This Vegan Thing

So I’ve been veganing for about 4 weeks now, with 3 little cheats (all involving dairy).  My skin is not that much clearer, but it seems to kind of be going through some sort of purging process.  Hair?  Fine, no real change.  Nails?  Wicked strong and talon-y.  Energy?  Good.  Weight?

Ah.  Weight.

The short answer:  about the same. 

The long answer:  Sigh.  Thanks to ladies like Angela and Gina, I’m trying to get away from the neurotic calorie counting and scale hounding that I’ve subjected myself to for the past 20-ish years of my life.  First, I’m really bad at math, and turning each meal into an algebra assignment where I have to research calorie contents, multiply by serving sizes and divide as necessary were not fun.  Also, the stricter and more crazy I got about the calories and the scale, the more resistant things seemed to get.  It was like trying to force two magnets together with the same polarity.  The more I pushed, the more they pushed back (they being my sanity and weight).  

Have I shed millions of pounds as a vegan?  Well, no.  The scale is still showing that I weigh pretty much the same as when I was eating 1/2 a pound of chicken breasts and 2 eggs every day.  But when I went in for my annual doctor’s visit this morning, I am six pounds lighter than I was last year.  That’s even after all my snacking yesterday and pizza night (yes, I am so neurotic that I know the scale should be two pounds higher the day after pizza night).  Why this is showing up on the doc’s scale and not on my Tanita scale, I dunno.  It’s not the clothes I wore because (again, revealing my neuroses) I always wear the lightest possible clothes to the doc’s.  I also try to schedule it early in the morning and eat breakfast afterwards so the scale isn’t affected by the weight of my food or clothes.  Crazy?  Yes, but accurate!

As an aside, I always find myself a little surprised when the nurse asks me if I need to “empty my bladder” before I get on the scale.  I immediately revert back to when my mom used to always ask if I needed to go potty every time we passed a bathroom (obviously, that was back in my toilet training days).  I always think about her question for far too long.  Isn’t that too personal to answer? Also, is it really necessary? I mean, I’m just stepping on the scale, it’s not like I’ve got a long car trip ahead of me or something.

Anyway, that’s sort of the update with how veganism is treating me.  I eat when I’m hungry (obviously, just look at my snack record for yesterday) and can eat lots of yummy fruit which is very satisfying.  I still catch myself worrying about the calories in things because, let’s face it, the behavior I began learning when I was 10 isn’t going to go away overnight.  Ironically, because veganism has such a restrictive connotation, I’ve found eating this way surprisingly freeing.  I don’t have to worry about any HFCs, sodium, fillers, or hormones added to my orange.  It’s really an amazing thing.

Peace,

Elizabeth