Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Shampoo: 1 Me: 0

Okay, so I never thought I'd lose a battle with shampoo as I try to be vegan, but sure enough... My wife called me on the phone to discuss our plans for the evening when she said "Oh, by the way, our shampoo has milk in it."

Huh?

Milk...shampoo... Does not compute. It never occured to me that this might be an issue. So we went to Whole Foods and I got organic shampoo that is free of animal products.

I also addressed another issue in my dietary regime: caffeine. Unbeknowst to me (and really because I didn't look) the tea I have been brewing each day is caffeinated. While I do not think that caffeine is not vegan, I have been told by countless individuals that I need to cut out caffeine. That it is all kinds of crazy evil. While I find myself particularly indebted to caffeine for my college diploma, I have decided I need to kick the habit. So I also purchased some Tazo teas, all of which were clearly labeled "Decaffineated."

I figure if I am giving up all animal products, I should give up caffeine, too.

By tomorrow afternoon, I should be needing a Starbucks. I love giving things up cold turkey.

Weight Room: 0 Me: 1
That's right, I finally got into the gym. First time this week. I did a standard chest routine: dumbbell press, incline press, flies, and horizontal chest press. All four sets of twenty. I am feeling pretty good on that front. Despite not having worked out in a month, I had not lost much strength. I can attribute that to my greater attempts at ingesting protein.

I'll know tomorrow just how sore I am.

Jogging: 1 Me: 0
So instead of hopping on the elliptical after lifting, I decided to do a 20 minute jog. It turned into about a 10 minute jog and a lot of exhausted walking.

Not good...

As near as I can figure, there's two things going on.

#1 Last night's moving did more to work me out than I thought.
#2 I'm not exactly in shape (or at least in the shape of a rectangle that I'm shooting for.)

Fried Foods: 1 Me: 0

Being vegan was a little easier yesterday, due in no small part to a trip to Blue Koi, a restaurant with several vegan menu items on it.

I've been calorie crashing a lot over the past two days, which I attribute to the reduce amount of food I have been eating and not to being vegan.

There was one small problem. My wife ordered crispy tofu in spicy awesome sauce...and I had some. And 1 french fry. I've been thinking about the friend foods restriction and I wasn't so high on them anyway... but yet this is an attempt to get healtheir. So I need to limit fried foods to once per week.

To make up for this rules modification, I am going to limit my jelly belly intake to once per week, too. I need to give those things up. They are just empty calories. Delicious, empty calories.

Really delicious empty calories.

Excerise log:
Yesterday was not a good day for me and exercise. I wanted to retrace my walking route since I had a letter to mail, but no one here has any envelopes. So I got in my car to go grab some, figuring I could buy them and still do a mini walk. And I had a flat tire.

So at that point my only option was the gym, which I decided to pass on because my cousin came over to help me move furniture to our new house and I did not want to several fatigued muscles and then have to move my armoire which is heavier than a black hole. I probably should have gone on the treadmill for 30 minutes, though.

So even though I did move heavy objects, I am not going to call that exercise.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Day 1 Recap: Honey: 1 Me: 0

So I've had worse first days on diets before...

All in all, my first day as a vegan was not so rough.

I didn't really feel hungry until about 5:00. On the recommendations of a lot of the fitness and dieting sites and magazines I've read, I am trying to take the 6 small meals approach to dieting. However, I had to interview a chef at 4:30 for a magazine article I am writing and was out the door at 4 having forgotten to grab my planned 4:00 meal.

So by 5:00, I was hungry. By 6:00, I was calorie crashing.

I was saved by the graces of my cooking class instructor. Chef McPeake has been the most understanding food professional about my choice to not eat meat. Since last night's class was on dry cooking, I was given a giant basket of vegetables and I was either given (or I just took) free reign of the culinary school's kitchen.

My menu: warm potato salad with olive oil, champagne vinegar, scallions, red onions, and capers, grilled zucchini and cucumber, asparagus with lemon and sambal, and grilled applies with a honey balsamic reduction.

Yep, there it is. I had already made the reduction and tasted it before I realized it was verbotten. *sigh* On the plus side, I did remember that I should not make a compound butter to go atop the mushrooms I nearly roasted in the oven.

So, all I can do is do better today.

Exercisewise, I had to take a walk. I didnt have my sneakers and the gym gets a little grumpy when people work out in dress shoes. So instead I walked for about half an hour. It was nice to get out and I did get my heart rate up.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Morning Day 1

I wanted to write an introductory post about getting things started earlier than today, but I barely got to the grocery store in time. I could not have chosen a more hectic time in my life to completely reinvent myself, but in some ways I think that's okay. I know I won't have a lot of time to sit around and do bordem eating and I like the challenge...

I am extremely scared of being vegan and I don't know why. I just know that while walking around Whole Foods yesterday, I wanted to be anywhere but there.

I think part of it was walking through the store and seeing how much I cannot eat... it's a bit daunting. However, I hope to use a lot of the intervening weeks to work on my vegan cookbook since, well, I have to eat vegan for the next 90 days anyway.

This is a big change for me, and for now it seems pretty insurmountable. Though I feel like it will be harder for me to keep up the exercise regimine than change my diet, but part of the reason I wanted to be vegan was to show one could do strength training and still be vegan.

In some ways, I am a little ashamed of how I started off this challenge. Instead of getting a ton of fresh fruit and vegetables at the store (I did get some), I bought granola and faux meats. My goal for myself is to gradually transition away from those staples and eat a diet that is more composed of raw and unprocessed foods. Stay tuned...

About Me and the Challenge

So I have been vegetarian for a little more than a year now. At first I started being one of those vegetarians that still eats fish (I know...I know...) which was probably necessary because at the time I didn't think I could live without fish and it gave me something familiar I could eat as I was figuring out what my non-meat options were.

Then, for all intents and purposes, I kicked the fish habit and have been living vegetarian ever since.

But it is not enough. I got into begin vegetarian because it was a healthy lifestyle, but I want more. So I have challenged myself to spend 90 days as a vegan to see how it affects my health and weight. I'll be tracking my progress here on this blog and share my inner thoughts, my recipes, and my fears as I attempt to do this.

I also have decided to make a few other changes in my life during this time as well. As I control what I eat, I will also be doing the following:

  • Working out at least 5 times per week
  • Not eating fried foods
  • Really monitoring my portions and controlling how much I eat
  • Eliminiating non-essential spending (This one is a bit off topic, but its important to me to put it out there so that I do it.)

So this becomes an challenge about remaking who I am through diet, exercise, and impulse control. I'll discuss them all throughout the next 90 days.

Lastly, I wanted to post the rules for what being vegan means to me:

  • No meat or eggs
  • No cheese or milk or other dairy products
  • No honey
  • Conditionally, no sugar. Basically I plan to avoid sugar whenever possible unless I know for sure it has not been processed using animal products.
  • No gelatin
  • Vegan is determined by the ingredient list, not the processing plant. I have started reading labels and if the product list does not have animal products in it, I am less concerned about the fact that the plant also might make diary or animal products.

Are there any rules I am forgetting?

Well...here goes nothing.