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Today’s lunch (pad thai with tofu) marks my first month eating a vegan diet. As a result I am over 10 lbs lighter. I have been conducting this privately and it may come as a shock to those who know me best.
It wasn’t easy, but at the same time it wasn’t that hard. I still enjoy tasty foods and don’t get too upset if I slip up from time to time. This is a brief summary of how and why I did it.
I’ve never been one for self-control. As it is the case for many of us, an active youth kept me fairly fit until I subscribed to a sedentary college lifestyle and meal plan ($5 large papa johns pizza… breakfast, lunch and dinner). I should have won a medal for how quickly I gained so much weight.
After a few years of hiding comfortably behind an online persona, my career and my assumed role of the token jolly guy, I finally decided to accept the fact that I was no longer the skinny person who I imagined in my mind when I thought about myself. I had become fat. Fat and super unhealthy.
More disturbing though than the image I was projecting was the fact that I wasn’t feeling well. I was uncomfortably gassy, tired, stressed, anxious… you name it… on a regular basis. A day didn’t go by where I didn’t think about the implications of my eating habits on the health of my future-self. Still I ate.
After succeeding at giving up caffeine a month earlier, I felt like my simple cold-turkey method was up for a greater challenge. At this point I had only decided to lose weight, not the means by which I would do this so I decided to study up. Diet books have to be the dullest of the bookstore. Luckily I came across Skinny Bastard, a book written in locker room language that seemed to be blunt and to the point.
The book’s approach is a work of art. The first three chapters read like a speech from Braveheart. Give up alcohol and caffeine. Drink more water. Eat good healthy carbs. Beware of sugar and its alternatives. Excercise. And finally, eat with a purpose. I was so on-board that I couldn’t put the book down. That was of course until Chapter 4, aptly titled “Meat: Rotting, Decaying, Decomposing Flesh”, hit me like a ton of bricks. The first few paragraphs are an onslaught of facts and studies linking meat to diseases like cancer and obesity. This went against everything I had ever been taught. Me, a vegetarian? Right. And yet I kept reading.
Up next, the dairy industry. Turns out we’re the only species who drinks milk after the infant nurturing stage, as well as the only ones who drink the milk of other animals. “Cow’s milk, by design, grows a 90-pound calf into a 2,000-pound cow over the course of two years.”… “Casein, the main protein in milk, promoted all three stages of cancer growth in humans.” Also, according to the authors, “Milk does a body good” is nothing more than marketing falsity. Me, now a vegan? Really?
And that’s when I decided to give it a try. I wanted to lose weight, be healthier, and alleviate my concerns of health issues as I grow older. Was food so important to me that I would just let my love for it control my future?
The Whole Foods frozen section single-handedly got me through my first week. I ate things like pad thai, Amy’s Quarter-Pound Veggie Burgers, Health is Wealth Meatless Buffalo wings, whole-wheat spaghetti and meatless meatballs and Amy’s Dairy-Free Rice Crust Pizza as dinner/lunch entrees.
Some other noteable vegan-approved items include peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, veggie dog and potato chips, tofurkey, vegetarian chili, salads, and rice and beans. For breakfast I am able to eat pancakes, waffles, cereals, etc with added fruits. There are great soy based ice creams that taste just like their dairy counterparts.
To make sure I don’t miss out on any important vitamins and minerals while I’m in this newbie stage, I take an Ultra Mega Green vitamin from GNC. I also drink TONS of water to keep hunger at bay and to aid digestion.
This has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me and I plan to stick to it for the foreseeable future. I’m feeling better physically and mentally, losing weight and hopefully reducing my chance of disease in the future. Veganism isn’t for everyone as it really goes against everything we’ve ever learned and I’m learning to tolerate the heavy criticism that comes with that. I urge you as freethinkers to keep an open mind and strive to eat purposefully.
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“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs (here’s the text of his speech) (via kareem)