The Weight Wait is Over

I've started another 30 Day Vegan workshop with Heather Bruggeman, of Beauty That Moves.  I've taken her workshops before, including 30DV and Whole Food Kitchen, and always appreciate new recipes and the supportive environment she creates.

And I've really been enjoying veganism recently,  I read Mark Bittman's VB6:  Vegan Before 6 book which advocates eating vegan and minimally-processed food for breakfast and lunch and then whatever for dinner (which for me is still vegetarian--so I generally just add cheese!)  I like the focus on plant-based foods with the flexibility of not adhering to a strict regime/dogma--and it makes cooking for all of us easier.  I like rules and VB6 is a pretty easy one to remember.

I had a pretty powerful epiphany recently:  weight loss is an unobtainable goal.  Think on it--how many people do you know who diet?  And how many do you know who have lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off even a year?  I think I can name 3 or maybe 4 (out of dozens and dozens and dozens), friends of friends or relatives, all of whom have suffered major health issues that contributed to or significantly motivated them to weight loss (intriguingly, almost all of them are over 65, too; none are in my peer group.)  There was another on the list, but she has gained back 40 lbs.  I'm not special and I don't imagine that I can succeed where so many people with less weight to lose and more interest in exercise also fail.  I realized that losing weight was a goal that only served to frustrate me, with years of failure behind me, compounding the problem with yo-yoing.

And science tells me I'm right.  Something like less that 2% of people lose and keep off weight.  There was even an article today in the NYTimes that evolution fights weight loss--"Even if a 170-pound person loses 20 pounds, he needs 15 percent fewer calories to maintain the new weight than someone who always weighed 150."  And that doesn't include the bacteria that healthy-weight people have in abudance that overweight people don't--it's not like I can go out and buy Akkermansia muciniphila.   I can't win and it's silly to play by those rules.   (And don't tell me just to move more and eat less because as studies show it doesn't actually work that way for many of us.)

So I'm changing the game.  And no, this isn't some tricky way to focus on losing weight without calling it that.  I've actually really given up on losing weight as a goal.   I'm focusing on healthy eating--plant-based veganism before dinnertime--and my PT exercises and treadmill.  I'm not watching the scale; I'm not measuring inches.  The numbers I care about are blood pressure (always low), sugar (fine), and cholesterol (could be lower), and all will be improved by veganism (even 2/3rds veganism.)

More than that, I think my spirit will be.  I'm still figuring out the ramifications of my epiphany, but it came to me as clear as day and has already improved things for me; though, I admit, believing it and living it are two different things--our culture is drowning in dieting/fat-shaming/weight-loss-as-a-billion-dollar-industry and that mindset is habitual.  Instead of living in a constant state of failure and negativity, I want to focus on what I can do--I've been a vegetarian for five years (with only some conscious decisions to eat meat, like, say, a bite of chicken fried steak and the occasional fish) and know I can be a vegan most of the time.

I'm writing all of this here not because I like to discuss my weight (I really don't), but because I want to reach out to my friends and readers who struggle with weight the way I do and are ashamed of themselves everyday for it.  You're not alone.  There is another way (and it doesn't have to be veganism; that's just my path now.)  Give up the dieting and the negative self-talk.  Fight cultural body shaming and bullying (and here.)  For ourselves, for others, for our children.  Let's try it together.  It's going to be okay.  We are still valuable, loveable people.  Even if we don't ever lose another pound.

Besides, there really are worse things in the world than being overweight.

Even if our culture has lost sight of that completely.

Here It Comes

30 Day Vegan Workshop leader Heather Bruggeman, of Beauty That Moves, is set to offer a new three-month course, Whole Food Kitchen.  Registration begins very soon.  And I'll be signing up!  The last workshop effected me immensely, even though I couldn't participate fully.  I'm ready, ready, ready for this one.

Farewell But Not Goodbye

It is the end of the 30 Day Vegan workshop (hosted by Beauty That Moves) a bittersweet ending to an enriching personal retreat.  While I was not completely vegan, I have continued as a vegetarian and whole foods advocate.  But with what I have learned and experienced during this month, I can continue on the journey, more informed and more inspired, with more insight.  At the end of the month,

• My kitchen, or "food studio," is more organized and peaceful.  We have purged and rearranged and adapted to my inability to bend.  I can do so much more in the kitchen than I've been able to do in almost a year.  This new aesthetic of useful and beautiful (I would add meaningful) is expanding beyond the kitchen to the whole house.
• My day is more planned.  As I focused on the personal care aspect of the workshop, I realized that a little advanced planning (and here)--meal charts for lunch and dinner (like this), to-do list, a home management notebook, even chore charts--would make things smoother,  not just for me but for everyone.  So, using resources referenced by the workshop leader, Heather Bruggeman, and the other participants, I am adapting materials to fit us.  And I can already see the benefits.  (Though, I'm not a printed-grocery list girl but a Grocery IQ devotee.)
• I know more about food, health, and nutrition.  I learned about pressure cookers.  I read about phytic acid in foods.  I read about the dangers of too much soy.  I learned how to make my own almond milk and natural soda.  I learned about other sweeteners like brown rice syrup and succanat.  I know more about vitamins, especially B12.  I have dozens of new recipes to try when I'm cooking more.  I've experienced "crowding out" of less healthy foods. 
•  I found inspiration and community.  In my so-called "real life," I  know only one other vegetarian (and now, one vegan!  You go!  Interestingly, I know several ex-vegetarians.).  Some friends are interested in local and organic and unprocessed.  But for the most part, it's SAD (Standard American Diet.)  Online and in links, I communicated with others who valued whole foods, who were learning and experimenting with me.  To paraphrase Julia Child (and Julie Powell), it was just us meatless home cooks here.  And it was good.
• Mama and I have reconfigured how we think of meals at home.  We realized we'd pretty much been running Mothers' Restaurant.  Not so much because we'd act as short order cooks, but because we'd let the kids vote in advance from a few options; healthy options, often, with vegetables, but still, not a sustainable approach, especially with fickle kids who change their minds or want their favorites everyday.  Not feasible.  And so we're becoming more traditional (not this traditional, but inspired nonetheless) in our approach:  one meal, no substitutes, have a "no thank you" bite.  Mind you, I don't go out of my way to make beans!  There has been resistance but we're making progress.  And I'm working on lunches too, as I've mentioned here and here.
• Books, links, and more.  From the movie Forks Over Knives to the book Simplicity Parenting, from Pinterest to Simple Mom, from Feeding the Whole Family to Simply Natural Cooking,  I am finding more resources for me to do my day job.  Really, there were too many to list here.

So, that's my month in a nutshell.  Thanks so much, Heather, guest blogger Renee Tougas, and all the other participants!

(And I'll be back for the spring workshop!)

Falling for a Plan

Continuing on a previous post about how quiet and clean the house is, I'm getting a good preview of what the school year will be like. And, while it's bittersweet now, with the end of summer fun, I'm also looking forward to fall and new experiences and the like.

As I've told you, I'm participating in the 30 Day Vegan Workshop hosted by Heather at Beauty That Moves. And because I'm not able to do a 100% vegan right now, I'm focusing on the self-care side of whole and natural living. I've been doing a self-refresh ritual around 3 pm, with brushing my teeth, combing my hair, rinsing my face, and washing my glasses. I've also started rearranging parts of our environment, keeping the useful and beautiful, redistributing the rest. To these ends, I'm reading a lot of the other participants' blogs and the recommended resources. And, as you know, once you get started, the web expands outwards leading you to all sorts of places.

Besides others' fun days of summer and their experiences setting up their kitchens for the workshop, I've read about a 30 day mom challenge, home management notebooks, the whole world of Pinterest, menu planning, Montessori approaches for home, and so much more. I've also found books, such as The Rhythm of Family by Amanda Soule, Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne, Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider, and Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson. And so, I've got some organizational plans in the works to keep me on task so I don't spend whole days doing nothing all alone while the kids are in school. Which in turn will help me be a better mom and partner when everyone else gets home from their day, making all of our days better. Think of it as my professionalization of motherhood and housewifery (an extension, as it were, of my more philosophical or spiritual musings on those. I guess it's theory and practice?). I know, I've waxed poetic about these things before, probably on a semi-annual basis (see here and here and here and here)--yeah, I'm much better at thinking and writing about it than doing it (an avoidance mechanism, for sure)--but I'm finding practical tips and tools to do it. A daily planner, an organized budget, a compendium of important legal and medical paperwork, a yearly schedule of things not to miss, a binder of tried-and-true recipes, ideas for fun family activities.

Beyond cleaning the kitchen and clutter, paying the bills and planning our family calendar, and all the other household maintenance activities for which there are myriad checklists and such, this is what I really want to do everyday, by myself and with my family:

• Read something.
• Learn something
• Create something.
• Work on a work-in-progress.
• Clean something.
• Connect with someone.
• Be outdoors some.
• Meditate.
• Exercise.

And I know just where to look for help.

To Begin with the Beginning

Paraphrasing Dickens, I'm excited today to begin at the beginning of the 30 Day Vegan Workshop hosted by Beauty That Moves. As I mentioned previously, I can't focus as exclusively on vegan food as I had originally planned, but I am striving to meet other wholesome, whole-living goals. And today was all about self-care.

Continuing the reorganization of my environment started this weekend, I cleared my desk of its accumulated papers and emptied my nightstand of all the detritus that had accumulated during my 6 weeks of bed rest. It looks less like a hospital side table and more like a nightstand now. In fact, while our house-decorating style will always be more Victorian horror vacui than modernist simplicity, I'm coming to embrace several aspects of wabi-sabi, the Japanese appreciation for beauty in used, old, or otherwise imperfect objects. In cleaning out my magazines, I came across an article in Mother Earth News (February/March 2011) that elucidated several of the principles, including, with my own descriptions:

• cultivate slowness, which reminds me of "when you wash the rice, wash the rice" and other Zen mindfulness teachings
• cultivate vision, or really look at what is in front of you
• cultivate craft--I recently heard of the "slow craft" movement (called "slow clothes" in this article on sewing in Brooklyn)
• cultivate cleanliness, going back to Zen, this reminds me of much of Karen Maezen Miller's writings, including her book Hand Wash Cold
• cultivate solitude, a "mommy time-out" to meditate for me
• cultivate space, space and light being two major aesthetic principles
• cultivate silence, which for me is turning off the noise of technology
• cultivate sabi, or respecting the beauty that comes with age and history
• cultivate soul, by embracing people over technology in what you buy, keep, and do
• cultivate imperfection . . . because I won't be able to enact all of these all the time!
• cultivate hospitality, so that I have a warm drink and a treat on hand for friends
• cultivate simplicity, again people over things, experiences over objects

It makes me want to re-evaluate every room in our house, taking out that which is simply there and leaving that which is most beautiful, most useful, and most meaningful. I also want to re-read with the kiddos Wabi-Sabi, the children's book by Mark Reibstein and Ed Young about the cat and the philosophy.

Finally, after all that cleaning, I've also done my treadmill exercises, spent some time outside during a break in the rain, and even brushed my teeth, washed my face, and cleaned my glasses midday for a little personal rejuvenation. Which is exactly what this course is giving me.

My "Food Studio"

As I've mentioned, I'm participating in the 30 Day Vegan Workshop via Beauty That Moves. It officially starts Monday but there was some prep work for us to do, from downloading recipes and shopping lists to watching an intro video. And there was a post about setting up a whole-foods and cooking friendly kitchen.

I already have my utensils in big containers and my beans in recycled jelly jars and my oils and S&P on the counter.And I'd gotten rid of most of the plastic awhile back. Though, my mostly Penzey's spices are spread out in two different places, being too numerous to put in my little cabinet (and the basement entrance, with shelving, gets too much sun to store spices there).

But I still had work to do. Well, that "I" is rhetorical. I still had work for Mama to do. Namely, relocating the contents of many of my cabinets (yes, I think of the kitchen as mine) so that I could reach everything I might need to do the little bit of stovetop and crockpot cooking I can manage--collander, Corning ware, mixing bowls. I couldn't reach them where I used to store them anymore so we fiddled with our organization and found an easy-to-reach shelf for everything I would need regularly. Sure that means it's a rather odd collection all on one shelf, but it works for me now. And that's the point of a "food studio," to borrow Heather Bruggeman's words: a place where I can comfortably create food.

That was last night. Today I put a few finishing touches on things. I washed down the giant magnetic chalkboard that takes up one wall of my kitchen, sorting and saving artwork from the end of kindergarten; it's now ready for the new school year in two weeks. I cleared off some of the clutter on the refrigerator door, moving papers and moving magnets to the chalkboard. Then I rearranged the windowsill above my sink. I've put one of our homemade candles in its little Old Sturbridge Village candleholder there, along with my blue "hopes and dreams" bank decorated with an orange cat and a gray cat. Finally, I hung up a prism because I love to see rainbows dancing around the room, which faces not quite due-west, which means rainbows while I prepare dinner. Lastly, I'm thinking of painting three rocks or shells with the words "big mind," "joyful mind," and "mom mind" a la How to Cook Your Life about Edward Espe Brown.

Actually, I'm inspired to paint the whole room, the one room in the house we never painted; it's just plain white. But that will have to wait some.

The kitchen, indeed the whole house, is unusually quiet and still this afternoon, with the kids at the beach with Mama. But it's ready for action. And our first kitchen activity will be making a meal of baked spaghetti pie and strawberry "risotto" for our friend who is struggling with adapting to her daughter's new Type 1 diabetes diagnosis.

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Spaghetti Pie

4 cups cooked spaghetti (about 1/2 pound uncooked)--I'm using whole wheat

1-10 oz package frozen chopped broccoli, thaed and squeezed dry

1 cup shredded smoked mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese

1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

1 large egg, beaten

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 1/2 cups marinara sauce, warmed in the microwave

chopped parsley leaves

Preheat oven to 350F and coat 9" springform pan (I'm using a foil pie plate) with nonstick spray.

Stir the spaghetti, broccoli, cheeses, egg, and Italian seasonings together in large bowl. Scrape in pan and level the top.

Bake 30 minutes or until golden. Cool about 5 minutes and then remove sides of springform pan. Cut into 6 wedges. Serve with marinara and parsley.

Weight Watchers Eat! Play! Move!

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Strawberry Risotto

1/2 cup low or non-fat strawberry yogurt (not the fruit-on-the-bottom kind)--make into yogurt cheese by straining in a sieve lined with wet paper towel/cheesecloth/paper coffee filter set over a jar for about 6 hours

2 1/2 cups low or non-fat milk

zest of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup arborio rice

1 cup sliced fresh strawberries

Warm milk in saucepan and steep lemon zest in it for about 10 minutes, keeping the milk below a simmer.

Dissolve sugar in milk, then strain to remove zest.

Put rice in heavy saucepan and pour enough of hot milk to cover the rice. Stir over low heat until milk is absorbed. Keep adding hot milk and stirring until you've used all the milk and rice is plump and chewy, about 40 minutes.

Take risotto off heat and let cool a bit, stirring oven, for about 5 minutes. Stir in yogurt cheese and let cool completely. Stir in fresh strawberries

Refrigerate for at least 3 hours, covered, until chilled through. Stir well before serving.

Diana Shaw, Almost Vegetarian

My Two New Food Projects

Next week I start my second vegan cleanse, this time following an official vegan workshop hosted by Beauty That Moves (it's not too late to join us).

There's only one challenge: I've recently started a diet--not a "lifestyle" but an honest-to-goodness diet with rules and limitations--that provides most of my food for me in prepackaged astronaut-like containers.

Yes, I know. It's not natural. It's not local. It's not organic. It's not seasonal. It's everything I don't like in food. It's not really even real food. Though, it is vegetarian.

But I need to lose weight for my back and that has been absolutely compromised by my complete inability to really cook. So this is a temporary approach to a longer term project, a way to lose half my weight (not what I weigh, but what I need to lose) or so as easily as I can, while protecting my back and saving my energy for my kids.

I will still make their food, mostly in the crockpot or on the stove since I can't get things in and out of the oven, and we still make all of our own fruits and vegetables.

So, for the vegan workshop, I'll be making non-dairy choices when possible and making delicious vegetable dishes to supplement. I'm hoping it's the best of both worlds, at least until I can get back to cooking and real food and a lower weight.

Trying Again

With my sore throat disappearing (and hopefully with it, all concerns about a salicylate sensitivity), I'm back on the fruits and vegetables bandwagon, eating mostly vegan and gluten/sugar/caffeine free. And so, with a tempting offer in my inbox, I've signed up for the next Beauty That Moves 30-Day Vegan Workshop. It starts in August, which gives me more time to get back to the kitchen (yeah, pun intended, because we all know how hard on the back cooking and cleaning can be). I'm excited because it was this workshop, experienced vicariously through Sew and Sow's posts, that led me to my first vegan cleanse attempt. Sure, that unfortunately corresponded with my weird allergy experience, but I'm hopeful the second experience will be less fraught.

Besides, my dad, very concerned about his sister's well-being (she had surgery again today and is still a very sick woman, even though she is doing much better), has been repeatedly reminding me to take care of myself (that goes for all of us), both physically and financially. We're trying to do both and are in better shape, herniated disc not withstanding, than we've been in a long time.

Come join me . . . I think it will be a transformative month.