The Food I Ate

Let me outline of my nutritional life up to this point.

Food Pyramid from Childhood--Carbs Much?

1.       0-18 : Ate what my parents fed me and what the Food Pyramid outlined as acceptable. Well balanced and variably punctuated by special snacks and treats.

2.       18-20 : Ate variety of foods provided by the college cafeteria. Health conscious so as to contribute to my athletic performance.

I Used to be Good at Sports

      3.       20-22 : Learned to cook and made dishes I learned from my mom as well as others I picked up from the interweb and picture tube. Continued to eat so as to better my overall health and make me BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER.

      4.       22-25 : Moved to Chicago. Diet shifted from that of a healthful hardcore athlete to that of a fat-ass lazy moron. Too many slices of pizza, pulled-pork sandwiches and liquid meals. (AKA BEER)

An Accurate Representation of My Physique

That brings us up to about 18 months ago. I was chubby, and ate and drank too much. SO MANY FUCKING USELESS CALORIES. I went from being in the best shape of my life to that of a moldy old potato before I knew it. (Round and squishy)

A few things helped whip my head out of my butt…

1.       Alton Brown did an episode on “Good Eats” called Live and Let Diet. Here is someone’s blog review of the episode; I didn’t read it all the way through, but the beginning gives you an outline of what the episode entails. http://weightmaven.org/2010/01/05/alton-browns-live-and-let-diet/ You can also check out the episode on youtube.com. It encourages you to forego garbage (doughnuts, cookies, fast food) in favor of nutritionally dense foods. (This is highlighted with an orange vs. doughnut example.)


2.       I read “This is Why You’re Fat, and How to Get Thin Forever” by Jackie Warner. Crazy lesbian trainer to the fancy. She has a billion DVDs and has been featured in countless magazines. She tells you what to eat, how much of it and what not to eat. The book also includes workouts, but that is not the point. She let me know the reason I was fat is that I eat too much sugar. ‘Fat doesn’t make you fat, sugar makes you fat.” That is what the book preaches. Sugar in the broadest sense of the term. That artificial sweetener shit is sugar too for all intents and purposes. The book makes it really easy to follow along and eat clean. She tells you to eat like its your job. 5 days per week. It also allows you to have “treat meals” (Not cheat, TREAT!!!) If you ate correctly during the week you allot yourself 2 treat meals. Seems fair. Who does that bitch think she is? A professional or something? She was right. It worked. I used clean eating to shed my winter layers (yes LAYERS) and run my first half marathon.  

After My First Ever Half Marathon

A month later I moved back to Portland and started training for my next half marathon in October, which seemed to go well. I continued eating clean and kept up on my fitness.



From mid-summer to late winter my diet was normal; swayed from healthy to eating out too much and back again. AND THEN…Dun*Dun*DUN***

I watched Food, Inc.

Stream this on Netflix

A documentary about the food we buy and eat. Much of it focuses on the meat industry and GMOs. It encourages you to buy local/organic foods in lieu of the disgusting garbage that most national chain stores are slinging. Eye opening.

Stream on Netflix

It takes a lot to gross me out; I was. So I evaluated the foods I was eating. I made a huge effort to reduce any and all processed food items from my diet; the goal was to ingest only WHOLE FOODS. When I get super psyched about something I chatter about it to anyone who will listen. (Case and Point, this Blog.) So I started blabbering about this movie. Someone suggested I watch Forks over Knives (about the benefits of a whole foods plant based diet) and Fat Sick and Nearly Dead (about the health benefits of juicing to reduce/eliminate disease.) 2 more documentaries about food…MY NEW OBSESSION.

Stream on Netflix

I watched them. I sorted through the things that were presented; it is all propaganda after all. There are tons of things, in both of these films, which helped convince me that animal-less foods were the way to go. So I challenged myself. 

I Assume this is Super Racist Propaganda

The next day I started eating sans animal derived products. I continued to eat as many whole foods as I could, while leaving behind [for the most part] the processed garbage I shouldn’t eat anyway. Things that people think would be really hard to go without or that the majority of Americans say they “Can’t live without” were actually really simple to eliminate. Here is the process I followed:

Step 1: If you don’t eat it, you won’t eat it.

A change like this for the people around you can be shocking. I barely know a handful of people that are even vegetarian, let alone “Vegan.”

I continued to eat only plants for 2 weeks before I even mentioned it or anyone admitted to noticing. So I read and googled and spent tons of time discovering new foods and flavors. One take away I have found from cooking without meat and butter is: to take a lot more care in seasoning food.

Flavor>Fat

So here I write, a couple months down the road, about how I went from an average healthful diet, to SAD (Standard American Diet), back to average and straight into a well rounded plant-based whole-food extravaganza. It wasn’t as hard as most people think. I am lucky to have a great network of people who are less critical and more curious about what the change entails.  For those of you who think they could never give up meat/eggs/cheese because you “can’t live without it”…I say you CAN, and you’ll probably live longer.

For more about my transition to plant based foods and less about why…STAY TUNED.

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