What's eating VBG?
My very first blog post was
entitled "Green is my favorite color" and it truly is. But that
post had nothing to do with my wardrobe or paint choices, instead it focused on
my new (at the time) lifestyle choice to become vegan. I have said very little
about it since then and that's because shortly after I started blogging a struggle set in and I have been all but abandoned it. All but because I
just can't shake it. Like a crack addict needs a rock, I need to be trying to give up meat every other week it seems. I can do it too for a few days or even weeks and then boom I'm running with the bulls, pigs, chicken and fish again.
Baltimore is a pretty progressive city especially compared to Smallville. So you can encounter a lot there especially on foot. Even as a teen I walked - a lot! It was my means of transportation - I hated the crowds and confinement of buses, still do. Anyway, in my walks I came across a place called the Golden Temple and thinking it was true to the name I went in. I'm a seeker always have been, what can I say, but it was not a religious place at all. Instead I'd stumbled upon my very first "health food" store to serve the body temple. It was owned and run by Sikhs, actually they were Caucasian converts garbed in flowing white fabric and turbans but there was something about them that appealed to me way back then. Maybe it was the vegetables or the religion maybe it was the smell of the spices and incense. Probably a combination of all of the above.
My wunderkind and her BFF, Sofie (who by the way is unequivocally one of the sweetest girls on the planet) recently explained to me the moniker you get for that kind of behavior these days is "hipster".
Even as knowledge abounds that a diet of organisms that rank lowest on the food chain - (we eat animals who eat plants) and the constant admonition from every Mama to "eat your vegetables", it never ceases to amaze me how much resistance the very mention of a meatless diet inspires. Saying you're eating vegetarian in America still inspires the same kind of suspicion J Edgar Hoover espoused toward Communists. Vegetarian?? You must not believe in God, either - You Commy!
I recently read a book, not listened to a book, I actually READ it - okay 1/2 the book. It was Augusten Burroughs’ This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. I kid you not that is the title and it’s almost longer than the book. He has a chapter on "how to be fat" and I loved it. In it he talks about how if you’ve been dieting for 10 or 20 or oh even 33 years then THIN is not your issue nor is fat. Your issue is figuring out what and why you’ve have equated a number on the scale or clothes rack with your ability to attain true happiness. Maybe to you it means a slew of awesome new friends, adventures, more money, new career opportunities, or dare I say it a new crop of viable suitors? (Yes, my dream man is a vegetarian and yes of course, I only attract the most carnivorous of men who treat a head of broccoli like it's kryptonite.) The key is figuring out what things you attribute to being thin and move it out of the thin realm and into the your life. So I started thinking what does being a vegetarian mean to me. Quite simply something I feel I don't have enough of - discipline and simplicity. The things I thought I saw in the folks at the Golden Temple.
Just before Turkey Day, I decided I wanted a quick win to see if I could lose a 10 lbs in a month by omitting grains, beans, refined sugar, processed foods - eating paleo. The paleo or caveman diet is not vegetarian. In fact meat is an inherent part of the diet. My thinking is with the discipline it takes to omit those other things for say 5 weeks while getting my fill of meat and cleaning up my gut (bacterial/probiotic) issues would lead to a renewed and hopefully successful pursuit of a diet devoid of anything with a face or a Mama...yes, that old beet & broccoli eater solgan. During all my previous attempts to vegetize my diet the Wunderkind resisted, now she's decided she's not eating meat (I knew this day would come though I figured it would happen in college). But just maybe this time with a little help from the Wunderkind - discipline and simplicity finally will stick.
Baltimore is a pretty progressive city especially compared to Smallville. So you can encounter a lot there especially on foot. Even as a teen I walked - a lot! It was my means of transportation - I hated the crowds and confinement of buses, still do. Anyway, in my walks I came across a place called the Golden Temple and thinking it was true to the name I went in. I'm a seeker always have been, what can I say, but it was not a religious place at all. Instead I'd stumbled upon my very first "health food" store to serve the body temple. It was owned and run by Sikhs, actually they were Caucasian converts garbed in flowing white fabric and turbans but there was something about them that appealed to me way back then. Maybe it was the vegetables or the religion maybe it was the smell of the spices and incense. Probably a combination of all of the above.
My wunderkind and her BFF, Sofie (who by the way is unequivocally one of the sweetest girls on the planet) recently explained to me the moniker you get for that kind of behavior these days is "hipster".
Even as knowledge abounds that a diet of organisms that rank lowest on the food chain - (we eat animals who eat plants) and the constant admonition from every Mama to "eat your vegetables", it never ceases to amaze me how much resistance the very mention of a meatless diet inspires. Saying you're eating vegetarian in America still inspires the same kind of suspicion J Edgar Hoover espoused toward Communists. Vegetarian?? You must not believe in God, either - You Commy!
I recently read a book, not listened to a book, I actually READ it - okay 1/2 the book. It was Augusten Burroughs’ This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. I kid you not that is the title and it’s almost longer than the book. He has a chapter on "how to be fat" and I loved it. In it he talks about how if you’ve been dieting for 10 or 20 or oh even 33 years then THIN is not your issue nor is fat. Your issue is figuring out what and why you’ve have equated a number on the scale or clothes rack with your ability to attain true happiness. Maybe to you it means a slew of awesome new friends, adventures, more money, new career opportunities, or dare I say it a new crop of viable suitors? (Yes, my dream man is a vegetarian and yes of course, I only attract the most carnivorous of men who treat a head of broccoli like it's kryptonite.) The key is figuring out what things you attribute to being thin and move it out of the thin realm and into the your life. So I started thinking what does being a vegetarian mean to me. Quite simply something I feel I don't have enough of - discipline and simplicity. The things I thought I saw in the folks at the Golden Temple.
Just before Turkey Day, I decided I wanted a quick win to see if I could lose a 10 lbs in a month by omitting grains, beans, refined sugar, processed foods - eating paleo. The paleo or caveman diet is not vegetarian. In fact meat is an inherent part of the diet. My thinking is with the discipline it takes to omit those other things for say 5 weeks while getting my fill of meat and cleaning up my gut (bacterial/probiotic) issues would lead to a renewed and hopefully successful pursuit of a diet devoid of anything with a face or a Mama...yes, that old beet & broccoli eater solgan. During all my previous attempts to vegetize my diet the Wunderkind resisted, now she's decided she's not eating meat (I knew this day would come though I figured it would happen in college). But just maybe this time with a little help from the Wunderkind - discipline and simplicity finally will stick.
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