In the past few days, I’ve chatted with many people about eating and what’s been going into my mouth the past week and a half (and hopefully into the next few months).  There are lots of questions floating around that I’d love to answer-

-That stuff is gross, how do you even eat it?  I’ve tried eating healthy like that before and I can’t get myself to do it.

-What do you eat in a typical day?

-But it takes so much time! How do you do it?

-What do you feed your kids?

-How do you get your protein and your calcium?

-How long are you going to do this for?

First off, yes, a lot of the stuff I’ve been eating, I wouldn’t normally eat if given the option.  Quinoa doesn’t really rank high on my “delicious foods I like to devour” list, nor does probably 90% of everything I’ve eaten in the past ten days, and in the three months that we did this before.  Vegan eating is no walk in the park for me, nor have I ever (nor WILL I ever) proclaim that it is. It’s my personality style that I need to have a black & white clear cut line on things that should be consumed, and this I’ve already mentioned before.  I’m an all or nothing girl–and I guess we’ve just decided that the best way to go about losing weight is to do it absolutely the most simple and God given way that there is- just eating clean.  Not only does this pretty much guarantee weight loss, but it also is amazing for our health in general.  I recommend watching Forks Over Knives for lots of research based health benefits of a plant based diet.  I guess to me right now, the point isn’t to make my mouth happy.  The point is to make my heart happy. And to make my heart happy, I’d be thrilled to weigh 35 pounds less than I do right now.  If it means eating things I consider bland and disgusting to get there, then I’m willing to make that temporary sacrifice.  I haven’t been 100% vegan in the past ten days though–I have eaten eggs, and twice I had a bit of chicken (probably about 3 oz in all). But I have absolutely had no dairy.  And I also haven’t had any bread either, which is huge for me.

A typical day of eating- Breakfast- 1/2 oatmeal with 5-6 drops of liquid Stevia.  (Here’s the link on what Stevia is–it’s a South American herb that is very sweet and is a natural sugar replacement).  I also just bought quinoa flakes to make a cereal sort of similar to grits, but I keep forgetting that I bought it.  Lunch- Well, this totally depends on the day, but this is a variety of items- veggies and hummus, fruit, plain rice cake with natural peanut butter, a small handful of raw almonds.  Dinner tends to be similar every day, and lately it’s a bean burger or sprout burger (no roll for me), topped with a big heap of a bunch of other stuff- hummus, avocado, tomato, grilled potatoes, grilled peppers, grilled onions, cucumbers and spinach.  And then I try to make a smoothie as well–the past few we’ve had have included almond milk, soy milk, hemp seeds, flax seeds, chia seeds, sweet potato (cooked), carrots, spinach, a few drops of stevia and a handful of frozen fruit.  For dessert, I use my vitamix to make a smoothie with soy milk, a banana, ice and some PB2 (Check out this link if you’ve never heard of it).  Do I accidentally make a mistake sometimes?  Yes, of course.  I’ve slipped up a few times, but all in all, I’m happy with my choices so far.

It does take a lot of time to prepare fresh foods, I’ll give you that.  We spend a ton of time cleaning, peeling, cutting and preparing what we eat.  Is it a pain?  Yes.  No way around that one.  Can’t make a smoothie a day ahead of time and keep it in the fridge.  That needs to be consumed fresh out of the vitamix!

We don’t expect our kids to eat like us, though we try to incorporate heathier foods into their diets too.  We only buy soy milk and almond milk now.  We have more of a variety of veggies that we give them.  And we try to encourage them to take a sip of our smoothies sometimes 🙂  They are eating less meat because we aren’t making it very much.  And also, really the only dairy they are eating is yogurt and cheese, and probably only 1.5 servings of that per day.  Other than that, they just eat normal food that we’ve always eaten.

We’re sort of brainwashed as a society to think that we need to eat meat because we need the protein and we need to drink milk because we need the calcium.  TRUE- we do need protein and calcium.  Do we need it from meat and dairy?  Of course not.  A typical woman like me needs around 100 grams of protein a day.  If I eat on a typical day- hummus, almonds, rice cake, oatmeal, natural peanut butter, sprout burger, black beans, garbanzo beans, edamame, spinach, cucumbers, broccoli, peppers, hemp seeds, soy milk, almond milk and quinoa (and I eat normal amounts of these things), I should be nearly good with protein, minus about 20 grams, in which a bit of a protein powder drink would be sufficient to provide the rest of whatever I cannot get.  Also, calcium is even easier–a cup of soy milk, a cup of almond milk, beans, spinach and a couple other veggies get me almost to 100%.  A cup of soy milk alone has 45% of your daily needs.

And finally, how long am I going to do this for, people would like to know.  I’ve never been one to talk something up like I’m going to do it forever.  I don’t preach things like they are going to be permanent lifestyles changes that I swear I will never sway from, only two lose interest a couple months later like the latest fad and move on to something else.  Since marriage, I’ve always been a pretty go with the flow kind of person.  That’s why we’ve moved many times, why we rearrange our furniture every other month and why I am nearly always spontaneous about making plans.  So it is with this–I’m not going to tell you that I’m going to do this for the rest of my life (we all know that would be a lie).  I have no idea if I’ll do it for a year.  Or six months.  Or three months.  I’m just doing it today.  And tomorrow, and perhaps the next day.  Until I’m happy where I’m at, and then I can decide what my next steps will be.  How’s that for a vague answer?

Any other questions?  Ask away!