Vegan-ish

This summer, we made a major change to our lifestyle that must be mentioned. Back in May 2010, Scott and I both read the book The China Study and it changed our lives. Since then, we've been trying to eat vegan-ish. It's a BIG change, but I think we are doing pretty well! It took me a couple of weeks to wrap my head around this shift in how I think about food. I had to figure out new staples to keep in the house. New ideas for meals. It took me a while to figure out what exactly made a meal and how much food is enough. The kids had to adjust too (they are also eating vegan-ish). We are now more that 2 months into the change and it's going great.

The results so far... we all have more energy and crave the healthy whole foods that we've been eating. I'm sleeping better. I've lost some weight (although, that's not the goal). Lily is now off of her constipation medicine! That's been a battle for most of her little life and we solved the problem with a healthy diet. Whoo hoo! My tastes have changed and now I don't really like the flavor of animal foods. It's amazing.

I say Vegan-ish because we are not strictly vegan. We're trying to eat a whole foods plant based diet. We're trying not to eat too many processed foods, but when we do, if they have traces of milk or eggs, I'm not worried. I'm not worried about the piece of cake at a birthday party or an occasional cookie. In my opinion, if we have desserts and treats rarely, it doesn't really matter what they are. We try to have some fish every other week. I think there are benefits to having some fish, but not too much. Scott really didn't want to give up bacon, so we have that sometimes too. None of us have a food allergy, so there is not reason for us to be very strict.

We still have some things to work out with our diet. We're finding Austin to be very Vegan friendly, but when we travel, not as much. I've got a bunch of cook books I'm trying to work through and we're figuring out what we like and don't like. Having guests over is another challenge. Since I am constantly trying out new recipes, I don't yet have good meals to serve when we have company.

I certainly would love for everyone to read this book. However, I found the book to be very powerful and it changed my life. If you aren't ready to take on a big change or don't want to, then it's not the right time.

This is a life change for us. It doesn't happen overnight. I'm sure I'll have more to post about it later.