Hello...Vegan?

It's been months since I've last posted. And a lot has happened. You know...the usual. Work stuff. Life stuff. Relationship stuff. Oh, and in August of 2023 I accidentally became Vegan. Yes. You read that right. Don't worry. It feels weird to me too.

Now, I wouldn't say I am straight up, never ever in my life going to eat animals or animal by-products again. In fact, since this change took place, I have. You see, I am the type of person who struggles with this "all or nothing" thinking.

I'm NEVER going to wear make-up again!

2 months later...I'm back on make-up.

I'm NEVER drinking alcohol again!

7 months later...I'm dabbling in the occasional craft beer.

I'm ALWAYS going to exercise 5 days a week!

5 weeks later...I've been to the gym 3 times total.

This "all or nothing" thinking leaves me feeling shitty. Like I can never keep a goal. So when this idea came to eat less meat...I knew I needed to be strategic. I knew that if I made the loud and proud statement of I'm NEVER eating meat again, I'd quickly disappoint myself. So I took it slow. And I have to say...for the most part, I've been killing it for 9 months.

Okay. Enough of this back story. Let me dive in and take you through this journey.

It was a night in early August and a new documentary was out. My husband and I are huge documentary fans. This one was called Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe you've seen it. Maybe, if you're like me...you thought it was just so-so. Don't get me wrong, it was entertaining...just not life changing.

To its credit, I will say that this documentary made me and my meat-eating husband think, "Hm...we do eat a lot of meat. Let's try to incorporate a few meatless meals into next week."

Well, as you can imagine, my all or nothing brain was like: Let's cook vegetarian food every day of the week!

My husband likes to be healthy, so while it wasn't on his radar to stop eating meat, he thought a few meatless meals sounded good. So I dug into recipes and tried my best to find some delicious ones.

It. Was. Hard.

Have you ever looked up vegetarian recipes? There is like a million of them. And trust me when I say...they aren't all good.

That first week I tried a variety of things. Below are just a few memorable ones.

Penne Pasta with Chickpea "Meatballs"

Sweet Potatoes loaded with black beans, onions, and tomatoes

Mexican bowl with shrimp (Okay...this one isn't vegetarian, but it felt healthier to me at the time)

All of the food I cooked that week was good. But again...not like "Let's make drastic dietary changes good." At most I thought, "Okay, moving forward...I can make a few more vegetarian meals in the week."

However...everything changed that second week. Haphazardly, the end of that fateful first week in August, my husband had a doctor's appointment.

He was telling his doctor about us trying to eat more vegetables, and how I was trying out more vegetarian type meals.

He mentioned how we had watched a documentary on food.

His doctor said something to the effect of, "If you like food documentaries, you have to check out Forks Over Knives!"

So we did.

And, not to sound overly dramatic, but this documentary gave that life-changing feeling I've been talking about. It just made sense. Forks Over Knives is all about the benefits of a Whole Food Plant Based Diet (WFPB).

No meat.

No dairy.

No oil.

A WFPB diet is not about eating food in the raw. But it's about eating food in its natural packaging.

Take an apple for example. If you eat an apple, it can be a good snack that can tide you over until your next meal. Yes, it has sugar in it, but it also contains fiber, and nutrients. An apple is a delicious source of nutrition.

But, when you take that apple...along with 5 other apples...put them in a juicer...and get 1/2 glass of juice...you've stripped the nutrition from its natural packaging.

You may get full eating one apple. But you aren't getting full drinking 5 apples in the form of juice.

The same goes for oils. Take olive oil for instance. Olives are great for you. If you eat a couple handfuls of olives, it's no big deal. You're getting great nutrition. But did you know it takes about 45 olives to make only 1 Tablespoon of olive oil? A couple handfuls of olives may very well satisfy a craving. 1 Tablespoon of olive oil is high in calories, and isn't doing anything to stabilize your hunger.

That's what WFBP is about. Eating foods as close to their natural form as possible. The thought process, is that in doing so, your body is able to regulate itself. And when I say regulate, I mean regulate your weight, cholesterol, energy levels, and so much more!

Like I said, when I first heard about WFBP it just made sense. But I was skeptical. The success stories seemed too good to be true. Sure, those people on the documentaries lost 50 pounds and lowered their cholesterol by dramatic numbers.

But that wouldn't happen to us, right?

That's only for those types of people who they pick for TV, right?

Regardless, I was hooked. Food documentaries became my husband and I's obsession. Over the next several months, that's all we watched. We immersed ourselves in them. To some, watching nothing but food documentaries after work each night may seem boring, but we loved it.

During our super-food-documentary-era I started really scouring the internet for WFBP recipes. Forks Over Knives has a data base of recipes, so that was a good starting place for me. I also found that the world of WFPB is more unknown than its similar Vegetarian or Vegan counterparts, so I started searching the internet for Vegan Dinner Ideas.

You might be wondering, isn't Vegan and WFBP the same thing? The answer is, it can be...but no.

True, both lifestyles are meatless and free of animal by-products, but the term Vegan doesn't always mean healthy. In fact, sometimes a lot of the mock-meat and cheese alternatives are super processed...or what I like to call fake food. Also, a lot of vegan recipes contain oil, which a WFPB diet considers a processed food.

Regardless of what the recipe classified itself as, I applied the knowledge I learned from all of the documentaries my husband and I watched, and adjusted if needed.

For instance, if the recipe said to sauté onion, celery, and carrots in oil...I'd do like Forks Over Knives says, and use water. Yes. You can use water to sauté. Weird, I know.

At the start of all of this, the recipes were cumbersome. They took me time. It was an unusual way of cooking. Like...did you know you can soak cashews in water and blend them into a creamy delicious Alfredo sauce? I sure didn't.

Each new recipe I came across was weird, called for ingredients I had never heard of (wait, what is nutritional yeast?), or called for some new cooking technique. But with the hardship also came this level of excitement. I remember finding this nacho cheese recipe, and the picture looked JUST LIKE VELVEETA. I remember being so excited to make it. When I blended it up for the first time I was seriously awestruck by how much the texture really did resemble nacho cheese.

Was every recipe a success?

No.

But when I would find a recipe that would make both me and my husband perk up on the first bite and say, "ooookkaaaaaaay," it's like a small piece of me came alive.

With each recipe I gained more confidence. And soon, I was looking forward to cooking dinner.

Soon, the cooking became easier.

Soon, I was acknowledging how much more I liked cooking these WFPB/Vegan dishes than my tried-and-true meat versions.

It was about 3 months in that the results really started speaking for themselves.

My husband and I felt more energized.

We both started dropping weight (as of now we've lost around 40 pounds each).

My husband's cholesterol dropped 41 points.

Now, I know these are some massive statements to make, but I promise you I'm not lying. The physical results, coupled with the mental clarity and happiness we were feeling kept us both going.

What started out as a small attempt to eat some vegetarian meals at least once a week, turned into this complete lifestyle shift.

I will say that in the firsts 5 months, we were VERY strict with following a WFBP diet to a tee. However, like I said in the beginning, I know that my all or nothing mentality doesn't serve me. Nor does it serve my husband. I knew that if both of us felt like we could NEVER have meat again, we'd be miserable.

So when we started getting meat cravings around the holidays of 2023, we didn't deny ourselves. And now, if we do choose to eat out and have some meat, we don't go hog wild (no pun intended).

Our belief is that if meat is eaten, it should be in small amounts and super delicious. No longer do we just eat meat for the sake of eating meat. In fact, most of the time meat doesn't even sound good to us.

My friends and family often ask what my diet is. When I get this question, what I tell people is that I try to eat this WFPB/Vegan way at least 90% of the time. I create a grocery list for the week of my favorite recipes, and I help my husband meal-prep his lunches for the week. We are pretty strict with following the WFPB rules with these planned meals, but we also leave room for life to happen.

While for months I stopped using all oil when cooking, I've slowly started adding a small amount back in. I'm finding that some things just cook better with a little oil.

Now, someone might read this and completely disagree with my lack of picking a specific diet and sticking to it. Some may even be offended that I occasionally claim the title vegan when I still do occasionally eat meat. But I just don't care. I strongly believe that people need to do what is right for them and their mindset.

Trying a new lifestyle or new way of living won't be successful if you don't really want it. I find that as humans, if we try to cut things out of our diet it doesn't work. Our will-power only lasts for so long. We have to truly believe in what we are doing.

I strongly believe that my husband and I's drastic dietary shift is due to these documentaries we watched. Through them we gained education and learned some science that helped back up the health claims.

But most importantly, we experienced results first-hand from our dietary changes. My husband and I always say, "We just can't argue with the results!"