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Something has to change. MelissaKnits, and Eats Plants and Rants About it, and Does Yoga and Hikes in the Woods and Probably Very Soon will Kayak...

Today I finished my Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition through eCornell. I posted my last response on an optional activity just now, and wanted to share it here. I can become exuberant about a topic, believing I have found the new best thing, preaching to anyone who will listen, only to discover that maybe I didn't have all the information and maybe am not quite 100% right. It has taken me a long time to come to accept those missteps and misadventures as parts of a process - a path - that I trust will always lead me in the right direction - and they do - and in truth that path only enlightens me in deeper ways that allow me to see things as others do, which only gives me more tools to help them come to different and deeper understanding themselves. We learn from failing. I wish I knew then what I knew now, so that I could go back in time and rear my kids in this lifestyle - but maybe you can, and maybe you can learn from our story. For now, for me and for Gene, that path has placed us firmly in the whole food plant based camp, with a life goal of being fully vegan as we wear out and use up our animal clothing. This lifestyle seems to bring together all the aspects of the things that I hold nearest and dearest to my little heart - social justice, environmental justice, an end to cruel farming practices, a reduction in diseases of affluence and preventable death and disease...and it is so profoundly simple at the core that it boggles my mind. During the weeks of this course I have been exposed to reliable, data-driven evidence that our current eating habits (including the over-valuing of meat and dairy and the near absence of whole, unprocessed vegetables, fruits, legumes and grains) are, literally, killing us - and this information is neither novel nor unknown to the institutions and individuals that drive our food machine - and it is a big, dangerous, scary machine at that. 

This is our story, today:

I would not trade this process, although it has taken me nearly three decades to get here, for anything. I have gone through a lot of “phases” - vegetarian, pescatarian, low carb, grass fed, rearing and killing my own chickens for meat and eggs, home cow-milk dairying all in an attempt to find health and wellness, get my husband’s cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure in check, and stave off what I saw as the inevitable in myself - every woman in my family has died, so far, from hearth disease or cancer, and most younger than necessary. And while that process took time that I could consider “wasted”, it has left me with a profound sense of gratitude. I have a very rich  understanding of the complexity and confusion that even the best intentioned among us faces when trying to decipher and decode nutritional reality from the fairy tales spun around us by corporate agri-business giants, food scientists, our own government, and lobbyists.

click me, read me, love me

We have been Plant Based for 336 days, and Whole Food Plant Based for most of that time, probably around 300 days. Initially in order to ease the transition for my husband I used some “fake meat” products, mostly taco meat type crumbles and fake chicken strips. He also initially struggled with the absence of oil, and would wander into the kitchen during prep time asking if I needed to add some. He read package instructions and tried to correct me - “but the package says to use vegetable oil.”… I used these moments to begin to retrain his thinking around food preparation citing Drs Campbell and Dr Esselstyn, and encouraged him to take a more active role in cooking. It helped that my work schedule shifted to evenings, leaving him at home with a recipe to prepare for my return home in the late evening…this was a radical departure from our traditional roles, and it was good for both of us on many levels. Involve everyone in the household by sharing responsibility for meal prep and planning - it breeds a natural interest! 

By the time we made the change to plant based eating we had been in process for about a year, experimenting with various vegetarian meals, and were already consuming much more variety in veg than the average American, but most of that was roasted with a little oil. After reading “How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” the oil went out the door. Still his desire to make the change for his health was at odds with his palate and I had a hard time eliminating the fake meat products. Then one day, about a month into our process, I pointed out the relative cost of legumes (canned even) and fake meat during a grocery shopping trip. He was shocked to discover exactly how much money was going toward those processed and refined substitutes. He agreed to give legumes a try, and after a couple weeks of adjustment he was “converted”. He now even has “favorite” legumes and grains! Take opportunities to effect change and educate whenever and wherever they present themselves - if saving money is what gets someone to make a change for the better, roll with it!

We (humans) tend to fetishize food and apply a “live to eat” philosophy to our consumption rather than eating to live. A lot of money has been spent developing foods and flavors that addict us. I’ve spent hours trying to create big thrills in the kitchen before finally realizing that instead of trying to beat them at their own game? I just needed to play a different game altogether. I have gradually removed the fussy, multi-step vegan recipes that had me trapped in the kitchen and replaced them with large containers of pre-cooked and prepped grains, legumes, fruit and veg. These can be quickly tossed in bowls and topped with some simple, fast oil-free sauces and dressings. That means that after 32 years of playing “home chef”, endlessly tied to the kitchen trying to please everyone, I get a break - I get to be free, more or less, from the daily grind of appeasing. 

The responsibility of preparation of the bulk of our meals - or the components of them - still falls predominantly on me. But gradually there has been a shift in that as well. It is important that my husband know what I do in the kitchen and why, so that he can replicate it in my absence and explain and share with others just how simple this lifestyle is after the initial adjustment phase. His weight loss and increased health were so profound and so obvious that he’s faced a lot of inquiry. He’s become a strong advocate for this lifestyle which piqued his interest. As a side benefit he has a glimpse into what I have been doing for the last nearly 30 years of our marriage on a daily basis in the kitchen. Our household labor has been divided neatly along traditional heteronormative gender roles for much of our marriage. That needs to change. Last time I checked there were two adults living here, and both of us have thumbs! 

We recently had one of those spousal heart to heart talks in which I asked him to openly share just how committed he was to this lifestyle. If, I asked, I died tomorrow, would he be at McDonald’s by evening? He says he will not. He says that this lifestyle has become important to him not just for health reasons, but for environmental and animal welfare reasons as well. Looking at our grandchildren he knows that he wants to be here for them for as long as possible, and knows too that he wants them to have clean air, clean water, clean soil that grows clean and healthy food. He wants them to live life, and someday join us in not eating death - not exploiting other animals by subjecting them to the horrific factory farm nightmare we relegate them to now. What began as an experiment for his physical health has become a way of life, a vision for the future, a mission that neither of us can imagine giving up. 

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. 

Change Your Thinking One Day at a Time? Right.

I walk my dogs every morning from our cozy little spot on the hill down into the town and along the waterfront. We walk along the fishermen's wharf and wave hello to the regulars who congregate there. My trash-collecting habit amuses some of the guys, who laugh at me and shake their heads, and others thank me for my "service". I find all sorts of things from empty cans and bottles to scratch tickets and even occasionally discarded waitstaff shirts from a local eatery or two - I've started a collection of these just to see how many I can score in a year. Thank you, disgruntled staffers discarding their summer jobs and the shirts along with them!

Yoshi hoping for a duck dinner on our morning walk

Since absenting myself from the knitting world, social media, and this blog I've been pretty introspective. I've spent a lot of time in prayer and Bible reading, and a lot of time allowing God to show me who I am and what I am supposed to be doing instead of trying to do everything all on my own. The truth is I have no answers to anything on my own, although I've spent a lot of time trying to prove that I did. I've stopped trying.

Low tide at the wharf

It's probably not a secret that I have struggled with anxiety and depression. I have not handled stress nearly as well as I might have. And I've had an uneasy relationship with money; once I get into any sort of a role where I begin making it for my own benefit, even in small amounts, I run fast and far in the opposite direction. Success terrifies me. My thought stream tends to be negative. I compare myself to others, which is self-defeating on all levels. I want those things to change.

Really low tide in the bay

One of the things that's always puzzled me is the ability of some people to be so damned cheerful in the face of...well, frankly, life in general. How do they DO this? How can they just be so bloody happy, as if nothing around them matters, like they cannot SEE the giant horse on the dining room table, and how can they not SEE that huge thing?!? Then add on the peculiar experiences of some of us, and I wonder how anyone even gets out of bed, let alone chirps along joyously, quipping about the beauties of life. Maybe I just started off on the wrong foot. My role models were, I suppose, not exactly what you could call "healthy". Even my father, for all of his awesomeness, struggled with the day to day thing we call living, and often ended up a bit more on the side of pessimism and sarcasm than might be considered ideal. And I have said before I am a slow learner. I think I meant it.

Since becoming a Young Living independent distributor and setting some goals related to that, I've become increasingly aware of just how much negative thinking I do, and how much that leads to self doubt and negativity, depressive feelings, stress, anxiety, and the lot. I'd also like to point out here that I have set myself up in an attempt to be successful in a field with something like a 92% "failure" rate - multi-level marketing, network marketing - these are areas where the vast majority fail, and very few succeed. And here I am; pessimistic, negative, freaky little me, thinking this is something I can do.

And now we get back to the walk, the one I take every morning with the dogs. As I walk along I think about things. I plan my day. I consider what I am going to do with all the can and lottery ticket money (I've decided to donate it). I think about deeper things - about life and choices and consequences, and about how I need to step back and allow God to change me, from the inside out, one day at a time.

The steps and revelations are TINY most days. I try not to even look at "how far I've come" because the snail pace would put me under a quilt (or possibly my crocheted Noro Silk Garden afghan), tucked neatly and tightly around my (wide) eyes, quaking with panic.

Today as we were walking along I saw a can behind a fence in a public area. It was covered with spider webs and all manner of ick. I wanted it. I will bend over for a nickel, it's true, even if I have to rinse that nickel out and take it to the local bottle center on Monday morning (where they guy now recognizes me, jokes about my "coffee money" and congratulates me on my weekly "earnings"). I love gleaning cans even more now that I have a plan for the money that puts it into better hands than mine. So there was this trapped can, and I wanted it. I thought to myself "I can't get that can. It's behind the fence and it's covered in spider webs. I can't." Doom and gloom and pessimism and a lost nickel!

But what if ...and it hit me heavy, this small, simple thing... what if I chose to look at that can in a completely different way? What if instead of saying "I can't..." I said "That can is behind a fence. I can get it if I want to. But... (Wait. Red flag! NO BUTS!! Instead say...) That can is covered in spider webs. I CHOOSE not to put my hand through the fence to get that can." And I walked away, leaving the nickel behind.

So. Simple.

So. Small.

So important.

Day by day, one day at a time, one small step at a time, my entire way of thinking, of viewing the world, of engaging with others, of being in spaces is changing. And I love it and I am SO grateful!

Avoiding the Plague While Saving the Planet

The boys and I go for a walk in our new home town daily. During these walks I have a tendency (this is a mild word for my search and destroy missions...) to pick up trash and bottles and cans from the side of the road.  Yes, I am THAT crazy lady in your home town! This drives Mr. W up a tree when he walks with us, so I try not to do it when he's along for the ride unless it's something irresistible, like a case of empty beer cans, or  those darned loopy plastic can holders that strangle birds. But the rest of the week you can find me bending and stooping to pick up everything from empty nip bottles (there but for the grace of God go I) to scratched lottery tickets ($25 in dropped winners to date - you can't win if you don't pick 'em up!) and soda cans, to the occasional bit of used drug paraphernalia. I carry hand sanitizer and gloves, and I am not afraid to use them. But having grown up with the "Crying Indian" commercial, I can't very well just leave it all there.

I just can't! Besides, I "make" about $2.00 a week in bottle returns - what my bottle guy smiles and calls my "coffee money". We move at a good clip in spite of all the bending and stooping, and average 3 miles a day. It's fun, and since running is off the menu, the trash retrieval gives me something to occupy my mind in the face of the reduced pace. Running just had so many benefits...but I digress.

I have gone through hand sanitizer like underwear in the last few weeks. It's summer and people are leaving half-full cups and containers of all sorts of things on the waterfront and side streets, and thrown between the rocks of the jetty. I empty gooey and drippy things when possible, avoiding contact with cup rims or straws, and add them to my "trash" bag. Returnable cans are similarly emptied and added to the "nickel" bag. I reach for the hand sanitizer quite often, and today I ran out.

Now, nothing beats a good soapy scrub with warm running water. And I am not a fan of heavy chemicals, and certainly am very aware both as a health care professional and as an educated kinda crunch-berry granola-type of the issues surrounding our obsession with anti-bacterial this and that. Hand sanitizers often harbor chemicals I'd probably rather not come in contact with - but they seem a better alternative than nothing when soap and water are far away.

For example, the label on the bottle of an alcohol free version by my side reads: water, cetrimonium chloride, glycereth-2 cocoate, behentrimonium chloride, acrylates/dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate copolymer, lactic acid, tetrasodium EDTA, fragrance. Kind of makes me wish they'd just left the alcohol in, you know? I could probably fiddle with some of the root words and make some guesses about what the unpronounceable bits are, but really, wouldn't it be nicer if my hand sanitizer just read more like my new DIY foaming facial scrub bottle does? (Doc Bronner's liquid soap, glycerine, aloe vera gel, sweet almond oil, essential oils, and water). I think so.

So I set out to see if I could find a recipe online that would let me make my own hand sanitizer, preferably featuring Young Living Thieves essential oil blend, and ideally with some good old rubbing alcohol in it. For this first round I chose the most basic recipe I could find. It contains only three ingredients - rubbing alcohol, aloe vera gel, and essential oils. I had all three on hand, and the limited number of ingredients appealed to me after reading that label up there.

I combined 1/4 cup aloe vera gel (I used plain aloe gel that I had obtained for my facial cleanser - this can be difficult to find, but keep trying! Most of the big-name aloe gels contain a host of other ingredients. We are striving for purity here, so less is MORE. If you can't find it at a health food store near you, try Amazon. I like Lily of the Desert brand) with 1/2 cup of rubbing alcohol in a bowl, then added 10 drops of Thieves oil.

I whisked the whole thing together and ended up with two (well, one and two thirds, but I didn't scrape the bowl!) bottles of DIY, low-cost, minimal ingredient hand sanitizer. I put it into my two cleaned and recycled empty bottles and put them in the backpack I carry every day on my walks with "the boys".

I would not call them "gel" sanitizers as they are fairly fluid and I will experiment more in the future with different recipes and different ratios. The gel, really, is purely convenience. I can cup my little palm and use these just the same as the thicker gel versions - and sleep better at night knowing what's in them!

In a first trial run at the sink I found the fragrance to be much improved when compared to the chemical stuff. The alcohol evaporates fairly quickly, and while the aloe leaves a faint residue on the skin until it dries, I've had similar residue present with the creepy chemical versions.

Try some yourself! Unless you think unpronounceable "irritating, toxic and slightly flammable" ingredients are something you want on your skin - I know I don't want it on mine!