Over the past year, life got a little bit crazy. My mom had to have open heart surgery and ended up in the hospital for three weeks. She was in ICU for two of those weeks – super scary. Now that she’s home, the doctor has ordered her to lose weight and start taking better care of herself. Of course, he didn’t really give any guidelines on how to do that. And since there seems to be an issue lately with high blood pressure, it seemed like it might be up to me to figure out how to make us ALL healthier.
Remember that year I went vegetarian? No? Well, I do. It really wasn’t that hard. Just stop eating meat! I pretty much didn’t miss it, and after the year was over and I went back to eating meat, it was on a much rarer basis. Since then, I’ve watched two different movies, both espousing a vegan diet (for different reasons). One is Vegucated and the other is Forks over Knives. Both extremely interesting and motivating for their own reasons.
Going vegan is appealing to me. First and foremost is – if you stop eating processed foods and start eating a plant rich diet, you almost can’t help but lose weight. Studies have shown that cutting out meat and dairy can have amazingly positive effects on your cholesterol and blood pressure.
Here’s the problem: my family.
It’s one thing for me to choose to be vegan. It’s quite another for them. I think we’ve come up with a good compromise, though, by going mostly vegan. For us, that means eating vegan only during the week, and allowing meat and dairy on weekends. That way no one feels like they’re being deprived, and hopefully the changes in diet will show drastic changes in health.
So – in addition to all the other things I do (homeschooling, serving on boards, writing), I’m planning on adding my mostly vegan (but super easy!) recipes here. I hope you ‘ll come along for the ride.
