Vegan-ish Eve

Tomorrow Mike and I are diving into the culinary adventure of our married lives: six weeks (ish--we have an anniversary and a birthday in there, after all) of a vegan dietary plan. Pretty much the simple version of the plan outlined by the Eat to Live program.

Veggies and fruities and beans, but why?

Easy. We saw a Facebook post from a friend of the suffer-no-fools variety who was basically pounding his breast and hollering about how flipping amazing he felt in week 2, of his new Vegan eating plan, and I--jealous of the healthy adventure--lobbed it as an idea at the extremely dedicated carnivore I married....and he got excited about the prospect. Which is right about the time I freaked the hell out and turned into weasel-mc-quitter.

But then we watched Knives Over Forks tonight. A documentary about the quiet-yet-gigantic studies that have linked animal products to accelerated cancer rates, and Mike kept looking at my seriously cartoon eyes with total amusement.

"You would be totally freaking out right now if we weren't making this big change tomorrow, wouldn't you?"

Why, yes. Yes, I would. Even though the rational part of my brain knows that the science in this movie took some extreme liberties with the conclusions it drew given patterns witnessed (I think you science types call them correlations, right?). But still that bit about Norway's cardiac disease numbers taking a nose dive in 1941 following the Nazi's appropriation of all livestock was pretty darn convincing. Even if a quick Google search shows that fish consumption in Norway increased during that time, too.

But this isn't about Norway. The fact is, I don't know what the nutritional truth of the vegan lifestyle is independent of a documentary that was edited to support the author's hypothesis. I expect that the way I'm feeling in a few weeks will help answer that. But what I do know is this.

I have food issues. I eat too much of the wrong things. And it's worse when I'm stressed out. Over the last year, Mike and I ate our way through the worst loss of our marriage to date, and we both gained weight that absolutely needs to get the hell gone. But to do that, I need a program to dive into to make me forget how much I crave sweets and french fries and sweets and steak and sweets and bacon and fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies.

I'm out of control. Mike and I are going to help me get back in control. With veggies and fruities and beans, I take it.

Here's hoping it's way easier being green than a certain swamp Muppet would have us believe.