21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart: Veggie Daddy Approved

21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart by Dr. Neal Barnard. I have been perusing this book in the bookstore a few times, and every time I look at it, I am more intrigued by it. Anyone that sees me reading it must think I'm pretty odd because I weigh 140 pounds, 6 feet tall--I am thin as a rail, so why in God's name am I reading a book about how to lose weight? But I am sure no one actually gave a rat's ass about what book I was reading in the store, after all, they have better things to do, don't they?

But check this book out. Especially if you're a vegetarian, like I (and my wife) have mostly been for the past ten years or so. There are some very unique ideas here that I am just glomming onto. What? Let me explain.

My whole life, I have always had a very high metabolism. I could eat anything and not get fat. And I was always hungry. I mostly ate crap, of course. Cookies and ice cream were/are my favorite. But ever since I stopped eating meat, I kept feeling like I was missing something, like the meals weren't substantial. And I would be starving before I went to bed, too. I was actually tired of having such a high metabolism because I had to keep eating to have energy and I wanted to do other things besides eat. I was never a big eater either. I drank so much milk as a kid I probably had white blood.

So I was startled by the abrupt and immediate changes I underwent once I became a vegan. As I started to eat more real food, more fruits, vegetables, and grains, I noticed I became way more sated than usual. I actually felt full and went to bed with a full stomach. Why was this? I thought eating ice cream and cookies, cheese and butter would certainly fill me up. It must have been because I wasn't eating any meat? That's what I used to think. Not the case anymore, and this book explains why.

When you eat plant-based whole foods, your stomach actually tells your brain it is full. When you eat refined carbs or animal fats, you're body says, "Hey, I'm still hungry!" and so you have to eat more until you feel sated. Your stomach still hasn't got all that it needs to register the satiety point. I already knew this from my own experience, but I didn't understand the science behind it.

Another fascinating thing this book points out is that when you eat a whole foods, plant-based "diet," you can eat as much of these whole foods as you want so you don't have to count your calories--everything you eat, your body loves. You can stop worrying about how much you've eaten because you learn (as you eat them) that these foods actually make you feel full, so you can't overeat. It's impossible. You'll also feel more light on your feet, rather than that heavy feeling I use to get after a "heavy" meal. 

So this book outlines what exactly you should be eating to trick your stomach into feeling full. This is what was missing from my "vegetarian" diet of so many years. It explains why I do not feel so hungry anymore. And what a great feeling it is! You have to experience it to believe it, of course.

So now I am beginning to understand why I always felt so hungry. It wasn't because I stopped eating meat. I was eating cheese, eggs, milk, butter, all filling right? Just calorie-wise, but your stomach says, "I am still not getting what I need!" and so we eat more and more until our stomach goes "Ding!" and then our brain hears it and goes ""Ding!" I was so hungry all the time because I wasn't getting what I needed: real food.

So what's wrong with animal fats? When you eat too many calories, your body stores it as fat. This is true for animals, too, all the animals we like to eat: pigs, chickens, cows. So when we decide to eat animals, we're simply eating their fat-storage. They eat the food, store it as fat. Then we decide to eat their fat. It's just empty calories, nothing of substance there. We get the protein, but we get protein from plant-based whole foods without the fat so cut the animal foods out and eat the vegetable foods--especially if you're trying to lose weight. It's a no-brainer. And there are far more calories per gram of fat than of carbohydrate, so you can get fat but not feel full. This book really helps explain how to feel full. And when you feel full, you stop eating. "Ding!" 

Eat real food. Eat as much of it as you want. You can't go wrong. You don't have to worry over how much you eat. What a load off. Literally.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Whoever Likes Vegan Cheese-Whiz, Raise Your Hand

FOOD DIARY

That picture up there, that was my wife's lunch:

Clearly that's a sandwich there, but inside there is a walnut-chickpea spread w/ cucumbers, tomatoes, butter lettuce, and banana peppers. She also had left-over beet salad. (She's rarely home for lunch so that was a nice treat.)

I just had leftover pizza and beet salad. Big-ass glass of water, and I was full.

My youngest, she also ate the walnut-chickpea sandwich. You know, little bites, nothing crazy-like.

At Snack, I had the last peanut-butter and chocolate muffin and I had a piece of the carrot cake I was too full to eat from the night before. The cake my wife made which she wasn't supposed to make because mothers shouldn't cook anything on Mother's Day, am I right? Right. Yet, she still sneaked that cake in there without me knowing.

I also had a pear, to keep with my eating-real-food-that-is-alive principle. I eat raw for breakfast and in between lunch and dinner. So, yeah, a pear worked great after eating a muffin and cake, all home-made, of course.

While I have you on the phone, I just wanted to do a little math. The big-ass glass of carrot, orange, and lemon juice I had for breakfast this morning would probably cost $4-5, perhaps more depending on where you're buying it. So let's take the conservative end of the spectrum and say it's $4. Now let's say you buy one of these every morning on your way to work or at lunch or wherever. Fresh squeezed juice of any kind is very expensive unless you make it at home.

So, fresh-squeezed juice every day for 30 days= $120. Nope, I wouldn't recommend it. That's just a little less than what we spend on all of our groceries every single week, which is about $175. We just weren't meant to buy fresh juice every day. So we make it at home.

Get an awesome juicer and juicing becomes a breeze. You can see a picture of our Omega juicer in my previous post.

We used to buy the Tropicana Orange Juice in the big-ass carton which they have now slimmed down to give it a nice sleek-but-we're-actually-screwing-you-over kind of look. It was $6.20 last time I checked, it could be more now. Go through one in a week with your family and you're spending $24/mo. on not-really-fresh, already nutrient-deficient orange juice. The longer it sits, the less nutrients it has, of course. So you're spending even more for juice of an inferior quality. It will never taste as good as fresh-squeezed juice seconds after you juice it. Never. And the more preservatives it has to "keep it fresh", the deader it becomes. And processed food? Dead as all get-out. Yet the companies sell it as juice. Save yourself the trouble and the money. Don't buy juice and keep it in the fridge unless you plan to use it in recipes or something. Or give to your kids for their lunches.

Here's what we had for dinner.

That's a Philly-cheese style slider with grilled peppers and onions. (From Vegan Diner.) Salad lightly dusted with hemp seeds. Power food! I ate two sliders, and I am stuffed--to 80% of my capacity, of course, following on with Veggie Daddy Rule #2.

"What the hell, is that vegan cheese-whiz?" you might be asking. Or "Is that some kind of crazy-ass vegan cheese?" you might also wonder.

Yes, it is, and it's something I don't think I ever would've eaten a year ago. It's made with cashews and it is truly awesome. It is incredible what you can do with cashews. Short of having sex with them, you can do almost anything!

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Food Rule#2: Eat to 80% of Your Capacity

12:50 PM

I am back from City Hall which took over 4 hours. Since I only had a glass of juice for breakfast, by 10 A.M. I was pretty hungry, and so popped a couple of homemade pumpkin-oatmeal cookies into my mouth. I didn't have any other food with me, but I managed to last until lunch time. Though I couldn't help but notice several people next to me who had Cokes, Diet Cokes (which is way worse than regular Coke) and Cheetos for their snacks, neither of which I would call food; Michael Pollan says "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants," the byline on the title of his remarkable book In Defense of Food.

Pollan's rule of eating food corresponds with my Food Rule #1: Eat foods that are dense in nutrients. It should go without saying that if you eat actual food, as opposed to processed food like Coke and Cheetos, then you are most likely getting some quality nutrients in your system. Doing otherwise is like putting the wrong kind of gas in your car, but you would never do that, would you? After all, you don't want your car to break down. And yet for many of us, it seems okay to go ahead and break down our bodies/minds by eating non-food daily. How did this happen? Ignorance is bliss...and tasty!

FOOD DIARY

For lunch I ate:

Meal:

a bbq-seitan sandwich with banana peppers on a toasted Kaiser roll.

crispy potato wedges with ketchup

water

"What the hell is seitan?" you might be asking. That's a good question. You can buy it at the store, or make your own. My wife made a seitan-loaf yesterday from the cookbook, Vegan Diner. Comfort food, basically.

And no, I am not a vegan. But I don't eat CAFO meat, either. And after seeing the movie, Earthlings, I don't think I could ever eat it again. Seeing this movie is like taking the red pill in The Matrix. You just don't want to know... After about ten minutes in, I was so horrified I had to turn it off. I still have chills of the images.

I was thinking after the lunch I would eat some of the peanut butter and chocolate muffins sitting there on top of the fridge, but my body/mind is really telling me the bbq-sandwich was quite enough, thank you.

Which brings me to Food Rule #2: Eat to 80% of your capacity. This rule is suggested in The Three Pillars of Zen. Also mentioned from this book is that Zen Buddhists are basically vegans. They've been eating this way for a long, long time.

Eat Bright,

Veggie Daddy