We left off talking about the documentary that made the biggest impact in my life - "Forks Over Knives". Again, I highly recommend watching this documentary, even if people talking about being vegan and having whole food plant based diets scares you. Bottom line is, I didn't feel great and if changing my diet could help me, why wouldn't I try it.
This picture above was taken at a musical festival and it was my big gorging out party to myself before I was going to become Vegan. The thing that resonated with me the most about the whole food plant based diet was that I believed our bodies were never meant to eat as much meat as most people do. I was a meat, dairy and potatoes kind of person. And the meat portion of my meals was the main portion.....by far. I hardly ever ate vegetables or even fruit for that matter. So I needed to get myself out of the rut of eating so much meat and dairy.
The additional documentary I watched at this time was "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". It followed a guy who changed out his diet to only be juice (mostly vegetables) and how it made amazing changes to his body. So I too did a 4 days juice cleanse, in fact it's how I started out my journey to become vegan. I will admit that juicing is a really hard diet to follow, and it probably isn't needed for most people. The amazing thing it did for me, was to kick my soda habit. After 4 days of juicing I haven't touched soda again. I used to have to have at least one can/glass a day and now it's been 4 years. When soda accidentally gets mixed in a drink, I can tell immediately and it's way too sweet for me. Since that 4 day juice cleanse, I have tried a few more times to do a reset and juice again, but I haven't been successful. I was extremely tired and had headaches during the juice cleanse and since I still have children to take care of and work too, it just doesn't happen. People claim if you make it past 4 days you start to feel amazing, I can't personally vouch for that.
Taking meat and dairy out of my diet forced me to try new kinds of food and figure out what I liked. Honestly taking out cheese was the hardest part of the process, and the part that I cheated on the most (still do). I cut out almost all meats and fish/seafood. Only eating chicken on very rare occasions. I also cut out over processed and refined flours/breads and replaced them with whole grain options.
I can't remember exactly but I followed this diet for about a year. Jesse also joined me on the journey. It helped me to loose the pesky baby weight I had put on with all three kids, and Jesse really slimmed down too.
The problem was - I didn't feel much better. I was still tired all the time and I was still getting migraines. I did realize that the few times we tried to eat meat again, I felt absolutely awful afterwards. My stomach could not process red meat or pork, it would leave me doubled over in pain. I took that as a sign that taking meat out of my diet was a good choice, but I still needed to find more answers.
Also on a more vain note, I had lost the baby weight, but my body was definitely in different shape than before I had kids. I had problem areas that it seemed like no matter what I did, the fat wouldn't go away. On the outside I probably looked healthy, but on the inside I didn't feel healthy. I also still had three young kids and finding time to workout just wasn't happening. So I started doing more research.
I came upon a book and phenomenon known as "The Elimination Diet" which lead me to the second part of my journey.
