Saturday, February 11, 2012

Day 42--I've been neglecting my blog, but not my health!

I can't believe I'm almost halfway through this challenge already.  I keep track of my progress with this pretty calendar and some stickers.  I get a flower sticker for every day that I have remained vegan  (you'll notice some "good try" happy face stickers on days that I accidentally had egg or milk in some food item, and one day that has nothing on it because that was the day I had beer.  The star and heart stickers are days I exercised and since this photo is from my January page, you'll see that for the first month, there wasn't that much.



In some ways being vegan has been a huge adjustment, but in others, it's really been pretty easy.  I want to take a minute and just take stock of where I am vs. 42 days ago.

I have more energy, but maybe not as much as I thought I would.  I'm happy to be caffeine-free though.  I bought one decaf coffee since the challenge started, and I thought it tasted too heavy and too muddy, so I don't bother with decaf.  I have a nice assortment of teas, and I have hot teas in the morning and at night, and iced during the day.  I don't sleep very well though.  I average about 6 hours per night, and I usually take a nap during the day.  I suppose it sorts itself out to 8 hours, but I'd like to be more productive during my daytime, and sleeping doesn't help me accomplish this.  Napping is just so seductive when the house is empty though.

My weight has been a pretty major frustration.  After the 8lb loss of the first two weeks (when I couldn't figure out what to eat), I discovered food that tasted good again and I came back up about halfway.  So yeah, that's about a four lb loss for the month, but while I wasn't expecting a magic bullet to weight loss, I expected better than that.

I'm no longer taking the arthritis medication, but within a couple of days of stopping, any inflammation improvements I'd been experiencing started reversing right away.  I have another prescription for the meds, but I don't want to be on that stuff long-term if I can help it, so I'm looking into alternative methods.  I'm also looking suspiciously at wheat.  I've suspected a gluten intolerance for quite awhile, and even was tested for celiac last year.  The celiac test was negative, but that doesn't rule out an intolerance.  Finally it was settled that my symptoms were probably due to a lactose intolerance, but at the time, I didn't really give up dairy.  I expected those symptoms to go away when I went vegan, but they didn't, and when you've eliminated so many things from your diet, it's easier to examine the effects of what's left.  I've been experimenting with wheat  free days, and when I do, my joint pain is less.  I haven't done it for enough days in a row to know for sure (it's hard), but it's something I want to look into more.

Now for the good stuff (and there's a lot of it!).  I've really been enjoying most of my food!  I actually think being vegan is making me a better cook, because so much of what I cook is just imagination and experimentation.  What things do I have in the house that could go together and taste good?  It's easy to make meat taste good, and I often think that what I prepared would be a whole lot better with a little chicken in it.  It takes a little more effort for me to figure out satisfying flavor combinations when I'm working with different options, but when I do, it's so satisfying!  I've also developed a big appreciation for tofu and tempeh.  Those two ingredients have transformed a lot of dishes from pretty good to really satisfying.  I don't think of them as meat substitutes, but they do lend an umami element to a lot of dishes that I would definitely miss!

I love the way my food looks too.  It's so much prettier than it used to be.  Even the simple stuff...This is one of my recent lunch wraps.


This one is a garlic and herb wrap (a wheat product I would sorely miss), some bok choy, mushrooms, tempeh sauteed in some soy sauce and sesame oil and Goddess dressing.  Super crazy yummy!

Dax and I have been having a few more date nights than usual.  Partly because WE FINALLY CLOSED ON THE HOUSE this week, and partly because we're losing our babysitter soon.  Cori has decided to move back to Missouri and will be leaving us on the 22nd.  :(  So anyway, we've been trying a few more restaurants around town, and although I've had one other night where my only option was french fries (and that was o.k.  It was Dax's turn to pick a place.  He lets me pick most of the time.), and I've had a few menus where I only had one choice from a five page menu.  But I've also been to a few places that had so many options that I can't wait to go back and try something else.  Last night we had Japanese and I had some to-die-for teriyaki mushrooms!  I can't wait to go back there!  One of my favorite restaurant meals I've had was this great dish I got from a Vietnamese restaurant.  I have no idea what it was called, but it's tofu, green beans, and carrots in a curry sauce.  I managed to get a picture because I had half of it leftover for a great lunch the next day!


Finally, the best new thing I'm doing is taking yoga classes at Shine On Yogasomething (yoga, biking, walking the dog, hooping) six out of ten days so far this month, and I'm hoping to improve on that even more.

I'm also going to try and update my blog more frequently!  This entry took forever!

2 comments:

  1. Yoga, fun - you go girl. Of course I'd be more than happy to help you go GF I'll share recipes. Cooking GF is usually easy it's just the baking and snacking that is tricker. Sorry you'd have to skip out on the tempeh too. But mostly I wanted to say, good luck with finding alternatives to the meds, that can be difficult but a well worth the while search. - HK

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