I'd hazard to say my ever changing relationship with food has been one of the most fascinating parts of my lifestyle change.
It has been essentially emblematic of my progress.
As the days and months tick by I recognize small changes that add up to pretty big changes, and one of those has been the way I eat, and increasingly, exactly what it is that I eat. When I began my lifestyle change at the beginning of April 2018 one of the things that made it significantly different than a diet was the way I approached food. I knew this time was going to be different. It was something about the way I had long pondered the change, something about how I managed to align my heart and brain, my soul, to a complete and total commitment.
I knew this wasn't going to be a diet, it was going to be a way of living.
Now, I’d heard that so many times before and still was desperately searching for a magic key to weight loss and transformation. The people who were always the most successful always said it was diet and exercise, and people like me, so fraught for a simple answer, felt like this, the most simple answer, couldn’t possibly be it. Because it hadn’t worked for me like that before. It turned out that the mental commitment was everything. I cannot stress that enough.
Because now if someone were to ask me what it is that I'm doing to lose weight, I could say diet and exercise, and leave them flummoxed wanting more.
The only more there is to it, and as it turns out, it’s the most critical, is the mental dedication. With this mental dedication, and knowing this would be a lifestyle, not a diet, a journey, not something to miserably measure out one day, one week at a time, a long haul, not some short stretch with an immediate success followed by a slowing down and ultimately failure. No, this would be different. And part of that difference was how I would approach food.
In the past when I devoted myself to a new start, a new diet, yet another attempt to help myself become the true me, I would go out and buy all sorts of healthy snack items. I would tell myself that instead of reaching for an unhealthy snack I could eat one of these tasty Kind bars, or a Lara bar, or some other fruit/nut/chia seed who knows what concoction. I felt that packaged foods had been a big part of my failures in the past. They left me feeling full of the wrong things, empty of satiety.
So when I started out I wanted to think of food differently and figured in time my relationship to food would alter as well, and maybe I could be that person someday who was eating to live, not living to eat. I’ve talked before about crutches, and with food I had some, too. I began with these smoothies of almond milk, plain Greek yogurt, frozen strawberries, a smidge of cane sugar, to fill me up if I was craving something sweet. I ate turkey roll ups at lunch time with a plate full of fruit. We were still eating out frequently and I was desperately trying to make the menu work for me. But I didn’t give into packaged foods, and honestly, with the mental commitment, I didn’t miss them.
As time wore on and I was changing in myriad other ways, my relationship with food began to change as well.
The smoothies disappeared. I didn’t need the crutch anymore. I did keep eating a moderate portion of Jell-O with light whipped cream, or Halo Top ice cream, or caramel rice cakes for dessert at night. So I got my sweet there, but I didn’t need it during the day. The mental commitment had allowed me to completely cut out fast food, a disturbingly huge part of my diet prior to the lifestyle change. Kevin and I used to eat fast food on Thursday nights alone after the kids went to bed, something we looked forward to. This had switched to me creating more indulgent meals on Thursdays to eat alone, something like sweet potato BLTs, Kevin’s favorite, or other such dinners. We kept this up as we moved into the summer and my progress continued. I was cooking a lot out of Skinny Taste, using chicken and turkey burger as we cut out beef at home for environmental reasons. I was using healthy grilling cookbooks to try and make things work on the boat.
By the time I came out the other side of summer, and we hit fall, I was about 80 pounds down and began picking up on my hiking, something I’ve always loved but that had been difficult to commit to the way I wish I could have. As my activity increased with hiking, I realized I was ready for the gym and to make exercise a regular part of my life. With this change came more changes in eating. We stopped eating out, almost entirely. I had gotten to the point where I had realized I could create better tasting, far healthier, more satisfying meals at home. I used to roll my eyes at people who insisted on that. But there I was. With the change in eating out, the change in my activity levels, the way I ate began to change as well. I started purchasing more vegetarian cookbooks and exploring more in the kitchen. The more meals we ate at home, the more variety I was searching for, the more I became interested in the new spices and ways of using vegetables and then, in a weird natural progression, meat substitutes.
Those Thursday dinners changed and I found myself making more Indian vegetarian dishes, more complex soups.
Those dinners, and Friday dinners, and Saturday dinners, which we usually ate out before, became opportunities for me to explore new flavors, new dishes, new cookbooks. I got to the point where I was calling myself a Flexitarian, and saying I ate vegetarian about 60% of the time. Then it was 80% of the time. Then 90% of the time. I began making meat for Kevin and the kids a couple times a week, but serving it on the side, making myself tofu, tempeh on the side, or using what I gave them as a side, as my main meal, usually something full of veggies, maybe some beans, or lentils, or eggs, or other proteins. Before I knew it, I realized I had gone over a month without eating meat. Our occasional use of a deli while out and about during weekend lunchtime had me ordering veggie wraps, which a sad amount of places actually know how to satisfactorily make. Our occasional dinner out for a date or the rare family meal out had me excitedly ordering veggie burgers and asparagus as if these were the new indulgences in my life. I learned how to make some amazing indulgent meals at home, satisfying veggie burgers, delicious sweet potato fries, amazing General Tso’s cauliflower.
As the little changes added up into big changes, so did the changes in my eating. It had started small, with very little prepackaged foods, Skinny Taste meals, a lot of chicken and turkey burger. Then it changed, with my changing body, with my changing activity levels, with my love of yoga, with my passion for hiking, I slowly but surely became a vegetarian without meaning to. As someone who would call themselves an environmentalist, the environmental impact of eating a vegetarian diet is quite the plus for me, but I didn’t have an agenda when I unintentionally became a vegetarian.
Before I wrap this up, I have to give credit where credit is due.
At the start of my lifestyle change, my favorite cookbook was a Skinny Taste cookbook, and the awesome website. There was a wealth of recipes that my whole family found delicious that were also healthy. But as my palette slowly became more complex and my diet became more plant based, I started to explore vegetarian cookbooks. I cannot ignore, however, the important role that Skinny Taste played at the beginning, and I do still turn to that old dog eared book from time to time.
I would credit Inspiralized & Beyond for being the bridge between my initial foray into healthy eating and my full blown love affair with veggies.
Ali Maffucci made veggies more accessible and I loved exploring with them in the spiralized form. I do still turn to this cookbook frequently because it does have a ton of vegetarian dishes, or dishes I can make for my family and adjust to be vegetarian for myself. I love her breakfast section, which I use for dinners and lunches. My favorites are her huevos rancheros, her squash egg cup bake (which was a favorite lunch over the winter when I wanted comfort food), and the vegetarian breakfast quesadilla.
She brought to us our first favorite Thursday meals, zucchini pork dumplings, vegetarian meatball subs, BLT sweet potato sliders, Philly cheese steaks in bell pepper cups, and hasselback zucchini. Other favorites include the collard green fajita wraps, and the cabbage pad Thai (I make this with shrimp for my husband and tofu for me now), fajita night pasta (with chicken sausage for him and the kids, tofu again for me). Then she has an entire vegetarian section, from which my favorite is the cauliflower steaks and chimichurri. She also has incredible recipes available online!
Then, in September of 2018, just as I was beginning to really pick up on my hiking and was looking into joining a gym I was driving to pick my daughter up from school and was tuned into NPR. The Food Schmooze was on and I was listening to this scrumptious description of delicata fries and giant portabella mushroom burgers. The book was Pretty Simple Cooking by Sonja and Alex Overhiser and I was hooked just based on Faith’s interview with Sonja. It sounded like it had promise to be the cookbook that could make vegetarian meals accessible to me.
I could rave about this cookbook, now my favorite, but I will try to be succinct.
When I went online to order the book I was in love with the cover photo and the font. If Faith hadn’t sealed the deal, just looking at the book sure did. Then when it arrived and I eagerly perused the pages I found myself excited to try all of these meals, so many of which I never would have tried just half a year ago. The pictures are gorgeous, the layout is so user friendly, and every single thing I cook out of this book is incredible. There are so many amazing recipes in this cookbook, but what I especially love is that there are a wealth of starters, salads, side vegetables and so on that you can mix and match with other meals from this cookbook or other cookbooks.
Everything is so versatile and delicious.
My favorites to use with meals even not from this cookbook are the roasted poblano salsa, simple refried pinto beans, delicata squash fries with awesome sauce (that I make with acorn squash once the delicata disappears), spiced sweet potato wedges with chive cream, crispy baked restaurant style fries with honey mustard (I make these with sweet potatoes all the time and oh my goodness, with that homemade honey mustard, divine), and the turmeric roasted cauliflower, which is so addictive, I’m not even kidding you, buy this cookbook just to try this cauliflower!
But, wait, there's more!
The Overhisers provide a bounty of mains that are ranked based on how much time they will take to prepare. I love it! My favorites are the ultimate egg sandwich (I eat this with the squash fries), creamy cauliflower cashew curry with pickled onions (arguably my favorite recipe in the book), loaded sweet potato wedges with black beans (I make these black beans with other dishes all the time, and while the roasted poblano salsa is good on these sweet potatoes, in the summer, an amazing fresh peach salsa is the best), roasted cauliflower and black bean tacos, Moroccan sweet potato stew with quinoa, roasted acorn squash with brown rice sausage and kale, falafel burgers with yogurt dill sauce, and pizza margherita with pecorino and egg (we love this pizza dish! I never would have tried an egg on pizza before this). There’s also a lovely dessert section in addition to a section on baked dishes, a breakfast section, and a from scratch section.
Why did I go so in depth on this one cookbook?
Because I have to credit it for really helping me turn the tide in favor of vegetarianism. This cookbook opened up my palette and invited so many new, warm, comforting flavors into my cooking repertoire, all without meat. I simply didn’t miss the meat. And so my search for similar cookbooks began. Let me tell you about a handful of my favorites and I’ll shout out a couple of the dishes I love from each book.
Thug Kitchen's Eat Like You Give a Fuck really transformed how I saw meat substitutes.
I love their marinades and instructions for cooking tofu and use them religiously. The tone of the book is right up my alley and makes for enjoyable recipe reading. My favorite recipes include sweet corn and green Chile baked flautas, five spice fried rice with sweet potatoes, chickpeas and dumplings soup, wedding soup with white bean balls and kale (these soups are hands down my favorite recipes in the book), vegetable pad Thai with dry fried tofu, sweet potato, squash, and black bean enchiladas, silky roasted bell pepper pasta with zucchini and basil ribbons, cauliflower cream pasta with fresh herbs, and the spring veggie bowl with red curry lime sauce.
Love Real Food comes from Kathryne Taylor of Cookie + Kate, a blog I had been enjoying since my eating began to change.
My favorites from Love Real Food are the spicy breakfast fajitas with fried eggs and guacamole, the jalapeno-lime dressing, beans and greens quesadillas, roasted broccoli, bell pepper, and tofu bowl with peanut sauce, sweet potato-black bean veggie burgers with cabbage-Pepita slaw, and while there is not a single soup in this book I haven’t loved, my favorite, favorite is the West-African peanut soup, followed closely by the creamy roasted cauliflower soup. I will say this cookbook has an extensive drink section, which was a bit of a bummer for me because we don’t drink and it was quite a lot of pages.
Other shout outs go to Anna Jones with A Modern Way to Cook,
Joshua McFadden’s Six Seasons,
and East Meets Vegan from Sasha Gill. I’m also loving Vegan Richa’s blog and plan on buying her book next!
All of this is to say that when we open our minds and our hearts to a different way of living, you might be surprised by the changes that occur naturally as a result .
I never in a million years would have thought I’d end up a vegetarian, and I didn’t set out intending to become one. It just happened. As I became more active, as I began to settle into my true self, as I, as a result, began to explore more foods, I naturally gravitated towards vegetarian dishes and slowly, hardly realizing what was happening, stopped wanting meat. I’ve never been more satisfied with my diet in my entire life. I love, love, love so many foods I wouldn’t have even touched half a year or a year ago. I was the person that would only eat romaine or iceberg lettuce. I didn’t know what a real salad was. When people are disparaging eating healthily they say they cannot be satisfied on a diet of lettuce and cardboard, or as I was one told, lettuce and tears. But here’s the thing, a salad is so much more when you learn how to really build one, when your palette has expanded and you enjoy the nutritious dark, leafy greens that should be at its base, when you add in delicious fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, homemade dressings, flavorful cheeses. Soups full of vegetables can be so robust and comforting. Eggs and cauliflower are so amazingly versatile. Protein can come from unexpected and decadent places. Adding walnuts to a sweet potato soup with a sprinkling of feta can feel like a dessert, as can a soup with a hearty helping of peanut butter. You start to feel good about where your fats are coming from, and the more indulgent ingredients don’t cause guilt because they belong and they create this beautiful medley that, in the end, is healthy and wholesome eating.
I’m not someone looking to stand on a soapbox. I think you can get healthy without becoming a vegetarian. I was doing fine before I became a vegetarian. But I will say that I’ve never felt better, I’ve never been more connected to my food, I’ve never felt more at home in the kitchen, I’ve never had a better understanding of how spices and foods work together, and I’ve never had a better relationship with my body. When I set out on this journey I told myself I wouldn’t ever resort to counting calories because I wanted this to be a lifestyle change, something sustainable, and that’s not what counting calories is for me. I wanted to gain intuition around eating, to learn balance and moderation, to know when to indulge and when to say no. And I’ve finally arrived after so much tweaking, learning, and growing. I trust myself to choose well when it comes to fueling my body. I’m over a year out now, 145 pounds down, and I haven’t counted a single calorie. This isn’t to say I’m doing it right or someone else is doing it wrong, but to say that this is what has worked for me. I’ve come so far and as I reflect back on these changes in just my diet, my views of food, of cooking, of eating out, of nutrition, over the past year, I’m left excited about what the future holds. I never, ever would have thought I’d be a vegetarian, and here I am. What’s next?