I am in the process of transitioning from a mostly plant based diet, to an all plant based vegan diet. Here you will get the good, the bad, and the ugly of my journey. From the effects on my health and well-being, to my experience with recipes and different vegan foods. I am a notoriously picky eater, and my husband loves to joke about when we first met because all I would eat was a plain cheeseburger with ketchup. So this journey will be a challenge for me, but my hope is that my tastes adapt to this new lifestyle so that I can live a long healthy life.
So a little back story on yours truly! I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, in the typical conservative household, and we at the typical US diet of meat, carbs and vegetables. My mom did her best to feed us healthy foods, she recycled, and tried to instill a sense of health personal care in her kids. I was always a relatively skinny kid, but my dad loved to tell me I was “fluffy”, so I was pretty insecure about even the smallest amount of fat on my body.
Fast forward to the year I turned 20, and the universe gifted me with something I will forever be thankful for, my son. He was an unexpected surprise, and his father did not stick around after the stick turned positive. It’s safe to say that was a rough time, and once he was born my weight dropped to an unhealthy level do to me trying to raise a newborn, go to school, and work to support him. I would not be who or where I am now without the help and sacrifice of my parents who let us live with them, and my mom stopped working to watch my baby boy so I could work and build us a life. My mom continued to try to make healthy food for me in the form of things like Salmon, Rice and Peas, Meatloaf, Spaghetti with meat sauce (for real though, her spaghetti is out of this world!) and garlic bread, you know, typical Italian momma foods. Despite her best efforts, my depression and exhausted left me with next to no appetite, and what I did eat was not about nutrition, but comfort.
We got through it, and when my son was 3 we met my now husband. He and I fit together immediately, and like a lot of couples who fall in love and feel happy and comfortable, we got very over weight. We would go to Buffalo Wild Wings one night, and order the pizza the next. For the first six months things went this way, and it wasn’t until we got engaged a year later that we realized we needed to shed some of those wings from our waistlines.We were married one year after we got engaged (May the 4th be with you!) and I had lost about 20 pounds. During that time I was of the mind that a “Calorie is a calorie” and as long as I stayed within my calorie restriction I would lose the weight, nutrition aside.
So my son was 5 at this time, and within a split second of being married we were expecting. Now it’s worth noting that my pre-pregnancy weight for my first child was 169, and I got as high as 199 during that pregnancy. My second pregnancy STARTED at 198, and stopped at 230. This second pregnancy turned out to be much more difficult as my pubic bone had, for all intents and purposes, split. Walking was very difficult, and even sitting was hard if I wasn’t reclined back. I had to leave my work a month prior to my due date due to my inability to walk or sit at a desk. During this pregnancy, as a lot of women do, I ate whatever sounded good at the time. Cinnabon, pizza, cinnabon-pizza, and after my son was born, I didn’t really lose much weight. I stayed right around 230 until he was about 9 months old, and that’s I realized that I didn’t like having my picture taken anymore. I didn’t like looking at myself in the mirror, I wouldn’t buy clothes if they were the slighted bit form fitting, because I hated the body I was in.
So we bought a treadmill, and I got serious about my exercise and again, staying within my calorie restriction. I lost 30lbs in about 6 months, and when the weather got warm I bought a new bike and starting biking. I worked my way from only being able to go around the block, to riding 15 miles a day in an hour. In the summer of 2017 my best friend, who was vegetarian, was going to be moving to our city and staying with us for a few months. I had been toying with the idea of vegetarianism for a while, but was struggling to break old habits. I decided to go vegetarian while he lived with us, so he did not feel like the “odd man out” in our house, and I just never went back. I did still eat pepperoni pizza, because I felt that I was more likely to stick with a mostly plant based diet if I did not cut out all the things that I enjoyed. The weight dropped off, and in the end I hit my goal of getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight of 169. I was so happy when I saw that number on the scale, that my subconscious went “oh cool, goal achieved! Time to celebrate with pizza!” and I celebrated with pizza, and cereal, and more pizza. I also received a medical diagnosis during this time that set of a string of anxiety and depression, that is something I will discuss at a later time. As the weather got cold again, my motivation to working out faded, and I continued to eat poorly. Needless today, I did not stay at 169 for long.
Here we are now, I have stayed on my mostly plant based diet for almost two years, and despite this last winters terrible eating and lack of exercise, I have only gained back about 20lbs of the 60lbs that I had lost. I realized a lot of the old feelings of shame about how I looked were returning, despite not being nearly as heavy as I was before. So I busted out my trusty calorie tracking app, and went back to making sure I stayed within my calorie restriction. Then one day while I was at work, I decided to throw on the documentary, “What the Health” which my husband had watched a year prior, and his immediate response was, “I’m going vegan” I laughed at my meat loving husband, and suggested maybe he just cut back on his meat intake first.
I watched What the Health, and was immediately horrified that not only had I been eating this stuff for years, but also feeding it to my kids (my littlest LOVES yogurt). I did not think it wise to immediately change my views because of one documentary so I began researching. I watched TED talks and youtube videos from people like Mic the Vegan and Earthling Ed, and realized just how much this lifestyle hit home for me. I have not always been conscious of my impact on the environment, but one of my reasons for transitioning to a mostly plant based diet was due to cruelty in factory farms, and animal farming effects on the environment. I decided I would try a vegan diet for a week, and see how I felt and if the food was satisfying enough, but I was not optimistic.
I am currently on day 5, and there have been uncomfortable parts, like bloating and gas, and on day two I felt a little like I was drunk all day, not to mention I have the shortest temper known to man at the moment.
On the other hand, I feel AMAZING. I have been struggling with my depression the last couple of months, and this week I have felt HAPPY and energized. I am finding myself drawn to upbeat music, that makes me want to just dance around. My son and I sat down and watched some Earthling Ed videos last night, and had a long talk about health and the environment (keep in mind that he is 9 now) and he said he wants to go vegan as well, so this weekend we are going grocery shopping and are going to learn new vegan recipes together.
I don’t know if I will be able to stick with this lifestyle long term, but I am certainly going to try. I will share with you here my ups, my downs, my trials and my errors. I will give you a first hand look on what it is to go from a meat lover to a vegan, so you can see what it is like.
Thank you for following my journey.
