LIZZIE WELBORN // Meatless Monday's🥕🍓🥬🍅

This blog post was written by Lizzie Welborn.

I am sure you’ve heard by now, how climate change is becoming a bigger and more scary issue. It is regularly brought up in the news, on social media and in everyday conversations. Alongside all this, there are thousands of different messages all telling us what we can do to help reduce climate change. Sometimes, these messages can be really overwhelming. There is so much we can do, almost too much! I have slowly made big changes in my life to help tackle climate change. These changes have been slow and gradual, they definitely didn’t happen overnight. The most important thing to remember when taking action against climate change is start slow, and just do what you can.
One of the biggest changes I have made in my lifestyle to combat climate change was to switch to a plant-based diet. I wrote all about it in a blog earlier this year, which you can see here. Around one fifth of all global emissions come from the agricultural industry, and a large contributor to this is the massive amount of meat that is consumed around the world.
 
Reducing meat in our diets is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce our personal carbon footprint. However, everyone has a diet routine and trying to change this is hard. It requires time, thought and energy. So many people have told me how they would love to try and reduce meat in their diet, but just don’t understand how they could do it. My advice is to start small. Meatless Monday is the perfect small change to start with.

Meatless Monday is a fantastic campaign that helps people reduce their meat consumption. All they do is encourage people to eat no meat on Mondays, or “skip meat one day a week”. There is a tone of information and tools on their website about how to do it, and here are some of my tips too.
 
If you are keen to give this a go, the most important thing to do is to be organised.  Plan what you are going to eat on your meatless day. Monday is the best day to skip meat because you can have Sunday to prepare for the change. It will be so much harder to wake up on Monday morning and attempt to eat no meat when all you’ve got in the fridge for lunch is leftover chicken.  
 
For anyone who wants to give Meatless Monday a go but doesn’t know where to start; I have written up a little meal plan with three of my favourite plant based meals. I eat these on a regular basis because they are all super easy to cook and adjust to your specific diet needs.
 

I have porridge at least 4 mornings a week, I absolutely love it. Not only is it delicious but it is a great way to start the day with heaps of healthy fibres. I never actually measure how much oats or oat milk I use, I make it depending on how hungry I am. I usually use 2 cups of oat milk for every I cup of oats because I like my porridge super creamy. If you want more liquidly porridge, you may have to add more oat milk.

For me, lunch is defintely the hardest meal of the day to prepare for. I usually try to make enough dinner so that I can have the leftovers for lunch the next day. When that doesn’t happen, this salad is my ‘go to’ because it actually only takes 5 minutes to prepare and it is yummo. Also, chickpeas are a great source of protein and a good meat replacement. This recipe is inspired from the ‘Deliciously Ella app’.

There are so many great dinner recipes that I can share, but this one is definitely one of my favourites because it is also super easy. It is also very easy to adjust depending on how much time you have to cook dinner. Black beans are also high in protein so are a great meat replacement. I have put the basic outline of the recipe here, and then below I have included what I like to add when I have more time to cook.

Not only is this challenge good for the planet, but it is also an exciting way to spice up your week. If you find Meatless Mondays easy, there are so many ways you can make it a little bit more challenging for yourself without doing it every meal. For example, you could try and do meat free two or three days a week. Or, you could even try and do all meatless lunches. Maybe challenge some of your friends to do it with you, this is a great way to share recipes and keep each other accountable. Tailor this challenge to suit you. There are so many little ways we can reduce our meat consumption, but it all starts with the first little step.

This blog post was written by Lizzie Welborn.