The Decision

I have been a meat eater my entire life. I love all types of meat and eat it with nearly every meal. I enjoy the taste of a juicy London broil, the zest of lemon pepper chicken and the delicacy of hot lobster dipped in warm butter. Ironically enough, my younger sister has been a vegetarian for most of her life. She made the decision when she was 8 or 9 years old. I am not sure what exactly prompted her to make such a bold decision at such a young age but she stuck with it for the last 10 or 11 years. I never understood it. Why would you not want to eat meat? I supported her decision and respected it, but I never wanted any part of it. A few days ago, Kayla text messages me and asks me to watch a film called Forks Over Knives. I figured it had something to do with vegetarians so I wasn't exactly looking forward to watching it but as her big sister, I figured I would appease her.
Sunday night (11/13/11) my husband and I watched the film. Talk about an eye opener! I have always known that the food you put into your body effects your health and weight but never did I actually take it seriously I guess. As a 27 year old, over weight female diagnosed with PCOS, pre-diabetes and thyroid dysfunction, the last thing I want is to pop pills every day and have no control over my own fertility. I have known managing my weight would help reduce some of these issue's but not matter how much I want to change, I wanted to eat even more. PCOS makes it hard to lose weight and very eary to gain so I have to work extra hard to work the weight off but I just couldn't make the right eating choices. It is something I have struggled with my entire life. Thankfully, this film may have come  into my life at the exact right time. I have gained 30 pounds this year.. I am at the heaviest I have ever been and I am well aware of the body image problems I have along with depression, anxiety and shame. This may be my life saver. Forks Over Knives really lit a fire under my butt and half way thru the film my husband and I decided we are no longer going to be meat eaters. And we will strive to eventually only eat a whole food plant based diet.
We are doing this a little bit at a time. We want to make a lifestyle change and I know I am no good at quitting anything cold turkey. So our first stage is eliminating beef, chicken, milk, soda and eggs. I have noticed in the last two days that since we are focusing on these four things, neither one of use want to ruin what we ate for the day by indulging in fries or sweets. So even though at this point we haven't completely eliminated these foods, the changes are happening.
I stopped at the local produce stand and stocked up on veggies and fruit and threw out the beef and chicken in my freezer. Yesterday for breakfast I ate an apple and pumpkin muffin. For lunch was carrots, an orange and crackers with hummus. Dinner consisted of a delish stir fry over rice. Today I made toast and fruit with almond milk for breakfast and lunch was a raw kale and spinach salad loaded with veggies and fat free Italian dressing. For dinner I am making portobello mushroom burgers and another kale salad for us and a friend.
So far this is exciting. We are both enjoying learning about new foods and making new recipes and really changing our life's. I know this won't be easy tho which is why I decided to start a blog. Maybe having some sort of accountability from the virtual world will help us stay on this path of healthy eating.