New Blog!

Hi friends and readers!

As you may have noticed, I haven’t updated 2013, With a Grain of Salt in about two years.  This isn’t due to laziness.  It’s because this blog was simply a year long project (hence the name) to test different diets on myself. I loved writing that blog and I’ve decided to continue in that vein in my new blog Health, With a Grain of Salt.  In this one, I will be debunking myths in the field of health (though heavily focused in nutrition), as well as describing the merits, pitfalls, and importance of new research in the fields of nutrtition, metabolism, and health.

If you’ve enjoyed 2013, With a Grain of Salt, I think you’ll also enjoy this new project.  Head on over by clicking here.  You can subscribe by clicking on any of the posts and filling in your email in the tab on the right-hand side of the page.

Hope to see you all there! As always, I welcome comments, criticisms, and so forth.

Take care!

Caitlin

The Grand Finale

And here it is, my final post of this entire project.  What a year it’s been!  I recently read back on the “About” and “The Beginning” posts that I wrote over a year ago in order to re-familiarize myself with the reasons why I embarked on this journey to begin with.  What I learned from reading those posts is that my posts have gotten A LOT longer over the year (sorry about that) and that most of my goals for the year were achieved.  I had wanted to learn what it was like to follow a regimented diet, to learn new cooking techniques, to be able to answer questions about popular diets, and to improve my will power.  I would say I wasn’t a total success on the will power portion, but I also realized, through a year of “failing” on the will power game, that it’s not a battle that should even be fought.  More on that in a minute, but first, my “awards” for this year.

The Dow Diet Awards
These are obviously just based on my opinion, except the “Most Expensive” award.  That one is based on cold hard facts as witnessed by depletion of my bank account.

• Most Hated: Winner – Fast Metabolism Diet. Runner Up – Paleo
• Most Forgettable: Low Fat
• Best for Weight Loss: Although I didn’t really lose any weight on any of those (remember: that was my goal), the ones I would recommend would be 1) Volumetrics Diet and 2) Weight Watchers
• Most Expensive: Sustainability
• Enhancing the Culinary Prowess: Mediterranean, Vegan
• I Can’t Wait to Quit You: Paleo, Low Fat, Fast Metabolism Diet
• Favorite: Too tough to choose just one. Three-way tie between Vegan, Mediterranean, and Mindful Eating.

My Dietary Recommendations for Health and Happiness, in a very specific order

1. Eat mindfully- Taste your food, free from distraction.  Cook it and savor it with all of your senses.  It will work miracles on your relationship with food, and is by far the best thing you can do for yourself.
2. Cook your food – Here is a video narrated by Michael Pollan, which really hammers home the importance of cooking your own food.  This doesn’t mean “preparing” a meal, i.e. a box of macaroni and cheese. It means actually cooking from scratch.  When you do that, you don’t have to worry so much about the fat, carb, and protein content of your food. It’s just nourishment at that point, and it will balance itself out over time.
3. Don’t be a dick about it – It’s hard to put this at #3 because I want to put it at #1, but the other ones are probably more important.  I’ve always just rolled my eyes and been annoyed when people are super pretentious about their food, but these feelings were strengthened this year by trying all these different eating approaches and also by moving to Boulder, CO (the most uppity place I’ve ever experienced).  My friends back in Tucson have something called the “In-N-Out and Casa Molina” test for people.  If you aren’t willing to ever eat a tasty cheeseburger and some delicious, greasy, unhealthy Mexican food, there may be a larger underlying issue.  If you disagree with this statement, you’re probably that pretentious person I’m referring to.  Stop being a dick about it.

1. Eat more produce – Everyone could stand to eat more fruits and vegetables.  Incorporate them into more and more of your meals until you eat them constantly and start to crave them.  Then, get creative, try new ones, and try preparing them in different ways.  The possibilities are endless.
2. Whatever approach you use if you’re trying to lose weight, choose one that can be maintained long term – At the end of the day, all of the diet trials and myriad of studies that have been performed ultimately lead to the same conclusion: the diet that works best for weight loss is the one that you can maintain.  Try out different ones to see what works for you, and don’t get discouraged when the first thing you try doesn’t work for you, but it worked for your cooler, hotter, sister who everyone likes more and who has never struggled with anything. It’s so unfair! We’re all individuals.  There is no one-size-fits-all approach to weight loss.
3. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid – Literally, but also figuratively.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
4. Stop freaking out about it – It’s not nearly as complicated as the media and all the snake oil salesmen want to convince you it is.

What I Learned

As I previously mentioned, I really struggled this year with will power, until I realized that there is no point to will power if there isn’t a larger goal in mind.  One of the most important lessons I learned this year is that curiosity is only a good short-term motivator.  I struggled nearly every month to stay on track with the allotted dietary pattern because I would either lose sight of why I was doing this or, when I would remind myself of the goals listed above, they didn’t seem like good enough reasons.  This was particularly true in months like Paleo and Fast Metabolism Diet when I had never felt hungrier and that transcended into some mental and emotional imbalance.  Those months were the only time that I ever got a glimpse into what it’s like to be on a diet.  One of my goals was to attempt to understand the psyche of a person undergoing a diet (thanks to those two aforementioned diets, I succeeded in that goal), but also to understand why people put themselves through the torture of a diet.  I never got to the place where I understood that, and that comes back to the curiosity thing.  Curiosity was my motivator, but the need to feel normal when you feel terrible trumps curiosity.  I imagine a person with a dire health concern or a need for weight loss has a different motivation, and that’s something that I can’t relate to at this point in my life.  Maybe if I ever need to change something about my lifestyle I’ll be able to relate to that issue more, and I’ll see the need for will power.  But right now, I think will power is a silly thing to get caught up on, and I think it’s an issue that prevents people from reaching their health goals.

So here is a larger spiel on will power, and I realize as I’m writing this, that these ideas are not something I’ve ever been taught in any nutrition or health class. They go against many of the recommendations that students are taught regarding diet counseling.  But here it goes.

The most important lesson I learned this year involves the concept of moderation.  I know, you’ve heard it a million times before – everything in moderation.  And maybe you’ve decided that moderation doesn’t work for you because you haven’t found that grasp on it – it’s either gorge yourself or go without, and if you are working on losing weight, the “correct” option is to go without.  I really REALLY learned the fault in that kind of logic this year (the caveat to this, of course, is people with addictive behaviors or personalities, which I can’t really comment on because I don’t have any kind of extensive knowledge or training in that area).  I’ll use the example again of FMD.  That was truly a “go without” month for me, and I HATED it.  Not only did I feel physically unhealthy, but I felt mentally unhealthy.  And there’s the crux of it all.  Physical and mental health are so intertwined that they can’t and shouldn’t be separated, though our current system attempts and is often successful at convincing us that they should be.  Typically things that are good for your mental health are good for your physical health, so focus on that.  You will never see the full benefit of a healthy lifestyle approach if you only focus on the physical health aspect of it.  This whole time I’ve thought that my will power issues could be rectified by taking away the stimulus.  This is the basis of nearly every fad diet and every dietary recommendation.  “Don’t keep chocolate in the house so you won’t be tempted.”  “Snack on fruits – it will feed your sweet tooth.” I call bullshit on all of that.  While this may lead to weight loss, it doesn’t do a whole lot for your mental health because you a) feel deprived and b) never learn how to have a healthy relationship with these foods that you consider unhealthy/evil.  And what is the point of physical health if mental health isn’t riding shotgun?  I don’t know what the meaning or goal of life is, but for me it has something to do with finding peace in the midst of a hurricane.  Removing a stimulus doesn’t improve will power – it weakens it.  We need to find ways to achieve balance, and we do this by being in the midst of a room full of crispy French fries, the most decadent chocolate, a succulent cheeseburger, the deepest of deep dish pizzas, the creamiest ice creams, with a littering of fruits and vegetables and other health foods… and then we choose to have a few tastes of each of those things.  We really savor them and appreciate them, and then we carry on with our day, never feeling deprived or engorged.  It’s being able to control a situation instead of letting a situation control you.  This clearly isn’t just about food.  It can be applied to nearly every situation you will ever face in life, but your relationship with your body and your body’s fuel is a foundation that needs to be built, strengthened, and continuously re-patched in order to live a long, healthy life.

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I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes that taps into the issues with how we eat in America.  Eating a diet that supports the beautiful vehicle that is your body needs to be a priority if we want to prosper and see progress on both individual and societal levels.  The path to get there isn’t as difficult as it seems.  It’s just straight into the kitchen.

“…it turns out we don’t need to declare our allegiance to any one of these schools of thought in order to figure out how best to eat.  In the end, they are only theories, scientific explanations for an empirical phenomenon that is not itself in doubt: people eating a Western diet are prone to a complex of chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets.”
-Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Thank you to everyone who followed this project over the past year.  There’s no way I could have done this on my own – I would have quit so many times if I didn’t have followers. Thank you for your attention, your comments, your questions.  

Live Beautiful!
Caitlin

P.S. If you’re looking for another health blog to follow with posts that will take a lot less time to read than mine, check out my friends Dezi and Matt’s blog: Simple Fitness Blog.

Are you there, Caitlin? It’s me, Questions.

One day I was at work, working on this very post (it was a slow day in science), and a friend asked what I was doing. I said I was answering questions that people had for me, and she replied with initial excitement that waned into reality: “Oooh you’re like Carrie Bradshaw! Except instead of writing about sex, you’re writing about science and nutrition.  That’s not really as exciting.” No, it’s not.  But here it goes – my attempt at being a columnist.

Q: What do you know of this Garcinia Cambogia and body cleanse diet. Dr. Oz has talked about it. Have you heard anything on it?

 A: Like usual, when I saw “Dr. Oz” in the question, I cringed.  I typically consider Dr. Oz to be a bit of an extremely charming snake oil salesman.  But I decided to look it up because when the people have questions, I give them answers. First, I went to Dr. Oz’s website to see what him and his people had to say about it.  Then I searched on PubMed to find out what the science says.

What Dr. Oz’s website says: Garcinia Cambogia is a fruit native to Indonesia and supplements are made from the rind of the fruit, which is high in a compound called hydroxycitric acid (HCA).  The claim is that HCA prevents fat synthesis by blocking an enzyme (citrate lyase) that converts carbohydrates to fat.  HCA also reduces appetite by increasing serotonin production in the brain.  In effect, this improves mood and reduces the drive for emotional eating (though it is unclear if people with normal or high serotonin levels and who don’t resort to food to for emotional reasons would benefit from HCA).

What the science says: 43 Brazilian women who were overweight/obese were randomized to receive either a placebo or 2.4 g/day of G. Cambogia (separated into 800 mg consumed before each meal) in addition to an energy restricted diet (~1500 kcal/day) for 8 weeks.  There were no differences pre- to post-treatment or between randomization groups following the study in terms of weight loss (or any other anthropometrics), or any marker of the lipid profile with the exception of triglycerides, which were lower after 8 weeks in the women consuming the supplement compared to those on the placebo.  This study indicates no real benefit of using G. Cambogia.  That’s just one example of a research study on G. Cambogia, but there are many more that show similar results.  A recent review article by Astell et al. evaluated the data on a variety of plant extracts (including G. Cambogia) that have been explored in randomized controlled trials (the gold standard of human research) with regards to weight loss, and concluded that there is not sufficient data to suggest that any plant extract will significantly aid in weight loss above standard dietary and physical activity practices.  One study did show that HCA taken in combination with Gymnema sylvestre extract resulted in a 5-6% reduction in body weight after 8 weeks.

The Bottom Line: There aren’t enough well designed research studies for this herbal supplement (or any) to get my stamp of approval.  First, there isn’t enough information to suggest that they are effective, but more importantly, there is a question of safety here.  People often use the logic that herbal supplements are “natural,” and therefore safe.  But there is nothing “natural” about taking a supplement that provides you with 10 fold or more of a compound than what you would get from just eating food.  Remember, hemlock is also “natural,” but it still very effectively killed Socrates.

Q: I have a friend who is using a mobile app to track his caloric intake and lose weight.  He has lost weight, but I’ve noticed that he still eats pretty unhealthy food, drinks beer, and doesn’t seem like he’s getting any healthier, though he is still losing weight.  Is he actually getting healthier?

This approach is similar to that of many fad diets, and it relies on the simple principles of “calories in, calories out.”  Yes, if you ingest fewer calories than you expend, you will lose weight.  This friend may actually be getting healthier because weight loss of as little as 5% of initial body weight has been proven to confer health benefits like improvement in blood lipids and glucose, blood pressure, sleep apnea, joint pain, depression, Type 2 diabetes, and you’re bound to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease.  Only 5%.  That means that if you weigh 200 lbs and you lose 10 pounds, your health will most assuredly improve.  Lose more weight, see more benefit.  So the fact of the matter is, yes, health does improve when you lose weight (if you need to lose weight. This doesn’t hold true if you’re already a healthy weight).  But this is not an approach I would ever recommend for anybody.  While you will get healthier simply by losing weight but still eating whatever you want, it’s only a fraction of how healthy you could be if you started eating healthy foods.  Matching the caloric content of two patterns, eating a whole foods diet that focuses on whole grains, fruits and vegetables, lean protein, and healthy fats will win out every single time over a diet high in refined carbohydrates, processed foods, and fatty protein sources.

There was a “case study” that a brave soul performed on himself to prove a point to his students.  Professor of Human Nutrition at Kansas State University, Mark Haub, decided to go on a junk food diet for 10 weeks to prove the premise of “calories in, calories out.” He ate Hostess cakes, Doritos, Oreos, etc and consumed 1,800 calories/day (he should consume about 2,600 to maintain weight).  While he did take a multivitamin and eat a couple of servings of vegetables everyday, his diet was mostly shit and he lost 27 lbs.  A number of outcomes improved for him over the course of 10 weeks: his body fat percentage dropped, his blood lipids improved. (Read more about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/).

The Bottom Line: So should you try to lose weight by simply focusing on calories?  Like I said, not my recommendation.  Haub’s data are interesting, sure, but we don’t know the long-term consequences of eating like that.  I would speculate that the risk for cancer would increase, and inflammation and oxidative stress would be huge issues for Haub.  Inflammation and oxidative stress are known to exacerbate chronic disease risk for diseases like cancer, Type 2 Diabetes, CVD, Alzheimer’s, etc.  The outcomes that he measured are validated markers for disease risk, but they don’t tell the whole story.  While obtaining/maintaining a healthy weight is extremely important for long-term health, there’s a lot more to it than just the number on the scale.  Eat your damn produce.

Q: Is there any science to back up Ayurvedic eating practices?

A: Ayurveda is an ancient Indian approach to medicine, and Ayurvedic eating is a therapeutic approach to eating that is often practiced by yogis and others with goals of inner peace.

The focus of Ayurvedic eating is to find joy, balance, and an appreciation of food via eating.  Most of Ayurvedic eating uses the same principles of mindful eating – being present, cooking your food, eating food that tastes good, paying attention to hunger cues, and not eating distractedly.  In addition to mindful eating techniques, the practice considers three different body types and personalities (called “doshas”) – Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.  Once you determine which dosha is predominant for you, you can start eating to complement it. I’ll go through everything for myself, but use this link to find out about yours, if you’re interested.

I determined that my primary dosha is Vata, which is fairly spot on with my body type and personality.  The primary qualities of a Vata individual are that they thrive on movement and change. Vata individuals are typically tall and slender with narrow hips and shoulders and are generally energetic and enthusiastic, unless they are out of balance.  Signs of being out of balance are skipping meals (something I try to avoid because I actually do notice how much it throws things out of whack for me – I don’t know if this actually has anything to do with being Vata or if that’s just my personality) and snacking constantly (my worst dietary habit!).

One of the predominant issues with Vata is digestion.  To stay in balance, it’s recommended that Vata cook their food to ease digestive issues instead of eating foods (like vegetables) raw and heavier, oily, or warm foods are preferred.  Vata should avoid red meat and many types of beans, but sweet, ripe fruits and many cooked vegetables are supported.

An interesting thing about Ayurvedic eating is that it focuses on eating a balanced diet, not only by balancing carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals, but also taste.  There are said to be six tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent.  Each meal should contain all six tastes in order to be balanced, though each dosha should focus on some more than others.  For example, the Vata dosha should minimize bitter, pungent, and astringent flavors because these are said to lead to imbalance.

What the Science Says:  I did look for some actual science to support this, but I didn’t find anything.  This would be a pretty difficult thing to test, in general.  First, I’m not sure what the outcome would be, other than quality of life.  Ayurvedic eating is a healthy approach to eating, both due of the mindful eating approach as well as the focus on whole foods.  This means that if you put the average person on an Ayurvedic diet, they would feel better because their diet in general has improved. You could probably put anyone one on any of the specific dosha diets and see improvements in health.  In order to test it properly, you’d need to find people that already eat healthy, but perhaps don’t eat mindfully and don’t follow the recommendations of their particular dosha.  It’s pretty difficult to properly measure a health outcome on people who are already healthy because the scale by which they can improve is drastically reduced.

The Bottom Line: While I couldn’t find any data to support Ayurvedic eating, that doesn’t mean it’s not a healthy approach to living.  It just means that no one has tried to and/or effectively tested it yet.  As I mentioned above, you’re likely to see benefit because of the mindful eating techniques as well as eating whole foods.  As far as eating for your body type and personality – I don’t know.  I can’t pinpoint a specific mechanism that would suggest that that’s necessary.  But if you’re interested in it, give it a shot.  It certainly won’t hurt you, and it looks like you may learn some interesting cooking techniques as it will force you to pay more attention to flavor pairing.

Hope that answers some burning questions that a few of you had and maybe the rest of you learned a thing or two along the way. I’ll post my final blog post within the next few days!

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers

Well, hopefully I do.
I want you, my loyal readers, to send nutrition related questions to me.  Wondering about the validity of a certain diet that I didn’t try? Want to know the benefit of a specific nutrient or class of nutrients? Want advice on eating healthier, weight loss, etc? Or just need clarification about something I touched on, but didn’t explain in enough detail.  I’ll do research on items that I can’t answer completely with my own knowledge base, and if it’s a topic that I have next-to-no-knowledge in, I’ll let you know! I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on all things nutrition related, but I’ll give anything my best shot!
Just post a question either to the comments section of this post, send me an email if you have my address, or send me a facebook message if we’re friends on the interweb.  I’ll answer as many of them as I can (or all of them if you guys don’t have many questions) in January-February 2014.
There were a lot of topics that I had hoped to cover this year that I didn’t.  Instead of me just blabbering on about something you may not be interested in, I figured I would use a question and answer approach to talk about some of the info that’s floating around out there!
Hope to hear from y’all soon!

Track Your Intake → Lose Weight

I’ll start off by apologizing (again) for my lack of posting.  It still doesn’t look like this will change any time soon.  The good news is that I submitted my dissertation last week!! But I’m not out of the woods yet – two weeks from now, I’ll be defending my dissertation.  Assuming all goes well, I’ll be a DOCTOR! All very exciting, but as you might imagine, all very time consuming and requires a lot of mental preparation and stamina, which is why I haven’t been posting much.  But enough about me and my future.  Let’s talk about me and my present.

My month on Weight Watchers was fantastic.  I honestly cannot give it a better recommendation than I already have in my previous post, and I will recommend it to anyone who asks me my opinion on the best weight loss program.  However, I did run into some obstacles and challenges along the way, which is to be expected.

My Biggest Issue: Trying to do WW without access to the online tools is time-consuming… frustrating… cumbersome… I really wanted this to not be an issue because our society’s dependence on technology is frightening to me.  For example, no one knows how to read a map because everyone is used to Siri telling him/her how to get from Point A to Point B.  And then they get lost when their phone doesn’t have service because they never thought to read the actual street signs and pay attention to their surroundings.  And this is how present day horror stories are made.  I digress.  What I’m getting at is that I wanted to be different from all that and be OK with using equations and calculating the points of the food I ate because I thought it would teach me how to look at a meal and estimate its nutritional value more accurately than what I can do now.  It probably would have done just that if I lived in a world where dissertation writing, traveling, writing, commuting, writing, cooking, writing, sleeping, writing, exercising, and writing didn’t take up all of my time.  But my life doesn’t consist of skipping through meadows and picking flowers or sipping a cup of coffee whilst reading the morning paper and pondering the meaning of life (right now).  Right now my life is chaotic, which is an issue that nearly everyone reports, and I need all the help I can get.  Calculators don’t really count as help.
Because I wasn’t willing to pay for WW, my day would go like this: I would eat breakfast, google the food that I ate, record the points in a journal, and repeat these steps for lunch, with the intention of doing this throughout the day.  Then my day would get away from me, and all of a sudden it would be 10:37 pm and I’m trying to remember what I ate, guessing the serving sizes, googling the points of said food (much of which has not been calculated, so I’d end up using a poor-excuse-for-a-substitute), and calculating my points for the day.  Like most people, I am great at starting the day with good intentions and acting upon them until the day starts to get hectic and whatever is occupying my mind takes precedent over what I’m eating.  This really gets away from the purpose of WW, which is to track your points throughout the day, so that you can make adjustments accordingly.

Issue Number Two: Traveling.  I went to New Orleans for a conference, and I had such a great time, both at the conference and touring the city and surrounding areas.  But what was equally fun to all of that was all of the food in NOLA.  For example, I ate a gator poboy sandwich, gumbo, jambalaya, beignets, red beans and dirty rice, and drank sweet tea, and beer, and bourbon, and hurricanes (whatever those are), amongst other foods and spirits, which I’m surely forgetting.  Needless to say, this wasn’t a “diet” friendly adventure.  I calculated my WW points on only one day while I was there, which came out to a whopping 50 points! (Remember, my goal was 26-33/day).  I gave up after that, for a couple of reasons.  1) I didn’t want to miss out on all that unique food by freaking out about the point total, which I knew I would do if I tracked it. 2) I rarely had my not-so-handy journal with me. 3) Type in “alligator poboy, weight watchers points plus” into google and you won’t find anything useful. This food was hard to track, so I just didn’t.  I was positive that I gained weight after that trip, but as you’ll see below, that was not the case. This is likely attributable to the amount of walking I did – according to my pedometer on my phone: between 15,000 and 20,000 steps/day (10,000 is an arbitrary goal with really no scientific evidence to back it up, but you’ll see it out there.  It’s actually pretty hard to meet if you’re not a super active person).
I don’t think the fact that I went to New Orleans, specifically, makes this situation unique in any way to traveling.  I think we all are more inclined to let loose and not worry about what we’re eating when we travel, because, “Damn it! I’m on vacation!”  However, if you are trying to lose weight, it’s not smart to completely forget about your diet while you travel, because you’re likely to undo a lot of the hard work that you’ve done.  In all honesty, if I had the online tools and the WW phone app, I probably would have tracked my diet more while I was traveling, not so much for trying to curb and control my intake, but really just out of curiosity because I always learn something when I track my diet, and it’s interesting to me.

The Final Issue: Drinking.  That makes me sound like a lush, and I only sort of am, but not to any extreme.  I enjoy imbibing on occasion, but what I like most is just having a beer or a glass of wine with dinner, especially when I’m with friends.  However, I never think of the calories in alcohol when I drink (like most people), but this can be a major downfall if you are trying to control your weight.  Honestly, I was surprised at how many points are allotted for alcohol.  And they’re not unreasonable at all.  Alcoholic beverages are empty calories, and they should be treated as such on a weight loss plan. (**As an aside, it is recommended by the American Heart Association to drink one alcoholic beverage/day, as this amount confers cardiovascular benefit.  And no, you can’t “save” all of them for the weekend and drink all 7 drinks at one time and expect to see any benefit.  In fact, binge drinking is linked to poor cardiovascular health.  Physiology doesn’t care about your weekend plans.**) Here’s a breakdown of the points:

Light Beer (gross) = 3 points
Regular beer=5 points
Beers over 200 kcals/pint (this includes a lot of porters, a lot of the Flying Dog and New Belgium beers… which of course are some of my favorites) = 7 points
Wine (4 oz glass)= 4 points
Hard liquor (1 oz)= 4 points + whatever you mix it with

As you can see, this can add up quickly, which is why people get fat when they drink all the time.  This isn’t rocket science.  And ignorance isn’t bliss unless you think of bliss as a spare tire sittin pretty around your midsection. Check out this site if you want more info about WW points allotted for beer: http://www.justdietnow.com/weight-watchers-points/points-for-beer.html

Let’s move on to the stats:

	Goal/Normal	Baseline Data	Jan-Vegan	February- Paleo	March-WW
Anthros
Weight	121-60	127.5	127.5	128.5	124
BMI	18.5-24.9	20	20	20.1	19.5
PBF	21-32	21.4	21.2	20.6	21.3
WC	<35	27.5	27.5	27.5	27.5
HC		38.5	37.5	38	38
W:H Ratio	<0.8	0.71	0.73	0.72	0.72
Blood Pressure	<120/80	113/77	101/69	105/72	110/70
Diet
Total kcal	2000-2200	1975	1809	1965	1900
Protein (g)		77.5	57	100	75
Protein (%)	Oct-35	16	12%	20	16
CHO (%)	49-52	51	39-50	47	54
Fiber (g)	at least 25	26	42	32	27
Fat (%)	20-35	29.5	44-54	47	30
Sat Fat (%)	<10	7	8	8	7
Sodium (mg)	2300	2587	2138-2527	2132	2370
Potassium (mg)	4700	3479	3959-4109	3742	3628
Fruit/Veg (servings)	5-9	3-7	8-12	6-8	5-7
Cost			192.59	206.38	120.97

There isn’t anything remarkable here, though I think two things are noteworthy.

1) Weight loss:  I had mentioned in my last post that I lost two pounds when I first started WW, and I made a concerted effort to regain that, and I almost did (regained 1.5 pounds) before I left for New Orleans.  But then I didn’t maintain that weight regain, and I lost 4 total this month compared to last month.  I hope this doesn’t piss off people who are actually trying to lose weight.  I really don’t mean to sound so cavalier about the whole thing, but I am an overachiever to my core, and I tend to go all out when I try something new.  I think what this really shows is that if you track your diet (and you’re honest about it), you will change the way you eat for the better, and this will result in weight loss.  As I said in my last post, the number one behavior that is associated with weight loss and weight loss maintenance is self-monitoring. Done.
2) Look at how much money I didn’t spend this month! I even had a little bit of food left over, which wasn’t true of February.  This just goes to show that you can eat healthy without being a nutcase about health foods and breaking the bank. Done. Again.

Once again, a great learning experience and an overall enjoyable “diet” to follow.  The take home message: track your diet if you want to lose weight.  If you’re going to follow Weight Watchers, pay for it and download the mobile app.  Don’t do it my way because you won’t stick with it.  If you are looking for another way to track your diet, but don’t want to follow Weight Watchers, I recommend “Fat Secret” (free for Droid or iPhones).  It’s got the most complete database and is the most user-friendly out of all the apps I’ve seen.  Now get out there and get trackin’, kids!

Girls Gone Vegan!

Before I started veganism, I had come up with a lot of sarcastic, really hilarious comments that would be included in this final post.  Unfortunately, I can’t use any of them because I’ve actually really enjoyed being a vegan. It’s weird for me to even re-read that and believe that it’s me thinking, saying, writing those words.

“Vegan” was always a dirty word to me.  I admit it, I judged vegans.  (It’s always nice to think of ourselves as wholesome, nonjudgmental people who accept everyone for exactly who they are, but that’s a bunch of B.S.  Everyone has anywhere between 1 and 206 judgmental bones in their body.)  I thought of vegans as extremists who drive Subarus, smell like patchouli, wear Birkenstocks, pay annual dues to PETA, maybe spend their weekends breaking into their local university’s animal care facility to “free” all of the experimental research animals, listen to Ravi Shankar, and don’t laugh at Portlandia because they don’t realize that it’s, like, about them.  (By the way, I only embody a few of those characteristics, all of which started before my vegan adventure.  I’ll let you guess which ones.)  It’s weird that I associated all of those characteristics with veganism, because I know a few vegans, and they’re totally normal people.  Let’s blame it on the media.

Anyways, I stand corrected. I admit that I may have been a total a-hole about the whole vegan thing.   So, to all of you vegans who didn’t know I was at least sort of judging you, I’m sorry for sort of judging you.  You are much wiser than I.

Here are some of my observations from the last month:

I feel extremely healthy.  Everything feels good. I don’t really know how to describe it. I don’t feel lethargic. I’m motivated. My skin has never looked better. All good things.

I feel more positive.  I’m sure this has very little to do with the fact that I’m not eating animal products, but rather that I’ve made a big life change that I was initially very negative about, but it ended up being a great change.  I’ve also noticed that the necessity to plan my food intake has resulted in hyper-planning of other parts of my life, and I feel more motivated and proactive about things.

Cooking takes up a lot more of my time than it did before.  This may not be something that would last if I were to take on veganism completely, as I’d be more willing to spread out all of the interesting recipes I’d discover over a greater time span instead of cramming everything into one month.  I didn’t really mind spending more time en la cocina, though, because I’ve learned how to use new foods.  Also, I did it to myself, so I only have myself to blame.

WWRVD?

There were a couple of challenges throughout the month.

1)    Weddings: I went to a wedding where everything they served had some kind of animal product associated with it. The salad had feta. The dinner was meat lasagna and chicken manicotti.  I suppose I could have eaten the simple side of sautéed summer squash and zucchini (two vegetables that I only really like when they’ve been manipulated so much that they don’t even really taste like their former selves), but I was super hungry so I just ate it all, unapologetically and without comment.  But, I have to ask myself, what would a real vegan do (WWRVD)?  Would you plan in advance and eat before the wedding? Would you bring nuts and dried fruit in your handbag? Would you make a scene? I did none of the above.  However, my stomach hurt the next day, maybe because it hadn’t had to process meat for awhile, or maybe it’s because I’m very mildly lactose intolerant, which I normally don’t notice because I eat dairy regularly in small quantities, making it a non-issue.

2)    Eating Out: I started to get the hang of this over time, but eating out remained more of a chore than something fun for me.  Most of the time, I was successful at veganism.  One time I went vegetarian and allowed cheese on my black bean burger because it would have been pretty blah without it.  I got bored being condemned to the salad portion of the menu.  Another time, I was at a happy hour with a couple of friends, and I put back a couple of Old Fashions.  Get good bourbon in me, and for some reason I want to eat meat. So I did. I ate a delicious machaca beef taco and then my stomach hurt the next day.  WWRVD? Probably not eat a beef taco.

Here are a couple examples of some excellent vegan options I had here in Tucson:

Lentil Fetoosh Salad (Pita Jungle on Broadway, west of Craycroft).  Pita Jungle is awesome because the food is extremely flavorful and almost every item is healthy. You can eat vegan and not even mean to do it.  My mom also got the Grilled Vegetable Salad (below), which is equally delicious and vegan, even though she is certainly not a vegan.

Betabel Sandwich (Time Market on University, just east of 4^th Ave).  Go here for great, gourmet sandwiches and pizza.  This is a red and yellow beet sandwich with sprouts and an orange-pistachio relish.  It’s amazing how all of those flavors go so well together to make something so tasty.

What I have learned from this month is that I could very easily and happily be a vegan about 90-95% of the time, but I would just never call myself a vegan.  There are a couple meals that I love that include meat, and I just don’t see myself ever giving them up because I’m a hedonist.  By not labeling myself a vegan, I would never have the guilt associated with eating animal products.  So, I would eat them occasionally when I wanted to, which isn’t that often, and then eat healthfully, and animal free the rest of the time. Easy as pie (made with vegan butter crust).

If you are interested in veganism, other people’s attempts at veganism, or if you just like documentaries, a great one is Vegucated (available instantly on Netflix).  It’s a short doc that follows 3 meat-eating New Yorkers on a 6-week vegan journey.  It’s interesting, entertaining, and re-opened my eyes about issues with meat production.  Good flick.

The Final Stats

	Goal/Normal	Dec-Baseline	Jan-Vegan
Anthros
Weight (lbs)	121-60	127.5	127.5
BMI (kg/m2)	18.5-24.9	20	20
Body Fat (%)	21-32	21.4	21.2
WC (in)	<35	27.5	27.5
HC (in)		38.5	37.5
W:H Ratio	<0.8	0.71	0.73
Blood Pressure (mmHg)	<120/80	113/77	101/69
Diet
Total kcal	2000-2200	1975	1800-1950
Protein (%)	10-35	16	11-12
CHO (%)	49-52	51	40-50
Fiber (g)	at least 25	26	42
Fat (%)	20-35	29.5	38-48
Sat Fat (%)	<10	7	8
Sodium (mg)	2300	2587	2138-2527
Potassium (mg)	4700	3479	3959-4109
Fruits/Veg (svgs)	5-9	3-7	8-12
Cost of Groceries			$192.59

My hip circumference went down, which I noticed based on how my pants were fitting.  I’d like to get this measurement back up to what it was before (here comes a month of squats!).  I also haven’t really been running or working out a ton this month (other than power yoga), which may explain the drop in my HC due to a reduction in muscle tone.

It looks like my blood pressure significantly decreased, but I’m not sure I buy that.  BP is regulated on a beat-by-beat basis, so a single measurement doesn’t always tell you a whole lot. It’s better to measure 24-hour BP to get a more accurate reading.  This month’s reading is more reflective of my usual BP.  The blood pressure cuff was acting up last month, and I had to take four readings before I even got anything that registered/made sense.

I was totally surprised at how much fat I ate, though when I really think about it, I’m not worried because pretty much the only saturated fats came from peanut butter, and the rest was mono- and polyunsaturated (and high in omega-3 and not omega-6’s) from nuts, avocadoes, and olive oil.  And it wasn’t like this all the time – maybe 30% of the time.  Otherwise, it was down between 30-40%, which is still high, but when it’s healthy fats, the diet isn’t hypercaloric, and the diet is rich in antioxidants, it’s not too worrisome.  I was eating so many vegetables and fruits (8-12 servings a day! what’s up!), which are low in calories, so I guess it’s not completely shocking that I was eating so much fat.  If you are trying to lose weight, though, this is something to watch.

I feel like I should make a comment about the cost of my groceries, but admittedly, I have no idea what a “normal” grocery budget looks like. I don’t skimp on the quality of my groceries, which is possible when you’re cooking for one.  $200 seems like a lot, but maybe it’s not.  I also bought a lot of things that definitely did not get used up in one month (miso, nutritional yeast, nuts, quinoa… pretty much everything other than fresh produce and peanut butter), so that’s something to take into consideration.

Final Thoughts

I have learned that veganism isn’t some kind of crazy witchcraft, and it’s really not that extreme.  Don’t knock it until you try it! I would definitely recommend it to anyone considering making a healthy modification.  Remember that you don’t have to dive 100% in to any health change to reap at least some benefit.  If you’d like to rely less on animal products and increase your fruit/veggie intake, try some vegan recipes and see what you like. Maybe go vegan a few days a week. I can almost guarantee that you will feel healthier, both physically and mentally.  But it is time for me to say farewell to my vegan lifestyle, and start eating like our Paleolithic ancestors (Not that we even know exactly what they ate. More on that later.)!

The Delicious Dish

It’s recipe time! I’ve picked out some of my favorite recipes from the last few weeks of veganism.
You’ll notice that I use almost no “fake meat” products, which is by design.  My diet consisted of mostly unprocessed foods prior to my vegan adventure, so I didn’t want to introduce many of those in to my diet.  I’ve tried a few meatless products before, and for the most part, I don’t like them.  They don’t really mimic the texture of meat very well, and a lot of them are high in sodium.
Check out this article if you’d like some tips from the pros on incorporating more vegan products/recipes into your cooking repertoire.

Disclaimer: There are a few “recipes” that I have developed on my own.  I apologize in advance because I don’t measure anything when I’m not following a recipe (actually I don’t measure much even when I do follow a recipe).  So if you try something that you think you would normally like and find it repulsive, it could be because my estimations of ingredient amounts are off.  Or it could mean that you don’t know what good food tastes like.  Hard to say.

Sides

Citrus Poppy Seed Salad – I thought about using a substitute for the coconut oil because I didn’t have any, but decided to bite the bullet and purchase some.  Totally worth it.  The flavor of the coconut oil is so surprising when combined with the citrus, and it’s delicious.  I used ruby red grapefruit, blood oranges, and navel oranges in my salad.

Barbecued Blackeyed Peas– Ok, so these take a lot of time to make, but it’s mostly hands off time, so you can do plenty of other things while these are soaking/boiling/baking.  I also added a little brown sugar at the end, and it resulted in a sweet, spicy side dish.

Fruit Salad w/honey lime dressing– This is one of my favorite ways to add some flavor to a boring fruit salad.
Ingredients:
2 cups of chopped fruits (You can really use anything, but I used mango, blueberries, and strawberries)
2 T canola oil
2 T honey
2 T lime juice
1 T roughly chopped basil/mint

Whisk together all of the liquid ingredients in a small bowl and mix in the basil/mint.  Pour over the fruit, and enjoy!

Soups

Smokey Spicy Pumpkin Almond Soup– I know this link says butternut squash, but I didn’t feel like roasting and pureeing all that squash, so I used canned pumpkin instead.  I couldn’t find dried chipotle peppers, so I used canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  Oh my spicy! I substituted coconut milk for heavy whipping cream, and because the soup was so spicy, I just poured in a whole 14 oz can (instead of 1 cup) to calm it down some.  I also added a little honey to sweeten it up.  I ate this first with some cranberry walnut bread (from Sprouts) and then ate leftovers with a black bean and quinoa stuffed bell pepper.

Aztec Soup – My friend Jenn gave me this recipe, and I can’t get over how easy it was to make (only took about 30 minutes) and how tasty it was. The toasted nuts, avocado, and tortilla chips add so much flavor and texture. I also added in a can of cannellini beans (drained and rinsed) to get some more protein, and a couple teaspoons each of cumin, coriander, and oregano.
Ingredients:
½ c pine nuts
½ c walnuts
2 TBS butter (or oil or vegan butter)
1 small onion-chopped
1 minced garlic clove
6 cups vegetable broth (I use a couple veggie buillon cubes)
2 cups diced butternut squash
1 package of frozen corn (10 oz.) or 1 can
1 avocado, cubed
½ c. pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
Blue corn tortilla chips

Saute the pine nuts and walnuts in 1 TBS of the butter until golden, then set aside in a bowl

Saute the onion and garlic in the other TBS butter, then add the broth, squash and corn and boil until the squash is soft

Serve in bowl and add in avocado, nuts, pepitas, and crushed tortilla chips

Entrees

Kale Avocado Wraps w/Spicy Miso Dipped Tempeh – There may be some words in there that you don’t recognize.  Miso is soy fermented with a fungus to make a paste that is common in Japanese cuisine.  It’s tangy and tasty.  Tempeh is similar in that it is the product of fermentation of soybeans, but it isn’t tangy, and it makes a great, all natural meat substitute.  All in all, this dish provides lots of probiotics from the fermented foods, which I’m all about, since I’m not getting my daily dose of probiotics from yogurt.  I ate this yummy wrap with the fruit salad mentioned above and sweet potato fries.

Beany, Avocado, Cilantro Salad Surprise – This is one of my creations, which you could probably guess based on the stupid name I gave it. This salad could be eaten as a side or as a main dish, depending on how hungry you are.  The recipe below yields about 4 cups of protein-packed salad.

Ingredients
½ can chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
½ can black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 avocado, cubed
½ cucumber, diced in large chunks
½ red bell pepper, diced in large chunks
~1 cup spinach, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
-Mix all that stuff together

Dressing
½ cup packed cilantro
2 T lime juice
2 T orange juice
3 T olive oil
1 tsp agave nectar
salt and pepper to taste
-Blend all the dressing ingredients together (I used a Magic Bullet). Pour over salad and mix. Eat up!

Indonesian Cabbage Salad (another recipe from Jenn) – Holy crap. I can’t get over how amazing this salad is.  It might be one of the best salads I’ve ever had. I love it. I love it so much.  Plus, it’s very aesthetically pleasing.  However, like the fool that I am, I forgot to buy bok choi, so I just added more carrots and bell pepper.  Jicama might also be a nice addition. As you can see, I also ate this with vegetarian pot stickers (from Sprouts).
Mix together the following:  1/2 head of purple cabbage shredded or cut thin, 4 stalks of bok choi (sliced thin), 1 carrot cut thin, 1 red bell pepper cut in thin strips, ½ c. fine chop cilantro, ½ c. raw sunflower seeds.
Add this curry sauce:
½ c. almond or peanut butter
½ c. water
¼ c. rice vinegar
2 TBS miso
1 TBS cilantro
2 TBS maple syrup or honey
1-2 tsp red or green curry paste
1 tsp. onion powder
½ tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp ground ginger
-Blend all of the above well and pour over veggies.

Red Quinoa Broccoli Salad w/Almond Honey Vinaigrette – This wasn’t a within-the-last-month discovery for me, but it is my favorite tofu dish, so it’s worth sharing. If you don’t have red quinoa, don’t fret! You can use normal quinoa (or rice)- it just won’t be as pretty. I also add dried cranberries/cherries to give it a little more flavor, texture, and color.

Vegan Alfredo – I know what you’re thinking. Alfredo is pretty much the antithesis of veganism. You are correct.  And while this doesn’t taste exactly like alfredo, it is surprisingly close, which was shocking given the ingredients from which it is comprised.  As an aside, the picture in this link has to be a lie.  All of the ingredients are brown (cashews, soy sauce, mustard, nutritional yeast flakes, etc).  I’m no artist, but from what I know, you can’t mix a bunch of brown colored things and get an off-white result.  So no, it doesn’t look like alfredo, but damn it, it tastes good.  I ate mine over whole wheat fusilli pasta with steamed broccoli. Delish.

Treats
Alright, you only get one treat because I’m tired of writing this post.

Honey-Almond Popcorn– I made my popcorn using actual popping corn, and not from microwaveable popcorn.  It’s cheap (buy it in the bulk section), and it tastes better and is healthier than microwaveable popcorn. But if you only have the in-the-bag stuff, go ahead and pop it, skip the first portion of the recipe, and join back in for Part 2.

Part 1:
In a heavy bottom pot (I use my pasta pot), heat 3 T of canola oil (or any other oil with a high smoking point, NOT olive oil) over medium-high heat.  If you want your popcorn salted, this is the time to add in the salt, as it will coat all of the popcorn as it pops.
Add in a couple of kernels of popping corn, cover the pot, and wait for the kernels to pop.  This is how you know the oil is hot enough.
Remove the pot from heat and add in 1/3 cup of corn kernels (this will yield ~8 cups of popcorn) and count to 30.  This step ensures that all the kernels and oil are at the same temperature.
Put the pot back on the heat, cover, leaving lid slightly ajar (this allows moisture to escape and keeps your popcorn crunchy instead of soggy). Let the popping commence.  Once you’ve got a popping frenzy going, shake the pot occasionally so that nothing sticks to the bottom and burns.
When popping is reduced to ~3 seconds between pops, remove from heat.

Part 2:
Heat 1/3 cup of honey over medium heat until it boils. Remove from heat.
Add a heaping spoonful of almond/peanut butter to the honey and stir until well mixed.
Pour over your popcorn, mix thoroughly, and dive in!

Hope this gives you some ideas for vegan-friendly dishes! I also hope that this shows that eating vegan isn’t boring or restrictive.  My diet is incredibly varied, and I’m never ever bored. Please leave a comment if anything isn’t clear or if you have questions!

Weight Loss of the Unintended, Vegan-Induced Variety

Over the last few years of studying obesity and chronic disease development/prevention, I’ve learned so many ways to lose/maintain a healthy weight.  Many of these tools include portion control.  By that, I mean limiting the size of the portions of foods that are calorically dense and high in fats and sugars (but not eliminating them as deprivation is the shortest route to binging).  I also eat larger portions of nutrient dense foods like fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, non/lowfat yogurt and cheese, etc.  It may sound neurotic or obsessive, but I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even think about it anymore – it’s just how I eat.  Over the last 3.5 years of graduate school, I’ve incorporated all these habits into my life and slowly lost about 10 pounds.

When I started this experiment, I was at my lowest adult body weight, and I was happy with that weight.  But I made the mistake of simply taking the way I was eating and swapping out animal products with more legumes, fruits, and vegetables.  In doing so, I probably reduced my daily intake by at least 300-400 kcals, if not more.

The first few days, I wasn’t able to stay full for long.  I found that I was eating a larger volume of food than I ever have. I was eating so many fruits, veggies, and beans, and I was essentially eating all day.  I got on the scale on Thursday, and I had lost 3 pounds since I weighed myself two weeks prior (I may have lost some weight in those few days between weighing myself and starting veganism, but there’s no way of knowing).  What I do know is that I freaked out because my intention is not to lose weight, and I realized my approach has been off.  I talked to my friend Tracy, a registered dietitian, and she gave me some pointers on how to get in more calories. Some tips from the RD herself:

• Starch it up.  Eat more pasta, rice (whole grains, of course), potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, fruit juice, dried fruits, etc.  I need to max out my glycogen stores so that I can start depositing fat.
  Physiology lesson: glycogen is your body’s storage form of glucose.  Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles, and when your body needs energy, it will break down glycogen into glucose to use for energy.  Your body can only store a finite amount of glycogen though, and when that volume is reached, it will start converting glucose into fat.
• Go nuts.  I was eating more nut butters, but I got bored with that pretty quickly since I already eat them about once a day.  I’ve started eating more dried fruit and nut mixes.  I eat about a cup a day (normal serving size is ¼ cup), which gives me lots of calories from fat, protein, and carbohydrates, and also supplies healthy phytonutrients.  This has helped me stay full way longer.
• A vegan milkshake a day helps keep the skinnies away.  Tracy also recommended that I drink a shake at night to help me sock in calories.  There are some soy ice creams out there.  Some people like them — I think they taste like play-doh. I do like coconut “ice cream,” though, so I’ve been making a shake with chocolate coconut ice cream (I get mine from Trader Joe’s), some almond milk, peanut butter, and banana slices. It is awfully tasty.
  Metabolism Lesson: Nutritional scientists used to think that eating late at night wouldn’t promote weight gain as long as calorie intake matched calorie output over the long term, and anything that said otherwise was a myth.  There is now emerging evidence suggesting that activity of hormones and enzymes involved in metabolism and the deposition of fat changes with circadian rhythms.  So, in fact, eating calorically dense foods late at night may cause your body to store said calories as fat.  The verdict is still out as most of the published studies have only been in animal models, but there are studies currently being conducted in humans, so we’ll have to see what those results say.  Given the information out there now, though, my recommendation would be to cool it on the Ben & Jerry’s late at night if you are trying to lose weight.

If it’s not obvious, I don’t incorporate EVERY one of Tracy’s tips every day, because that could lead to too much weight gain.  I choose a few a day, and that helps to keep my diet varied and interesting.  Hopefully I’ll get my intake figured out in the next few days.  Of course, I could put on weight in really unhealthy ways by eating chips, fries, candy, and soda, but that’s not my approach to life.  There are healthy ways to gain weight, much like there are (un)healthy ways to lose weight.

If you are trying to lose weight and get healthier, try small changes like making all of your snacks vegan.  Eat fresh fruits, veggies and hummus, or ¼ cup serving of mixed nuts. Get creative with your options, and you’ll likely feel healthier for introducing so many nutrient-dense foods into your diet.

So far, being a vegan has been surprisingly fun.  I only really miss animal products with regard to the flavor they provide.  A couple of times I’ve cooked a meal and thought to myself, “A little bit of bacon/feta/parmesan would go really well with this.”  I’m trying to use more unique spices and herbs to enhance the flavor profile of my foods so that animal products are just a distant memory.  I’m also learning about cooking with new (to me) products like tempeh, nutritional yeast, and how to make “cream” sauces out of cashews. I’ll post some good recipes here soon, and you can give veganism a whirl as well!

Being a Vegan is Hard

Some Background

Veganism is a diet style in which absolutely no animal products are consumed.  That means no meat, dairy, eggs, or any products that contain any of those ingredients.  Many people follow vegan diets for moral, cultural, or health reasons, or, if you’re like me, for curiosity’s sake.  When done right, veganism is a very healthy style of eating and results in lots of positive health outcomes.

Those who have talked to me about it know that I’m not a huge fan of veganism.  When I think about it, though, it’s not veganism that I’m really against – it’s vegans who don’t know what they’re doing.  There are a lot of really great nutrients in animal products,  you don’t necessarily need to eat meat to get them, and there are a lot of free range/organic/local products out there if animal cruelty is your concern.  Because of that, I’ve always thought lacto-ovo-vegetarianism was a more sustainable and natural lifestyle choice.  Potential deficiencies in a vegan diet include:

• Vitamin B12: Required for proper functioning of the brain/nervous system, red blood cell formation, and DNA synthesis.  Deficiencies can result in anemia, confusion, fatigue, and depression.  The main non-animal B12 source is spirulina (an algae), though this form of B12 is overall biologically inactive.
• Calcium: Calcium is required for vascular contraction/dilation, conduction of nerve impulses, muscular contraction, and intracellular signaling cascades, while the bones act as the body’s reservoir for calcium.  When dietary calcium intake is low, the body will pull calcium from the bones (thus weakening them) in order to maintain normal levels in the blood so that all those other things I mentioned can happen.  Dairy is a great source of calcium, but certainly not the only one.  Green leafy vegetables contain calcium, and lots of foods are fortified with calcium like soy and almond milks, orange juice, tofu, etc.
• Iron: Iron is necessary for the formation of red blood cells, the delivery of oxygen to tissue, and for proper function of many enzymes.  Dietary iron comes in the form of heme (think: hemoglobin) and non-heme iron.  Heme iron is much more bioavailable and is present in meat, whereas non-heme iron is not very bioavailable and sources include fortified cereals, beans, and spinach.

Overall, these deficiencies can be avoided by taking a multivitamin or nutrient-specific supplements.  Plus, our food supply is so heavily fortified that you can readily get these nutrients without eating their natural sources.  You just have to be especially cognizant of what you’re eating and what nutrients those foods do and do not provide.

The First Few Days

Technically, I was supposed to start my month-long adventure of veganism on January 1, 2013.  That didn’t happen.  I was in CO for the first few days of 2013, and I spent NYE in Vail seeing Thievery Corporation (awesome live show), drinking a lot of whiskey, and being awake long after I should have gone to sleep.  Needless to say, I wasn’t much in the mood for eating a bunch of vegetables and legumes and no cheese on Jan 1^st.  Instead, I had a fried chicken wrap (which later gave me food poisoning) for lunch and chorizo tacos for dinner.  The food poisoning was probably my body’s way of telling me I suck for not following through with my vegan plan and/or I have bad karma.

I spent January 2^nd recovering from said food poisoning, so I was sort of a vegan that day, but mostly because I just didn’t eat much.   I have since been successful in pursuits of veganism, though it has not been without challenges, which I expect will continue for the next month.

Challenge 1: Eating out.  There are maybe 2 vegan options on a given menu, and a few more vegetarian options that can be veganized if you hold the cheese.  This makes eating out at an average restaurant fairly monotonous.

Challenge 2: Chocolate.  There is milk in most chocolate products (duh: milk chocolate).  It’s obvious, but I hadn’t thought of it, and it makes me sad.

Challenge 3: Airports.  There are close to no vegetarian/vegan options in an airport.  What I had for dinner at the airport Friday night was a “garden salad” (iceberg lettuce salad-in-a-bag mix) with balsamic vinaigrette and chips and guacamole.  It sucked.

Now that I’m back home, I think the veganism will take a turn for the better since I can cook for myself.  I will say that making my weekly menu took a lot more planning, and I have started reading more food labels than I ever did before (and I did it a lot).  I’m not really worried about not eating meat since I didn’t eat it much before anyways.  But cheese and yogurt make me happy, and ice cream and frozen yogurt make me even happier, so challenges certainly loom in the not-so-far-off distance.