Vegetarian Frugal Housewife

“This blessed Earth has given us many wonderful foods. I believe our trust is best placed in foods the way Nature intends, not in products concocted in laboratories by multinational corporations trying to exploit the vegetarian market. ”
~ John Robbins, Author The Food Revolution & Healthy at 100

Rarely do I choose to write here about the actual mechanics of vegetarianism, mostly because I don’t like labels and definitions and because I figure that people can work things out for themselves. But my own journey through the process of adopting healthy living, along with my recent readings on the subject and the varied experiences of my friends who have tried vegetarianism has led me to break my silence.

Countless studies, carried out by the most prestigious universities and hospitals around the world, including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cambridge, Cornell, The Cleveland Clinic and others, have determined that a vegetarian or vegan diet is the most health-promoting, illness-preventing and even sickness-healing diet that humans can exist on. For more on this, read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Healthy at 100 by John Robbins, I assure you that your reading time will not be wasted.

Now, that all being said, it must be noted that these studies are testing and making their claims about healthy vegetarianism, not junk-food vegetarianism. But what do you mean? How can vegetarians be unhealthy?

Well, the answer comes in two words: processed foods.

Admittedly, if you are a vegan, you are automatically less likely to eat junk foods because they often contain a plethora of non-vegan ingredients.

But, especially for people in the process of transitioning from the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet) to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, the benefits posed by “products” in the vegetarian section of your grocery often outweigh their inherently processed nature. These foods allow us to move into a vegetarian lifestyle without feeling so deprived that we throw up our hands and return to full-blown meat-eating.

The problems come when we begin to rely on these products as our main source of food, and we keep eating them well into our adoption of the new vegetarian lifestyle. A healthy vegetarian lifestyle is comprised of lots of fresh vegetables, whole grains, fruits, seeds and nuts. If you are vegetarian you may also insert small portions of eggs, milk, yogurt and cheese. (I am a vegetarian who doesn’t eat dairy, but I do eat eggs.) Does what I’m saying here mean that you can’t have faux-meat products, or cake or pasta? No. What is does mean is that the BULK of what you eat should be coming from whole foods, whole grains and fresh fruit and veg.

If you fall into a pattern where you are eating large amounts of cake, pasta, breads and processed foods, than I am sorry to tell you that you are not eating a healthy diet, despite your avoidance of meat, and will likely pay for it with decreased energy, excess weight and long-term health effects. To truly reap the short-term and long-term benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle, you need to be eating a diet comprised at least 90% of whole foods, not processed ones.

Contrary to popular opinion, it has been proven by high-quality science that vegetarians and vegans who eat a whole foods, vegetable rich diet do not need added iron or protein supplements, and may only occasionally need a B12 supplement. But, people eating more mainstream diets tend to need supplementation on essential nutrients while having an overage of nutrients that our body can make on it’s own, thus leading to a feeling of unwellness, an imbalanced immune system, food allergies and greater health problems.

The healthiest peoples on this planet eat 10% or less of their diets as protein, while Americans tend to eat ridiculously more, 2-3 times as much. If we, as vegetarians, consume lots of eggs, dairy and “fortified” foods we may still not be eating a healthy range of proteins and nutrients. The bad news is that when we eat more proteins than the body needs, we have a higher likelihood of heart disease, cancers and Alzheimer’s disease. The good news is that this is only true of proteins derived from animal sources. We can overeat on plant proteins all that we want and the adverse effects never appear. Ideally, only 1% of your diet should be comprised of animal-based proteins, and 4-9% of plant-based proteins.

Processed foods tend to have animal products in them, ie. eggs, butter and milk, in much more frequency than we would tend to use in home-cooking. This makes controlling your intake of animal-based proteins much more difficult and monitoring the quality of those animal products virtually impossible. (Not to mention the prevalence of unlabeled genetically modified and chemically modified ingredients in these foods.)

For myself I choose to be a Mindfultarian, I remain mindful of the nature of my foods and don’t shun, but simply choose to minimize, my ingestion of non-organic vegetables, overly processed products and dairy and produce that have come from nameless, faceless farms thousands of miles away rather than family farms in my own back yard.

I will proudly say that I have used vegetarian products to help me transition to, and remain faithful to, a vegetarian diet. I believe that being able to enjoy something which looks and/or tastes like an old favorite food can be just the emotional/psychological boost that new vegetarians (and even long-time ones) need from time-to-time. That is why you will find some “faux” products in a few of my recipes, I have a special knack for “recreating” S.A.D. foods using vegetarian ingredients and I do take requests from friends and family.

But, what I do not advocate is feeding yourself, or your children, on these “products” too frequently. Make whole foods your main source of nutrition and processed foods your occasional special treats. Keep your occasional moments down to one or two a month and your health will reap all the fantastic benefits of being a vegetarian.

I know that people, especially young people, who become vegetarians are often existing in a bubble, meaning that they are the only vegetarian that they know and therefore have no support. I know that many people, including adults, that are new to vegetarianism have very little, or even no, experience with cooking beyond heating up a frozen dinner or paying the delivery guy. In these cases vegetarian “products” can be a god-send.

But, for your health and that of the planet, after you get more comfortable, and have read a bit more about nutrition…in short, after you have decided that vegetarianism is for you, I urge you to be brave enough to experiment with new recipes that use only whole foods. Get to know your pots and pans and your spice rack. Check out free vegetarian cooking videos on YouTube and buy a couple of core cookbooks. Visit an ethnic market or restaurant for inspiration. What you will discover is that there is a whole world of scrumptious and healthy food out there which you never knew existed.

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

There are multitudes of books out there on vegetarianism and veganism. Some are aimed at converting you to vegetarianism and some are aimed at educating those who have already chosen vegetarianism. Some of the books listed below are more about food quality than actual vegetarianism, but all contain information that I think is valuable for ANYONE who wants to get healthier and eat more natural. I will add to this list as I come across more gems that I fall in love with. *Namaste.*

~

Food Revolution

Healthy at 100

The China Study

The Great American Detox Diet

Fast Food Nation

We Want Real Food

Skinny Bitch

Healing Foods (DK Living)

DVD: Supersize Me

Video: Food Matters

~

Note: Some of these books are easier to get in the UK than the US. But, using out-of-print sites like Half.com and Alibris, you should be able to find a copy. ;-)

“There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet, and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried.”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822)

I have been following a vegetarian/vegan diet for over one-and-a-half years now and the changes to my health, vitality and weight have been marked. Though they were dramatic in the beginning, the changes have fallen into a more sensible “steady shift” type of pattern and keep on coming.

Always very thin in my youth, college did a number on my weight and energy levels. By the time I left undergraduate school I had ballooned from my “skin-and-bones” weight of 120 pounds to a very porky 200 pounds.

I later lost that weight when I went to Europe for my graduate degree, but unfortunately gained it all right back upon hitting American soil a couple of years later. The easy abundance of cheesy, greasy, sugary pre-prepared goodies was just too much for my simple brain to handle, not to mention the unavoidable change from walkable communities to long drives in an automobile.

Though I had tried being a vegetarian during my idealistic high school days, it wasn’t until someone came into my life who didn’t just read and dream about vegetarianism, ethical consumerism and raw foods but actually lived those beliefs that I finally became motivated to follow through on my dreams of healthy living.

At first I just did a slow transition, eliminating and then reintroducing certain foods such as dairy, chicken, fish, until I came to understand how different foods effected my system. Then I settled into a longer term transition diet of lots of fresh foods, no chicken, pork, beef or other earth-bound creatures, and the occasional monthly piece of fish until I slowly transitioned to where I am today.

I presently eat no meat, fish or dairy with only the occasional indulgences in a fried egg or a sugary treat. I have substituted agave syrup for sweetener and am now aiming my sights on eliminating wheat in the next five or six months.

At the start, the beneficial change in my energy was almost immediate once I settled into a dairy-free, meat-free pattern. My sleep was less disturbed, my sinuses were less clogged and the excruciating pain in my knees became more of a nagging pain than a sharp torture. Several years of painful and irregular menstruation gave way to a virtually PMS-free, regular cycle.

When I first began the vegetarian transition, in late summer of 2007, I weighed 210 pounds (an awful lot for a woman who is only 5 feet tall) and couldn’t walk to the end of my own street without being winded and tired. By the summer of 2008 I was able to hike 8 miles before becoming too tired to push onward, which I’d say is a fair bit of improvement.

Today I have shed over 40 pounds and have no trouble keeping it off. The weight loss has been slow-but-steady and there has been no up-again, down-again roller coaster in the way that the weight has been shed. With very minimal attempt at exercise, I am half way toward my weight loss goal and am now sharing my success with all of you.

Am I proud that I went from the girl who everyone used to pick on for being too skinny, to the girl that everyone knows who became fat after high school? No, not particularly.

Am I proud that I have found my way to a balanced, nature-based lifestyle that is constantly improving the quality of my life and my health? Absolutely!

I am sharing my experience so that others may be inspired to adopt more balanced, healthy ways of living, and also because I would love encouragement and accountability form my readers on the next leg of my journey toward ultimate health.

My hopes for the coming year are:

1. To faithfully do my daily physical therapy exercises for the strengthening of my knees.

2. To give at least 30 days over to a raw food diet.

3. To eliminate obvious sources of wheat from my regular diet.

4. To detox using sauna, colonics, acupuncture and herbal cleanses.

5. To branch out from yoga and hiking to biking and jogging, knees permitting.

6. To find the courage to faithfully implement a 6-12 month voyage on the anti-candida (Body Ecology) diet so that I may finally be rid of my limiting food allergies!

7. To continue to develop more flavorful and fun recipes that make healthy eating more exciting.

So, I know that I can get most of these things done with the same dedicated, educated and gentle approach that I have used to introduce other big changes to my health. I also know that there will be physical and emotional challenges along the way and I hope that some of you will be supportive of me along the way.

Maybe you could even be inspired to join in!

“Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body - it just wears it out.”
~ Norman Mailer, American Novelist and Playwright

Okay, admittedly I do have an actual gym membership. It’s a fairly frugal one too, which allows me to bring a guest with me every darned day if I want to. But, in our recent spate of spring cleaning, I have come to realize how much aerobic work there is just around the house.

Think about it, you save $20-$80 a month on that gym membership and you get a clean house at the same time. Nothing wrong with that approach.

Any activity can burn calories, strengthen your heart and help increase your metabolism. So pick up those feet and get a move on!

Some of the lovely, heart-pumping activities that you can get up to around the house include:

1. Painting a room or the garden fence.
2. Emptying, dusting and reorganizing a closet.
3. Washing the road-salt off your car.
4. Collecting, bagging and hauling old clothes to goodwill.
5. Churning your own butter…easier said than done.
6. Raking up last year’s leaves.
7. Scrubbing down the tub and shower…icky but very labor-intensive. :-)
8. Cleaning, pumping up and greasing your bicycle.
9. De-cobwebbing all the corners and ceilings in your house.
10. Sanding down and repainting the deck.
11. Weeding and mulching the garden.
12. Hand-turning the compost bins.
13. Winding the balls of yarn for your next knitting project.
14. Mopping all the hardwood floors.
15. Sweeping out the garage.
16. Having a yard sale.
17. Washing all the windows in the house.
18. Cleaning out the gutters.
19. Building a chicken coop or treehouse.
20. Finally taking down the Christmas lights!

You may not have all of these chores, or perhaps you can think of a few more. But all that I realized is that exercise can be found on more than a stairmaster.

Happy, healthy days to you!

“All those vitamins aren’t to keep death at bay, they’re to keep deterioration at bay. ”
~ Jeanne Moreau, French Actress and Screenwriter

Every once in a while I get that feeling like I might be coming down with a cold, or like my immune system is less than energized. It may even be just a feeling of lacking energy a bit.

When that happens I know that I need to give myself a quick boost, but not from something detrimental like caffeine. Vitamin C is a known immune booster and an overall good guy to keep in your health arsenal. High dose vitamin C has been used to cure cancer and severe auto-immune diseases.

High doses of vitamin C, of 3,000 milligrams or over, are often taken in the form of chewable tablets. But the bitterness of vitamin C, due to the citric acid, can make it very difficult for some people to chew up. My fix for this problem is too make a nice, palatable drink.

This boosting elixir is sweet and a bit fruity and very good for your health. So drink up!

Pep-Up Vitamin C Elixir
Makes: 1 serving
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

Ingredients:
1 Large Orange
1 Tbs Agave Syrup
1 Cup Spring Water
2-4 Chewable Vitamin C Tablets

Directions:

1. Crush Vitamin C tablets in a bowl or dish using the back of a spoon, or a mortar and pestle.

2. Place Vitamin C powder, water and agave into a tall glass.

3. Squeeze juice of fresh orange into the glass, making sure that seeds do not fall in.

4. Mix vigorously and drink fresh.

Voila! A tasty health drink with fresh juice and a vitamin boost!

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