The Meatless Month

Blah, blah, blog.

2010-04-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say, both Lindsey and I realize that we suck for not updating daily as we promised...but we have good excuses! We both have school (and all the homework and studying that goes with it) two days a week, all day (10:30a or 11a - 10p or 11p, depending)! I also have rehearsals for the play I'm in 4 nights a week from 7p-10p, and we both work! And the capper: We are moving Friday. We thought we'd have an entire two or three weeks to pack up and move, but everything's taken so long to get the new place sorted out that we got down to less than a week before we knew for sure we were actually moving!

Anyway, long story short, this has been a crazy week or two. But we are still sticking to our diet! Though we've each had moments of weakness, we helped pull each other through without a single stumble.

Hopefully I'll find some time to go into some detail in the next couple days (in between packing and studying for my three tests tomorrow), but for now it's back to my schoolwork! Thanks for reading!

By the way, if you haven't read Lindsey's last post about cookies, check it out!! Yum!

Broth n Cookies

2010-04-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry we haven't blogged in a while! We've been busy with school and work.

We've eaten a lot in the past few days and strayed not a whit from our diet. Our new endeavor tonight is to make vegan chocolate chip cookies, and they seem pretty great!

These are whole wheat and made with natural sugar. Turbinado, maybe? I can't remember. Anyhow, these cooked up great, and taste pretty good fresh from the oven!

Another quest is to make some great vegetable stock, since most of what you find at the store hardly resembles its wholesome ingredients.

This has been simmering down for hours now and is nearly ready to go into some delicious (hopefully) tortilla soup!

Mmmm mmm, good.

2010-04-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

I think today is the first day that I've felt good since we started this wacky project. Myself, I'm fighting the blues and stress, but my energy level hasn't been too bad today!

Jeff has been hankering like crazy for hash browns for the last few days, and I have got to admit, I just wasn't. Our last few tries at making good hash browns of the shredded potato variety just left us with a gooey, salty mess.

But it seems we have stumbled upon the solution! Jeff swiped some baked potatoes from our Easter dinner at his parents', and we shredded one up and dropped it into some hot salted olive oil leftover from last night's popcorn. It fried up beautifully! It had crunchy bits, salty bits, potatoey bits, and was just great! I think I'm going to maybe suggest we have hash browns again tomorrow...

One thing I've been concerned about is us getting enough to eat in general. Jeff has been having some magnificent cravings, and I worry that he isn't eating enough! I'm a big fan of snacking on pistachios and I had quite a few handfuls between today and yesterday. I slip in more food in other ways, too. Jeff is managing more meal-to-meal, and I worry that he's just not eating enough!

So I think I'm going to suggest that we both try to get more good protein in throughout the day, from beans and nuts. I'm serious, dipping anything in peanut butter has recently become my best friend.

Oh, speaking of...! If you have any desire to go to a very vegan-friendly restaurant, try Fresh Choice! They have lots of fresh, local food and they mark all of their vegan option with a bright, yellow V. It made a great and easy lunch for me and Jeff this afternoon!

Easter.

2010-04-05T10:19:00.001-07:00

Easter was so hard for me. I was fine not doing the ham and the tri tip. Even most the candy and the strawberry shortcake. But when those brownies came out of the oven... I was this close to having some. I was trying to figure out a way to justify it in my head! :) In the end, managed to not eat any, but just barely (and mostly thanks to Lindsey).

Workin' On It

2010-04-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes working where I do is just plain painful!

I really like my job at Chili's, serving is great, and the restaurant is fun, but for goodness' sake, I can't eat anything!

Okay, so that's an exaggeration. Yesterday while I was on break, I ordered a large house salad with no croutons and used guacamole and salsa as a dressing. It was really tasty and I recommend it to anyone who wants to eat well (and pretty frugally!) at Chili's. I have to applaud Chili's new house salad; they've replaced the cheese and a blob of carrot and tomato with diced cucumber, corn, tomato, and they use a nice green romaine mix. It's great!

But still, it doesn't help me so much at work because I just don't crave a salad all that often. Instead, I crave french fries and chicken crispers and most of all...

Chips.

I have a serious chip obsession. I love chips from pretty much anywhere and the chips at Chili's are among the best I've ever had. It took a while for their thin crispy style to lure me in, but now that they have, they're a special kind of chip that you can only really get straight from the fryer, and you definitely won't find it bagged at the grocery store. Plus, Chili's makes a yummy fresh salsa that is just perfect on those light and crispy chips.

The problem is that I think they're not allowed. Chili's is a large chain, and they need the kind of consistency and shelf-stability that I don't think you can get without some kind of preservative or other chemical concoction. I really want to find the box that the unfried chips come in so that I can read the ingredient list and prove it to myself. Until then... I'm just going to sigh wistfully every time I scoop out a basket of warm, crunchy, perfectly salted, delicious chips.

That said, Jeff and I have discovered some interesting foods that ARE okay. One of which is Fritos chips, with only corn, corn oil, and salt listed as ingredients. We finished off our bag tonight, but we're not going to be buying more any time soon, since although they are technically allowed, with our goal of eating "minimally processed" foods, I think maybe we can do better. Still, if it comes down to quitting the experiment in a fit of munchy desperation or buying a bag of Fritos, I'm all for Fritos! They're delicious, especially with the fresh salsa Jeff made today.

Dinner Updates

2010-04-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm finally getting into the swing of things. I haven't had a headache today, and I haven't felt so hungry all the time! :) It helps that I've sort of figured out how to snack without the luxury of grabbing a granola bar or a bag of chips. Today I snacked on celery with all-natural peanut butter and a little honey to sweeten it up, plus an apple.

Dinners have been pretty yummy last night and tonight. Last night, we had stir fry veggies with a brown rice/wild rice mix. The stir fry included lots of scrumptious, healthy veggies: mushrooms, broccoli, asparagus, carrots, onions, with soy sauce, fresh ginger and other Asian seasonings, and garnished with cashews.

Tonight, we had a Mexican style dinner. Everything was homemade using only ingredients with no preservatives or HFCS. Dinner included:

refried beans
salsa
Spanish rice (with the leftover rice from yesterday)
corn tortillas (the ones I made last night)
steamed asparagus
sliced avocado

It was hearty, healthy, and delicious, if I do say so myself!

2010-04-02T23:54:00.001-07:00

Slept really poorly last night. Woke up a bunch & I honestly had like a half dozen dreams about eating food! Weird, huh? Had a headache again all day :(

2010-04-02T23:43:00.001-07:00

Set up this new text message blogging thing! Made those delicious corn tortillas tonight, with just masa (corn flour) and water! Yummy! :)

Tortillas!!

2010-04-02T23:40:00.001-07:00

2010-04-02T23:39:00.001-07:00

Waiting for Linz to get home from her first day of work at Chili's since we started this thing! Wonderin how it went...

Day 1: Done

2010-04-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

Interesting notes about Day 1:

Soy milk wasn't as bad as I remembered it. And maybe because I expected it to be awful, but I actually thought it was pretty alright!
To tell the truth, I didn't feel so good most of the day. Lindsey and I binged on junk food yesterday, so maybe it was a result of that. Or maybe it was because of the lack of coffee this morning. Either way, I had a bit of a headache and kind of just felt yucky.
As long as I'm being honest, I also felt hungry all day. We had a late breakfast, we snacked on popcorn and pineapple during the day, but I never felt full until we ate a big meal at the April Fool's fundraiser at ComedySportz (more on that later).
We've got some decisions to make. We went to the grocery store this afternoon, and to Whole Foods tonight, and we've got to decide what we consider "processed." I think we've kind of figured it out, but it's a definite gray area thing, and may be hard to draw distinct lines. We'll sort it out as we go along!

Tonight's event at ComedySportz was really cool. It was put on by Rebecca from The Cultured Kitchen (http://www.rawsupportfoods.com/nav/about.html). She is a raw foods vegan, which means she doesn't heat any of her food above 115 degrees or so, so it maintains all its natural goodness.

Though this is not what Lindsey and I are going for, it was certainly interesting to eat delicious, vitamin-packed, meat-and-dairy-free food. She clearly showed that super healthy food does not have to be flavorless!

My favorite things were her "Becca Burgers," which were lettuce cups filled with thinly sliced veggies, Maitake mushrooms, olives, sauce, and more. It was all vegan, soy free, raw, and it was delicious! She also had these little vegan chocolate hearts that contained no refined sugar and were amazing!

Definitely worth the price, and a great way to start our month! Check out Lindsey's post to see what we purged from our kitchen today (complete with pictures)!

We also took body measurements today, which we'll share at some point in the future! Make sure you sign up on here to get updates when we post!

The Big Purge

2010-04-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today, first on our to-do list was to purge the apartment of all the foods that didn't sync with our new nutrition plan. First, we went through the dry food, and removed anything made with milk or eggs, high fructose corn syrup, and preservatives or additives. We got rid of pretty much everything, save some bulk dried goods like lentils and rice, nuts and dried fruit, some pasta, and some canned goods. We even got rid of our all-purpose flour and our white and brown sugar, in our effort to avoid over-processing as best we can.

Next, we hit the fridge. Within the fridge lurked the evidence of my dairy obsession, with several cheeses (cream, cottage, cheddar, provolone, feta, stringy mozzarella), milk, butter, sour cream, and a few examples of oils pretending to be cream.

In the freezer we left ice cream, chicken breast, turkey patties and sausage, some tilapia, and a thousand chimichangas to chill out until we can find them a new home.

Since Jeff is in no way one to waste, he made sure that anything that was too used up or old to give away was properly disposed of, and we recycled all the packaging that we could. The rest he is taking to his mom's, where she surely will find many good uses for all of our extras.

Where did that leave us for breakfast?

Well, we had ourselves some steel-cut oatmeal topped with dried blueberries, raisins, walnuts, and honey, and washed it down with some green tea.

As you can tell, I'm delirious with joy.

Tune in tomorrow for the gripping tale of our first trip to the store, and to take a gander with us at some shocking dietary discoveries!

The kickoff party!

2010-03-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Lindsey and I have found a great way to kick off our month-long experiment!

We were invited to this event a few weeks back, but had totally forgotten about it. It is being put on by the sister of a friend of ours, and when he saw our Meatless Month group, he reminded me about it! What a great way to start off our month! Should be lots of fun and educational.

But here's the best part: members of our facebook group or followers of this blog get a big discount! Here's what Mike told us:

She has authorized a special discount for the members of your "Meatless Month" group. The [price] would be $20 per person or $30 per couple, all they need to do is mention the group.

So come join us for the fun tomorrow night, April 1st! The facebook event page is here:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108084699216320

or check out the poster below!

(Click image for full size version)

The Last Supper

2010-03-31T16:27:00.001-07:00

Today is the last day of "normal" eating before Jeff and I embark on our one-month food journey. Since Jeff and I both work at Chili's Bar and Grill, arguably the most unhealthy restaurant chains in the United States (home to the Big Mouth Burger Bites and several salads that are themselves nearly 1000 calories a pop, among many deliciously decadent choices), we decided to take advantage of our employee discounts for the last time for at least thirty days.

Jeff ordered us a Triple Dipper appetizer with Honey Chipotle Chicken Crispers, Boneless Buffalo Wings, Southwestern Eggrolls, and three dipping sauces. We topped that off with my favorite, a Southern Smokehouse Burger with extra crispy fries. Oh, and 32 oz of Dr. Pepper and (Jeff's favorite) another 32 oz cup of strawberry lemonade mixed with iced tea.

There's the lovely meal, and I'd be lying to you if I didn't tell you that people come into Chili's and order this sort of meal all the time, finish it off completely, and sometimes add dessert.

So what's the damage of a meal like that? Aside from a bit of a post-meal headache and some tummy rumblings and stinky meaty toots, we consumed, together, 5073 calories, 318 grams of fat, and 12346 mg of sodium.

Sure, split up we had just about 2500 calories and 150 grams of fat each, but since my recommended calories per day is around 1800-1900, and Jeff's is probably around 2200 or so, and our recommended intake of fat is maxed at 60 grams per day, we pretty much ate three days worth of fat and sodium and over a day's worth of calories in about a half hour!

I promise we won't stop here for our last hurrah today (I haven't even had one margarita!), but this "Last Supper" of our is the epitome of what we want to give up next month. I have a feeling that in a few weeks I'll look at that photo with a little bit of disgust. I know your body gets used to what you feed it, and I hope this'll be the last time for a while that I'll be able to eat so much plain junk with nary but a gargle in my gut!

Yeah, what she said!

2010-03-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

Lindsey has said it perfectly.

We have discussed this sort of thing now and again over the year of our relationship. One morning just a week or so ago, I mentioned how I would like to try to lay off the dairy a bit. Then I poured a cup of coffee topped off with a quarter cup of Lucerne 1%. Within 36 hours, I was on Papa John's website ordering a (heavenly) garlic chicken pizza.

So as you can see, I am not a health nut. Working at Chili's, I indulge in the benefit of an employee discount a few times per week, every week. I do try to stay somewhat active, but the days of playing soccer Friday, Sunday and Tuesday nights (and refereeing on Saturdays) are long gone. I now play once a week - at most - and ref, well...once in a while.

But I, like everyone, have my ideals. Right now, these ideals are so out of whack with my lifestyle when it comes to food, that I am excited to finally be doing something to bring them closer together. I'm not saying that this is going to be life changing. But like Lindsey said, I have absolutely, undeniably noticed a difference in my energy and mood when I've done this sort of thing before.

During my previous stint at Chili's a few years back, I watched the movie "SuperSize Me." It really shook me, and I stopped eating fast food completely, forsook my Chili's discount, and exercised at least three days per week. Within a month, I was shocked to find I had lost 15 pounds - dropping from a maybe-slightly-overweight 171 (at 5' 10"), to a healthier, far more energetic 156. Eventually, I lost the drive, life got in the way, and I went back to my old habits.

This experiment isn't really about all that, though. Losing weight is not a goal. Exercise is not a criterion. I just want to see what happens!

I.e.: Will eating more fruits and veggies, avoiding processed foods, and just basically eating a more natural diet have an effect on the way I feel?

I just don't know. But I'm determined to find out!

Why the heck would we do this to ourselves?

2010-03-30T12:59:00.001-07:00

How I eat changes how I feel. Recently, I started eating healthier, avoiding fats and high-calorie foods and eating lots of vegetables. One weekend, I decided to take a break, was snacking on Pringles and crackers during the day, and at night had a big dinner of fried food, barbecue, and some beer. Well, in the middle of the night, I woke up feeling like something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe and headed to the bathroom. On the way there I threw it all up- and I haven't puked in years!

I like eating "unhealthy" food. I'm not saying that eating fat and meat is evil or bad or even naughty, but I am saying that my body reacts to radical changes in my diet. It just messes everything up inside. Kinda like a dog getting diarrhea when you go from Purina to Iams overnight. I've just never puked up a vegetable binge.

When I ate more vegetables and less heavily processed foods, I think I noticed feeling more energetic and less stressed. I'm a cynic, though, and I'm just not so sure that it wasn't simply an illusion. But how can I know for sure? What if changing my diet would change my life for the better? What if those crazy intense healthy diets really do make people's lives better, and what if I'm missing out on years of health and energy because I like to enjoy a Hot Pocket now and again?

Well, I've been tinkering with the idea of testing exactly how much diet affects my quality of life.

This morning I mentioned to Jeff that I'd like to make a month-long experiment of cutting out all meat and dairy from my diet. He was immediately excited about the idea, and we've gone about making some rules and guidelines.

First, I'd like to say that neither Jeff nor I are vegetarian. We both eat and enjoy meat. To be honest here, we're both aware of the cruelty in the meat and dairy industries. It's just never stopped us from enjoying hamburgers, milk and cookies, or a nice fried egg.

All right, here's the nitty gritty. We've separated our "rules" into Hard Lines and guidelines. The Hard Lines are rules that we simply won't break unless we're held at dietary gunpoint. The guidelines are rules that we will follow and keep to as much as we are reasonably able.

Hard Lines

no meat (this includes any animal protein: eggs, fish, or bugs)
no dairy
no alcohol

Guidelines

consume minimally processed foods

This means we're avoiding high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), white flour, sugar, and stuff with excessive packaging, stabilizers, coloring, and other sorts of foods with no immediately identifiable natural origin. We're including bread as a processed food in this experiment, and yes, we'll avoid it as much as we can. And one more note: we'll be eating tofu and drinking soymilk. They're both pretty heavily processed foods, but I think that the health benefits of making sure we get enough complete protein outweigh the possible processed-food infidelity.

avoid caffeine

Jeff and I are both coffee drinkers, and we're giving it up for this experiment. We will, however, still drink green tea as much as we like, and black tea in moderation.

We are going to follow these rules starting on April 1st, 2010. We will continue through the entire month of April.

And now for the rest of today and tomorrow: Eat all the stuff we won't be able to have in April! There's a freezer bag of cookies, a half gallon of milk, and a carton of eggs calling my name...