Green Things

Sometimes I feel like one - like a hearty little green plant - endlessly growing regardless of substrate or rainfall, sometimes a little brown, sometimes struggling with fungus gnats, or root rot, but overall endlessly growing - like it or not. Call me kudzu. Unstoppable. Take your glyphosate and shove it.

I finish my eCornell Plant Based Nutrition certificate in a couple more weeks. I don't know what the direction is with this, but the concept of Lifestyle Medicine keeps cropping up. If that personality test thinks I should be a drill sergeant, and I am "stuck" as a nurse by education and circumstance, and I feel like an advocate down to my toes, and I need a "thing" that pulls together all the things that I care about - environmental issues, social justice and advocacy, health and wellness, and all the things nearest and dearest to my little heart, then...really Lifestyle Wellness Coach pops to the top. Heal the planet, heal your body, heal the babies, heal the world.

Eat plants. Move your body. Be mindful. And I can help you do all of that. One step at a time.

I was up this morning at 5:20. Not by choice, but by cat. Sometimes this makes me want to live cat-free. But today I was grateful - even if it took a little effort on my part to become so. Thank you, cats, for quiet space to meditate and do yoga before a busy day of errands and hiking. We have been putting off registering the cars here, waiting for some tax paper from NC that just never showed up. And there was banking that needed two signatures, and filing some paper at the registry of deeds.

But once that was done, we went to Superfresh! Organic Cafe in Brattleboro for lunch, then headed into the woods in Wendell State Forest. We are participating in the New England Trails Hike 50 Challenge this year, in part to ensure that we get out, and in part because I am a patch whore. I am hoping for 100 miles by the end of the season. This trail encompasses parts of the Metacomet Monadnock trail which we hiked extensively in the 1990's to early 2000's. It is odd for Mr. W to have a weekday free, but today he had one. And I think we maxed it out.

The hiking was beautiful, if chilly and less than sunny. It is nice to be back in native air, and surrounded by native flora and fauna. A little strange - we saw a couple of woodpeckers, but no other wildlife. Not a deer, bear, squirrel. Not a bird other than the woodpeckers. Two mosquitoes. That was it. I don't think we have ever been out and seen nothing - not even a scat. 

We have been listening to the Food Revolution Summit which we learned about last year and gained a huge amount of knowledge from. Each day they broadcast three interviews at 11am, 12pm and 1pm eastern standard time, then are available for 21 hours as replays on demand. Give it a look and a listen. I have learned a lot, and found a lot of things to think about and research. Plus? recipes! I made Heart Beet Hummus the other day. Delicious. Of course...you can't really do much wrong with hummus. But maybe that is just me. 

Because Right is Right

A long time ago Ms. Oprah started saying "When you know better, you do better." I think I said this so often that my children wanted to duct tape my mouth shut...but it is true. And there are a lot of steps - and missteps - on the road to "knowing better".

Like...I believed that by eating locally and "humanely" raised meat I was helping the environment, reducing suffering, and making a good ethical choice. I now know this to be untrue - in fact, locally raised and grass fed animal products do MORE harm to the environment - the animals live longer to reach slaughter weight, which means more food consumed, more water to maintain them, more land that isn't growing food crops for our use, but instead crappy feed conversion ratios that benefit already heavily subsidized commodity crop growers - but misuse grains that could instead be fed to humans, thereby ELIMINATING hunger from the planet. Well...now I know that was nonsense. I took great care of my birds. And then I killed them. I took their lives quite literally with my own hands, and then consumed their bodies because "chicken tastes good". 

And...I believed that being vegan was complicated and expensive. This is simply not true. Our meatless lifestyle has already saved us a small fortune. When people complain about the high cost of being plant based, I ask them what they are eating. They list off processed, packaged foods and convenience foods, all of which do carry a hefty price tag. We don't touch those. The closest we get to processed is soy milk to make yogurt, poly bagged frozen vegetables, or for occasional diversity a bag of Beyond Beef crumbles or a block of tofu (I dearly love tofu). 

The truth is that beans, especially beans from dry, cost a really mere fraction of the cost of animal flesh products - and about half what eggs cost per serving. (The numbers above are slightly outdated, but are within the decade). Beans, brown rice and steel cut oats are bought in bulk when possible. Our grocery bill in the new world order is generally about half of what we spent when omnivorous. We shop deals, sales, and a place in Greenfield called The Barn where I have been scoring cheap stuff since 1988, and have no problem setting aside a couple of hours to blanch and freeze stuff that comes our way at a significant discount. For the average consumer, the time to freeze bulk produce might not be in your plan, which will bring that bill closer to 2/3 of your old expenses - but still, just by keeping it simple and avoiding processed and packaged foods, you will save a lot. If you put your faith in scientists like Dr. Campbell or Esselstyn (et al, and "al" is growing by leaps and bounds daily), then you know that the processed stuff is killing you almost as fast as the meat and dairy were and you shouldn't be eating it anyway. 

The question that follows on the heels of the money issue is the time issue - and I too fell for that initially. After all, how could I possibly find the time to make the rather complicated, multi-pan, super fancy recipes featured in Vegetarian Times or at various online sites? Well. We don't. On holidays we might dabble into the complex with a batch of Thanksgiving Meatless Loaf, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted butternut with sage, red onion and nutritional yeast "cheez", and maybe she rich and hearty vegan mushroom gravy. The rest of the time we live on "bowls". Bowls for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bowls make me happy. Bowls are fulfilling, and can be fixed in the direction of whatever flavor profile you're in the mood for. To wit:

 Breakfast bowl #1 - this is mine - brown rice and red beans topped with tamari, a bit of sesame oil and flax meal, accompanied by a large pear.

Breakfast bowl #2 - Gene's - soybeans, oatmeal, homemade soy yogurt, cinnamon and flax meal, and...his own pear. 

Some days the fruit is in the bowl. Some days I have oats myself, other days I want savory. The basic ingredients list for both of these breakfasts are ready to go, at all times. How? INSTANT POT MAGIC! Batches of rice, oats and beans are made every 3-5 days and put in tupperware in the fridge. Soy yogurt is made once a week in a large batch in the Instant Pot. More about all that another day.

Lunch is generally a bowl of leftovers topped with hot sauce or tamari, or occasionally one of the sauces from How Not to Die Cookbook or How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook. I've also pulled flavor profiles and ideas from Thug Kitchen and Cookie and Kate - although I am very very cautious about NO extra fat added in, and NO reliance on processed items like fake cheese or non-wheat pastas and regularly modify recipes that call for things like peanut butter, apple juice, or cooking oil. Whole. Food. Plant. Based. Although not technically diagnosed with heart disease, Gene was close enough that I consider it prudent to follow Dr. Esselstyn's advice (mostly). No nuts - nuts are a gateway drug in this house - and no processed oils. There is fat in fresh, unprocessed food, yes even veg. And we add flax meal for GLA, although the science is a little muddy on that. For now, better safe than sorry. That means the things we eat are not cooked in oil, not even a little. We add 2 ounces of avocado to dinner or a half ounce of flax at breakfast. That's it. 

The other day lunch was Chipotle - a salad with sofritas, fajita veg, a couple of salsas, and a shared tub of guac which we count as a fruit. No dressing, a little tabasco on top. We have fruit with lunch most days, although not at Chipotle - we get more than enough in those bowls!

And dinner - this was last night. Thai Red Curry veg (snap peas, peppers, onion, garlic and mushrooms) over rice and beans. No fish sauce or oil...umami comes from miso and tamari. Here some processed things sneak in - red curry paste, for example. Most nights are much less glamorous. Some days and nights are frozen bagged veg over plain brown rice and beans. And it's delicious, because now I can TASTE the food instead of all the crap on top of it. I roast a lot of vegetables in the oven without oil. Roasted cauliflower and Brussel's sprouts are big here. Kale and spinach, lightly steamed, are usually on the menu at least 4 nights a week

Which brings me to another point. We have been conditioned by marketing to believe that food needs to be sexy; that by virtue of our challenging and difficult lives (...?...) we "deserve" treats, ease, decadence. I don't buy this. I am pretty sure it's crap. And I am not saying we need to suffer. I am saying that the food we eat now bears no resemblance to the food we were designed and have evolved to eat, and the hyper palatable crap they're selling us is lethal. Yes, I said lethal, and I meant it. You want to stray off the reservation a couple of times a year with some red curry paste, or a bottle of wine? Fine. But that shouldn't be daily or even weekly. Not because you don't deserve it - on the contrary - you DESERVE to be well. You DESERVE to not eat a plate full of death. You DESERVE to not consume processed, damaged, damaging junk. You DESERVE to be healthy, to be happy, to be content, to be in a body that fits you, to not take five prescriptions to cover your body's misery at the poison the marketers and the government want you to consume. And YES you will stumble and make less than optimal choices - and that's ok because you are human. Just pick up where you were at the next opportunity - don't allow one moment of decision making to rule your head.

One of the things that rings over and over in my head is this - when confronted with the truth, physicians and nutritionists, diabetes educators, those involved directly with (allegedly) helping people to live healthier and longer lives will occasionally say things like "Oh, but people just can't stick to that sort of lifestyle. We have to make allowances to increase compliance."

Bullshit.

Tell people the truth and let them choose. But TELL. THEM. THE. TRUTH. Don't be like my mother's diabetes educator telling her she could have anything she wanted "in moderation". That crap is addictive. Would you tell a recovering cocain addict they can have a little coke, in moderation? Would you advice a recovering alcoholic to sip on that drink at that party so they don't rock the boat and make themselves stand out by declining? Then support and educate people about dietary choices the same way. Don't lie about "moderation" because for most of us when it comes to our achilles heel foods, moderation isn't an option. it simply doesn't exist. Educate them on things like how to shop, how to make food ahead (even without an instant pot), how to bring flavor into your life in new and exciting ways, how to be patient and know that in six weeks your tastebuds will regenerate and as long as you don't go kicking any sleeping dragons of desire by cheating, you really will survive just fine on beans, rice and vegetables. In times of stress or joy, you may find yourself looking toward the candy display at the register, or eyeing the peanut butter. Stop. Take a breath. Look the food in the eye and say "That is poison. That food will kill me. If I eat that, I will be putting myself at risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer." Most of the time as I am moving through my day I can avoid eye contact with the evil. I don't put myself in situations that might be "tempting". I try to control where I eat when out with friends, planning ahead what I will and will not have. I decline "bites" of other people's "better" (read standard American!) food. At this point, their food usually makes my stomach turn. 

And provide a way for people to come back from bad choices. This is a process; it is not overnight success for most people. I have had two 1-ounce pieces of chocolate in the last 9 months, both offered by people I did not want to offend, and in both instances I accepted my choice and then got right back on the wagon (so to speak). Sometimes we get wine, and usually regret it. Ethanol, regardless of the source, is a poison, and no amount of excuse will change that. We are not perfect, we are human. We are just conscious and aware of the choices we make, the effect they will have, and we think long and hard before making any trade-offs. What we don't do, ever, is hate on ourselves for being human. Forgiving yourself, if you need to call it that, allows you to get back on the whole food pony. Bashing yourself is useless, counter productive, and feeds into the lie that you are expected to be perfect all the time. Find a group; I highly recommend that if you need help with portions and sticking to plan you consider joining Bright Line Eating. I have never come across a more supportive, loving group of people - and I am NOT a member myself.  Once you join you will be placed in a sub group of like minded and supportive people who have been on this journey long enough to have great insight and advice. Worth every penny, and a great use of the leftover grocery money and prescription co-payments and OTC antacids you WON'T NEED ANY MORE!

Your doctor may have a small cow (no irony intended). Ironically although our doc in NC was in agreement that the food is killing us, he was adamant and positively paranoid about vitamin B-12 supplementation (we do take 1,000 mcg once a week which is the only supplement we take) in spite of both of us having normal levels of B-12. The new-to-me doctor here in MA, Gene's former primary, is also neurotic and blames anything he can on the vegan diet while at the same time giving lip service in support. He fussed over the B-12 in ways he didn't ever fuss over the piles of scripts - or the undesirable side effects of medications - he stuck in Gene's hands when we lived here before. He also was concerned about iron (we both have normal hematocrit and hemoglobin levels), and refused to believe that Gene's blood pressure is normal until I submitted a list of recent BP's. He wanted to know why Gene wasn't testing his blood sugar daily (well, because it was 89 and 87 and 92 and 85 for weeks and weeks...so we stopped!). 

So that's my good news rant. You have choices. There's science to back this all up (the peer reviewed kind, not the pseudo-stuff paid for by the people who are trying to sell you something). There's no controversy, really. There's people trying to lie. There's people trying to give you excuses. But there isn't any actual proof that a whole food plant based lifestyle does anything other than....well...save your life. And that, my friends, is the good news I said I had. 

FOOD

That "on this day" feature on Facebook can create a lot of introspection. Today there was a profile picture from a year ago featuring a slimmed down right-size-body "mostly vegan" me next to a still overweight omnivore Gene. It brought up a lot of feelings for me. We have been on this lifestyle journey for something like 276 days, combining the concepts of Bright Line Eating with a whole food, plant based lifestyle. We began BLE in a sort of last ditch attempt to get Gene back into some kind of healthy body. Reflecting back on the journey both before and after BLE and whole food, plant based eating entered into our lives has made me grateful. It has also made me very, very angry at my own actions, at the waste of my time and my life and extremely resentful of the American food system that is more concerned with money than with truth or health; disgusted with our government for allowing big ag interests to dictate guidelines that they know are not only false but downright deadly, and that continues to encourage and insist that consumption of foods KNOWN TO BE DANGEROUS are somehow "essential" to our health. From dairy to meat to processed foods - at the end of the day the science shows (and will continue to show) that the food is killing us. And our government not only allows this to occur. It PROMOTES the eating habits that will continue to lead us to our graves. Am I being dramatic? No. I would be if it wasn't the truth. We are sick, and we are dying, and the people who should protect and serve us are so thoroughly corrupted that they are standing by and watching it happen. Shit, they are digging the holes and slamming the coffins shut.

Food for me is a fraught issue and always has been. I grew up with a mother who was overweight and hated it, but seemed unable to get a handle on her body weight. She tried different approaches over the years, including a "keto" type diet that appeared to work - until it didn't any more and she ballooned back up to above her previous weight plus a bunch. Filled with self-loathing at her "failure", she drowned her pain in bowls of pasta and butter, and a not insignificant amount of Darvon and Valium. I knew food was dangerous. I watched it hurt people. And I struggled personally with weight and body image for all of my life. "You are chubby, but not fat. Yet." was what I heard. If I started to nudge up the scale, my fatness was noted, commented on, and I was taken to task by my mother and my grandmother. Exercise was what was needed, I was told. And "watch what you eat", a nearly impossible task when the world of food information is so corrupted, and the person buying the groceries has issues of her own. And it tasted good. It filled holes I didn't know I had. A nice baggie of thin sliced deli roast beef slathered with mayonnaise and salt (hole the bread), or a spoon and the Peter Pan peanut butter jar can go a long way toward comforting a hurting girl. Of course they will also make her fat, and kill her eventually, but hey. Meat is on the pyramid. So are peanuts. It's all good. Anorexia and bulimia take care of the rest, right?

Except it's not all good.

The addictive potential of foods is something that I suspect will be much more widely studied in the future - and is being studied now. The brain that evolved to keep us alive in the face of constant danger and constant lack has been glutted in recent time with all of the things it so desperately craves for survival. Fat and sugar are not just abundant in our modern world - they exist in quantities that are embarassingly wasteful. Already there is growing public awareness of the addictive potential of processed and refined foods, and some growing awareness of the addictiveness of dairy from casomorphins. When people ask about how we eat, and I respond that we do not consume meat or dairy, very little alcohol, and no processed or refined foods, cheese probably ranks as high as booze on the list of things people believe they cannot live without. 

The idea that we "deserve" to be happy, indulged and 'spoiled' with food and goods is a new one. Historically we didn't have the time or space for indulgence, and we were, in many ways, healthier for it. Now - now we are affluent in ways we don't even recognize, whining endlessly about our lack and our needs - while killing ourselves with a glut of the most dangerous and unhealthy foods on the planet. Meanwhile we are spreading our affluenza around the world as fast as we can. And in truth, the food we eat in the standard American diet actually encourages and causes auto-immune disease, depression, anxiety, obesity, cardiac disease, diabetes, cancer, and on and on and on. 

We're killing the planet, too. Animal agriculture is well documented as the leading cause of environmental devastation when taken as a whole - if you include "production" (that means raising animals in ethically intolerable ways, feeding them biologically incompatible foods, in numbers that blow your mind), slaughter (another word for that is killing), transportation, etc. And don't get me started on the oceans. We have fished them to the near-extinction of multiple species and show no indications of letting up. 

How dare I speak, right? I hear you. I mean a few years ago right here on this very blog I posted about raising and slaughtering chickens in my front yard. I held chickens hostage and stole their eggs for food. I sold those eggs at a profit so I could buy more feed and make more eggs and more chickens to kill for more meat. Get off your high horse, Melissa. Or "Here she goes again...".

Yup. Here she goes again. Because every step I have taken to this point has been a quest for knowledge and truth, a search for truth endlessly blockaded and stymied by fake and pseudo science, by big ag, by other people searching for truth who thought they, too had found the answers. So have I taken  lot of wrong turns? You better believe it. Would have been helpful if the people with the money hadn't been throwing blockades and banana peels all over my path. Bastards. 

If the big "they" had just told us the truth from the beginning, it wouldn't have taken so many wrong steps and broken paths to get to here. 

The truth is that no other mammal consumes milk after infancy, and none of them consume the milk of other animals (say, humans drinking the milk of cows for example). Nature gave us all perfect infant food in our own bodies - breast milk. Now I am not going to get into the politics of "breast is best", or the mom-bashing over formula that I see all the time, except to say this: we all make decisions based on the information we have at hand. If you are a working mother, and your pediatrician tells you that it's ok if you feed formula, you will believe them. If you are a poor mother and your pediatrician tells you that WIC can help you by providing supplemental food, and one of those foods offered is formula, you are going to take it. Again, greater forces are at work under those decisions than meets the eye. It is in the best interest of the dairy industry to addict your babies as soon as possible. It is in the best interests of formula manufacturers to sell their product by any means necessary. Individuals who make choices based on shitty information (also called lies) are not to blame. The government and large medical organizations who bow to lobby pressure however...that's a different story. 

The truth is that ALL refined sugar (that includes maple syrup and honey - which is food for bees, not people) is too high in calories for most humans to consume safely, and has addictive properties similar to those of cocaine. And artificial sweeteners are just...artificial. And have a host of problems from artificially jacking up blood sugars to damage to the nervous system to keeping the addiction to "sweet" going in our badly damaged brains.

The truth is that until very recently in human history the "gathering" made up the bulk of what went into your body. The "hunting" was wasteful of time and energy, didn't provide enough calories to feed the village, and was a supplement consumed irregularly and in very small quantities - a deer for a village, perhaps, or a rabbit for a family. (Not a rabbit EACH, roasted, with a pile of processed oil-rubbed potatoes and a teensy side of something that was once greenish.) The women, children and old people fed the village. The men went out and "hunted" - probably with beers and a group of like-minded men who were too lazy to pick berries and cut leaves and grasses. 

The truth is that we can change. If you had told me a year ago that Gene would be asking why we hadn't had soy milk yogurt in a while, and when could we have some again? I would have laughed in your face. If you had told me that he would not only no longer consume animal products, but express contentment and peace with that, I would have called you a crazy liar. And yet...here we are. If you see him, ask him yourself. I'm always the evangelical mouthpiece. But he will answer if asked, and his answers surprise the people who've known him longest.

I have one kid who says he isn't going to change his eating habits because after all, he's going to die anyway, may as well die happy, just ten years earlier. My mother said that a lot.

Yup. He is going to die. And maybe ten years earlier. But he is going to suffer. Maybe it will take a few more years to catch up with him, as it did with his father. But he is going to suffer - and if he continues down the path and still doesn't change? Well. Diabetes causes vascular damage. Diabetes lose fingers and toes, vision. They develop cardiovascular disease - strokes, heart attacks. They lose control of their bladders. They don't just up and die. They suffer for a long time first. So yeah, die ten years earlier, after twenty or thirty of misery. Or not. I am hoping for not myself. I am like that. I like to hope. 

It would be easy to wallow in anger - that the answers are so clear, so simple, and so EASY - and that I myself missed them and fell for the Atkins bullshit a decade or so ago really pisses me off. The answers are even CHEAP. And we are having trouble listening, because our ears and eyes - like mine were - are blocked up with addictive things that the government is going to keep encouraging at the risk of pissing off the big ag interests that give them so many dollars a year that they are scared to say no. And it goes beyond that, really, into some nefarious, sneaky mafia-like behaviors and scenarios that also make me sick. Why can't the National Geographic photographer photograph your confined feeding operation, Mr. Meat-Man? Why can't the people see inside your chicken sheds and your pig barns and your slaughterhouses? Why? Got something to hide? Scared, much? Afraid that if people see the misery and death and horror that they ingest daily, they might...oh...STOP? I am more afraid that they won't. 

This is rambling and ranting, I know - but you have to admit I am good at both. I don't care today because I am angry. Someday maybe I will make more sense and have an outline. Today I just wanted to rant. Tomorrow...well, tomorrow I'll talk about the good news. Because there really is good news. Cheap, easy, clear good news. 

(my)Passion

I think I was born hippie. Maybe it was the time (quite likely). Maybe it was the place (less likely).

When we moved here I thought I "knew" so much about race and inequality - and I was so wrong. It's much worse than I thought, and so deeply in us. We are so isolated in the north and surrounded by unrelenting whiteness, and so those of us who don't consider ourselves racist can pretend it's a thing somewhere, but after all rational people aren't like that and MOST people aren't like that. Right? And the problems in our own schools and lower income communities are simply about density and no jobs or...something. Right? Then you get here and the blinders get all ripped off - and this isn't even the deep south - and suddenly you're like "WHO ARE THESE HUMANS AND WHO THINKS LIKE THAT?" Then you dig deeper and discover the deeply entrenched social justice issues that affect everything from voting rights to schools - all aimed at keeping a group down, and keeping people riled up against one another - and...it's such a tangled mess. I'm living in a state with voting districts that are shaped like snakes and octopi. I am living in a state that's probably about to enact voter ID laws that will further marginalize the have-nots, regardless of skin color. I live in a state where a man can smoke a bowl, get out of his truck, and get killed; standing while black. I am looking to move back to a state that is deeply racist and pretends it isn't, which is super easy when your towns are 99.3% WHITE.

Then there's the planet. Poor thing. We get given this amazing gift and what do we do? Rape the ever loving crap out of it in a short-sighted gluttonous assault. We suddenly "need" meat three meals a day (not including snacks!) which is so destructive to the environment on so many levels from water use to land use for commodity feed crops that could be growing plant-based foods with 1/10th the water and land waste and we would be PERFECTLY HEALTHY - hell, we would be HEALTHIER!! But we continue to kill ourselves and the planet and the powers that be come up with new ways to compensate for those of us leaving the meat and dairy markets by touting Keto or Paleo as the new cure-all when the science clearly shows the exact opposite is true...the organism has subsisted on the planet for millennia with meat as a side dish, not a main course. And we are stuffing it with all this animal flesh and fat, while our cancer rates and heart disease rates continue to skyrocket. Sometimes in my more paranoid moments I think it's intentional - cut down on the population by killing 2/3 of us off with food. Last man standing, holding a carrot and a bunch of kale, wins.

Then there's the animals and the small humans - and I go back in my child-mind to the picture of Jesus from Sunday School, all white and blue-eyed, with his long hair and beard, surrounded by a rainbow of small children and small animals, dove of peace seated on his shoulder. "Suffer the little children to come unto me..." and "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren..." and ok yeah He didn't mention animals, but really. I have never been able to put the cow on my plate completely into a context that makes sense, and that's even harder now, having watched all these things...could we raise animals for consumption without ethical quandaries? Maybe. But that's not what we do now. What we do now are things that any ethical person, witnessing in person, would want to report to someone - immediately - to make it stop. BUT WE EAT THAT SHIT. And kids - talk about an abused group. Kids and old people - the groups we all say we care about, but never put our money where our mouths are.

And on it goes.

Trying to find "a passion" in all of this is like trying to choose which of your children to throw off the life boat first. "But I love the people and I love the planet and I love the babies and I love the animals and I love the snakes and the bugs and the birds and all the things and..." what do I do with all that?

Death and dying has been and continues to be very important to me, in the way birth is. The arrival and departure of a soul should be sacred; it should be an occasion marked not with solemnity, but with respect and awe. When we lose that we lose our humanity. Hell, we've lost our humanity.

I am not perfect. I fall, fail, make mistakes - but I keep open and willing to learn and grow and change. And I am seeking truth endlessly. I find nuggets and store them away, but hoarding does me no good - the nuggets MUST be shared. They must be spoken, they must be set free.

So what, then, is my passion, my calling, my "thing"? This has been a topic around here lately as we both wander through mid-life, coming to grips with the past, making sense of it, and moving into the future.

My kids, grown now, are still my passion - but in a different way. Now my focus needs to transition to their children. All I have learned, I can share with them. Make them all sugar free, flour free, and vegan, and get their parents breathing down my neck (insert evil laugh here). OK, maybe not - especially in a world where pizza and Pepsi are everywhere - but at least introduce them to the natural world in a way that creates awe and wonder and the reverence for all life that we lack - and if someday they chose to opt out of the animal-cruelty based food chain, then good for them. Teach them that all humans matter. Teach them that all animals matter. Teach them that THEY matter.

Outside of that, I feel like I need to find a crusade that brings all of my passion into play. Advocacy, which is ironic because that seed was first planted by the shrink last year, but I have not been able to find the path to it yet. I need....a foundation of my own, with an endless budget - I shall save the whole world! I suppose I also probably need to make enough money to feed myself, damned capitalist system. But I would so rather just give myself away to the things that ignite me. Who needs a paycheck when I am talking about restoring sanity and humanity?

For the time being, still lacking a clear direction, I want to get certified in plant-based nutrition (for which I require that green evil we all so depend on in the modern world). In my perfect world I would go back to school near-full-time, gain degrees in nursing, social justice, nutrition, education? I am not sure what best suits the rambling, incoherent path I seem to be on. Actually it isn't incoherent. I mean, at the core of all the things I am passionate about lies the same thing.

Saving Your Life

(*all lab results and personal information shared here has been with full permission of Mr. Wonderful)

Why are we posting this? Because we are not the only humans on the planet who are being given horribly mixed messages about food, lifestyle, activity and exercise, health and well-being. We're not the only people who have been sold a bill of goods around food "choices". We are not the only people told to just "eat everything in moderation and exercise more", and then felt the shame and disappointment when that doesn't work - AGAIN. We know that for us, this is working when nothing conventional thinking has offered us has - in fact even the fad things I have tried (Atkins! Zone!) have all been bullshit in the end. At it's core this is about truth and science and reality. For some of us, moderation isn't "enough". We need clear, bright lines to guide us and keep us safe. We need the freedom of fewer choices in a world that bombards us with half truths and untruths all day long. We need to obsess and think about food LESS, not MORE. The choice of what's on the menu today is already made. Follow the plan. Learn and grow as you go. And never forget to love yourself enough to trust your gut.

I had wanted to do this entry on Thursday last week, which represented the 60 day mark of the Bright Line Eating program to which we committed in June after our drive back from Massachusetts. I had been up there for three weeks. Before I left there had been some intense conversations with Mr. Wonderful about food and lifestyle choices. See, when we first got together, Mr. Wonderful was a single dad manorexic looking guy who drank screwdrivers, smoked too much, and appeared to subsist entirely on chocolate marshmallow ice cream topped with bananas and maple syrup, and a steady stream of road cycling. He was muscled from riding, but his lifestyle choices were not really in line with a long range potential for good health. When I moved in with him in December 1991, I brought with me two kids, three meals a day, and snacks. We both smoked. I quit in 1993, he struggled more than I did with nicotine. I dreamed of being a vegetarian. I tried being a vegetarian. I gained 30 pounds. We rarely used convenience food, but the balance wasn't all that great - meat was a big part of the day, we didn't eat enough vegetable and fruit, and we ate a ton of bread products. Compared to the "average American household" we were doing well. Except that...we weren't.

Meanwhile, my weight ranged on a kiddie coaster scale, and Mr. Wonderful steadily put weight on. He tried to quit smoking, which only added more pounds. Then he did quit smoking, finally, and that added even more.  He rode aggressively and was disappointed that riding didn't have more control over his weight and health - after all isn't that the cure? "JUST EXERCISE MORE! EVERYTHING IN MODERATION!" Then we added alcohol back in. And...more pounds. I ranged from "chubby" to "one point from obesity on the BMI chart". He did the same. I joined the YMCA and learned to swim, and swam daily until I swam a mile on weekdays and two miles on Saturday and Sunday. My laps were neatly recorded in an excel spread sheet. My weight didn't change. He rode his bike when he could. My blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol remained in check. His did not. Not even close. He found himself taking "old-man meds". This was depressing because it just didn't feel like HIM. We tried different things, different eating plans. I would make all his meals...but he is a grazer and would snack. I struggled with snacking myself. Neither of us was happy with our weight, and his blood pressure and blood sugar and cholesterol were alarmingly out of control even WITH medication. I saw myself becoming a widow before I was 60. I could see it coming, like a freight train with me tied to the tracks. In 2015, while living in Plymouth, I recommitted to being vegetarian. I told him I would no longer be cooking meat at home. This worked well, and I think we both had some benefits. We kept dairy in, however. We definitely ate better. We went to the health club 3-4 days a week. I walked every day, 3 miles a day, with the dogs. He joined us on weekends. But it still wasn't enough.

When I moved to NC I had lost a bunch of weight, but whether that was a result of grief, super low thyroid, or vegetarianism I do not know; I suspect all three. Disappointingly, meat sneaked back in - it had made a re-appearance when the young woman we brought with us to help us get settled expressed her need for meat. For her, we said, for her...and began to eat it. Gene continued to snack. He is particularly fond of sugar - candy, starchy vegetables, popcorn, alcohol. I am particularly fond of sugar as well, but in a different form - cocoa powder, potatoes, and wine. It just was not a pretty picture. Having lost weight, I watched myself snack it all back on. After all, I said, work was stressful. I stress-ate. He hit a high of 196#. I was almost back up to 120# - I prefer to be under 110#. The lifestyle was out of control, and I knew that for me it was unsustainable. But what about him? He seemed depressed about the situation and seemed unable to see choices. He talked about genetics, and said this 'was just the way things were'.

In the early spring of 2018 I bought into The Food Revolution Network's annual summit. I remember we were in the car and listening to a free live session when the offer to purchase came on. I just bought it. I figured that we could listen when on road trips, and maybe he could find some nugget of hope, some alternative to the depressing idea of out-of-control genetics killing him slowly. Anything to get him away from statements like "I'll probably turn 65, retire, and die." He had reason to be depressed, and good reason to see a bleak future. In April of 2018 his lab work looked like a cardiac event waiting to happen. His weight was at an all time high. His blood sugar was 127+ in the mornings ON Metformin. His blood pressure was around 150/90 WITH two meds. His cholesterol had hit an all time high as well - total was 208, triglycerides 336 ON A STATIN. In short, he was not kidding when he said he might just turn 65, retire, and die. Something had to change.

While I was in Massachusetts he ate no meat - as an experiment to see if he really missed it. The older he gets, the more ethical questions come up for him about eating animals. He isn't a cruel man, and sadly our meat comes with a dose of well-documented cruelty. He didn't tell me this until we were on the way home, listening to more Food Revolution Network stuff. The various presenters talked about the dangers of processed foods, expressed documented concerns about meat, looked at food as medicine; food as the way to health. They described genetics as latent potentials, not die-cast futures. They gave back control to the individual by presenting peer-reviewed nutritional science. Not Pollan's "eat food, mostly plants" ideology which never felt 100% right to me because it really avoids the blatant environmental issues around meat - never mind the cruelty issue for a second - but a more honest "eat whole food, plant based, no meat, no dairy" concept. This sort of eating plan is also well documented and supported in peer-reviewed science.

And then they brought on Susan Pierce Thompson, PhD, creator of Bright Line Eating. As we drove along listening she synopsized her beliefs and her program. Processed foods - flours, sugars, alcohols - are, for many of us, addictive. Whole foods are what we were genetically designed to eat. Flour and sugar are the legal food equivalent of heroin and cocaine. When we stopped for a potty break we discussed what she was saying. It felt very true. Yes, food is addictive. We joke about it culturally, but it isn't a joke at all - the science bears it out. The brain has been compromised. Damaged by the drugs hiding in our food. And most of us have been eating it since we were born.

"We could try it", I said. "I can get her book, and read it, and we can just...try it."

"I have to do something. I'll try it." he said. And in that moment I saw what I had been waiting for - the spark of survival drive that just might be enough to change our future.

Home we came, and I ordered the book. I read it and ordered a copy of The China Study. We discussed the plan. I wanted to make it whole food plant based, and if he really couldn't stand it, he could add in a piece of meat now and then. Three meals a day, portions weighed. Anything not on the list and not at the right time of day is "Not My Food", and therefore off limits. It isn't a choice any more. It's just the way it is. No snacking. No candy. No wine. No cocoa powder. The inner conversations are healthy. "I recognize that you want that, but it isn't yours. Why do you think that you want it? What is something else that would make you feel good that isn't food that's not yours?" Inner family work. Healing. Allowing our brains to recover from lifetimes of addictive foods - literally - and lifetimes of proteins unhealthy for humans to consume day in and day out, three meals a day. Learning food triggers. No blame, no shame, no guilt. Awareness, acceptance, and self-compassion. Being mindful of emotional or behavioral impulses to consume food that isn't "mine". Healing the gut, the heart, the mind. The whole thing.

We began on June 11, 2018. Fresh start. I bought tons of vegetables. I cleared the house of things like honey and maple syrup and gluten free flours. We had a "last binge" and work up feeling...like shit. And we said good-bye to it all and stepped into a new normal.

At first it was hard, and I was deeply grateful that I hadn't picked up any work hours. The shifts I work are usually 8am-8pm. I leave home at 7am (no later than 7:09 am to be precise) and get back anywhere between 8:30 and 11pm, depending on the day. Being home meant I was free to focus on weighing, planning, and learning what worked. At first eating all of the food the plan demands was difficult. We literally could not finish meals, especially at night. Eventually we have found things that work, and only sometimes are too full at supper now. I will share a typical day at the end of this post. I learned to bite, lick, and taste less (I do taste occasionally, I have peace with that, because I am the cook and I need things to be palatable for a fairly picky man). I had a horrible feeling of shame when I returned from grocery shopping one day and popped a grape into my mouth without thinking. I sat down and thought about this - was that really the end of the world? Was I going to allow that one slip to destroy me inside? Or was I going to give myself an internal hug, and talk about how to avoid a similar misstep in the future, with lots of love and self-compassion? I did the latter. And we moved forward.

We talked about the hurdles. His afternoon habit of returning to the cafeteria at work for a snack and coffee was a hard one; so too the piles of food that seem to grow from the furniture in corporate offices. And the "leftovers" after meetings which he felt guilty about "wasting". I have worked a couple of days and felt myself mindlessly reaching for my Milky Way Midnight Mini "treat". I stop myself, redirect, and get a cup of tea or decaf instead.

Thompson talks about imagining yourself "wearing bunny slippers" during the weight loss phase of her program - take it easy on yourself, worry about exercise later. Losing weight is hard. You release stored up toxins from fat cells into your body. You may be tired. You may experience cravings as the brain tries to get it's drugs back. So reduce your decisions. Don't add in an exercise regimen until it feels right. We had already established personal routines - I walk, he walks and plays table tennis - and we kept those up, with occasional skips if it just didn't feel right. Self-compassion again. No obsessing about anything.

Last week he went to the doctor for a scheduled follow up. I knew he had lost weight, and I knew his blood pressure and blood sugar were down. I wasn't sure what the rest of his labs would show, and I was definitely not sure how his doctor would respond to this allegedly "restrictive" eating plan and lifestyle.

I didn't need to be concerned. After the weigh-in showed a nearly 30lb weight loss, and the blood pressure check revealed a normal BP, the conversation went something like this:

"Wow. I am amazed. What have you been doing?"

"My wife and I are on this plan. She thinks the food is killing us. We eat basically vegan, three meals a day, no snacks."

"Your wife is right. The food is killing us. But...I believe strongly in genetics, especially with cholesterol, so let's do some labs before we take you off all your meds."

I was chomping at the bit, but anxious. What if the doctor was right about the genetics? Would that just throw him back into that defeatist, depressed mindset where he was left feeling out of control of his own life, his own destiny? Would he give up? Head to the snack bar? Run to the store for dead animal parts? I worried. Then the labs came.

I WORRIED FOR NOTHING.
8/3/2018 labs show:
Total cholesterol - 145 (highest was 208, normal is under 200).
Triglycerides - 121 (highest was 336, normal is under 150).
Fasting blood glucose - 84 (highest was 134 while ON Metformin!! Normal is 65-99. He stopped taking Metformin in early July because his morning sugars were in the low 80's)

Weight this morning (8/13) - 166.2 (highest was 196). Blood pressure yesterday morning off of one med but still on the second - 127/70. Not perfect...but we are getting there. Blood sugar, which he checks once a week or occasionally after a meal was 107. I think this will come down too, and most days it is down to the mid-80's.

Me - well I've lost ten pounds. I feel really good. I love my food. My skin looks better, my sleep is better, and my tummy is very, very happy (I have IBS but... the symptoms are basically GONE). I don't feel deprived, and he says he doesn't either. I think twice in the last 60 days he's had beef cravings, and has had steak, measured portion of course. When we get closer to goal weight we will add back in things cautiously - for me that may be soon. He would say he misses popcorn. I mostly miss my cocoa powder. But...for me those foods are a slippery slope, gateway drug, danger, and my life is worth more than the fleeting pleasure. There's other things. Like, oh, living healthfully, having more energy, not destroying our bodies with food...all that.

The plan is now easy and feels right. If a thing calls to me I just have a little internal chat about what is and is not my food. It isn't perfect, or always easy - but then when were we promised a simple and easy life?? I think we spend way too much time rewarding ourselves, or making excuses for bad choices. The truth is we don't "deserve" food. Hunger is not an emergency, and there are things in life WAY more important than appeasing some stomping internal child who wants wine, or a candy bar or a piece of meat. Like being alive to see my grandchildren grow. Like not having a slow, lingering horrible death from a preventable disease, but living long enough to get hit by a truck or something. Like that. As Thompson says, this lifestyle isn't "extreme". Extreme is having your limbs cut off or losing your sight to diabetes. Extreme is a health care system that will collapse at some point under the revenue burden of failed "treatments" for preventable diseases. That's extreme. Eating a giant salad for supper...that's fucking simple.

I said I would share a typical day...I do a lot of prep when I have time, so the assembly of meals is much simpler now. We have a repertoire of things we like. We often mix and match proteins and vegetables from a core of liked flavor profiles. We weight nearly everything unless we are out, and then we read menus ahead and have a plan, or we bring food. I prepare the veg and protein separately. I find keeping them separate to be easier for me. This is an average day - I am not giving quantities, just know that we each consume the correct amount for our respective x and y chromosomes based on Bright Line Eating:

Breakfast:

Soy yogurt (made in our instant pot with this starter from Amazon)
Oatmeal prepared with soy milk
Fresh fruit, usually a combination of berries, stone fruits, and banana
Flax seed and walnuts, ground.
Generous sprinkle of cinnamon or my breakfast blend of cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric and ginger

Lunch (really this is today's lunch for me!):

Roasted cauliflower from last night
Hummus
Blueberries

Dinner:

Big (really, 8 ounces of salad is a lot!) mixed tossed salad.
Zoodles with homemade red cabbage and bell pepper pickle and Thai peanut sauce
Tofu

There's always a bunch of vegetables prepped in the fridge, and usually two or three protein choices as well - tofu, tempeh (also made at home now), or bean salads with flavors that lean toward Mexican, Mediterranean, Thai, what have you. Sometimes the vegetables are cooked, sometimes they are raw. Fat is limited, more than Bright Line Eating recommends, based on Dr. Esselstyn's work around heart disease and fat intake. We do consume some fat, however. After reading his work and looking at Gene's labs and knowing his history...I am not kidding, he was a cardiac event waiting to happen!! Our fats are tiny amount of walnuts, maybe a teaspoon of oil in a pan to keep the tofu from sticking, or a little avocado. No big amounts; nothing more than teaspoons. Breakfast occasionally is tofu and a baked potato or brown rice with fruit.

Goodness, this has gotten long. I am SO very good at that. I will end with this...

 This is Gene in December of 2017. 

This is Gene last Thursday night at Barcelona Burger, waiting for his bean burger and salad.

If I had any more feelings in my heart about these images, I would burst. I am proud, happy, relieved. Even if we get hit by a bus and never see old age...by God we tried our damndest to escape genetics and a faulty, flawed, disastrous, horrific food system. And so can you. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  You can be good to yourself. That doesn't need to involve food.The gratitude, it overwhelms me!