Thursday, November 01, 2007

November is Here

Hello! Hope you all had a fantastic Halloween. Mine was okay - my husband is out of town so I hung with some friends and handed out candy, but it just didn't feel the same without him around.

I didn't go to WW this week, but I may try to scoot over there tomorrow during work. I'm sure it will be a maintain/gain, but I am just doing the best I can right now so I'm okay with that.

This week I've been listening to the book Skinny Bitch on CD during my commute (which is a horrid 45 minutes each way on a good day) and I thought I'd give you all a little review here.

I didn't realize it when I bought it, but this book is predominately about becoming vegetarian/vegan. According to the sassy narrator, the only way to become a so-called "Skinny Bitch" is to completely abolish all animal meat and products from your diet.

It's interesting really, and for a couple of days I was seriously considering going vegan for a little while to see what happened. I know this subject could potentially be very controversial, and I don't want to get into all of that here, but I do like the idea of removing animal products from my diet.

I was vegetarian in high-school and college for a number of years, but added meat back into my diet because I wasn't getting enough protein. To be honest, I was what they call a "7-11 vegetarian." That means I wasn't good about substituting plant foods for animal foods. Instead, I just substituted crap foods for animal foods, and of course I gained weight during that time and I felt like crap too.

I haven't reintroduced red meat at all since that time and I have no plans to. In fact, I'd say I have at least 3-4 vegetarian days per week, as I just don't like eating meat all that much. That's what they call a "flexetarian."

But removing meat from my diet occasionally isn't going to prevent factory farming, and it isn't going to really help cleanse my body of all of the crap antibiotics and other shit that goes into meat and animal products these days.

Becoming a vegan is a huge commitment though. I mean huge. And frankly, selfishly, I just don't know if I can handle that commitment right now. Or ever. I wish I could, but I can readily admit that I can't.

The book did get through to me on a number of levels though, and I have been thinking about cleaning up my diet in terms of reducing animal products, sugar and sugar substitutes. Specifically, I've decided to cut out all sugar substitutes, at least for a little while.

This means no more aspartame. No more Splenda. No more diet soda, no more sugar free energy drinks, no more fake desserts. It's going to be hard because I rely on these things a lot on WW, but I know this will be good for my body. I know I do not need to be putting all that chemical crap in me.

I started on Tuesday, and so far, it hasn't been that bad. I've ordered iced tea at restaurants, no soda, and I haven't really missed it. I may miss it moving forward, but at this point, I feel truly good about my decision to eliminate this shit from my diet.

A couple of days is one thing, but forever is another, so I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I'm enjoying a nice glass of red wine tonight. No aspartame in that right? :)

Anyway, the book was interesting and informative and I may well adopt some of the practices it suggests, but not all of them. It did open my eyes to all of the processed crap and other shit I've been putting into my body, so all in all, I think it was a great thing to be exposed to.

Now I'm off to watch my recorded Biggest Loser and hit the sack early. Bye!

4 comments:

Kim said...

Hey Jeni -
Could you BE any SWEETER??? :) Seriously. Thank you for the wonderful comment that you left. You made my day.

I have been thrashed around emotionally the past week or two, but there is no way that I am going to give up on myself to reach my goals. Thank you so much for lifting me up when I needed to hear something so kind. I wish that we lived closer so that we could be running buddies or something. For now, a big 'ole cyber hug is going to have to do.

Thanks for being so awesome!

K said...

What an interesting post! I've seen Skinny Bitch around the place, but was too put off by the title to investigate further. So I didn't know it was all about the vegan.

I've noticed of recent years that everyone I know is either vegan or omnivorous, leaving me a near-lone vegetarian (well, and my mum and sister). I think I was lucky in that I grew up with my mother chanting "Make sure you're getting enough protein!" so I always knew that was an issue. And I'm also lucky in that there isn't a veggie I don't like.

I've been logging my food lately, and found some interesting things: my protein intake's OK, but my fat intake is strikingly low and carbs a bit high to compensate. I've recently been rejigging things a little to try to balance them a bit.

I'm not sure if I could be a vegan, though. I eat bio-yoghurt and either eggs, cheese or cottage cheese most days...

Who knows, maybe I wouldn't give it a thought after a while; I don't miss meat a bit.

(I will stop hijacking your comments now, and maybe write a proper entry of my own about this!)

Fatinah said...

I'm intrigued by the book you mentioned - I wondered though - is it graphic about the meat stuff? I'm not sure I'm ready to give it up completely, so I don't want to gross myself out entirely......can you leave a comment on my page?

Alea said...

To be honest, that's always been the one thing that bothered me about the WW plan and especially about all these WW products... When you're counting points, sugar substitutes aren't really an issue, are they? Theoretically, you could drink diet soda all day long because it has zero points, right? It doesn't make sense for me. All that artificial crap just can't be healthy! Plus, I'd rather have a small piece of the real thing than lots of artifically sweetened stuff... :)