A Journey of 1000 Miles...

Alright, so here I go. 

It bears mentioning that I’ve gone part-time at work.  I honestly don’t think that I would have enough time to plan and actually make this new lifestyle work for me if I worked full-time.  I didn’t go part-time just so I could become a vegan, but it was definitely a side benefit. I think once I’m into the swing of things it will be easier, but like everything the first stage is going to be a lot more work.

So the first thing I do on my first day off is start looking through my new cookbook Veganomicon.  My brother just bought this for me for Christmas (probably with a smirk).  After taking TWO HOURS deciding on the recipes I was going to try for the week and writing my shopping list, I was ready to go.

As I got in my car to go to the grocery store I was feeling apprehensive and even a little bit foolish.  What am I doing?  I have no business entering this world of skinny people who are conscious of everything they put in or on their bodies?  I’m a total fake. I felt just a teensy bit intimidated.  I had the same feelings when I did my first yoga class, until another heavy girl walked in. 

Same old grocery store, but for some reason it took me two hours to shop.  I had no idea where to find half of the stuff on my list. What is this thing called Arugula? Capers? Liquid smoke? Tempeh?  They didn’t quite have everything I needed at good old No Frills, but almost. 

Judging by the number of people gawking at me, or rather my heavy-laden, bulging shopping cart, I guess I was quite a sight to be seen. When I got to the check-out line and the woman in front of me eyes my cart and smiles.  “Go shopping once a month?”

Sadly no.

By the time I left the store I was feeling more empowered and less intimidated.  It’s just food, right?  $277.44 worth of food!!!  (I was also doing the regular household shopping). Hopefully next time I won’t have to spend so much, after all, you don’t have to buy coconut oil every time, right? 

After an entire morning of doing my vegan thing I was totally famished, so I went through the McDonalds drive-through on my way home.

Baby steps.

Healthy or not?

There are going to be a lot of people who object to the subtitle of this blog, mainly the “extreme healthy eating” part.  There are many theories out there as to what the best eating plan is for the general population. According to Canada’s recommended food guide there are the four food groups: vegetables and fruit, grain products, milk and alternatives, meat and alternatives. The American food pyramid is basically the same thing, but with just the fruits and vegetables separated from each other, and the addition of a little group called “oils”.

In general, a person who struggles with weight, and has gone through the process of losing weight a few times, would tend to know quite a bit about healthy eating and exercise.  Sometimes I feel like I should hold a degree in nutrition when you consider all of the time and research I’ve done on the subject. Just going through the Weight Watchers program should qualify me for some kind of post-secondary certificate.

Bottom line, I know what a healthy diet is.  The number one word that will come up is: balanced.  A vegan diet doesn’t seem like it could be balanced because you’re basically cutting out two of the four food groups.  In Skinny Bitch they cite many reasons why you don’t need dairy and meat and how you can get all the nutrients you need elsewhere.  I believe that.  I’ve known a few vegetarians (even fewer vegans) in my day and they claim that to be true.

They spout off a lot of information and cite 226 references in Skinny Bitch, however, for the most part what they’re saying goes against everything I’ve learned since I began this Fat Fight about 20 years ago. So do I believe everything they say?  No.  Do I believe that Canada’s Recommended Food Guide is 100% infallible and should be followed to the letter?  Double no.

Sidenote: I DO believe you can prove anything you want and find gobs of research to back up your claims. I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could prove that eating nothing but marmalade and marshmallows (I’m going to call it “The Great MarMar Cuisine Regime”) will add five years to your life and give your hair that lustrous sheen you’ve always desired.  I bet there would be at least 10 studies out there to support my claims.

The best line in Skinny Bitch actually comes in the introduction. “You just need to smarten up and use your head.” I agree.

In subtitle to this blog, I also call myself lazy-in-the-kitchen. For most of my adult life, meals have consisted of taking something out of a box and either putting it in the microwave or oven, or boiling it in a pot.  I enjoy cooking, but I never have time and I usually save meal preparation for special occasions, like Christmas. Generally my daily vegetable servings consist of what comes in my Subway sandwich.

To me, being a vegan means fresh produce, whole grains and special meal preparation. Lots of new foods with which I’m not yet familiar. Basically it’s bye-bye pre-packaged and highly processed food and hello to fresh and healthy. Throughout the course of my journey into vegan (da da DA) I will be figuring out the right types of food combinations in order for me not to have any deficiencies.  If I need supplements, I will take them.  I may know about healthy eating the old-fashioned way, but vegan is something new and completely different for me.  I look forward to finding out more, and I’ll share on this blog as I go.

So compared to what I’ve been doing, I actually think that vegan is an “extreme healthy” choice for me.  I will have to shake off that lazy-in-the-kitchen moniker I’ve given myself, suck it up and start chopping veggies. 

There I go, smartening up and using my head.

Change

Change is good.

For the past year and a bit it has been apparent that my life is stuck.  Admittedly, I’m stuck in a pretty good spot.  I’m in my mid-30s with a rock star husband (to me), and two great kids who are constantly amusing and amazing me. Great friends, a good job, a house, a car, blah blah blah.  And that’s where the problem comes in.  There’s a little too much blah blah blah. Same same same.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could uproot the family and move somewhere exotic and interesting like Brazil or Spain?  Lord knows I’ve looked into it, usually when the freezing temperatures of January and February kick in.

Sadly it doesn’t look like I’ll be moving to Brazil any time soon. So how do I go about peeling myself away from this stuck feeling?  Since I can’t afford to move, renovate my house or even redecorate for that matter, I’ve been looking to inward change.  And since I’ve gained weight recently… again, changing my eating habits… again, was a sure way to go. 

But as you may have noticed, I’ve been here before.  Weight Watchers has been great for my past forays into weight loss.  I’ve come away 70 pounds lighter on a few different occasions (How does it keep coming back???  Rhetorical question.  Sadly I know the answer).  However, the thought of counting calories (points) and journaling what I eat every day makes me want to shove a pen in my eye.  So I thought I’d try the South Beach diet, which is why I was in the bookstore when I happened upon the book Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.

The cover of this book makes it look like it could be any other piece of chicklit on the shelves these days. BUT it’s in the diet and health section.  It looked fresh and fun, and since I obviously have no problem judging a book by its cover, I picked it up. 

Reading this book is not for you if you have low self-esteem and have something against being called every nasty name in the book.  Their writing style was a bit objectionable, too aggressive and induced a great deal of eye rolling, but it was definitely food for thought.  By the time I got to the sentence “you’re a vegan now” I felt a physical jolt go through my body. 

I always thought that vegans were totally hard-core, hemp-wearing, protesting, anti-establishment types with chips firmly attached to their shoulders. But this book was merely pushing the diet part, not the lifestyle. The eating regime described in the book didn’t seem so difficult and for the most part made sense. And the whole cruelty-free diet thing definitely resonates with me.

I gave up eating beef about 15 years ago while I was in university.  I never liked the taste or the texture of it and so it basically just meant giving up cheeseburgers, which was actually kind of hard.  But I did it and I haven’t looked back since.  Basically I mostly eat chicken, and guess what, I’m getting really bored with it. The hard part for me is going to be giving up dairy.  The book also recommends giving up sugar, caffeine and alcohol, but that’s more of a Skinny Bitch thing rather than a vegan thing.

So here I go!