The past week or so I have been able to establish my vegan eating patterns in sort of a slef-supported vacuum. I didn't hang out with any vegans, I didn't really talk to anyone who was for or against my new vegan experiment. Which made everything go pretty smoothly. Boyfriend was at a conference for a week so that gave him some time to "prepare" and for me to assure that I wasn't going to force him to become vegan as well. So it's been nice. I could look up online articles on vegan topics, no one at worked cared one way or the other about my eating habits, and I've been too busy to hang out with anyone who would need me to explain anything in detail.
I got to meet up with my parents earlier today. Since I was a vegetarian before I was used to the constant questions about my health, if I'm getting enough vitamins, etc. My mom has been trying to lose weight but it's usually dependent on quackery medicine and rumors of magical diets where if you don't eat at a certain time you will magically lose weight. So today my delightful vaccumm was broken. I had to explain that I'm fine, I get enough vitamins and that while we will have them over for a BBQ I'm not eating any meat. That's going to be fun...
As I thought more about it, I realized that the concern about health with a vegan diet is a funny question in a country where 30% of population is obese. Of course everyone know the healthy alternative but no one really follows it. My first or second post on this blog did have a non-flattering picture of an overweight group of people harrassing a healthy looking group of vegans. Really? You are worried about my nutrition? Of course there are a ton of unhealthy vegans.
One of my concerns was becoming one of them. After all, I am not particularly organized, or a good cook or manage my time well. And a real balanced vegan diet requires all of those thing - planning, cooking, making sure you have the time to think things through. Though what I have come away is - don't be dumb. If you think you can be vegan on processed ramen and canned soup - rethink that plan. They serve as good alternative when you don't have any time or resources but the amount of salt and chemicals is not really something that your body wants to process. Tofu and soy products are great - however there is estrogen in some processed soy products so variety has been key for me even though it's way easier to just heat up some fake meat made with soy protein.
Today was also a bit tough since I wanted to get a blood screen for anything terrible in my body and analyze any vitamin deficiencies.
I am also hoping that things like "raw vegan" are not lumped together with what I consider vegan. Raw diet is based on a flawed idea that somehow you need enzymes from foods that are destroyed by the cooking process. This ignores the acids in your stomach that break down everything, including enzymes. This causes people like this to be in the news and say how their "vegan" diet made them sick. When in fact, unscientific and rediculous diet made them sick, not the absence of animal products. Raw vegan is not the same as vegan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/how-our-vegan-diet-made-us-ill-848322.html
I guess while I was expecting the questions and concerns from the meat eating public, I wasn't expecting to see "raw vegan" touted as an improvement or evoulution of vegan. In a way, I consider it a mutation. Granted many people can thrive on it. But it has no scientific bases what so ever. And in that respect belongs with the "milk makes your bones stronger" myth.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Day 10 - Days off are nice.
Today was the first day of my week long "time off" I decided to take in between continuing my internship and summer school. I also have seem to created a long list of errands to catch up on while I wasn't working. It was a nice day with minimal agrevations and would have been awesome if I didn't pull something in my lower back. According to the internet it's either kidney disease or will go away in about a month, so I am going with the later.
For dinner I made stir fried vegetables with tofu and buckwheat noodles. Some soy sauces, spices and ginger actually made the vegetables pretty tasty. Boyfriend also ate in the name of eating better and healthier. The bar was set pretty low since he was essentially expecting everything to taste bad. Lowered expectations worked well. Kinda burned, kinda gray looking but it ended up tasting ok.
I guess the hardest part of the day was not just being to grab any snack while running around doing errands. Everything had to be thought out and animal product free for me to eat it. Which I guess why I quit being a vegetarian in the first place. And yes, meat is way more filling as a protein. I have to work a bit harder to not want to eat all the time.
One thing did make me remember being excited about finding "skeptical vegans" online. Now it could mean that they are vegans who are atheists or that they are questioning some of the things that get lumped in with veganism. Just because someone is vegan doesn't mean that they are into yoga, crystal healing, raw food or believe that food has mystical energy. I found some great blogs questioning those ideas in a great ways. I had to also laugh myself when buying a bag of pop corn it declared that it was "Natural" and "Gluten Free". Well Natural means nothing - there are no standard for Natural and pop-corn, well it's kind of a no-brainer that it doesn't contain wheat, required for something to have gluten. Hilarious.
For dinner I made stir fried vegetables with tofu and buckwheat noodles. Some soy sauces, spices and ginger actually made the vegetables pretty tasty. Boyfriend also ate in the name of eating better and healthier. The bar was set pretty low since he was essentially expecting everything to taste bad. Lowered expectations worked well. Kinda burned, kinda gray looking but it ended up tasting ok.
I guess the hardest part of the day was not just being to grab any snack while running around doing errands. Everything had to be thought out and animal product free for me to eat it. Which I guess why I quit being a vegetarian in the first place. And yes, meat is way more filling as a protein. I have to work a bit harder to not want to eat all the time.
One thing did make me remember being excited about finding "skeptical vegans" online. Now it could mean that they are vegans who are atheists or that they are questioning some of the things that get lumped in with veganism. Just because someone is vegan doesn't mean that they are into yoga, crystal healing, raw food or believe that food has mystical energy. I found some great blogs questioning those ideas in a great ways. I had to also laugh myself when buying a bag of pop corn it declared that it was "Natural" and "Gluten Free". Well Natural means nothing - there are no standard for Natural and pop-corn, well it's kind of a no-brainer that it doesn't contain wheat, required for something to have gluten. Hilarious.
Day 8 and 9 - The weekend
So Saturday went alright. I guess I am a very functional and motivated person after I drink... Who knew?! When I got home on Friday with a few margaritas in me I went online and signed up for ... Kettle bell class. At 8:30 am on a Saturday. And I actually got up and went to it on Saturday. Best motivational margaritas ever.
It is taught at a yoga school so everyone there was female except for the instructor and one other guy. Wow... I am so out of shape. While my previous tests of cholesterol and blood sugar came back just fine, my endurance and physical fitness was so not fine. After about 3 minutes of warm up I was out of breath. This is a 1 hour class. Damn. I used to participate in Judo, I used to run just for fun, I used to swim and be active. This was just sad. Also I turn very pale and it horrifies people around me, so I had to convince the instructor that it was ok and normal even though I did feel fainty. Being already pretty pasty and then turning even whiter I guess is alarming to people.
So after some more very energetic exercises involving a kettlebell, lots of motion and a hint of yoga we were done. I hobbled home. I have never felt that many muscles in that much pain. But wow, I felt good, I didn't pass out and I rewarded myself with a vegan burger and vegan cheesecake. Both which didn't suck. Especially the cheesecake - it didn't taste like mashed up tofu with sugar - it was ... creamy. I added more fresh blueberries and it was divine.
Boyfriend came back later that evening from a conference and we decided to grab a quick drink. I guess this is how vegan might be difficult - he expressed no interest what so ever in that, which I knew previously. What I was just hoping that we could have our own food eccentricities separately and without conflict. We were able to share fries and nachos, where he suggested we get cheese on the side, so that I won't have to put up with scraping it off. Genius!
Luckily beer and Jack Daniels are vegan as far as I know so it was a good evening!
Sunday presented a different challenge - while the tastiest baguette known to man were semi-confirmed made without dairy, the tasty tamales at Pilsen Farm Market weren't. They do sometimes carry the ones with fake meat but the ones they had left were beans and cheese or eggplant and cheese. Sigh. I had to shovel my baguette into my mouth and sigh. Boyfriend did get chicken and mole ones and I was definitely jealous. Sigh. Might have to get there early to make sure to get the vegan variety.
Our Sunday lunch was basically me getting pad Thai without egg enjoying that. I am basically assuming that it's made in the same pan where all their meat dishes come from... but I really don't want to be THAT person. Even though I am not grossed out by meat really, not eating it intentionally has created a kind of "ick" factor about my meat-free food touching meat-full food, almost unconsciously. But in the ethical sense, I didn't add to the demand for meat dishes at the local Thai place and that's the ethical gain I was personally going for.
Didn't know I would make it this far. Only one screw up with pizza but everything I have been eating has been animal free. Honey is not an issue since I hate it and have no taste for it. Sugar is something I want to actually look into later but I don't have a sweet tooth anyways. I will be focusing on cooking more. But other than that - I am pretty happy with how my week turned out. I feel pretty good, not too tired and don't think I'm lacking in too much nutrition. Getting a blood test next week just to make sure. I mean it wouldn't be an experiment without all kinds of data, now would it ?
It is taught at a yoga school so everyone there was female except for the instructor and one other guy. Wow... I am so out of shape. While my previous tests of cholesterol and blood sugar came back just fine, my endurance and physical fitness was so not fine. After about 3 minutes of warm up I was out of breath. This is a 1 hour class. Damn. I used to participate in Judo, I used to run just for fun, I used to swim and be active. This was just sad. Also I turn very pale and it horrifies people around me, so I had to convince the instructor that it was ok and normal even though I did feel fainty. Being already pretty pasty and then turning even whiter I guess is alarming to people.
So after some more very energetic exercises involving a kettlebell, lots of motion and a hint of yoga we were done. I hobbled home. I have never felt that many muscles in that much pain. But wow, I felt good, I didn't pass out and I rewarded myself with a vegan burger and vegan cheesecake. Both which didn't suck. Especially the cheesecake - it didn't taste like mashed up tofu with sugar - it was ... creamy. I added more fresh blueberries and it was divine.
Boyfriend came back later that evening from a conference and we decided to grab a quick drink. I guess this is how vegan might be difficult - he expressed no interest what so ever in that, which I knew previously. What I was just hoping that we could have our own food eccentricities separately and without conflict. We were able to share fries and nachos, where he suggested we get cheese on the side, so that I won't have to put up with scraping it off. Genius!
Luckily beer and Jack Daniels are vegan as far as I know so it was a good evening!
Sunday presented a different challenge - while the tastiest baguette known to man were semi-confirmed made without dairy, the tasty tamales at Pilsen Farm Market weren't. They do sometimes carry the ones with fake meat but the ones they had left were beans and cheese or eggplant and cheese. Sigh. I had to shovel my baguette into my mouth and sigh. Boyfriend did get chicken and mole ones and I was definitely jealous. Sigh. Might have to get there early to make sure to get the vegan variety.
Our Sunday lunch was basically me getting pad Thai without egg enjoying that. I am basically assuming that it's made in the same pan where all their meat dishes come from... but I really don't want to be THAT person. Even though I am not grossed out by meat really, not eating it intentionally has created a kind of "ick" factor about my meat-free food touching meat-full food, almost unconsciously. But in the ethical sense, I didn't add to the demand for meat dishes at the local Thai place and that's the ethical gain I was personally going for.
Didn't know I would make it this far. Only one screw up with pizza but everything I have been eating has been animal free. Honey is not an issue since I hate it and have no taste for it. Sugar is something I want to actually look into later but I don't have a sweet tooth anyways. I will be focusing on cooking more. But other than that - I am pretty happy with how my week turned out. I feel pretty good, not too tired and don't think I'm lacking in too much nutrition. Getting a blood test next week just to make sure. I mean it wouldn't be an experiment without all kinds of data, now would it ?
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