Hello! And Happy New Year! It's a perfect time to start fresh and make healthier decisions.
I have been accomplishing some goals of my own, and it feels so good to make good efforts. Who's with me?!
Today i want to encourage any who read this, to watch a few documentaries about food. The first, is "FOOD INC." the second is "Forks Over Knives." You can find both of these on Netflix. In my opinion, it will help push you in the right direction for your diet this year. I want your feed back, so watch them and then comment, so I can hear your opinions.
I have been considering for a while, whether I want to try a Vegetarian or a Vegan diet for a while now. It's just such a big commitment. If you are rolling your eyes at me, please know that it has nothing to do with saving animals, or me being against hunting, or anything like that. I LOVE MEAT! That's why this decision has been difficult. BUT, I have been doing my research and the more I study, the more I discover that we, as a society, eat way too much meat/dairy. I know that we should "eat meat sparingly," but in the world we live in today, it's not convenient to make that change. The more I've been conscious of my meat intake, the more I realize I eat it for almost two meals a day, most days. There's no way that can be sparingly, in my opinion. So how do I change this?
Are some of you thinking... "Wait, but you need meat to give you protein!" or "You have to drink milk and eat cheese for calcium!" The truth is, you can get those nutrients from so many other kinds of foods. Just get educated about food, so that you can understand how to balance your diet!
In all honesty, I have been slowly cutting meat out of my personal diet for a while. Not because I'm involved with PIDA, or I am an animal lover, but because I would like to experiment. I want to see the improvement in my body by eating a whole foods plant based diet. This requires creativity with recipes and a little extra money buying organic foods, but in my opinion I think it will be worth it.
So, here I go on my journey to eating much healthier! I will continue to post about it. For right now, I'm simply cutting out meat, and eating much less dairy. My goal is to cut the dairy out for a while too, and see how it goes. Will I do it for a month? A year? Who knows, but for now it is purely experimental for me.
I bought a bunch of groceries over the last few weeks and have been trying new things, new recipes and such. I will post things that are tolerable, and things that I just can't choke down, so that if you decide to make some changes, you won't go through trial and error like me :)
Go watch the documentaries I recommended! Let me know what you think:)
We really liked Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (also on Netflix). I haven't finished Forks over Knives yet (Matthew was annoyed with who they considered "experts" so we turned it off, haha) I cut out gluten and refined sugar, eat dairy sparingly, switched to only coconut and olive oil, and avoid processed foods. I try to follow an almost Paleo diet. This works really well for me. I thought I would go vegetarian recently (when suggested by my doctor for health reasons) but it was much more difficult than I had anticipated. Especially if you are the only one in your family doing it. Like you, I've teetered on the Vegan/Vegetarian/Raw thing for a long time, and mostly just instituted a lot of theirs tenets in my eating, but never did anything official. Instead I have found this happy medium that is working for us. I've been able to reduce our meals to one chicken breast to feed our whole family dinner many nights, which is close enough to vegetarian for me right now. I highly recommend Dr. Mark Hyman's books. His book Ultraprevention is a little old, but still totally relevant, and he has several other books that cover most of the same material that are newer. His whole philosophy is preventing disease through diet. My other suggestion is when cutting things our of your diet, don't try to replace them with "fakes". It usually doesn't taste good, is processed (even if it's 'healthy') and won't satisfy what you are craving. Just find some other kind of REAL food to take it's place. (Ex: I use avacados instead of cheese (or fake cheese) in my enchiladas...i will NEVER make them any other way! they are SO good!)
ReplyDeleteI could never go completely vegan, but I am with you on this. About two years ago after I had Rushton, I started eating a much more plant-based diet. Most of what I could now is vegetarian- lots of beans, quinoa, etc. for protein. Of course, I still love a great burger or a bowl of ice cream once in awhile.
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