So, what if you’ve made the decision: you want to lose weight, but you are not going to fail by going on a merry go round of dieting and giving in and putting it all and more back on again; you’re not going to commit yourself to a lifetime of extreme exercise.  You are going to do it by changing what you see as food: changing what you put in  your mouth, not how much.

One idea is the all or nothing.  Go cold turkey(no irony intended-speciest speech, a frontier I have not yet tackled)  This approach is clean out your kitchen, get all processed food out of the house and don’t ever bring any back.   This approach will take a bit of planning as you may not know what to cook if you are not cooking meat.  So, you will need to talk to people or research some recipe books or the good old internet to get some ideas.  On the one hand, it’s really simple.  A truck load of fresh fruit and vegetables along with staples of rice, beans and lentils.  Unlike eating animal products which are high in fat and therefore strong in taste, these items are very low in fat, but have there own subtle and interesting flavours.  You will probably need to buy some different spices from what you have been using( an added bonus is many spices are very high in anti-oxidants, which are the chemicals which combat the cancer producing chemicals, free radicals which are produced by our body, by converting food back to energy).

The upside of this approach is that you are already at your destination and you have to just ride out the adjustment of maybe missing some foods, learning to cook differently and waiting for your taste buds to catch up.  And it is not just your taste buds but also your brain chemistry which will need to catch up.  So, you may go through a few weeks of not enjoying your food as much as you used to.  As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’ve never enjoyed food as much as I have since I have become vegan, precisely because much more thought and  care is put into cooking, as you are not relying on the meat for the big hit.

If you have been eating a lot of processed and takeaway food as well as meat, dairy and eggs the fat and sugar in these things are addictive and causing a spike in the release of dopamine, the pleasure neurotransmitter.(Neurotransmitters are chemicals which ‘talk’to the next cell in the brain).  Your brain will have got used to this level of stimulation so when you swap to a  whole plant food diet, the pleasure you get from it may be diminished compared to what you were used to previously.   This effect will vary with how bad your diet was previously.  The worse your diet in terms of takeaway and processed food(anything from a factory) the bigger the effect.  However, within a few weeks, you will be getting more pleasure from your food than ever before: the pleasure of the taste but also the pleasure of knowing that every mouthful is good for you!  Helping your immune system, helping your energy levels and helping your mood.  The cold turkey approach is the approach recommended by Dr John McDougall(see link).

The other approach is slowly, slowly catch the worm.  This is the approach recommended by Dr Neal Barnard from PCRM(see link).  The idea is to transition to a healthier  diet by adding in foods that you like that are whole plant foods.  You can do this by adding more plant foods to any meal or preferably adding some whole plant foods meals to your week.   A friend of mine had irritable bowel syndrome  and I suggested she add more fibre to her meals(no, not metamucil but the stuff only found in plants).  She added steamed vegetables twice/week and her irritable bowel improved just on this minor change!  She was the sort of person who didn’t cook much  and lived off of take away and cooked chicken from the supermarket.  The thinking behind the slowly, slowly approach is:

• you get a chance to experiment with and enjoy non-meat -non animal product meals and realise that they are not from outer space, or only for hippies or something
• even though it may only be a small change, you are likely to feel better
• if you are overweight, you are likely to lose some, which is rewarding.  A whole plant diet leads to weight loss as it is high in fibre and low in fat.  Fat on your lips is the fat on your hips.  Fibre has many benefits for the body(detox, production of good bacteria in the gut) but in terms of weight loss it takes up a lot of space in our stomach for no calories!  So, beans for example are very filling.
• from little things big things grow-so trying it out, you might do more of it, as it has been good

Julie and I are still  making alterations to our what we eat, even though we have been vegan for many years.  Some of these changes are health based, like recently reducing oil to very low levels and some of them are new ingredients, that are added into the mix.

So, which approach should you use: all or nothing or slowly, slowly.  Naturally it depends a bit on your personality and how clearly you are seeing animal and processed foods as poison.  If you are really clear in your mind that these foods are poison, you will probably go the all or nothing approach.     Even if you are not totally convinced you still might want to give it a go-what have you got to lose?  If you want to go back to your old ways, they are not going to stop making animal and processed foods, so it’s not as if it is a fork in the road of no return.  If you are not totally convinced you might want to experiment slowly and see what you think:  make sure you put some though  into what you are  going to cook so that it tastes good and you give yourself a chance.

It is useful to have snack foods as there is nothing you can buy on the run, from petrol station/deli that is any good for you.  I have never eaten so many apples as I do now!

Yours in health

 

Gary