I can honestly say we never thought we'd do this. (Especially me)
For a long time we've been wanting to re-vamp the way we eat.
Last year after Christmas we went on this "protein diet" that a lot of people in our church was doing. We lost a bunch of weight really fast! It was fantastic. I even got down to size 6 jeans and shorts by the time Easter came around. Never been that small in my adult life.
But, then summer came. Our lives get busier in the summer because of Tres' job at the camp, traveling with the youth, Mary Kay Seminar, and going to Maine. All of that hit, and our eating went out the window and never recovered. Plus, I was sick to death of salad. I'm not really a big fan of salad anyway, and since that's mainly what we'd eaten (or at least it felt that way) I just couldn't do it anymore.
So this year as the New Year turned over, we had been talking about changing our lifestyle. Eating less processed foods, more whole foods and veggies (even though we always ate a lot of veggies before too) Just being more mindful of it. Less Mexican (our weakness). But without an actual plan of action, it's way too easy to fall off the wagon.
And then it happened...
Our friends Max and Beth changed their eating drastically. Literally overnight. They cut meat out of their diet. You could almost call it Vegan (but don't freak out on me....it's not actually vegan). Now let me tell you something about Max and Beth. They are anti-diet. They love meat. They love eating things that taste good. They cannot and will not eat things that don't taste good. They outright refuse. I've watched them do it. They are some of the most anti-diet food people I've ever met. And that's saying something because I know plenty of anti-diet people, myself included.
Tres kept talking to me about the fact that we should do what they're doing. But I was not so sure. I couldn't imagine cutting out meat!
Then, I spent a Sunday in the nursery at church with Beth and started asking her about it. She told me about this documentary they watched called
Forks Over Knives. She said they happened upon it on Netflix and watched it and Max turned to her and said "we need to do this". Which is a powerful statement coming from Max.
So Beth gave me all the details. The studies behind cancer, diabetes, hypertension, just to name a few. How these doctors in this documentary have found definite links between diet and the rise of eating all animal products. How you can look at the rise of cancer and other serious diseases in the United States and it all correlates perfectly with the US Government pushing meats and dairy as important foods on us starting back in the 40's and 50's. How a major study in China done showed definite correlation between urban areas (with western diets) had significantly higher cancer rates than rural areas where they mainly ate off the land and water. Fascinating stuff. She told me to watch the documentary for myself and see what I thought.
So Tres and I watched it. Before we did though, we'd pretty much decided that we needed to lessen the amount of animal products we took in, but that going cold turkey was just unrealistic.
Then we watched the video. And we changed our minds in that 90 minutes.
I will say that we eat what we want when we're out. It isn't realistic to think that 100% of the time you will eat animal free. And what's the fun in eating out if you can't order what you want, right?
But at home, we are 100% Whole Foods Plant Based. Even our coffee, no more creamer. We put Almond Milk in it which we really love. I like it better than creamer believe it or not, and with the Almond Milk I don't need sugar. Double bonus! We do still add fish from time to time at home. But instead of one piece of fish for each of us, we split one piece of fish between us.
So what have we noticed in the 6-ish weeks we've been eating like this? Well, I've lost about 6-7lbs. We feel better overall. Or at least, when we don't eat like this we don't feel good at all. But we are less hungry in between meals. We just realized yesterday that Tres has taken a lot less medications. We wondered if a decrease in his medication would be an outcome, but it's hard to tell on a day to day basis. But the other day we received a phone call from the pharmacy saying that one of his meds was due to refill. In the time we've been married the pharmacy has never called us. We've always ordered it ahead of time out of need. And this medication that they called about...we still had quite a bunch left. So, we're pretty excited about that. The other thing medicine wise we've noticed is that he hasn't had to take as many acid reducers. Where that used to be a somewhat regular occurrence.
The most common question I've received from people is 1. "isn't it more expensive?" Followed by 2. "Aren't you eating the same thing all the time?" and 3. "Isn't it harder to prepare meals?" and 4. "aren't you missing protein in your diet?"
I'll answer them in order:
1. We haven't found yet that it is. Although we don't buy all organic yet. There is a Whole Foods being built in our area, and once it's opened we're going to do a cost comparison to see just how much produce we can buy at Whole Foods instead of HEB.
2. No. Not at all actually. Aided by the fact that my husband went out and researched Vegan Cookbooks. Yes, I said it wasn't Vegan and it isn't. But it's close. The difference is that Vegan's eat a whole of processed crap. Oils, fake meats, tofu, etc. Along with their veggies and rice and beans. So we skip that stuff. And thanks to the cookbooks and countless online recipes we have a whole array of stuff. I think in 6 weeks we've only repeated a few meals once or twice and every other meal has been new. Of course we're trying out a whole lot of meals to see if we can compile a new set of family favorites. And let me tell you, about 90% of it so far has been amazing. The other 10% I won't make again. But the 90% we've liked, we can honestly say that we don't feel like we're missing a thing. Even my Texas-born, meat-eating husband. He's loving this.
3. Nope. It's no different. We bought a rice maker, which I use about 1/2 the time I make rice, the other 1/2 I prepare on the stove. Just depends on the meal. We buy dry beans (so cheap!) and I decide the night before what I'm making the next day and soak the appropriate beans ahead of time so they're ready the next day (then they just require about an hour or so of boiling, so if you aren't home during the day you'll have to just plan ahead one extra day). And especially the help with the aforementioned cookbooks I am so excited to prepare food most of the time. I mean, I'm not jumping up and down, but I enjoy cooking so much more now than I did before. Isn't that interesting? I feel like we're eating healthy, it's all fresh and ripe, and it's all made the house smell amazing.
4. Not according to "Forks Over Knives". According to them there are two things that American's don't know. First that there is a lot more protein in vegetables than we think and secondly that we don't need nearly as much protein as we think we do. They use the example of rural asian cultures. They're poor. They eat a lot of rice and veggies that they grow right? They split a single piece of fish between an entire family. And they live long, healthy, lean lives. Tres and I have also added Chia seeds to our diet. We put it on our cereal, and when we think of it other meals too. Chia seeds are packed full of protein and antioxidants.
So anyway, we see this as a life long change. We love eating like this. Watch the video, decide for yourself!
