Plant-Based Diet

February 11, 2013

As with many people, as I started having children, I started paying closer attention to food. I only wanted my children to eat food that was nourishing their bodies. At one, my first child was still not eating what Mommy & Daddy ate because she would have two veggies, one fruit, and one grain on her plate while Mommy and Daddy were eating…wait for it…Hamburger Helper! You heard me. Anyway, we realized this needed to change.

So little by little, we have been eating healthier. That baby is 6.5 now! It does NOT seem that long ago!  A couple of years ago, I read a book by Dr. Furhman called “Eat to Live”. It is a wonderful book and in it he talked about how greens actually have more calcium than milk per calorie and how your body absorbs more of the calcium from greens/veggies than from milk. Amazing! This book recommended eating a vegetarian/vegan diet but gave some modified recipes including meat but that were still very healthy. I encouraged my husband to read through it but with working so much (2 jobs), he just wasn’t interested in more than a skim. Not a big deal, we just tried to add more salads and drop processed food for the most part.

About a year & a half ago, a friend told me to watch “Forks Over Knives” – a documentary about how choosing the correct things to go into your body (with a fork) can keep you off of the surgeon’s table (the knife). It talks about eating a plant-based diet while cutting out oil, and all animal products. It is WONDERFUL! Very informative. Not preachy at all. I asked hubby to listen to it (he listens to movies while he edits pictures). He listened to it…and then stopped editing and watched the whole thing a second time that night…and then said, ‘okay, let’s do it. Let’s not eat meat.’ WHAT?! That is not what I was going for! I was just looking to eat healthier – not drop meat! How do we do that?

But that is what he wanted to do – so I started looking for recipes. There are a plethora! I started at WholeFoodMommies.com for recipe ideas and went from there. We decided to try it for 6 weeks. He decided to drop sodas and meat. We also dropped cheese and milk. We tried to eat one head of romaine lettuce/day (what Dr. Furhman recommends). I found myself hungry and assumed it was protein that I needed. I did add beans to my salad, which was fine, but it turns out, it was just my body needing more fat – imagine looking for ways to add more fat to your diet 🙂 woowhoo 🙂

A month after we started eating a plant-based diet, I got pregnant (of course) and as any mom knows, when you are pregnant, not only can you not stand long enough to chop a vegetable; they are not very palatable. The only thing I could stomach was processed junk 😛 Once I had my baby, I was able to go back to chopping more veggies and therefore, eating more plant-based. Yay! 😀 We do not eat a head of lettuce a day anymore, as we probably should; we went back to regular milk for cereal, and I still have not mastered the elusive kale chip but we are still soda free and meat free in our house a year and a half later!

We are not done with our food journey. We are dabbling in juicing (juice fasts and the like) and are trying to build & expand our garden so we can eat even better produce (sorry Walmart, but your produce section is PITIFUL!).

My dream is to one day NOT drool every time I think of Pop Tarts (as I wipe the drool off my mouth, just thinking of them…mmmmmmmmmmm…)

How is your food journey coming? What is your Achilles heel?

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