Selfish Reasons First, But Then...?

I chose first and foremost to become a vegan for my own health. Goodness knows, I had plenty of reasons to choose better. Most of my eating came from sources that are ubiquitous and prepared to feed the gluttonous appetite at a moment's notice -- McDonald's, Round Table, any fast food joint, really. On every other street corner in America is a cornucopia of processed meat, processed grain, refined sugars, and highly developed oils and chemicals to give over-processed dreck enticing flavor. On my drive home from work I pass about 20 quick food joints for every one market. Quick, easy and premade is what we're meant to choose. That path means oodles of profits for corporate moneymakers that don't give a good God damn about our health, well-being or quality of life. It is at first a very satisfying feeling to say no to all of that, to say no, I am choosing myself and my own tomorrows over this most base, wanton craving for junk the system expects of me.

But then...after just a couple of months, a new awareness dawns. It creeps up, slowly, surely. As the processed-food born haze lifts, a new nagging consciousness unfolds in its place. At first, one starts noticing all the mindless gluttony carried by so many people as they lumber thickly, both mentally and physically through the pointless motions of half-lived lives. Then one starts to notice the dead hunks of meat dispensed by the bucket full from every eating place or market. Freezers and shelves are packed high and wide with chunks of dead animals that lived miserable lives and suffered before they were butchered and hacked into pieces. One timidly, anxiously starts to acknowledge that every living creature did suffer before it became a shapeless, packaged flavor for the masses. It is not pleasant to think of these things. It was so much easier living ignorantly, obliviously.

Do I want to bear the weight and moral responsibility of saying no to what is readily available in favor of choosing what is uncommon, largely unaccepted and barely an afterthought to the masses unless they're pausing to acknowledge that for some reason vegans are threatening and anger inducing? Well, you know, not really. I am a person who was in love with bacon cheeseburgers and felt irritated to be questioned by vegetarians. But I can't go back now. That would mean unlearning everything I've learned. It would mean shrinking back into the shadowy caves of ignorance and lack of awareness. I can't go back now, not without compromising what is now a part of my values system. I do not want factory farming of animals to carry on unquestioned when I know better what horrible events transpire to create a cheeseburger. I am kinder, my life is kinder and my health unquestionably better for having chosen a different path.

The question for me now is what would it take to make more people aware? How would it be possible to create a groundswell of action that brings vegetarian choices to fast food joints and restaurant menus? Maybe we should all withhold our dollars from restaurants or make a point to not just "go along to get along" by compromising our values for our tablemates. Maybe it is time we became more uncompromising and more difficult and let restaurants know vegetarians and vegans exist in numbers large enough to make an impact. If we actually do, that is. Most days I can't tell that there are enough to make a difference.

Allergy Update

This Saturday will complete week 8 of my becoming a vegan.

The Recap
The first week it was all sunshine and roses, as cutting out dairy helped my body rid itself of all sorts of yucky mucus, and my sinuses started clearing up. Weeks 3 and 4 "clear" seemed to turn to "open and vulnerable" and I began harboring resentments and reservations about the whole vegan thing as every speck of dust caused sneezing fits. Into weeks 5&6 I was still sneezing more than I was before cutting out meat and dairy, but not exactly having sneezing fits. Each time I cheated a bit of dairy into my diet, my sinuses would plague me for a day or so after. Week 7 I resolutely avoided all dairy, and at the tail end of that week, I caught a nasty cold. The cold is mostly cleared up 7 days later. I still need until at least week 10, I think, to determine whether my sinuses will remain clearer and the sneezing down to a minimum.

Is It Working?
There is no doubt my allergies have diminished and my sinuses are a lot clearer. Hitting weeks 7 and 8 my weight loss has picked up too. Glad I kicked the dairy-sneaking habit. I'm still completely off Q-Var and all allergy pills. One day of my cold over the weekend I had to take periodic hits on the Albuterol inhaler, but other than that, I am successfully free of allergy meds. I said way back on week 2 or 3 that this by itself is a miracle, as before cutting out the dairy I was abjectly miserable with puffy sinuses and wheezy lungs every single day without meds.

My overall health is just great, at least if I gauge it by how I feel. I no longer have energy dips after lunch, or at any time during the day. Even coming to work with a cold, the only difference is I blow my nose more, but I'm not slumped over my desk feeling fatigued and miserable. I no longer have those mentally cloudy days that prompt me to drink an excess of caffeine in efforts to clear the fog. My attention is better and my focus sharper. I feel like I'm thinking more clearly. It's nice. More updates to come as I see what weeks 9 & 10 bring.

Feelin' Bleu Over Cheese

Without blue cheese and bacon burgers, a cornerstone of my food pyramid fell away. Cold turkey I quit the burger and the bacon and the cheese. One month, two weeks later I'm missing burgers and bacon at least a little, but I am totally craving cheese. Like the little vegan cheater I am, I've sprinkled parmesan on my pasta, and quietly refrained from holding the sour cream and shredded cheese on my Mexican take out.

My sinuses pay the price for sneaking dairy. About an hour or two after consuming it, my sinuses get all stuffy and start draining. The feeling is really unpleasant. Quitting dairy is one of the best moves I've made for my health. The clear sinuses and clear lungs are so very worth it. So, how can I stop craving the stupid cheese?? I have no idea. There really are no suitable substitutes for cheese. The closest approximation of melted cheese texture I've found is daiya cheese, but the flavor is still rather lacking. Daiya has "Italian" and "Mexican" varieties, but they lack the satisfying bite of real cheese. Someone over at The Kindlife who went vegan says just stick with avoiding dairy for a full 6 weeks because the cravings can really last, so maybe this is my body having it's last dying gasp of cheese cravings. Dunno.

As far as the weight loss goes, doing OK. It seems like this is the slowest progress I've ever made in my weight loss efforts. Could be my age. Which sucks. A lot. Well, also I guess it's the highest weight I've started from. However, as slow as the weight loss is in pounds, it's been great in inches/centimeters. I'm up to 14.4 pounds now and not entirely sure how many inches. My pants are getting much looser though and most especially my middle innertube roll is shrinking significantly. Not eating dairy (and fried foods) seems to have the greatest impact on the pesky gut rolls.

Back in the Saddle

Today's dinner was seitan steaks in a shiitake and oyster mushroom gravy made with red wine, Worcestershire and tasty herbs, served over wild rice, barley, and brown basmati rice blend.   We had a salad of ripe red summer tomatoes, edamame, spinach, parsley, and cilantro green chili dressing.   We shared a lovely purpley bottle of Tempranillo from our Clarksburg  trip.

Breakfast was soy yogurt, mixed berries and walnuts.

Lunch I ate out with my old boss and a co-worker.   We went to Cafeteria L and I ordered tomato soup and a watermelon, tomato and basil salad.  So good! And nary a chip in sight.

Afternoon snack was hummus with cucumber, celery and carrots, and a cup of applesauce.

Now we've just got to keep it up!!

Too Many Chips Spoil the Diet

This week has been a really crappy food week for us, maybe a little worse for me than for Lora because of an extra basket of chips.

The first problem came when I had a meeting with my boss and an employee right before lunch. I'd made tabbouleh for lunch the night before and was all set to be healthy. My ADD boss insisted that we all go to lunch at the Mexican joint next door despite my insisting multiple times that I was on a diet. The analyst who was with us looked at me pleading not to be left alone with ADD boss. So, I went. And the boss paid for it, which was nice. But I have absolutely zero control around chips and salsa. I inhaled what must have been a whole basket of chips before my two veggie tacos came. I felt sick all afternoon and full of regret.

The next day went okay, but then come Thursday and happy hour with work friends Lora and I sucked down three margaritas each, tons of chips and appetizers and cheese. We felt awful the next morning. But come Furlough Friday noonish we felt ready for an outing.

Friday started out well. We had a big bowl of fruit and a few almonds for breakfast. We went out to run errands and got salad from Plutos, making wise choices. Not ready to go home we went for a drive down in the Delta and happened on the charming hamlet of Clarksburg. There was a cute corner store/deli. We stopped to get a glass of wine. Yum.

Then....we went wine-tasting and it all went wrong for the diet and the bank account. We had so much fun, but spent a ton of money and had plenty of wine. Then, of course, we were hungry and ate at the nearest restaurant where we devoured fried zucchini, salad, enormous bowls of white pasta with garlic bread and more wine.

Saturday morning rolled around and we felt sick of spirit and thick with salt. We skipped Weight Watchers but resolved to get right back on the wagon.

So far it's been mostly good. Yesterday after Riley's games we stopped at Adalberto's and even though I totally didn't have to I ate chips and salsa. The rest of the day was good, just a salad for dinner.

Today's been great. We had potatoes O'Brien for breakfast cooked with fake bacon but no oil and topped with soy cheese and salsa, and a berry smoothie with almond milk. Lunch was a salad with avocado, black beans, tomatoes, peppers, and a no-oil cilantro and green chili salad dressing. Dinner was seitan stew with potatoes, carrots, celery and peas. Totally fall like and Sunday dinner-esque. Lora pulled some out mid -afternoon and made a super tasty amuse-bouche with a coffee, worcestershire and brown sugar sauce. I love seitan! We had two glasses of one of our wine finds.

So here is my promise to myself this week:

1. No restaurants that serve chips and salsa. No restaurants at all is best.

2. No combining drinks with places that serve no healthy choices of food. For example, I give myself carte blanche to order drinks if we eat at a place where I can get an oil free veggie burger and salad.

Also I've got to shake this funk and get out and exercise more. Work makes me so stressed and glum I just want to curl up and indulge in escapism. I guess a walk with Lora, Riley and the dogs would be a good antidote to the blues.

Chugging Down the Road of Weight Loss Landmines

The past couple of weeks felt like rolling down a road of landmines. Both of us rode over the mines in the form of desserts, heavy dinners, party food, dining-out pitfalls (like delicious, evil french fries). Predictably, what blew up was our weight. Well, OK, not exactly blown, but just not a big week for losing weight. Starting with Friday night we just had too many events to attend, and we seemed to arrive at each one starving. We didn't set ourselves up very well to succeed.

First thing Monday we got back on track, and hope to make a rebound for this Saturday's weigh in.

One positive thing I have to say for us, is that we never totally gorged ourselves like we easily could have. We managed to at least support each other in maintaining reasonable portion control. That is something we can take into the future after we reach our goal weights and need to maintain the goals we achieve.

Whenever it happens to a person on a weight loss program, the first day or weekend of veering off course can be a "make or break" week. After the bad days, or bad weekends, we hit the crossroads of "Well, a couple of bad days. I can just get back on track now" or "Aaagh, I'm a failure so I'll just quit!" I'm glad to have Michelle as support in this because in doing it alone, I am more likely to fail.

Week 4, A Measly 1 1/2 Pounds

As the weeks progress, 1 1/2 pounds per week will no doubt seem fine. However, Michelle and I chart our own progress on our home scale that is perfectly accurate (we tested it with 10 pound weights). WW's scale determined that I lost 1.4 and Michelle lost 1.6. We both tracked our weight throughout the week to be closer to a 2.5 loss. WW scale is wrong. I'd heard they had a similar problem in the past from another attendee. They have 2 scales and apparently the first scale weighs a person at about 2 more pounds than the second scale. Obviously we'll be using the second scale henceforth.

Being vegan is a mixed bag for me to date. I did end up catching a cold and felt sick through the weekend. In addition, while I have a lot less mucus and sinus stuffiness, I've been sneezing up a storm. Every titchy little thing aggravates my sinuses. The dusty dogs running in from outdoors are a major trigger. So is any household dust, the cats, strong perfumes, pollen, even the facial tissue fibers...I do hope this overreactiveness tapers off in the next month. I refuse to go back on medications. Maybe eliminating wheat is the next step? Eliminating soy? I hate to contemplate the additional dietary restrictions. Bleh. I may turn to eating certain lean meats. The only upside is that it's the least stuffy headed cold I've ever had.

Overall, both Michelle's and my energy levels are way up. A couple of weeks have passed without either of us feeling the need to collapse like flour sacks on the sofa when we get home at night. The weekday evening activities we enjoyed when we first moved into our new house back in early 2008 -- walking the dogs, puttering in the yard, the occasional happy hour with friends, skating or biking a few blocks, shopping/running errands -- are becoming totally doable again. Maybe not so much Michelle, but I spent the past couple of years declining to an abyssmally fatigued state where doing anything, even dishes, in the evening felt like a lead-limbed chore. And I was only good for 1 major activity each weekend because I'd need to spend the remainder of the weekend first resting up and then recovering. My aches and pains are definitely clearing away little by little. The most beautiful feeling is that physical exertion no longer leaves me aching and spent for the ensuing week. I feel just fine the next day.

Able to climb to the top of the haystack again!

The skateboarding is going great. My balance is good and I'm developing courage to travel at faster speeds. By fast I mean like 10 to 12 mph, not bombing 30 down a hill.