Vegan February: Week 1

It's Waitangi Day here in NZ which has meant two long weekends in a row (yay!) and it means I'm a week into the February Challenge. So far, it's gone pretty well. I've only slipped up once, when on Friday I caved and ate a pumpkin filo pastry bite and a little chocolate cake on a stick at a work morning tea. I managed the league's day at the beach today without eating a good friend's chocolate cupcakes, and have managed to eat out twice this weekend with minimal difficulty (thank you Hell Pizza for your Sinister vegan pizza, delicious without resorting to vegan cheese!).

A few observations from the first week:

• Dairy products are everywhere. The bread I thought was vegan? Contains whey products. It took me over ten minutes carefully reading the small print on all the loaves of bread in the supermarket last night until I found one that was vegan friendly (this time I checked twice to make sure). Once you start looking, you see it everywhere.
• Preparation is key. On Saturday a few friends and I checked out the Auckland Circus Convention. We'd be there for lunch and into dinnertime, and whilst circus people are more likely to have a vegan-friendly diet I couldn't guarantee there would be food there I could eat, so I built some time into my day to go to the local whole foods store and get a few provisions. It turned out that we got dinner out anyway, but in a world where almost everywhere now has decent vegetarian options it's interesting being in a situation where there isn't a lot of choice. 
• I miss cake.Though it's interesting for someone who finds it difficult to say no to food being in a (self-imposed, admittedly) situation where I can't just say yes without thought. 

I have to say, I have been feeling quite tired and run-down in the last few days. I am finding work incredibly stressful to get back into though, and my body clock's adjusting to a four-hour shift (left to my own devices and I wake up at 10am, so my 6am work start is taking some getting used to). The last couple of times I've gone for a run I've only managed a few km's before I've ground to a halt but it's also been very humid so I think I need to get up even earlier to take advantage of fresh mornings) I'm eating enough according to MapMyFitness's nutrition program, and eating a good balance of proteins, fats and carbs, so I'm going to keep an eye on it and see how I go once I get used to being back at work.

Next week I have another vegan pot luck on Saturday (which I'll be doing some baking for- molly cake is a vegan fruit cake with no added sugar and it's DELICIOUS), two coaching sessions on two consecutive days (league has started back for new skaters, which I'll save for another post!), a duathlon, and possibly starting a circus skills class. And that's in addition to running and work (and sleeping) so I'll have my work cut out to eat more than endless rounds of avocado on toast! I managed to whip up a tasty lentil curry this evening in about 15 minutes, so I'm hoping this won't be too difficult.

Next post will be about roller derby, I promise.

February Challenge Preparation part 1

WEIRD.

 Today I got the e-mail from work telling me all about the procedures for the new term, which means that February is almost upon is. Thankfully, preparation for the February Challenge is well underway and I've made some interesting observations and research so far. First off, I've been experimenting with milk substitutes. I tried Rice Milk (left, in the attractive penguin glass). I can say, with 100% certainty, that rice milk tastes absolutely nothing like moo milk in any way, and if it wasn't an opaque white colour you would under no circumstances confuse the two. It's gross in coffee, but curiously tasty by itself. There's some soy milk chilling in my fridge now, and it's sort-of passed the tea test, so we'll see how it fares in future trials.



The other day I had a good rootle through my kitchen cupboards to work out what I can keep during the coming month, what's a priority for eating before then, and what can be safely stored. I was actually quite surprised to find that the bulk of my food is vegan-friendly (though not, unfortunately, kind to the orang-utans. I managed to buy a batch of noodles that are swimming in palm oil. They're vegan, but this sucks a bit)

...still good....

All good...

YAY POPCORN!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fridge good

 

 

 

 

I checked all the packaging for sneaky non-vegan bits and bobs like whey powder, casein (made from milk) and various other stuff that I've found out about from reading up on veganism (and there is a lot out there!). My non-vegan but veggie options were pretty obvious, with the exception of the herbs-inna-tube (whey? Really? But whatever for?)

NOT VEGAN

For me, the big surprise was finding out that these flavour packets (one of which, the nasi goreng, has been a staple of my diet since I discovered it a couple of months ago) contain shrimp paste, and the Moroccan seasoning contains, wait, CHICKEN. Wait, what? Yup, chicken. Quite how much or in what capacity, I don't know. I am a bad vegetarian.

Any of you omnivores want some Moroccan-flavoured Laksa goreng?

 I'll admit to being a bad vegetarian. It's only in the last wee while since I got back on the wagon that I've really started to think about my food choices. I guess when the focus has been on getting my body as healthy as possible, considering what goes in it becomes an integral part of that plan. One thing I am hoping to get out of this challenge is a greater understanding of what goes in and how I feel as a result. Today I ate an almost entirely vegan diet and it was delicious (vegetable and cashew nut stir fry with soy sauce, ginger, garlic and peanut butter sauce- NOM) and I'm neither hungry nor wanting. How I'll cope when I don't have an option remains to be seen. Vegan Cooking for Dummies comes unstuck in a lot of recipes by falling back on vegan cheese a lot. I'll be trying it, but I'd rather make a pizza that isn't trying to be something else if I can help it.
Finally, I read this yesterday. Jonathan Safran Foer if you've never heard of him is one of those painfully modern American writers whose first novel I was told is excellent (as soon as I get past page 20 I'll let you know, I've tried twice and owned it for 18 months) and whose website is charmingly/irritatingly called "The Project Museum". I picked up his non-fiction book Eating Animals from the library as I figured I stood a fighting chance of finishing the damn thing and being able to say I'd read his work to the very few people who might possibly care.

As it happened I downed the book in a one-shot and I'm still thinking about it. Like Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation it forces the reader to take a long, hard look at the way meat and dairy are produced. Where Schlosser focused on the food most of us would agree is over-processed crap, Safran Foer takes us further and makes a convincing case for cutting out ALL meat from our diet, and at the same time supporting family farms and producers. He acknowledges the intrinsic part meat plays in our culture and history and makes his journey very personal without falling into mawkishness. It does make me question how I can possibly ever eat meat again with anything approaching a clear conscience (see my above comment about shrimp, through the lens of knowing that shrimp make up less than 2% of any shrimp netting exercise. The rest is "by-catch", and thrown dead, dying or injured back into the sea. 98%).

I'm not going to turn this blog into a big ranty "Rah rah meat is murder rah rah eat only lentils and tofu etc." epic, as even I'd get bored of that (not to mention the season starts up real soon and I'll have lots of ACTUAL derby-related stuff to write about) but with a change in diet (even for a month!) comes an awareness of your current choices, and that to me is worth writing down and discussing (in an adult fashion, without recourse to the "steak/bacon/salmon is delicious and I couldn't live without it" argument. That gets frustrating real fast)

It's New Year! Let's talk about dieting.

This post has been a long time coming. I've written it several times over and deleted it every time, rejigged my opinions. I've been concerned about nailing my colours to any particular mast for fear of getting them shot down, blown up and beaten by commentators on both sides of what is probably the biggest, angriest debate in health this decade.

Mmmm, Bacon....

Either that or nobody will read this and I'm having delusions of grandeur. Whatever.

There are statistics out there about fat and weight loss that I'm sure you've heard of or seen here and there. 50% of women are on a diet at any given time. The weight loss industry is worth $46.3bn in the USA alone. 95-98% of all diets fail. The Health At Every Size (HAES) and fat positive movements are gaining ground and my twitter and tumblr feeds are awash with the Fat Fightback. I'm fascinated.

What fascinates me is my own conflicting, complex relationship with what goes down my throat, and how these arguments and research relate to me and my own views on fat and health.

When I was fat (and there's no other word that's gonna suffice here) I got into the whole mindset of fat being someone else's problem, not me. I remember arguing passionately that I ate healthy, had sensible portions, that 121kg was a perfectly normal weight for someone of my height and the fact I couldn't find clothes I liked in my size was down to a "ghettoisation" of fat people, that I was being marginalised for being me. I don't think I ever compared it to something like racism or homophobia but if anyone can attest to me saying something so fundamentally fucking stupid then please correct me, I wouldn't be surprised.

Ironically, I gave one of my most impassioned "Rights for Fatties" speeches as a Lighter Life meeting I was attending, with a group of other women who were paying nearly 80 pounds a week to attend group counselling sessions and ingest (I wouldn't call it eating) less than 400 calories a day in the form of powdered soups and shakes. I was in my second week there. The fact I was sitting there, having just written out a cheque, saying that the only reason I wanted to get out of the morbidly obese bracket (BMI of 40, kids) was because of society, not me, neatly encapsulates for me the conflict I felt within myself about my body and how I and others saw me. Truth was, I was spending that money because I'd reached a point where my shame in my own body was such that I could barely look at myself in the mirror. Where there was this fat...thing instead of the 23 year old image of dark-haired beauty that I'd clung on to until I couldn't deceive myself any longer. I hated how exercising get me hot, sweating and sore after ten minutes. I hated what I'd become.

When I realised that there was no magic bullet, just years of exercise, extreme changes in diet and lifestyle, and a whole new understanding of myself and food, it changed everything. I appreciate that changing a huge part of who you are is an incredibly difficult thing to do, but if you want to do it then there's nothing really stopping you. So, I bought less food, started cycling to work, stopped buying booze to drink at home, and the weight started to come off. Admittedly, I lost the weight at a rate of about 1-2 dress sizes A YEAR, but off it's come. Slow, steady, and just like the doctors say it should. I don't need to tell you what I can do physically as it's pretty much all I write about on here, but it doesn't take much to figure out that it's a LOT more than I could do in my early twenties. I feel transformed.

After something like this, it's hard not to be evangelical. "Hey, I managed to lose 40kg! EVERYONE can lose weight! It's easy!". It's quite easy to sound like an asshole in such circumstances (man, I make it easy to sound like an asshole in almost ANY circumstance). With that came a sense of annoyance at other people's inability to follow suit. When people would complain about their weight, I'd hear excuses. Hell, I'd managed it, anyone who couldn't was WEAK and LAZY and JUST GET OVER YOURSELF.

I want to take a moment here, to apologise to everyone that I've been a total asshole to about their weight. Be it making comments about fat people, jokes, whatever. I'm sorry. It's not cool, ever. I've been learning.

A fat person, some time ago.

My theory is that as a society we ARE getting fatter, no amount of Fat Activists (FA) posting up old pictures of larger people will change that fact. I think it's because as a society we've been given an endless land of plenty, simple carbs and instant gratification (when was the last time, outside of the festive season, that you took longer than an hour to prepare a meal?). It's left a lot of us, me included, very messed up in our relationship with an addictive substance that you need to ingest a little of every day. To break that programming, that NOW + LOTS + CRAP equation, is really, REALLY hard.

However, it can be broken. I am now constantly vigilant about what I eat. I think about my diet a lot. What I've had to eat today (four slices of wholemeal toast and low-fat peanut butter, half a bowl of couscous, a bowl of vegetables roasted in olive oil, wine vinegar and a little honey, a banana, two carrots and three kiwifruit. I didn't even have to check the fridge). What I'm going to eat tomorrow. If I'm eating enough protein. If the reason I had a crap run today was down to the last gasp of a vile hangover, or not having eaten the right stuff earlier (I'm going with hangover). I have to be this aware, to prevent old attitudes resurfacing.

Which they do.

I used to be able to eat one of these in one go.

I hate buffets, or places with food out on tables. Because I'll nibble and nom and munch and I won't even be thinking about it until I've snaffled a crapload of food without thinking. Give me the chance and I'll take more than my fair share. Stopping myself from doing this is hard. Really hard. But I try. I have to. I don't buy anything that's even vaguely "snacky" (apart from fruit and veg), because a packet of biscuits becomes an open packet of biscuits becomes an empty packet. I can't trust myself.

This is going somewhere, trust me.

Over at Slow Fat Triathlete (mentioned here before) Jayne talks about research into weight loss, and the "exhausting" lengths people who have lost weight have to go through to maintain weight loss. For example:


Ms. Parker-Pope then interviews a woman who lost a lot of weight and has kept it off for years. This woman's regimen includes minutely detailed food and weight journaling; constant weighing and measuring of every mouthful (she knows, for example, that lettuce is about 5 calories per cup); researching menus and performing calorie calculations before any meal outside the house; avoiding all foods with white flour and sugar; and exercising 100-120 minutes a day. “It’s one of the hardest things there is,” she told the Times. “It’s something that has to be focused on every minute. I’m not always thinking about food, but I am always aware of food.”

Yeah, that sounds familiar. This struck a chord with me because I'm like this and I CHOOSE to be this way. I worked so hard to change my health and gain fitness, I'm not willing to give it up. If I stop thinking about my diet, working on how to improve it, thinking about how to stop reaching for the chocolate bar when I'm stressed, then I KNOW I will become one of the 95-98% of the failed dieters out there. It's too easy.

I'd rather be here....

However, just because I have decided that the rewards of being slimmer outweigh the immense pain in the arse it can be having to be super-vigilant about my diet, doesn't mean EVERYONE has to be. If someone decides that dieting isn't for them, that they are happy being their size, then that's a choice that's been made and fair enough. Personal, informed choice is something I am a fan of.

BUT....

...than here.

I can't accept that fat is healthy. I have put on about 6kg since the accident, and I'm aware of it. Aware of how I move, how it sits on me. I understand on a basic level that this extra weight is interfering with my ability to work out, and that I'm going to have to haul ass (literally) to get rid of it. It's a matter of physics more than anything. Shunting around the equivalent of an adult human being on my frame all the time was bad for my health. It's bad for anyone's health. Lose the weight, reduce that stress on the body. Simple.

If you're not incredibly active, then no big deal I guess. If you don't feel any strong desire to skate till you feel sick or run until your legs shake then that is totally your prerogative. But if you do, and you want to use your body ergonomically rather than just see it for its aesthetics, then excess weight is not going to help you in your cause. Either take the (very) hard road of food-watching and dietary vigilance, or lose out on your potential, fitness-wise.

And on that note, there's a month to go until skating starts again. Woop woop!

Worse than it looks....

That's....it? From a fall that felt like the bone was going to pop out the skin like an overripe pimple on a Domino's employee forehead? That's had me wincing every time I sit down all day? Granted, it's the angriest shade of purple I've seen this side of paintball. Still, it looks tremendously weedy given the sore and the ouch and the bag of peas down my pants for half of training and then SISTER WRECK'D ME PUNCHING THE BLOODY THING.

The lesson there is that you can't rely on impressive hits to deliver impressive bruises. Last night's training was the final one before the bout Saturday night, and as the clock runs down we're following our diets and exercise plans and getting ourselves ready for what feels as important as a grand final. Mascara Massacre has the feel of a team with something to prove, to ourselves if nothing else. We've worked incredibly hard for this, and I think that no matter what happens we'll have given absolutely everything we have.

Speaking of diets, after my little pause and hum over being told I wasn't eating enough earlier in the month, I appear to have got over the hump. Porridge for breakfast, the obligatory toast and peanut butter for lunch, and I'm getting better at remembering to eat (and cook!) in the evenings and that snacking is fine. I think I needed the brain dump after being told that to sort out a few bits and bobs in my head (and a massive thank you to everyone who e-mailed, facebooked and spoke to me about that post, pretty awesome to know there are all these people out there in my corner!).

The blog is nearly up to 3000 views since I started it in January. Things have changed for me immensely in that time, both in derby and in the real world. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who reads this, it's pretty cool that other people find this readable! After the bout I'll be reviewing Gumball toe-stops (had them a wee while, been giving them a thorough going-over), Pro-Tech Dent mouthguards (apparently the best in derby, can't be worse than my current $10 special from the pharmacy) and a load of other stuff. If you've got something you want me to write about, share, review or whatever, then get in touch!

Highway to the Danger Zone 2: Highway Harder

I just thought I'd put a little addendum onto my post from last night, about undereating. Thanks to everyone who's messaged me with suggestions on what I can eat and diet ideas. I've got a good idea of what I need to do to improve my diet, it's the mental block of actually eating it I'm having to get round. Had an extra banana at break today, planning on having a larger than usual dinner as well. This idea of eating MORE to be healthier is going against years of prior knowledge and learning about my diet, and it's taking a bit to get my head round...

Highway to the danger zone

I had my six-week check in with my PT at my gym today. It was an interesting chat to say the least.

First off, the good stuff. Blood pressure outrageously good. Resting heart rate so resting it's almost asleep, and apperently my thighs have lost 5cm off them since I started (everything else has gone down a fraction too). Nice to know that I'm doing alright, despite the ups and downs of the last few weeks!

Then came the interesting bit. I'd kept a food and exercise diary for the last few days, just to show her. I'd been feeling a bit low energy recently, and I was concerned that my diet wasn't right for the amount of exercise I'm doing at the moment (derby up to four times a week, weights 3 times a week, classes at the gym 1-2 times a week). Anyway, she pulled a bit of a face when she saw it, and asked if that really was everything that I was eating. Apparently I've been eating WAY less than I should be for someone of my activity level, which came as a bit of a surprise. To give you an idea, here's the breakdown for Tuesday:

Breakfast: 2x slices wholemeal bread with crunchy peanut butter, coffee (skim milk)
snack: banana, apple
Lunch: same as for breakfast
Dinner: chickpea and tomato curry (vegan), 2 slices wholemeal bread
Naughty thing: bar of chocolate (Tuesday was a stressed out day)

I figured that was an OK diet, mixture of proteins and carbs, and that it wasn't too low. Uh, no. Apparently, to MAINTAIN my current weight, I need to eat about 2,900 calories every day. That's about 900 more than the recommended intake for women my age. The amount that I put away on Tuesday? At a rough calculation, about 1700. So yeah, if I wasn't exercising so hard, then all good. As it is, it's not so good. No wonder I've been below-par. And factor in that most days there isn't a chocolate bar in there, and you have some stuff to work out.

I've been sent away with instructions to eat more (eggs, tofu, porridge for breakfast), have some supper after training, more veggies, and to buy some protein powder for after workouts so that my body is eating something useful (and not, say ITSELF). It was good to get a fresh pair of eyes to look at my diet, but at the same time a bit scary.

So here's the thing.

In the years since I hit my top weight, I have constantly been losing weight. Steadily, slowly, evenly, but it's come down steadily. When it hasn't, it's because I've been putting on muscle. For the most part, I've been fine with that. When I was with my ex partner, he cooked the meals and I ate pretty well. big portions, lots of healthy stuff (living with a vegetarian weightlifter who loves cooking means you eat good food). Since I started to live by myself though, food's gone back to being fuel. I rarely cook from scratch, and when I do it's a big load of chana dal or veggie chili for me to slowly consume over the next few days until I'm sick of it. If I don't have someone to eat with, I just don't eat. And to be honest, being told to eat more squicks me out a bit.

I'm frightened.

Frightened of what? Control, and the loss of. When I was getting fat, I never thought about what was going in. I ate anything and everything. Hell, I'd eat stuff I didn't like that much because it was there. I had an appetite that, looking back, horrifies me slightly. To go from glutton to gym-goer required a HUGE shift in outlook. to see the value of not eating, as well as eating. To understand that inconsiderate eating affects your body in big ways. That you don't always need a chocolate bar after work. To have such a huge shift in outlook is very difficult to do cleanly, without any leftover issues. And so it is with me. I'm worried. Worried that if I increase my intake, I won't be able to stop increasing. That I'll pile it back on. That I'll lose the control over my eating again. I'm having to take a step back and remind myself that yes, my diet at the moment is fine, but only if I wasn't doing all the training, the weights, the derby. As it is, I'm not gassing up the tank enough and it's OK to eat more. Not loads, but some.

The realisation that I'm afraid of eating more is something of a slap in the face. I feel like I've just been told something dark about myself, that I knew and didn't want to acknowledge. I  wouldn't say I have an eating disorder, but for the first time I'm aware of the potential within myself to use food as a control, to go from eating healthily to hurting myself. The fact this week has been pretty hard-going has, I think, exacerbated my unconscious need to hold onto my diet.

Today opened up a big can of worms, and it's clearly something I have to keep an eye on. This evening I did better, had 4 rather than 2 slices of toast with my pumpkin soup for one (man, do I sound sad), and a couple wholemeal pitta bread after training (which was ace).

I'm seeing my PT again tomorrow, to go over the revised program she's made for me (my shoulder problems not being helped by my original program), so will talk more about it with her then. But for now, sleep, and eating a bigger breakfast in the morning.