WoW Dos Semanas!!

No lo puedo creer, llevo dos semanas sin comer ningun producto animal! Ha sido un proceso bastante dificil y creia que hiba ser por las carnes pero no mas por los productos dulces. La primera semana fue super dificil pero ahora lo he podido controlar y prefiero comerme una naranja o un guineo antes de comerme una dona. Llevo 8 dias ejercitandome con el programa Insanity para ver me hiba a sentir con este cambio de dieta. En verdad que me siento normal, algunos pensarian que me hiba sentir debil por no comer carne, pero hay muchos productos que puedes conseguir con una cantidad increible de proteina como lo es el Tempeh. Eso si, en el cuarto dia sin comer carne, me sentia como se me hubiera tomado una Benadryl, en un limbo, dormido, lento, duro alrededor de 5 horas ademas que estuve en el ba~no cada hora, pues si no la pase muy bien como pueden ver. No se si fue una etapa de adaptacion o de detox, no se pero lo que he leido, esto puede pasar. Lo mas interesante de todo este proceso es que he comido cosas que en mi vida habia probado y que sob muy ricas y saludable, una de ellas es el Kale, me encanta el sabor ensaladas y en jugos. Lo que tengo que aprender es cocinar vegetales y buscar opciones porque durante este tiempo mi esposa es la que ha cocinado. Cuando pienso en que cocinar lo que pienso es en que tipo de carne voy a utilizar. A pesar de todo no ha sido tan malo y hasta ahora no me arrepiento en tratar ser vegano. Vamos a ver como me va cuando llegue a la Isla del Encanto.

My DHA arrived today!

Supplement time! I have done a lot of reading on vegan nutrition, and I am now supplementing with B12 everyday, DHA (sourced from algae) a couple times a week, and Vitamin D (D2, plant-based) when I think about it. I will be going back to iodized salt on my food when I make it to the store. It turns out iodine is very important. Of course, I also try to eat lots of natural sources of vitamins and minerals--more on those efforts another time. In this post, I wanted to share with you some of what I've been learning.


What I am beginning to think is that perhaps one reason that many of those who try vegetarian or vegan diets give them up is that they aren't properly informed about nutrition. There are plenty of celebrities in the media who talk about how they "just couldn't live on salads," or how they "just needed the protein in meat." Well, guess what? No one can live on just salad, and protein is in a lot of plant sources. Eating ethically and healthfully takes education, and I am doing my best.

We all need B12. But you don't get it from plant sources. And if you are deficient, you will have problems. So, the solution is to simply take a vitamin. Easy, right? If you have a 100mcg pill, you take it daily, and if you have a 1000mcg pill, you take it 2-3 times a week. (I learned this by reading Vegan for Life, and one of the authors, vegan dietitian Virginia Messina, has a great website with lots of good info.) However, if you have been off animal products for a while, your stores might have gotten depleted, which can be corrected by upping your B12 for just a couple of weeks, then continuing to supplement according to the guidelines above. So I've got another week and a half left of taking 2000mcg, figuring that the time I've not been eating meat, combined with nursing a baby, might have helped lower my reserves. (Disclaimer, in case some Internet crazy later decides to sue me: I am not a doctor, I am not a dietitian, check with your physician (who probably, by the way, will inexplicably never mention to you the benefits of a plant-based diet) before you try this, yadda yadda yadda...)

I think that a lot of people might actually be B12 deficient and wind up (erroneously) concluding that a vegan diet isn't for them, when a simple supplement would help them have more energy and feel better in general.

We welcome your comments, by the way, in English or español!

Tratando una dieta vegana

Pues si, yo soy el esposo, mi parte sera escrita en espanol. Perdonen por errores pero voy a escribir de mi tableta. Nunca pense en que trataria de dear de comer carne o cualquier producto animal. Cuando conocia personas que hacian esto pensaba que estaban loco y que era algo muy extremo. Todo comenzo con la pelicula Food Inc. Aprendi a como nuestro sistema esta tan corrupto que no velan por la salud de nosotros y lo unico que importa es cuanto dinero pueden hacer. Cambie mi dieta en tratar de comer productos organicos. Pero unos anos mas tarde mi esposa, que nunca le gusto mucho la carne, decide tratar una dieta vegana. Yo, por supuesto, la apoyo 110% pero nunca pense en tratarla. Un dia decido ver el documental Vegucated, y me abrio los ojos el como nosotros los humanos no nos importa como tratamos los animales en estas grandes granjas, ademas de que no hay motivo de comer tanta carne Como lo hacemos. Muchas de estas cosas que vi en el documental, eran cosas que mi esposa me habia mencionado cuando leia uno de los libros que la inspiro, escrito por Alicia Silverstone, llamado "The Kind Diet". Pero nunca le preste importancia hasta que vi el documental. Have 6 dias que no he comido carne y para un puertorriqueno, pesto no es facil. Lo mas dificil han sido los dulce, estos me han echo pensar que tenia una adiccion a la azucar. De mirarlo siento que mencionan mi nombre. Hoy hay una fiesta de despedida y vamos a ver como me va. Asi que sigan mi cambio.

Ella dice que sí, pero él no sabe...

This is it! The inaugural post. We've been talking about it for some time. Today's the day.

I am the wife, and I have recently gone vegan.

I think the last time I ate meat was in May... shrimp, to be exact. Shrimp twice, actually. So that might be what's hardest for me to give up. But shrimp have faces. (So many people have exceptions for seafood; I think it's because it's the "meat" that feels furthest from human. But fish, shrimp, and the like are obtained in just as unsustainable a manner as other meats; they can be detrimental to your health because of crazy human activities that have polluted their environment; and they suffer, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

A little background:

Back in the spring of 2010, we screened Food, Inc. at our apartment and even hosted a potluck. (I won a cool gift basket from PBS, too, when I shared photos from our event!) It's an important film, and you should see it. It changed the way I thought about the food I ate, and I couldn't eat chicken for a long time, thinking about the footage I had seen. One thing I've learned along the way, though, is that you have to continue to educate yourself and keep your reasons for making changes fresh in your mind, or you slip back into what you were doing. That's how I figure I slowly got back into eating meat and buying processed foods that had icky ingredients in them (although high fructose corn syrup is like a curse word in this house--it's just not allowed).

In December of last year, I stumbled upon Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Life website when I was looking for a gluten-free, dairy-free dessert to make for a holiday party. I have to eat gluten-free, and I was nursing a baby that seemed to be sensitive to my consumption of dairy products. The chocolate peanut butter cups I wound up making were amazing! I noticed that they were vegan and thought that was kind of funny. After all, a vegan diet is just too extreme, right?

Fast forward to January? Februrary? when I decided to read Alicia's book, The Kind Diet. Whoa! I will have to write a whole 'nother post about that on another day. But it changed everything for me and helped me see that not only should I stop eating meat, but I needed to eat a whole lot more veggies, especially leafy greens, and also whole grains.

And that's pretty much how I became vegan. Other books have been helpful along the way, such as Food Revolution and Vegan for Life (written by two vegan dietitians), and movies such as Vegucated. I heartily recommend each one of those.

Stay tuned for his side of the story! We're going to blog our way through our experiments with food.

-L.