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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Friday, January 16, 2015

"Well, my time of not taking you seriously is coming to a middle."

it's been a while.  it's also that time of year when people take to the internet to figure out their new years resolutions and look for inspiration.  I've been thinking a lot lately about something i guess I've never written here and something I wish I had figured out ten years ago.  Last year I fainted on new years and Matt freaked out.  I am sure it was just low blood pressure (which is common in the winter when no on drinks enough water, but that's a different story altogether) but the doctors couldn't really give me a concrete answer.  Which is partly why I started looking elsewhere for how to live a healthier life.  I watched Forks over Knives, which is amazing and even if you don't care about killing animals to eat them you should totally care about how they are killed and processed and make it to your table.  Anyway, so I decided to try going vegan.  I know I wasn't eating enough vegetables and fruits to get the vitamins I needed so it seemed like a reasonable place to start in order to feel better.

I've been slowing removing all dairy from my diet as I was already vegetarian and the difference is amazing.  I think it's a lot like how paleo people feel about their diets and I believe it's all about removing the dairy.  I still occasionally eat our home raised eggs but I try to avoid all cows milk products and I feel amazing.  The biggest thing is that I am never hungry, I have no cravings.  I didn't think I would ever have an attitude to food like I do now, where I really have to think about if I'm even hungry when I choose a meal.  I eat about half the food I used to.  And there is nothing I miss.  I used to love chocolate ice cream.  I can look at the ice cream case and buy for matt and never even feel badly that I don't get to have any because I don't even want it, it's no where on my radar.

All in all i'm down about 10 pounds from this time last year.  It took a while to really remove all the milk based foods from my diet and we are toying with the idea of trying goat's milk, although for real cashew and other nut milks are delicious.  I still bake and there are plenty of recipes that don't suffer with the removal of cows milk.  I can still have chips and fries and I do, and I don't count calories anymore.  I have nothing but my personal experience to go by but I feel so incredibly different without dairy in my diet.  Everything tastes better, I feel fuller with a smaller meal, my cravings are just gone.  I so very much wish I had taken the idea of a plant based diet more seriously in my twenties.

It's bullshit that you need the protein, there were vegetarian dinosaurs who didn't have to deal with assholes asking how they get their protein.  All plants have protein.  I read something that I loved on a vegan website.  So many people say they couldn't give up meat or cheese or ice cream, and that's bullshit too.  They don't want to and that's not the same thing at all.  After watching the documentary and some others about veganism I looked at my habits and realized that I had no good reason to eat cheese sticks every day or cows milk in my cereal.  I'm not missing anything in my life without cheese sticks except feeling sick and hungry all the time.

So that's what I'm up to.  I hope some of the new years visitors who stop by consider watching the film.  Even if you aren't over weight, don't have heart disease or diabetes it's good for all of us to eat less meat and less dairy and more vegetables and beans.  As they say food is the best medicine or the slowest poison and life is too short to be sick.

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