A while ago, I went on a vegan diet and while I was avoiding all forms of animal products I noticed a few things about how food affected me.
First, a true vegan eats nothing that comes from a animal, so I really wasn't a true vegan, because I did eat fish during this time, but all other animal products were gone from my diet. I learned a lot about myself and my food for the almost three months that I was without any “land animal” products.
I started off with a good positive can do attitude and then I went through my pantry and cleared out all of the animal tainted products. As my pre-vegan diet wasn't that dependent on meat I didn't so much miss that, but there were other things that I missed. Mayonnaise has eggs, out. Butter, out. Margarine, has milk fat in it. Some butter substitutes are worse than the real thing. No milk, cheese or any other dairy tainted product, like massed potatoes or other things we don't always think of as dairy, might have dairy in it. All of that was out. No chicken broth based soups. The list goes on and on.
So what do you eat when you are a vegan. Tons of soy and soy based products ( only non- gm soy).
Fruits and all kinds of vegetables.
I'm a decent cook and I love fruits and veggies, but it didn't take long before the options seemed to close in on me and I stopped looking forward to eating. At lease the way I used to. That is when I discovered an important thing about veganism.
When so much is off limits, food becomes a less and less important part of your day. I found myself eating when I was starving, not because it was lunch or dinner time. I began to crave certain fruit and the taste of steamed broccoli with lemon and pepper delighted my taste buds like any steak or anything else ever had. The process took about a month, but once I arrived at this point of not thinking about food until I was being disturbed by the growl in my belly I understood how food had been seducing me before.
Commercial TV is the worst. I had to stop watching so much TV, the ads were driving me nuts. I love cheese pizza, not pepperoni not sausage, just plain old cheese pizza with ample amounts of garlic on it.
You can't believe how much the pizza industry must spends on advertising. Then every fast food place in the world has six or seven different ads running all the time. They are seducing us to eat their foods.
When you are a vegan, you are no longer their target market and the ads seem silly and corny. But when a double bacon cheese burger is your thing, it's hard to ignore the 1080i close up of a dripping pile of flesh, bacon and cheese.
While I was on this diet, my taste buds rejected anything processed or containing any chemical additives or what ever else they put in the dipping sauce for fried zucchini.
One night, late, I , realized that I hadn't eaten all day, other than a fruit smoothie in the morning, I stopped and ordered the only thing a vegan can, at a fast food establishment, fries and onion rings. Not a bright idea. The dipping sauces tasted like a mixture of cough syrup and motor oil and they left me feeling like a bag of rocks had been installed into my belly.
Soon, I could go all day with two peaches a wedge of watermelon. Or two fruit smoothies and sometimes less.
Then it became perfectly clear that I couldn't eat as much as I used to, and after a meal, rather than having a weighed down feeling, I was energized. Strange, but it turns out less is more.
One of my favorite meals was so simple and satisfying that I'm going to share it.
Super Berry Smoothie
½ cup each of :
Strawberries
Blueberries
Raspberries
2 tlb spoons of honey
1 cup of soy milk
Ice.
Combine and blend until you can't take the sound of the blender another second.
Veggie Sandwich
9 Grain thick sliced wholewheat bread
Hummus
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
White Onion
Alfalfa sprouts
Lemon Juice
Toast the bread, use hummus like you would mayonnaise and top with sprouts and a squeeze of lemon juice. Slice the Cucumbers, tomatoes, and Onions, and pile them on.
Sounds lame, but it's incredible how you feel after such a simple meal.
Try it, and tell me what you think.
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OH MY GOD! You turned gay? ROFL!
ReplyDeleteWe had this discussion before and as you know, I will never touch soy products because I am a man and do not care to grow tits. I know Americans eat far too much red meat but chicken, eggs and milk are the best proteins. As an active sports fanatic and gym rat, I need to consume large amounts of protein, thus, a gay diet, I mean vegan diet would not suffice.
Do not pull a Bill Maher on me. I love his show but want to slap his face when he goes on a PETA rant and insults those who actually have balls and eat meat.
Humans are designed to eat animal products of some sorts, maybe not a whole slab of cow wrapped in bacon, but some animal product. What if you could go back in time a few thousand years and kick it with a tribe of early man? How do you think you would fair if you rejected a slain deer and instead said, "no thanks, I will just eat the nuts and twigs I found out in the pasture." Vegans would be the first to die.
Vegans put out nonsense propaganda claiming to be so healthy and what not. Other than Tony Gonzalez of the Falcons, I have yet to see a strong, muscular, healthy male vegan (he is actually not a full vegan but a vegetarian). They always look scrawny, weak and "earthy" (another way to say dirty, unkept or living in a tree house look).
Your topic today really touched me off because you know how I feel about that lifestyle.
That sounds like relief to me. I can bare witness to the fruit smoothie; absolutely filling and healthy. While I too continue to improve my diet, recipes like these are no risk. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteCurv
Sip, you dip. You missed the point of the piece, it wasn't to promote vegan-ism, but to make you take notice of how food affects the way you feel and live.
ReplyDeleteIt's simple, these days the meat the average American eats has more pollutants then ever before in human history. The shit just ain't fit for human consumption.
The test of this is to try it and tell me I'm wrong, that you actually don't feel better, clearer mind, more energy.
If you all caught up with if eating soy will give you tits, you should avoid soy products, but don't knock the principal of eating with sound judgment and wisdom.
Good day, Sir !
slow down Kodiak! I know you are promoting healthier living. I commend you on your new lifestyle....even if it is a little light in the shoes. LOL!!
ReplyDeleteWhen someone asks me for advice on how to get into good shape. I always tell them that working out at the gym is the easiest part. Changing your eating habits is harder than most people think. You can never eat too much fruits and vegetables. Add some whole grain, high fiber bread to the mix and some lean meat or chicken and you can't go wrong. There is no reason to ever eat something packaged, filled with preservatives etc. If you cant pronounce one of the ingredients, DO NOT EAT IT.
Bravo! So you do agree, in principal.
ReplyDeleteI used to tell my daughter to read the ingredients from last to first if I didn't want her to eat it. The first seventeen syllable word, back on the shelf.
This is a good start, but please stay away from soy or at least limit it's use. Research soy. Also soy has a lot of sodium in most of it's product. I went on a raw fruit and vegetable diet last year for 3 months. (Best thing I ever did). I went on a 30 day earlier in the year, and plan to do it again soon. What happens is that when you eat fruit and veggies your body is getting all of the nutrients that it needs. Most prepared foods that we eat lack nutrients so our bodies are always craving more food. A simple way to eat is to not eat anything in a box or can, and only eat food that is on the perimeter of the store, DON'T GO DOWN THE AISES!
ReplyDeleteMy best experience of this was a three week stay at the Ann Wigmore Institute in Puerto Rico a number of years ago. I was already a vegetarian but wanted an intensive cleansing experience. Ann Wigmore was the woman who promoted wheat grass. At the institure you not only drink wheat grass, you use it as an enema twice a day. But what really got me was a diet that was beyond raw - all greens were prepared as soup, nuts and sprouts were used extensively. What I experienced was not only as you describe, but a spiritual clarity that I never had before (although being able to walk a few feet to the beach and do prayers at 5 in the morning before yoga helped that too). One day I cheated. I had an enchilada - loaded with cheese - within a few hours I had a massive headache. Food affects not only the physical body - the spiritual and the emotional as well. Wish I was as "clean" as I was then, it is a journey, but I know for sure that destination is divine!
ReplyDelete