I won't post everyday about my vegan adventure, but I thought I'd add a touch more on yesterday's post. I totally forgot to mention that I would be vegan by diet plus a bit more... but I still need to work on carrying that over to clothing and items. I love, love animals, but choosing a vegan diet is mostly for selfish reasons of improved health (I totally respect true vegans that forgo all things animal including what they wear).
So by "a bit more" I mean that I am going to cut out processed sugars whenever possible, foods with preservatives, white flour, heavily processed foods, vegetable/canola oil, and some other things in addition to the typical meats, dairy and eggs. I think that sometimes you'll see some "vegans" that eat tons of potato chips, fried noodles, and other high fat and high calorie foods. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this if your main motivation is for animals. I'd like to take the "kind diet" approach and really work at getting my body in the best state of health as possible. The Kind Diet takes vegan to the next level, toward macrobiotic or "superhero" as coined by Alicia. I'm somewhere between vegan and superhero as defined by the book (the book has three levels: flirting, vegan, superhero).
So what about iron, vitamins, and protein? According to the book (which I recommend), you can get all of these if you vary your diet enough and focus on the grains and vegetables and include some form of protein in the day - beans, tempeh, etc. Also, soy is not pushed in this diet, which is nice as too much soy is not good either.
Supposedly, your body might go through a "detox" of sorts when you make the transition and so far, I haven't felt sick, but I was really sluggish and tired this morning... I will let you know how it goes.
If anyone has any great vegan recipes they'd like to share, I would love to hear about them!
oooh... and I'm excited to follow Alissa on her vegetarian adventures...