Forks Over Knives: Conversion Day 1

I watched "Forks Over Knives" this week. I had been vegetarian for 6 years in junior high and high school. My reason for never going fully vegan was 3 fold. I want to be able to travel and being completely vegan, especially whole food plant based, would make that difficult. I was worried about bone density issues. My maternal grandmother lost height due to this before she passed away. And. I have found Vegan politics obnoxious.

"Forks Over Knives" presented research based evidence that eating a plant based whole foods diet will not cause bone density issues. In fact their evidence seems to indicate that the opposite may be true.

Starting today I am going to attempt to adopt a mostly plant based whole foods diet. I will allow myself to eat dairy one day a week, meat 1 day a week. Why keep the meat & dairy? This is for ease of travel. I do not want to develop a lactose intolerance. Similarly I want my body to remain accustomed to processing meat.

My issues with Vegan politics are side stepped by referring to this diet change as a plant based diet. Additionally many vegan recipes are not whole foods oriented. I am adopting this way of eating for health reasons and eating minimally processed foods is a key component to this path.

Note: I am not taking my husband or my children with me on this journey. Obviously they have the option of eating what I am eating but I consider this change a choice. I will continue to keep animal protein and dairy on their menu. The shift they will see is away from an American way of eating ,in other words meat as the main course, to a more global way of eating, or meat as a side dish and veg/grain as the main course.

So. Here I am on day 1. Will it be a cake walk? No. Will I feel better in the long run? I hope so.

Default & Detox

The new change in food intake has been going ok. I have been allowing myself to ease slowly into it. I am looking at grain and refined sugar free eating as my default way of eating. The view of a way of eating as a diet tends to have two downfalls that eventually lead to quitting that path. First if a person is on a diet and breaks from that way of eating the common vernacular is to call it cheating. This implies bad behavior. If a person feels like they are bad and have failed it can lead to a feeling of defeat. Second a diet is usually meant to be used for a finite amount of time. A change in eating style can be adopted for the rest of a persons life.

In my case weight loss is not my goal. If it happens great. My goal is to improve my sense of well being and avoid developing type 2 diabetes. Lowering the amount of grain and refined sugar I consume will help off set the 50% increase in my chances of developing diabetes that is a result of having had gestational diabetes in my last pregnancy.

For the next 2 weeks I will be freely allowing grain back into my dietary intake. I will be attempting 2 weeks of a simple detox interjected with a 3 day juice fast. The links for both can be found at the end of this post. The outcome I hope to achieve at the end of two weeks is having my body at a place where I have lessened my refined sugar cravings. Grain is not something I usually find myself craving. I tend to eat it out of convenience. Processed sugar is a whole different story. I do find myself craving it almost to a point of distraction.

Guidelines for detox & juice feast on My New Roots blog:

Simple detox:
http://mynewroots.blogspot.com/2009/01/simple-detox-for-all.html

Juice feast:
http://mynewroots.blogspot.com/2010/05/great-juice-feast.html

Calorie Intake Reduction Aid

I obtained a juicer last week.  It has been marvelous.

One juice that I have been making is kale, grapefruit, lime & ginger. The combination tastes great together. It has the bonus of making me not want to ingest anything but water for a few hours after. Totally eradicates binge eating in that time. The reason? It makes everything else taste horrid.

You can make a salad if you aren't into juicing. I would think that chopping the kale, peeling the grapefruit into pith free segments then tossing combined juiced lime with crushed ginger would work nicely.

Food Musings & an Update

Transition of my fitness & eating lifestyle is going well. We have been eating at home a lot. Grabbing a bite out is a rare thing these days. I have only had a real soda a few times in that handful times we dined out. In the place of soda there tends to be seltzer water around the house. Yoga has been off and on but I miss it the days that I don't practice. Practice is also making it much less of a thought process and more of a comfortable place physically & psychologically.

I cancelled my gym membership. Husband still goes. I was able to make it out one day a week, three weeks out of every four. Simply put the cost wasn't worth it. Especially when the thirty minute prep and thirty minute recovery that surrounded me getting into my car. Much simpler to roll out of bed, put my hair in a ponytail and turn on a DVD before I have fully woken up. Going forward I am hoping to work up to yoga everyday for seventy-five minutes. It would be nice to fit in either a middle eastern dance class or DVD practice 3 times a week too.

This Friday will see me stepping up things in regards to my eating. It's spring. I crave differently as we barrel toward gods awful hot here on the tip of the south. Less dark meats and rich foods. More lacto-ovo style diet. When we hit summer I can see possibly juicing during most of the day with a light egg for protein meal in the evening becoming my norm through the middle of fall. I doubt I will give up that decadent drizzle of half and half in my tea for more than a week or two. A person has to hold onto some vice.

Speaking of vice. I am almost completely coffee free. I haven't brewed a pot of coffee at home in some time. I have had the occasional Starbucks creation when out and about. Life has been mostly tea powered. It's not likely that will change as the weather heats up. I'll go from pots of hot tea to pitchers of cold. Plain tea, not *shudder* sweetened.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a detox May-ish. June or July I might even go as far as a juice cleanse for a few days. I was raised pretty darn granola so neither concept is new to me. Mentally it feels more akin to comfort food . Kind of like apple pie and hot chocolate to others. If I do go ahead with the detox and the cleanse I will be following the advise of My New Roots (   http://mynewroots.blogspot.com/  ) .