Vegan-ary Day 2

I survived Day 2 of massive diet overhaul, although the cravings were pretty intense.  It wasn't really cravings for anything specifically, more like I just wanted to eat...and eat...and eat, all. day. long.  Just after lunch I started getting a migraine.  I medicated it, but it still hung on kind of dull and in the background for most of the rest of the day. 

Since we were rained out of our run Tuesday, we were supposed to run yesterday instead.  Well, my husband got trapped at work and couldn't get home in time to run before daycare closed.  I really didn't have it in me to tackle the treaddy, and he can't tackle it because his head bumps the ceiling, so we decided to run today instead.  I'm really anxious to see how it feels now that my body is already starting to feel more "cleaned out". 

The only other change I've really noticed so far is that this morning I only snoozed twice when my alarm off.  I always snooze 4-5 times because I'm so so tired in the mornings.  But this morning, just twice and then I was up and at it.  Maybe a coincidence, maybe a result of the dietary changes.  Only time will tell, but I liked it and I hope it's a habit that is here to stay.

Vegan-ary Day 1

This is my 100th blog post. For some reason I find that really exciting :-)

Today was a successful day by my standards. I didn't eat what most would call a "balanced" diet, but I expected that. The first few days are about breaking old habits and cravings and getting acclimated. Once that happens I'll start focusing more on variety and balance.

The last few days, we were well aware that Vegan-ary was approaching and so we wanted to eat any foods that we knew we were going to miss. This was an attempt to "get it out of our system" in hopes that these same foods wouldn't trigger us to cheat or want to cheat. So we have binged on down home southern comfort food, fast food breakfast sandwiches, Chinese buffet selections, BBQ, you get the idea. We were so miserable after last nights Mexican splurge. Bloated, heartburn, stomach cramps, diarrhea. Basically how we used to feel all the time. And we have been feeling like that for days, since our "cheat-proof binge-fest" started.

Well today, after one day of Vegan-ary, I am happy to report all the bloating, heartburn, and stomach issues GONE! I'm still really exhausted and feeling too lazy and tired to clean or do anything besides veg in front of the TV really, but I'm hoping those will improve with time.

My run today was cancelled due to rain...and I just didn't feel like running in the rain.  So I'll move that back to it's regularly scheduled Wednesday.

Basically, no drastic changes yet, just ridding myself of the heartburn and all. Thankfully no major cravings yet either.  I did have a mild headache all day and just SO tired.  I also realized that I bought myself a little miniature Ben and Jerry's ice cream cup so I could have one last ice cream splurge, but I forgot to eat it!!  Ugh.  Now it's mocking me.  I plan to feed it to the kids soon :-)

The Month Formerly Known as February

The hubby and I embarked on a non-New Year's Resolution on January 1st...but we are ready to grow the challenge.

We’ve decided to take on this 30 day challenge to eat mostly vegan, mostly unprocessed, mostly whole grain foods.  We will do this all of February, plus today to get our total 30 days.  We’re calling it Vegan-ary (ya know…instead of February).  No more “cheat days”, not for this month.  We’re going all in. The rules are pretty simple:

1.      Eat a mostly vegan diet eliminating ALL meat, eggs, and dairy.  We are making exceptions to a truly vegan diet by still allowing honey (as the FoK diet does) and gelatin.

2.      Eat only whole grains at home when cooking or eating bread or pasta.  If we go to a restaurant we may bypass the whole grains requirement, so long as what we are eating is still a vegan meal (with noted exceptions above).

3.      Reduce added oils and sodium when cooking at home.  Again, restaurant meals are an exception so long as we stick to #1.

4.      Eat primarily whole foods (grains, fruits, and vegetables) and cut out most processed foods (which we currently rely far too heavily on)

5.      Don’t break the rules for all of Vegan-ary!!!

I want to post regularly throughout Vegan-ary to document the improvements (or problems) that I’m noticing.  It’s not my intent to document exactly what I’m eating and turn this into a food blog, although I will talk about it some if anyone is interested.  I’m more interested in documenting how I’m feeling, changes I’m noticing, the way my runs are going/feeling/timing changes, etc.  I want to look back and have a record of how improvements in my diet are affecting me. 

When we had our first 8 day streak (January 1-8) we were feeling down because we didn’t notice any changes.  Or so we thought.  What really happened is that we had forgotten just that quickly how badly we had really been feeling before.  This time, I do not  want to forget.  I want it on here in all its glory…the clichéd good, bad, and ugly.  I am so beyond ready for Vegan-ary to begin!

Thoughts from January

My husband and I aren’t really New Year’s Resolutions kind of people.  I admire the people who are NYR kind of people.  If you can make a resolution and stick to it just because the calendar flips over to a new year then I think that’s great.  It takes amazing resolve.  Resolve that my husband and I don’t have.  We are not NYR kind of people.  We need a far greater catalyst for change than a calendar flip. 

This year on January 1^st we did make a change.  And it wasn’t a New Year’s Resolution, and it wasn’t because it was January 1^st.  It was because there was a catalyst for change and randomly that catalyst occurred just a few days before the New Year.  This happened:

We like to watch documentaries because we’re kind of nerdy like that.  We’re also aware that our four food groups are junk food, fast food, frozen food, and Paula Deen desserts.  We know those aren’t the healthiest food groups to build your day around.  We know it’s a horrible example for our children.  We know that it is shameful (yet oh so true) that days will pass without a single vegetable or fruit passing through our mouths.  For all of these reasons we were completely entranced by Forks Over Knives.  It really resonated with us.  In fact, it kind of terrified us.  But in a good way.  A way that inspired us to finally make some changes that we’ve been working towards for years.

We took a couple of days at the end of December to pig out on some of our favorite foods.  Then on January 1^st we completely cut out meat, eggs, cheese, and all dairy, and we switched to all whole grains for our breads and pastas.  We set out with a transition plan that allowed each of us in the house (including the 2 kiddos) 2 “cheat days” during the month.  This actually meant a cheat meal and not a whole day.  We figured 8 crappy meals during the month and 85 really healthy meals was a drastic and marked improvement.  And it would help us get through the cravings and rough times, knowing that we didn’t have to cut out some of our old favorites forever, but just for a little while.

We had an amazing January where we learned a lot about our bodies and our health.  We had an 8 day streak where we were questioning whether there was any difference at all in how we felt.  Then we had our first cheat dinner which instantly brought on all of the symptoms that we had already forgotten about: heartburn, stomach cramps, diarrhea, bloating, fatigue that made us completely worthless for the rest of the evening.  And then when we had our next streak of clean eating, we appreciated finally how much better we really felt.  It didn’t stop us from using all of the cheat days allotted to us, but it did make us wonder how we could feel if we cut out the cheat days.

Would our health improve?  Would our energy soar?  Would our running times go down and runs feel better?

So we decided to find out……stay tuned!

Reflections and Choices

We're approaching the end of the year and I've been feeling really reflective.  I think it happens to the best of us around this time.  It's hit me especially hard this year because 2011 has been what I would consider the worst of my life.  I've actually had a run of bad years as of late.  I could choose to let that get me down, but instead I'm choosing to use that as a stepping stone to make 2012 fantastic.

In November of 2009 my stepmother (of 25 years) passed away suddenly at the age of just 50.  That was extremely difficult to deal with.  My brother was in his early 20's but still lived at home, and he instantly became displaced.  My sister was only 20.  Neither of them could cope with much of the planning or decision-making, and as the oldest all of that naturally fell to me.  And it was hard.  And I'm not very good at mourning.  It was a rough time.

In April 2010 my grandpa passed away.  It was not sudden or unexpected, but he had been sick a very long time.  Every year at Christmas we all said "appreciate your time with him, this could be his last".  I think we had said that for at least the last 10 Christmases.  And he kept on hanging on.  And we all sort of stopped believing that "it might be his last" because he was so resilient.  But last April he finally lost the fight.  And I took that loss extremely hard.  Harder than I even expected I would.

My grandpa left behind his 96 year old mother.  We always said that she would hang on to take care of her sick son as long as he needed her around.  And she did.  But just a few months after he passed, so too did she.  Yes, 2010 was rough on me too.

In 2011, I haven't lost anyone I've loved and for that I am grateful.  But I almost lost everything else.  My husband and I have been married for over 7 years.  We have two beautiful little girls.  We have a life that I love.  But this year, we didn't take care of it and we almost lost it all.  We came to the very brink of divorce.  And it would have been justified, and no one would have blamed me for leaving, but it's not that easy.  I wasn't willing to throw away almost 9 years of history.  I wasn't willing to walk away from my partner, my best friend since we were 22 years old.  I wasn't willing to sacrifice my childrens' family or future. 

Together we have spent 6 months living in and going through hell, to fight for our family and our relationship.  We have kept our childrens' home together, and kept it running smoothly, and protected them from the hard work we were doing behind closed doors to keep it all together.  We have fought, and it seems we have won.  But it was a terrible year in the making, a terrible year to get to where we are today.

I know that there are still hard times ahead.  I know that my current situation is such that I will have to continue to choose my husband, even when some days I don't want to.  I know that I will still get down, feel sad, be exhausted from the weight of it all.  But I also know that I can choose how to respond.  I can choose to find happiness and joy in my life.  I can choose to make 2012 huge and wonderful and exhilirating.  I can choose to make 2012 different.  I can choose to really live in 2012.  I can choose.

Treadmill Shopping

Like I said yesterday, my treadmill has a GIANT hole in it and I'd rather put money into upgrading to a better one than sinking money into a repair that costs as much as the treaddy did in the first place.  I still have absolutely zero idea how the deck got a hole in it.  I don't run with weights or kettlebells that may have fallen through it.  The weight limit is 300 pounds and neither my husband or I come close to exceeding that.  We don't use it for hours of long running or crazy bouts of speed (although realistically it should even hold up to that).  Regardless, it's now a worthless piece of junk and I get to go treadmill shopping.

Here are the contenders (in no particular order):

1. Freemotion Xtr
2. Horizon Fitness T202
3. Horizon Fitness T203
4. Bowflex Series 7

Unfortunately I am not independently wealthy, so this purchase is kind of a big deal to me.  I'm feeling the pressure because I do not want to screw this up!  If I make the wrong decision I will be sad for years to come.  I'm going to continue scouring the interwebs for reviews of these models (and maybe others) and try to make a decision this week.  I need a way to run SOON.  Losing my stress relief has NOT been good for me!

Anybody have any opinions on these or other treadmills.  Any that you love?  Or hate?

I Haven't Been on a Run

I haven't run in awhile.  Despite proclaiming that I'm going to PR.  Which I'm still totally going to do.  But, Winter has set in hard and work has set in harder.  I've been getting home after dark every day.  And my treadmill has died it's last death I think.  I've run on it twice recently and it felt really bouncy and saggy.  I decided to investigate and found that (unbeknownst to me) it is made of really thin crappy MDF board inside the treadmill deck, and somehow that MDF now has a big hole in the middle of it.  It costs $129 for the materials to fix it, and the labor is probably astronomical.  And I only paid like $350 for it, so not sure I wanna go there.  So the bad news is that I haven't run.  The good news is that I've been treadmill shopping.  Soon I will have a newer, cooler treadmill and I'll be running again!

The other problem with running is that my husband had his tonsils removed on Thursday.  See pitiful man below:



I've been playing the good wife and taking excellent care of him willingly, HOWEVER:

1. I spent 7 hours in the waiting room on surgery day,
2. then another couple of hours making a pharmacy run and a grocery run for soft foods.
3. I don't mind doing either #1 or #2, BUT THEN
4. I pick my 2 kids up from daycare and my darling eldest eats dinner and then pukes it back up.
5. She puked all night long.
6. Including on the white carpet and several of her clothes.
7. I had to shampoo the carpet and wash laundry at 11 PM.
8. I normally go to bed at 9 PM.
9. Oh yeah, she also lost a tooth that day so I had to remember to play the tooth fairy.
10. And I'm basically a single parent through all this because my husband slept for about 48 straight hours after the surgery.
11. I don't begrudge anyone for any of the aforementioned things...but you can see why maybe I wasn't able to run over the weekend?