Day 21-24 of eating vegan only-Ok I may have lived it seems......

Here I am at Day 24 of my vegan year and going strong! I don't really mean to start off each post saying how amazed I am that I have made it this far but thing is, I really am amazed! This is the longest I have ever stuck with a eating plan in my life and darn tootin I am proud of myself.

When I first began this journey I decided and explained on this blog that I was NOT going to drag  my family into this whole vegan eating thing. Well it seems I may have been making a liar out of myself. The more I delve into the vegan world the more I learn and the more concerned I become for my loved ones. I would have loved it if I had had a better healthier start on life  myself, who knows, I could have avoided many of the diseases my body is now plagued with. My parents did the best they knew to raise me healthy, the information about nutrition and healthy back then was just as misleading as it is today and even harder to access. They fed me and taught me what they felt was good for me and I couldn't have asked for more from them. However flash forward many years and I now am armed with the information that my parents didn't have.

Since beginning my journey to eat vegan only for 365 days, the responsibility to give my children the best the start in life and to feed my family as a whole only things that are good for them and nothing harmful, has grown immensely. As a parent I would never let my children play with a firearm or run with scissors because I know it harmful to them so how is giving them a piece of food that I know is harmful to their health any different? In my opinion it's not.

I made the decision to not buy any animal or over processed foods from now on. I will gradually phase out the bad foods in our home by simply not replacing them on my grocery trips and instead making better healthier purchases. This seemed all good and find except when I took my children grocery shopping with me over the weekend and I said "No" to many of their favorite animal products and junk food. My teenager especially was just plain mad. He explained to me that he is so young eating healthy is not a priority at this time, he says he has plenty time in his latter years to get healthy. I explained to him the connection between hormones and animal foods and that by just eliminating dairy he could possibly clear up his skin. He wasn't sold but he stopped grumbling some. I bought more fruit than normal to replace their sugary snacks and my kids seemed ok with that because they love fruit anyway. One of my children's biggest concerns was that we wouldn't be able to go out to eat anymore, something our family enjoys doing, so I made a deal with them....and my husband. When we go out to eat they can order whatever they want (I will only be ordering vegan of course) since going out should be a treat.....and because I intend to a lot less of going out. Dr. McDougall says that if you can at least eat vegan 80% of the time than thats a huge step in the right direction so I figure going out once a week and letting my family order what they please is a good compromised for now. My hopes of course is that they will start learning better food choices and eventually not be wanting to order the greasy chicken fry  or cheese oozing burger. We will see. For now however I explained to my family that in our home I will buy and serve good healthy vegan meals only.

When I let my family know my new plans for our whole family eating better my teenage popped off and said "Well at least I can eat decent food at school!" I hated to tell him that he would be taking his lunch from now on and the news went about as well as I expected. You see my son attends a very large jr high that like many schools in America give the students  wide range of food options at lunch time. Most of the choices are unhealthy and with the heavily subsidized government provided dairy and meats (more on that in another post) that dominate the school menus it is hard to find a good choice for a meal at my son's school. If my son orders the typical tray lunch it comes with a meal consisting of a small starch, a main entree full of meat and other chemicals, a small serving of veggies and fruit and the only drink available is milk. If he doesn't want milk is only other option is water from the drinking fountain or a sugary soda pop from the vending machine. The other options include lines where, if students wish, they can purchase a giant pastry, chips, pizza, hot dogs, etc for their meal instead. I found out a few weeks ago that my son has been eating a giant cinnamon roll and Cheetos for lunch most days and he washes it down with a energy drink sold in the school vending machine. I don't know about most parents I am not sending my child to school with lunch money to have them get junk every day. Anyway, my son is now taking his lunch as of this week. I won't say he is happy about it but even the healthy items I put in his lunch are better than going hungry so he eats it and doesn't complain too awfully much.

Packing a healthy vegan lunch for my husband has been easy because he has access to almost a full kitchen at his office for reheating and preparing food. My son's school however does not have any way for students who bring lunch from home to heat their meals. I bought a thermos for warm foods over the weekend but it turns out it didn't keep his food warm until lunch time so I will have to see if I can find a better  one. I did buy some bento boxes however. I love the ones I got because they are easily slipped into my son's backpack without risk of the food getting squished and without  my son having to carry a lunch box which he says is totally lame. lol Today in his lunch I put nut butter and fruit preserves on whole grain bread, basically a healthy pb&j sandwich. In the other areas of the bento box I put mini rice cakes and an assortment off mixed chopped fruit. For a drink he took iced green tea with lemon which he happens to adore. I plan on doing a whole post of packing vegan lunches but first I must do my research and learn some more ideas and tips for doing so. If anyone has any great ideas for vegan lunchbox ideas I would love to hear them! :-)

Well this the part where I sign off, take the dogs out for a potty break, gripe to myself about all the snow and realize a neighbor saw me outside in my pj's, snow boots and bed head. Have a terrific day everyone!