So after a long hiatus and completely burying the idea of blogging about my little cooking/healthy eating fascination under a mountain of unfulfilling part time jobs, I am back, thanks to a DVD of “Julie and Julia” I received in the mail a few days ago. And I decided tonight, after a particularly amazing yoga class, that I would treat myself to an evening of watching it while baking some vegan oatmeal muffins. Lo and behold, the muffins are AMAZING (and I will post the recipe! ) and here I am at my computer resurrecting this wonderful website back from the dead.
So where have I been and what have I been eating? Well, shortly after finishing my juice fast, I went back to the completely vegan side and stopped dabbling in animal products. My body feels fantastic and I really don’t have a terribly hard time eating healthy and staying full. In fact, being vegan has given me a kind of freedom I have never had before in my life. It gives me the freedom of not being on a diet. I don’t count calories anymore and I eat till I’m full. If I can make it vegan, I can eat it. Bagels, muffins, cookies, ice cream, anything at all I want, I allow myself to eat it. Now let’s be honest, I don’t live on these kind of treats or I would surely gain weight, but I never deny myself them. It’s a whole new world for me. I’m pretty sure this is the longest in my life I have gone without being on a diet. To be honest, I now finally understand what they mean when they say ‘it can’t be a diet, it has to be a lifestyle’. Vegan is my lifestyle, it’s not some crazy fad I’m doing for the next 3 months till bathing suit season or something ridiculous like that, it’s just how I eat.
I don’t want to preach and I would never force my views on anyone else (or judge them for eating meat!) but I figured I’d explain a little more about my particular lifestyle choice because I know it might seem a bit extreme. I love animals, yes, I have an awesome little Westie named Charlie who might as well be my little brother. However, I am not a vegan ONLY because of this. I truly disagree with the way our animals are handled in mass quantities and pretty much bred to be slaughtered. It’s gross and I personally don’t need that kind of karma in my life but for the sake of food chain logic, let’s go beyond that. The hormones, the pesticides, the infections, and the illnesses of these animals are seeping into our food supply and that is truly what I want to stay away from. Cows, chickens, pigs, etc are fed hormones to make them grow faster and gain weight so that the farms can expedite the slaughtering process. Now I absolutely do not need those kinds of hormones in my system, nooo thannk youu! Not to mentions the illnesses and infections these animals get because of the treacherous conditions they live in or the pesticides put on the grass/greens their fed – completely unappetizing.
Enough about that though, in all fairness I must admit I do slip off the vegan wagon from time to time and as a lover of food and cooking, it is hard to deny how amazing some animal products taste. I can’t promise I’ll be vegan for the rest of my life but I’m pretty sure I’ll always err toward the vegan side of the scale. I confess to missing fish (particularly salmon) and brie the most but I don’t ever see myself eating steak or drinking milk again.
* If your interested in learning more about living vegan, I strongly recommend checking out the books “The Kind Diet” and “Skinny Bitch”.