The story of how a 30-something carnivorous daughter-of-a-trapper ventured into a bold new vegan world.

Monday, December 12, 2011

True Confessions

There's no sugarcoating this.  I've been a bad, bad girl. 
For 6 days, I ate whatever I wanted.  And I wanted gelato.  And smoked turkey.  And cheese.  Lots of cheese.  I had brisket.  I drank a mocha...with whipped cream.  I even smoked cigarettes at work this week.  Pretty much every day I worked.  And you know what?  I felt TERRIBLE.  Part of it was probably pyschological, since I kept all of this from John (~gulp~).  Alot of it was physical. 

I didn't sleep very well.  I felt puffy all over.  My eyes felt irritated.  I woke up each morning feeling congested.  I was short-tempered.  Friday night I asked myself why I was doing this to myself. 

The "why's" were plentiful.  It is easier and more socially acceptable to follow the "normal" western diet.  Questioning recipe ingredients and defending how you're eating can be tiring.  And let's not overlook the most obvious...gelato tastes pretty damn good. 

So, without telling John I'd lapsed, I asked him to help me write a vision for our family, describing what our health and lifestyle looks like and what we're eating (vision writing is huge in the company I work for).  We watched "Food, Inc" and "Forks over Knives" to get us refocused. 

I'm tweaking the language, so while I'll share the actual vision soon, here are the main points.  For us, as a family, we are committed to eating a mostly plant based diet, which means:
  1. drinking/using only nut milk for us and the kids (soy has too much controversy around it for us)
  2. eating meat and/or cheese no more than twice a month (John likes having this little clause, makes him feel more in control)
  3. avoiding processed foods (no faux meat products or soy cheese for us; In his book, "In Defense of Food", Michael Pollen suggests not buying anything with more than 5 ingredients or anything your great grandmother wouldn't readily identify)
What does that leave?  Fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains...  Armed with dozens of recipes from the good ol' internet, we're ready!  I'll share recipes, what we liked and what we didn't, with you as we go.  Hang in there!

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