No Animals Were Harmed When I Wrote This

Today marks the completion of one week into a Vegan lifestyle. If you were to ask me a few months ago how I would feel about giving up meat, cheese, butter, milk, eggs—and even honey—I would have laughed and picked up a cheeseburger, shuffled in some fries, and washed it down with a Muscle Milk. This was unreal to me until I started reading about bodybuilders, football players, swimmers, martial artists, and other professional athletes who chose to give up their meat eating lifestyles in favor of a plant-based diet. How could this be possible? I started to do the research and what I found astounded me.

I found that statistically, vegetarians live longer, are healthier, and hardly ever suffer from the major diseases that plague American’s today. More and more people are choosing this lifestyle because it makes them stronger, smarter, thinner, calmer and happier than their counterparts. After 7 days into it, I’m beginning to understand why.

I started to read “The Kind Diet”, by Alicia Silverstone, and formulated recipes based on her cookbook to jumpstart my Vegan fast. I’ve already learned a ton from her and I encourage you to check it out!

When I decided to go on this journey, you would not believe the responses I got from people. My mother thought I was going to kill myself because of a deficiency in protein (which BTW, is incredibly uncommon among Vegetarians and somewhat unheard today when there are so many food choices). My friends thought I was going to loose a ton of muscle and I’ve had people ask me constantly “What are you going to eat if you can’t have chicken, pork, beef, or fish?”.

Well, it turns out that there are hundreds of different varieties of plant-based food you can get in any grocery store. As I started to research, I came to a bunch of conclusions that just made sense to me. Did you know that cup of beans has more protein than a steak? Also, more calcium, iron, and other vitamins. Of course, you don’t have to live on beans, there is a significant source of protein in sea vegetables, tempeh, miso, soy products, nuts, seeds, and tons of other veggies too. Whole grains, like legumes, are also a significant source of protein.

So why do we all think we have to eat animals in order to be healthy? If you do a little investigating, you’ll find that the meat and dairy industries spend billions of dollars to make you think this is true. The fact of the matter is, American’s consume way too much dairy and meat products. In most countries, meat is not the main ingredient in a meal. Usually a tiny bit is mixed in with their whole grains, vegetables, beans, and other organic ingredients. That might help explain why we are the fattest country in the world.

Let’s face it, meat is freakin’ awesome. Where most people in the world would consider it a great luxury, thanks to a thriving meat industry, we get to have it every single day. It’s cheaper than vegetables and it has most of the nutrients we need in it. If you stop for a minute and consider WHY these meats have so much good stuff in them, you’ll realize how they got there in the first place: cows, pigs, and chickens are all plant eaters. Yup, the nutrients you get and benefit from when eating that chicken breast, got there from the plant-based foods they consume. Vegans and Vegetarians are just getting them straight from the source—except with none of the bad stuff attributed with meat (like heart disease).

One scary thing to think about is the ingredient list on popular foods and trying to avoid eggs, butter, and milk. It’s in EVERYTHING! For example, I’ve made one or two slip ups already because I didn’t realize that my veggie burger was held together with a tiny bit of mayonnaise or that my Morning Star meal starter had a small amount of eggs in it. On my first day, I went to pick up orange juice from the grocery store. There were two kinds on the shelf, one that was just regular juice and another that was enriched with calcium, protein, Vitamin A and extra Vitamin C. When I read the ingredients, I realized that the second choice contained dairy products in order to achieve this nutritional fact.

I’ve committed to this for 21 days and now that I’m 1/3 of the way through it, I have already started to feel the benefits. I’ve lost a lot of water weight that I’ve been holding onto for months. When my alarm clock goes off, I’m able to wake up more peaceful rather than hitting the snooze button and crashing back to bed. I have a lot more energy throughout the day, where before it was only after a Monster energy drink in the morning and afternoon.

I’ll keep you all updated on my progress and I invite you to give it a try with me. Here is a recipe from tonight’s dinner:

AJ’s Vegan Chili Mac

• 1 can of organic tomatoes (or fresh if you can get them)
• 2 cans of variety organic beans, usually labeled chili beans
• 1 can of tomato sauce
• 1 can of water
• 1 whole onion
• a handful of chopped bell peppers
• 4 tablespoons of chili powder
• 1 package of ground beef replacement (don’t use Morning Star though, it contains eggs and dairy)
• 1 package of whole wheat rotini (again, watch out for eggs and dairy)

Cook on high the ground beef replacement in medium sized pot. Add tomatoes, beans, tomato sauce, onions, bell peppers, and chili powder.

Cook in a separate pot the rotini. Strain.

Combine pasta and chili into a bowl. Top with Vegan sour cream and vegan cheddar cheese and enjoy. Also delicious with a nice tall glass of almond milk.