at the bottom of this post, the catergories will be listed as labels. This post has been labeled with all five kinds of posts. You will also see the number of each kind of post in my Labels Gadget at the top of the page. All post titles from now on will begin with one of the catergories above.

The members of my group are: 

1. Samantha B.http://samanthagreenwithenvi.blogspot.com/
2. Adam http://adamsoutdoorconnection.blogspot.com/
3. Alyssa http://treeifictimewithalyssa@blogspot.com/
4. Kristen G. http://kristenscoralreef.blogspot.com/
5. Katie http://throughgreeneyeswithkatie.blogspot.com/
6. Carly http://gobluetoowithcarly.blogspot.com/

You can subscribe to my blog by clicking the subscribe gadget in the gadget column. You can also follow my blog by clicking "Follow this Blog" in the gadget column. I am subscribed to all the blogs in my blog list gadget. You can see my complete profile and all the blogs I am following by clicking on "See Complete Profile."

I'll be blogging here throughout the semester about a variety of environmental issues and topics, I hope you'll join me on my quest!