Vegan ver. 2.0

I saw a program on public TV about reversing diabetes (and being generally healthy and loosing weight) with Dr. Neal Barnard. I watched it twice. Jon even watched it with me once. Dr. Barnard stresses a low fat vegan diet. I'm going to try (again) to do vegan, but a hybrid version. Meaning, it isn't all or nothing. If I'm eating out and there's no tasty vegan food, I'll eat a steak and enjoy it. But for home purposes and to the extent practicable, I'm following this:

http://www.21daykickstart.org/mealplan/index.cfm

It has 3 weeks of meal plans, recipes and shopping lists. All it doesn't do is shop and cook for you. (You can also google Dr. Barnard for more information.)

When I tried to go vegan last summer, for whatever reason, it had to be all or nothing. It did not even occur to me it was OK to, in certain circumstances, not strictly adhere to veganism. Let me provide some details.

Why I decided to try vegan-ism last summer:

I couldn’t sleep one night and turned the radio on to Coast to Coast am, my favorite radio program (and worthy of it’s own blog by me at some point). The guest was discussing why we should all eat vegan. For all I know it could have been Dr. Barnard on the air. By the time the program was over at 4:00am, I was convinced I absolutely needed to convert! I posted on Facebook that if anybody wanted to get me a birthday present, I’d be happy to get a vegan cookbook. My sister, Kathy, got me exactly that.

Why it didn’t work:

About one or two days later, I had to travel out of town for a couple of days for my job. You try eating vegan when you are out of town! There were vegetarian offerings that were mostly really nasty tasting. Vegan is REALLY REALLY difficult to find in restaurants, unless you like the taste of lettuce with no dressing.

And then, of course, the fact my husband was really, let’s say, surprised, to hear from his brother I’d decided to eat vegan. Ooops. It didn’t last long. Last summer I was out of town frequently. Also, I didn’t find a website like the one above to help me with a whole plan.

For me it is mostly about health, not a moral issue.

And this time, I have discussed it with Jon prior to posting this on my blog. He is in agreement with my intention. I’ll try to follow the vegan diet here at home. I may still do some dairy (skim milk, half and half in my coffee (until I switch to tea, which I take plain), and yogurt), but I’ll mostly be vegan. The recipes and food look really good to me. It is all stuff I like, so it won’t be like forcing myself to eat rice cakes (blah!).

And if we are at dinner out or at someone’s house, I’ll eat what’s there. At a restaurant if they don’t have a vegan choice that makes me think, “Oh, yummy!” I’ll eat something that will taste yummy to me! And not feel guilty about it! Jon said he can live with that. And as long as I have a piece of meat for him, he’ll eat what I eat. He likes the food, too, but just doesn’t think he wants to go meatless, or cheese-less.