Why we switched to plant-based whole-foods, how it made us healthier, and how it can save the planet.
1.4.2020
Each of us have in us the capacity to grow and become better than our past selves. The only thing stopping us from doing so is ourselves.
Don’t believe me? My diet from childhood through 2005 was your typical American nonsense: refined carbohydrates, dairy, and meat. Salsa, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, any-form-of-potato, buttered sweet corn, and the carrots from my mom’s pot roast were the extent of my vegetable consumption. Green things were balked at.
Primarily, I ate: Doritos, pasta (spaghetti and mac-and-cheese happened multiple times weekly), ramen, burgers, fries, ice cream, bacon, tacos (extra cheese, no lettuce), pepperoni pizza, mozzarella sticks, bricks of sharp cheddar cheese, any and all of the candies (daily), rotisserie chickens, chicken fingers, barbecue ribs, pulled pork, and chicken wings. The chicken wings were my favorite and were eaten weekly from 2001-2018. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I was in the worst physical and mental health of my life; but it horrifies me that there are adults and kids I know today that eat just about the same or worse than above and laugh while they say they never/won’t eat vegetables.
2004 and a typical meal: large piece of pepperoni pizza, soda, and Skittles for dessert.
I grew up in a household with perpetual candy/baked goods/soda/junk-food and my parents believed you shouldn’t make a kid eat something you don’t like either (vegetables, in this case); so I received no push back on this terrible diet until I started dating my future-husband in 2005.
Ian came from the beautiful farm valley of South Onondaga, NY and was used to eating a rainbow of foods. He waited a spell before mentioning that he never saw me consume vegetables, asked if I was eating them when he just wasn’t around (“Nope!”), and pointed out that I was going to need more nutrients in my diet if we were going to live to be old folks together.
Photo I took of beloved South Onondaga, NY
We were serious from the start and I knew I wanted to be old with him; so, I grew a little. I put peppers on our pepperoni pizza, I made pickled veggies to go with our home-cooked meats, always ate the carrots and celery with my wings, everything that I cooked at home (and I’m one of those folks that for at least a decade has homecooked 99% of our meals) had a salad or roasted vegetable with it. I grew to love them.
Over the years, books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and any news source you want to sort through, made us fully aware of the cruelty of mass-produced livestock and all the antibiotics and hormones found within animal products, so we started sourcing ours from local, organic sources and thought we were on the up and up.
In late 2017, Ian proposed we try eliminating gluten (if you’re like “Wait! Gluten isn’t the enemy! We’re going to get to that) and refined carbohydrates in an effort to reduce inflammation. Ian had a herniated disc, I (along with our son Quillan) had daily gastrointestinal distress, and I had lifelong knee and back pain with the added fun of an arthritic neck from past Lyme’s Disease. Ian had reason and heaps of scholarly articles in his defense and our doctors also thinking it was a good idea, but all of the above waged a hard-won battle against my emotions, my addiction to refined foods, and the cultural security of American junkfood.
Sense and love prevailed.
We cut out refined breads, pizzas, and pastas and subbed in whole-grain versions. We made black rice, stone ground polenta, and the rare homemade arepas. We cut out all the perpetual desserts (ice cream, cookies, donuts, etc) and had dark chocolate, fruits, or home-baked/healthier treats.
Within a few weeks, it was noticeable how much we had been affected by the refined carbohydrates. They had been the only things we cut out and: Q’s and my GI issues started to dissipate; my knees and back were rarely* sore; Ian was feeling more limber; I was no longer HANGRY (This was once my perpetual state, and I haven’t been hangry in 2 years); none of us were tired in the middle of the day.
Additionally, there were mental and emotional results we never expected. Q was much less rollercoastery with his emotions (no more random tears for simple requests, no more manic moods), he had better focus, wasn’t asking for snacks all the livelong day, and was generally less sick (his sinus infections and ear infections started decreasing*).
And for me it was a thunderclap.
The sort of melancholy self-portraits I took in college (that’s a whole floor made out of nails). I eye-roll now, but I dearly wish I knew then what I do now. 😣
I come from a lineage of depression and mental wailing. Prescriptions are woven into my loved ones, yet they have continued to struggle.
None of my —or their— doctors had ever explained that 90% of your serotonin is produced in the gut or that diet and mental health are linked (ESPECIALLY refined/processed foods): instead a pack of pills was advised.
To me it made no sense to fill my body with chemicals (and follow your own medical path, this was mine) so I avoided them and focused on keeping ahead of the darkness. How dark? This is coming from someone who has battled with anxiety and depression since childhood. I know well the howl of self-loathing, that hollow-pit of stomach acid that aches for days, the alarming numbness, the perpetual exhaustion, the rattling/jangly never-comfortable-in-your-own-skin scream. In my past, I'd been known to cry for days, have Vip Van Winkle “naps” that bled into the following day’s twilight, starve myself in depressive grief (terrible, unhealthy path!), and was a horrific cutter throughout high school and college (first boyfriend suggested I start, and it was Ian who eventually got me to end that addictive nonsense too!!)
I grew to find that meditation, breath, polar bearing, or hiking could redirect the worst of it; and so it was with shockingly no prescriptions (just good old, fashioned diet) that I found all that pent-up worrying and melancholia were completely gone, and all those things that were a “release” instead brought more joy.
It was like I broke out of a haze. My mind was suddenly a bright, sunny sky and there was nothing holding me back. It felt like everything was clear, more precious, and I was growing a laser focus on my purpose: to be as kind to this earth as possible, and help others learn to do the same.
My depression is gone: things that would have sent me into a reclusive, depressive whirl now seem minute and laughable. My anxiety is gone: I haven’t had an anxiety attack or panic attack since 2017 and I previously had multiples daily.
[If any of the above resonates for you, I beg you to cut the refined-carbohydrate cord and free yourself from sadness and perpetual hunger. Every link within this section leads to some manner of helpful/illuminating article.]
This also meant that I gave up beer! This was something we loved so much we brewed ourselves and we rarely ended a day without it. These days any form of alcohol is a rare treat.
So in January of 2018 we swore to cut the cord on refined junk. We had no desire to set Q up for the same inflammatory, addictive, self-destructive path, and the research and our personal anecdotes were clear. It took us months to do this completely, as there were cheats here and there (each one a reminder of why we’d stopped) and we received perpetual cultural/familial push-back; but the farther out we got, the better we felt.
We decided to approach eating from a whole-foods, nutritionally beneficial perspective (ie “Is this good for me, or just taste-fun and I’m going to feel awful later?”) but I’m Hobbit so it still had to be delicious :-).
Unfortunately, the family split into two camps. Ian supplemented with meat, and I veered vegetarian.
Between the two of us Q volleyed: a deeply empathetic world-view and concern for his beloved cephalopods affected by climate change, vs the zeal of tasty meat mouth-fun.
2018: Q meeting and mind-melding with a cuttlefish (one of his favorite animals) at the New England Aquarium. For Q, the biggest environmental concern is that his beloved cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish, nautilus) will be obliterated if the ocean continues to acidify at its current rate. What’s assisting that acidification? Meat and dairy consumption..
I’d always had a nagging voice in my head about the animals that had arrived on my plate, and the rise of keto across the country caused my newly keen/kind mind to wince with visuals of all the additional cows/pigs/chickens we needed to slaughter for such a selfish diet. It didn’t matter if we had been personally getting our meats from close to home (which is a slim piece of the carnivore pie), resources had still been thrown into an animal just to raise it and kill it. I didn’t understand how we could eat *more* animals if research showed you could source enough protein and nutrients from plants and still live healthily. It wasn’t kind to the animal, it wasn’t kind to the earth, and later I would learn it isn’t kind to your own body!
All of the above was just my own empathetic perspective, however, and I had not yet delved into how it was harming us. (<——Eating animal products increases your cancer risk, heart disease risk, diabetes risk, and shortens your lifespan. <—-American Heart Association)
[In case you decide to cut-out and read no further, the least you should do for your own health is read this National Institutes of Health “Plant-Based Diets: A Physician’s Guide” which shows that vast overwhelming proof that plant-based diets are doctor-recommended to be the BEST DIET FOR HUMANS and will spare you from many of our preventable diseases... while also protecting our planet because Plant-Based is a global imperative for environmental sustainability, prevents the loss of millions of species due to ecosystem collapse, and will help us avoid climate tipping points <— The United Nations is even one of those links.]
Glorious mulch from the same guys who chopped down that dangerous Norway Maple alongside the house. Local, waste-free, shoveling fun.
Ian was not yet swayed and maintained the belief that he needed meat to sustain his vigorous work day, and was more concerned with retaining muscle mass for body health, so we moved forward on separate and increasingly distant paths.
I’ve historically been a willowy-weakling, yet over the next year I grew stronger and more energetic than I’d ever been in my life: as of 2021 I am 38.
Outside of my regular full-time job: I shoveled 3 deliveries of car-high mounds of mulch into my trusty wheelbarrow and redistributed them throughout our property; I weeded for hours, hauled stones, created new stone borders all throughout the yard, dug dozens of deep holes in planting zeal; painted our clapboard siding all the livelong day: hanging off banisters and ladders while still maintaining the breath to sing; powered through whole Saturdays on my feet preparing food for the week; spent newfound hours accomplishing all sorts of tasks I previously ignored (while sitting on the couch watching Netflix); changed careers (working both at the same time for a month) and started working the most physically demanding job of my life and found I could do it easily and with a beam of joy; and after it all, I still had more energy than when I started.
I grew stronger, but Ian threw out his back mid-summer and was laid-low for months.
When Ian got a virus, I stayed healthy*.
*All the asterisks above lead to Cheese, Glorious Cheese.
As the year progressed, I had done more and more research on plant-based diets and their environmental impact, and I was continuously shamed by our persistence with cheese. It is clearly documented to be bad for the environment, bad for our health, incredibly cruel (<— dairy comes from a cow robbed of its calf so humans can take that calf’s stolen milk —we’re also the only species that does this—, and that mother cow is subjected to rape and her child taken away multiple times) and on the myopic end: my and Q’s body repeatedly communicated that it was inflammatory poison. Ocne we’d distanced ourselves from it (thus noting the cause & effect) every time we ate it, we’d groan later about how we shouldn’t have.
For Q, he’d get: a distended belly, GI distress, a face full of mucous (that would lead to a night full of clogs and gasping like he had sleep apnea), and a weakened immune system that would often lead to catching a virus.
For me it was much of the same (if we went hard on the cheese, we both got sinus infections), plus itchy skin, and the shock of hormone induced lumps in my breast. I felt physically better than I had in my whole life, but the lumps caused enough concern to visit my doctor.
Months of blood tests, sonograms, and mammograms only to find out I was perfectly healthy: nothing suspicious on the scans. Additionally, that whirl had enough tests and data to show: no signs of deficiencies in my blood work, and no sign of the heart disease and autoimmune disorders found on both sides of my family tree. I was told this was all hormonal inflammation, and was advised to cut back on the dairy (<— dairy is flush with estrogen because we’re consuming a mammalian growth slurry flush with cow estrogen). I did, and lost the lumps entirely.
There were plenty of options to get enough protein, iron, Calcium and Vitamin D without animal products, but convincing my menfolk to end their relationship with cheese and meat was a battle: Ian still believed we needed animal products to survive and we were at an impasse.
Ian and I as Team Zissou in 2005.
In May of 2019, I approached Ian with an ultimatum: primarily plant-based living or marital separation.
This was coming from a woman who had once asked him to shovel us out of a hazardous Oswego blizzard so we could still make it to 25 Cent Wing Night; the same woman who he once had to prompt to eat vegetables in the first place!
This was audacious and the hardest thing I had yet to do in my life: Ian has been my best-friend and soul-mate since 2005, but we were no longer growing together and the rift was now affecting Q’s health and our environmental impact.
There was a chasm that had grown between us, and a usually light-hearted house fun of laughter was tense and quiet. All talk seemed to wither or sizzle with impasse. For me, the hypocrisy of Ian saying he was focused on health and environmentalism (while consuming a diet that was contrary to both those pillars) was a terrible example for Q. And Ian had his own grumbles: the belief that my nutritional path wasn’t sound enough for a growing boy. (<—That's a link about pediatric nutrition explaining the health benefits and and decreased chronic disease risk of Plant-Based diets). I didn’t think it was healthy (bodily, mentally, parentally) for us to be on such different pages in the same home, I worried this was an additional terrible example for Q, and if we were going to be at such odds I felt it best we do it in separate homes as properly reflected our standings.
Additionally/Frustratingly (because Ian has an open-mind about everything else in this world!), for over a year, I had shown increased vitality (all those blood tests were helpful on this front) and strength with a diet void of meat (so we knew it could be done and within our budget <— has lowered grocery bills actually), and we knew through multiple vectors that a plant-based diet was better for the environment and better for our health, yet here I was throwing reason and research against ingrained meat lust. Any decision to continue the carnivore culture was purely stubborn will and a poor example for our son: the soul set to inherit a dying earth if we do not change our ways and educate others immediately (and the soul who would be replicating these terribly harmful food choices —to his own cardiovascular harm— if he kept seeing them in our homestead).
Ian decided to grow with us, and —like me— found that plant-based living gave him power, energy, and faster recovery after vigorous days. Tangentially, it made our whole relationship better than ever and he’s also now quite vocal about the merits of transitioning.
2019: a year of change and growth. Those trees in the main pic are in Stony Brook State Park, and where we spoke our 2011 wedding vows. A line in mine was how I would love him even through the chicken farts: gaseous wallops so bad they’d wake you up from a dead sleep! The toots I could/can still take, but needlessly gobbling up a chickens at the cost of the earth’s health, the body’s health, and that chicken’s suffering was a habit we needed to collectively grow over.
With plant-based diets we easily power through physical day jobs and still have extra energy to tackle all the heavy-lifting at home. We even accomplish this while mostly following 16:8 intermittent fasting (we eat our day's food intake within an 8 hour window): we do this for energy, longevity, and blood sugar regulation (I have hypoglycemia and it ruled my day. Got rid of all the processed foods driving those blood sugar crashes and now feel great. 🙂)
Ian is no longer sore after his work outs, Q is less inflamed and bursting with energy, and I power through days/work/hikes like a mountain goat. We used to binge Netflix, but now you will always find us working on some project, yard work, out hiking, or perched at a standing desk writing 8-page-single-spaced-diatribes about our nutritional journey. :-)
Q and I were still doing shameful (because we know it is bad for the environment and our bodies!), brief dalliances with cheese until September of 2019. I lost insurance for 2 months (when I switched careers) and out of self preservation, I decided we should cut out all dairy so we’d avoid a known inflammation-to-virus path. (<—I also readily admit that the compassionate lack & environmental impact are more important than personal health, and should have been considered first.)
Within a few weeks of ditching dairy, I was feeling so much better I resolved to never go back… and two years ago I would have sworn to you that I could not live without cheese or ice cream!
Q and I both stopped having all the frequent sinus infections and ear infections. Our season allergies even dissipated to a point where we no longer needed allergy medicine.
The remaining GI issues: absolutely gone. The remaining pain in that arthritic neck: absolutely gone. And my ability to power through a work day and still have more energy at the end of it was still in full force, if not stronger.
If you have lingering concerns and have read this far and are still thinking, “There is no way this is healthy”; first go back read all those links I’ve tagged, because each of them is different and illuminating. :-)
I’ve even written more about this in the future (this post was from January, and there are now posts about: how to make the change, why you should make the change, pediatric nutrition, and more.)
Secondly, I highly recommend Forks Over Knives (a brilliant nutritional wake-up from 2011), What The Health, The Gamechangers: a documentary on Netflix by James Wilks. While recovering from an injury, Wilks (a combat instructor) researched the quickest way to heal and discovered plant-based diets are known for recovery, reducing inflammation, and continued strength. I’ve spent the last year reading and discovering similar articles, and they are scattered throughout this post.
Follow it up with all the articles mentioned herein, or watch the 3+ hour debate with James Wilks and a sceptic on Joe Rogan. It convinced my highly rational husband that we were on the correct path.
Gamechangers uses multiple medical professionals to explain the hard science on plant-based nutrition, cuts it with evidence that we (like all other primates) are meant to primarily eat plants, and shows career athletes who have found themselves *stronger* after switching to their biologically beneficial plant-based diets. From a molecular level you’ll see/understand the benefits of all the antioxidants and proteins in the plant-based foods, and how we’re learning all the various ways animal products are harming us with inflammation. Just like me, Wilks started out a raving carnivore, but had the open-mindedness to tryout how plant-based would feel.
And here are some Great Books:
Dr Dean Ornish “Undo It”
Dr Michael Greger “How Not To Die”
Dr Neal Barnard “Power Foods For The Brain”
Dr Will Bulsiewicz “Fiber Fueled”
Nutritionist Simon Hill “Plant Proof”
What our counter looks like after a CSA haul. All those colors are compliments of flavonoids and they are what your body needs to run properly.
Gamechangers illuminated to me why I have so much more energy now and why I am never sore after a strenuous day, but most importantly: it shows us that though animal products are indeed jeopardizing the future of all species and ruining this planet, ceasing consumption could be the silver-bullet to reduce emissions and start helping this earth back to equilibrium.
Plant-Based Whole-Food Brownies with Cashew Cream and Cherries.
Meals in this house are now a delicious and mindful balance of protein and nutrient. A typical nightly meal may be: black rice with mixed vegetable red curry; homemade refried beans with black rice, pickled veggie rainbow array, and avocado; mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy and roasted vegetables; stir-fry dishes with whatever veggies are at hand, topped with Q’s Sesame Sauce or homemade peanut sauce; curried acorn squash bisque with arepas; pots of soups full of beans and greens; etc, etc, etc.
Treats: cranberry dark chocolate chip oat bars (whole grains, no added sugars except for what is hiding in the dark chocolate); homemade peanut butter with dark chocolate sauce; berry breads with a strawberry reduction; delicious, dense black-bean brownies. Etc etc etc.
I used to have depression, anxiety, eczema, a perpetually achy neck from Lyme’s, a sore back, cranky knees, was chronically tired & riddled with irritable bowel syndrome, had random cheese-driven lumps in my breast, and was participating in a global meat culture that was ruining our planet.
I changed my diet to plant-based, whole-foods and now all the above are gone. No prescriptions at all. I am healthier, no longer HANGRY, never sore/stiff when I wake up, stronger than I’ve ever been, more mindful, have abundant energy, and I am determined to make this Earth a better place.
Hike Q and I did over the 2019 holiday break. We started level with that pond in that distance. Powered by peanuts, we walked a 1/2 mile loop to a waterfall, then hiked 2 miles and 700ft up to this view, then laughed and slid the rain-slick 2 miles back down. We completed the whole adventure in under 90 minutes, still smiling, and the only soreness the next day was a minute pang in my bicep from hefting the 42lb cub the last stretch up the hill.
You could be saving the earth and your body with your food choices, and still go out and power through a day of adventure! <3
It has become my life’s purpose to show others how to be kinder to this planet. If my klaxon gets too feisty for you, I apologize and acknowledge there are milder voices out there. For me, there’s too much at stake and no time left for me to remain silent or mild-mannered, and it ceases to be a “personal choice” when your actions doom the rest of us.
If you are calling yourself an environmentalist, an animal lover, or state that you want to be healthy; and you’re not working toward the biggest thing you could do to help any of the three: you are a hypocrite (just as I once was) who is simply seeking taste-sensation at the risk of your health, our health, and every other species on this planet.
Open your mind, open your heart, try a different path, and you just may heal yourself and help us save the Earth.
