Eat Like a Giraffe

Hey, it took me several years to get to veganism, including 2 years to get off cheese. Expecting this to be easy was naïve of me.

But I want to do this. I really want to do this. And the New Year is coming up. I’m actually a month early—almost unheard of in my life.

How I’m going to start

Plan a damn 2-week menu. Not down to every bite, but how much produce to consume each day. If I want to eat a whole pizza (yes, vegan) and a loaf of bread besides, fine, but I must choke down all the vegetation first.

Plan how to acquire and prepare the produce as well. That’s where I fell down before. I was always playing catch-up with washing and chopping. Whatever storage items I need to keep things fresh longer, going canned or dried if necessary—bottom line, make it easy to consume what I need every day.

Post here every day. When I did low-carb, my blog helped.

Yesterday I had some screw-ups.

1. Those greens I cooked were just too strong-tasting without added fat, so I put them back on the stove and added a couple more cans of diced tomatoes. Still not good.
2. Added pinto beans. This helped a little, but I realized that I had cooked the pintos for too long, and I should have seasoned them beforehand. Overcooked beans become watery and flabby.
3. By this time I had my 6-quart Dutch oven filled to the brim with a concoction that looked like pig slop. The gloppy dull-green strings of vegetation were grossing me out. I decided to puree it in the food processor.
4. Pureeing didn’t help. Now it looked like a cross between vomit and… the other end. I threw it out. Life is too short to eat things that don’t taste good and look terrible besides.

Lessons learned:

1. When it comes to bitter greens, I’m going to have to experiment with how to get them into my diet. More spinach, less collards. I could eat a whole pot of them when I could season them with bacon. Can’t do that anymore!
2. Also, I think I need to avoid bagged greens. They chop the thick stems into the mix, and with collards and kale especially, they’re just too tough and stringy most of the time. (OMG, this reminds me of when Mom and I grew some rutabagas. The beggies themselves were wonderful. But then I tried cooking some of the greens, and they were horrible. Way too strong-tasting, and simultaneously mushy, tough and stringy. )
3. Soak beans beforehand, which boosts their nutritional value. According to Fuhrman, soaking starts the sprouting process – not to the point of seeing actual sprouts, but enough that beneficial compounds are created. Then simmer them only until they’re tender, before they start to break apart. And I need to go back to adding a chunk of kombu (seaweed) to the pot – a time-honored way to give beans an umami flavor.

I can’t wait till my blender gets here. I could put 2 cups of chopped kale in a smoothie and not even taste it with all the other stuff included.

Also, I need to dig out my postal scale and weigh everything. I need to understand the volume of a pound of trimmed and chopped greens.

I’ve ordered a blender. I’m going to focus on smoothies. As I said back in 2016, they really are the most efficient way to ingest raw produce. I’m looking forward to having really smooth smoothies!

I buy 6-oz. packages of berries at the 99¢ store. These go for 2 to 3 times as much at regular grocery stores. Since Fuhrman recommends berries especially, this is a real boon. Sometimes, though, as would be expected, they’re a little past their prime. Not inedible by any means, but I like my berries firm and tangy, so the softer, sweeter ones I’m freezing for later use in smoothies, like I do with overripe bananas.

Also, I have made an exciting discovery. 1/2 cup of white popcorn kernels, popped, is only 200 calories. There’s my grain serving. I cannot fully express my joy at being able to munch with wild abandon on a humongous bowl of plain popcorn. I used to think I wouldn’t be able to stand popcorn without butter and salt (Fuhrman also recommends low salt), but I can! My palate has changed. So that’s my daily carb-y treat and I love it.

I’ve decided to up the produce level while eating up my “bad” food instead of going full bore on Monday. Fuhrman recommends doing a 6-week intensive. But you know what? I’m going to be on this the rest of my life, not 6 weeks. So I’ll transition into hard core when I’ve eaten up the bread etc. I’m also going to try to avoid oil as much as possible, but might add a little bit to veggies when I need to.

But I’m going to start keeping track of my produce intake now. So for today, so far:

• 12 oz. blueberries and blackberries
• 1 quart of miso soup (2 c. cooked bean sprouts, green onion, baby greens, tofu, mushrooms in miso broth) – no oil!
• 2 pears
• 1 c. cooked greens, tomato, onion, mushroom
• 1.5 c. pinto beans with salsa

Note: The objective is to up my produce consumption, not track everything I put in my mouth. I’ve also had several cups of air-popped plain popcorn and a peanut butter sandwich, but as I’ve said many times, super close daily tracking ends up driving me nuts. This is just to familiarize myself with how much I need to eat to meet the produce requirements and what that looks and feels like.

I’m kind of shocked the greens dish tastes so good. I let the greens (a bag of collards, turnip greens and kale) simmer for quite a while. I used vegetable Better Than Bouillon (BTB) but not much salt. No fat. The greens, especially mixed with a can of diced tomatoes, are a dark olive drab, not generally how I like them. But they’re really good – assertive and earthy, but sort of meaty, especially when chewing them thoroughly like Fuhrman recommends. Also I made them soupy – that enables me to skip the oil.

Last night I stopped at Clark’s to get miso, and I ended up signing up for their membership. I’m going to be taking the long way home a lot now. They’re the best place to get organic stuff. Sprouts is good, too, but Clark’s is a local business.

I also stopped at 99 and Food4Less and loaded up on produce. And today I’m overwhelmed.

Luckily I’ve taken the day off, but now I need to prep all that produce. 2 pounds of chopped greens. A butternut squash. 5 pounds of pinto beans. 2 pounds of green beans. Several packages of mushrooms. Berries. Cucumber. Celery. Miso soup ingredients. And more.

I also have household chores to do and my never ending palette experiments. I’ll make a list and start tackling it one thing at a time.

Herbs are leafy greens. I need to make a habit of buying fresh herbs and using them liberally. Also, different kinds of seeds – sesame, pumpkin, chia, hemp, sunflower, flax, maybe more. I need to acquire a good-sized amount of each and just sprinkle them on everything. It’s important to have a lot of variety in this diet. The focus is on low calories, yes, but more importantly, high nutrition, and every plant has something different to offer. I’m going to have to get more organic stuff, too. I bought some organic celery the other day (celery is #1 on the pesticide dirty dozen list) and I swear it tasted better than celery usually does.

I need to do some strategizing for how to have on hand a sufficient variety of things to munch on and to use in recipes. I’m taking tomorrow off partly for that reason. I want to be ready for Monday.

—

I swear, Mom is around somewhere, beaming in delight that I’m doing this. It’s going to work.

I’ve assumed I’m stuck being fat forever. I’ve assumed that calories in/calories out is somehow not operative for me. That I suppose I would lose weight if I were in a gulag living on rats and potato skins, but not otherwise. That the only way I would ever lose weight would be to count everything, weigh everything, watch everything that goes into my mouth and if it tastes good I’d better not eat it, so basically, to be miserable the rest of my life, with all my energy going to staying thin instead of into art or experiences or friends and loved ones. Part of me still isn’t certain that’s not the case.

But if this thing works…

Maybe my problem has simply been that however healthy my food intake is, there’s too much of it. That I’ve been consuming too much fat and starch and not enough produce. Dear god, if this works, I’ll be happy to live on spinach and apples and beans the rest of my life.

I did a really helpful thing by going vegan. I don’t think I’d be doing this now if I weren’t. I proved to myself that I can stick to my principles. I’m used to prioritizing other things over goodies. I don’t need to ever eat another slice of bacon. Eventually I’ll eat cake again, if I want to, and when I do I’ll finally understand those bewildering people who are satisfied with a little cube of it.

Things have slid into place. This is going to work.

February 4, next Monday, is when I’ll be starting the Fuhrman diet plan. I need to eat up all my bread and margarine by then, because I won’t be eating any more for the next year or so. I will be eating a shitload (literally, I suspect) of greens, broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, onions, berries, and beans, however.

This plan is basically devoid of added fat, but something I’m realizing: I don’t need fat on raw vegs, and I don’t need fat in soup. I also don’t need fat in smoothies. Cooked vegs, I seem to need some kind of fat or oil, so I’m thinking I’ll be mainly eating smoothies, soups, salads, and raw vegs with various bean dips. These things I can eat in practically unlimited quantities. They say “don’t overeat,” but it’s pretty much impossible to stuff oneself on vegetables and beans without fat added.

I don’t want to tempt the gods of fat to sit on me, so I’ll stop myself from saying that it’s quite possible I could be 50 pounds lighter next year at this time.