Kickstarting the New Year

Boy, has it been a while since I've posted! The holidays were pretty busy here, but Santa was very good to Son and Daughter. I didn't do too poorly myself - it was a great year to get gift cards!

Both Husband and my parents-in-law gave me Barnes & Noble cards (they know me so well!) and I was eager to use them. Last weekend, one of the books I bought with the cards was Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet. It was a really quick read, and it gave me some excellent motivation to try harder this year to stick with a vegan diet (especially after the holidays - yikes). I highly recommend her book. It's very well written (conversational, entertaining, informative) and not super preachy, but there are certain aspects of it that I don't quite buy. Only flushing after Number Two in order to conserve water? Please... But she does have some great ideas for how to eat out and how to deal with temptation (the two biggest pitfalls I have with fully committing to being vegan - that, and cheese...). I know that I'm not ready - or even willing at this point - to try the Superhero version of her diet, but vegan is alright by me. I also signed up online for PCRM's 21-Day Vegan Kickstart. I'm hoping that a daily e-mail with advice and recipe ideas will also help keep me motivated.

I should clarify that, despite the "diet" aspect of Silverstone's book and the weight loss benefits being touted as part of the Vegan Kickstart, I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm very happy with my current weight and think if I lost any more, I'd be in trouble. I got to my current weight by being vegetarian. I'm most interested in pushing myself to vegan status because I think it is so healthy. The more information I read about the health detriments of eating any animal products, not just flesh, makes me realize I can be even healthier than I am today. And who wouldn't want that?

Day 1 of 2010 - a fine start:

Breakfast: veganized banana nut muffin, soy yogurt with flaxmeal, black tea without sweetener
Lunch: black bean chili with brown rice and half an avocado mixed in (delicious!), oven roasted cauliflower and broccoli, whole wheat bread with Earth Balance
Snack: Tazo Wild Sweet Orange herbal tea from Starbucks (another gift card from Husband), handful of roasted almonds
Supper: packaged butternut squash soup mixed with whole wheat penne, sauteed mushrooms and spinach; whole wheat bread with Earth Balance, celery sticks, blood orange

Why Veg?

There are so many reasons why people go veg, but I bet I've got one of the strangest you've ever heard...I first went veg for the challenge of it. A little bet with myself - how long could I go without eating beef/chicken/pork/fish before going crazy? Turns out...quite a long time, thank you very much.

In all honesty, I don't miss meat at all. I didn't even have cravings at the beginning of my challenge. Sure, I love the smells of meat cooking - especially grilled hamburgers and bacon prepared every which way - but I don't want to eat it. Before I went veg, I noticed that I wasn't eating much meat anyway. Maybe a few times a week, and mostly for Sunday dinner and the one night a week eating out with my husband and kids.

I'd been playing with the idea of going veg for quite some time before I did it. My biggest concern was how my husband would take it...he's your typical "meat and potatoes" guy. Turns out, he has been super supportive of my efforts, mostly because he's the greatest guy in the world, but also because I'm not pushing him to go veg with me. If he wants to join me, he knows he is more than welcome...but that's his decision to make.

As for the kids...they are meat-eaters. Sure, I push fruit and vegetables at them whenever I have the chance (like all moms), but they eat what is considered a "normal" diet. Maybe when they're old enough to make their own lifestyle decision, they'll jump on the veg bus.

Since I went veg, I've experienced some of the usual (and delightful) side effects - weight loss, lower cholesterol, better blood sugar. And, while my first challenge was to eliminate meat, my ongoing challenge is to find delicious and easy recipes to meet my nutritional needs. I love that kind of challenge!

A New Adventure

Well, I never thought I'd start a blog - especially one about what I eat from day to day - but I realized that I was spending so much time on other vegetarian/vegan blogs that I wanted to have a blog of my own.

One of the main incentives to start my blog was that so many of the sites I visit are written by people seriously committed to the veg lifestyle. Me...I'm vegetarian for all but maybe 3 meals a year (mostly because I ate something I didn't realize had bacon in it). And as for being vegan...it's a goal. When I cook for myself, it's vegan all the way and I love it! But I have a husband and two young kids who are not veg, and sometimes that cheese pizza they're eating looks and smells too good to resist. I'm not perfect, but maybe a blog like this will hold me a little more accountable for my eating. We'll see...

(Oh...in the interest of full disclosure...just before I created this page, I had the very cheesy eggplant sandwich at Cheesecake Factory. Eating out and trying to be vegan is even harder...)