Time for a Change

Time for a Change

On New Year’s Day I was browsing through Netflix looking for something to watch and came across a new documentary called: “You are What You Eat – A Twin Experiment” and of course I immediately clicked on it and began watching.  I won’t spoil it for you and highly recommend you watch it, but in summary the premise of the documentary is an experiment conducted on identical twins to explore how certain foods impact the body, focused on healthy omnivore versus plant-based diets along with some lifestyle changes.    To be honest, most of the information in the documentary was not news to me as I already knew the benefits of eating a healthy diet with lots of fruits and vegetables as well as the importance of exercise and other lifestyle changes on our health and well-being, so nothing new there, but what really hit home for me is the environmental implications of my diet.  For example, learning that livestock farming (cows and pigs) generates the majority of greenhouse emissions and contribute to large deforestation and biodiversity loss is something I was aware of but never gave much thought to, until now.  I feel very strongly that we all have contributed to the current climate change crisis (for all you non-believers, this is my belief and is not up for discussion), so we all play a part in solving it.  Taking small steps such as saving energy, switching to an electric car, walking/biking versus driving, etc. are all worthy efforts that in aggregate help move the needle, but knowing that just by changing what I eat can have the biggest impact on the environment while bringing me key health benefits was just a no-brainer for me.  So, I decided it is time for a change.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this will not be an easy change for me as I not only love eating meat and chicken, but dairy is just part of my diet DNA.  Just the thought of not having cheese in my life is enough to make me want to cry.  It will be hard, but to me personally this is a must do and now I’m on the path of educating myself first, by learning about substitutions, trying out foods and recipes and slowly eliminating animal-based products from my diet.  As I embark on this personal challenge, I will be sharing my successes and failures on this blog in the hopes of keeping myself accountable to reach my goal.  This is very important to me as I not only want to make a difference and be an example to my son, but I also need to change my eating habits to bring down my triglycerides and cholesterol levels that quite frankly are not off the charts yet but in the too high for comfort category, particularly my LDL or “bad cholesterol”.   

My goal is to set short-term goals such as introducing more veggies into my meals by trying out different recipes, replacing animal based products for plant based substitutes in my favorite foods, trying out different plant-based milks in my coffee to slowly phase out all animal based products from my diet. Most importantly, I have to keep reminding myself why I’m doing this. I’m hoping that by keeping my why in mind every step of the way, will help me keep going no matter how many times I fail and give in to the familiar comfort of eating what I know I like. 

This blog will serve as my accountability tool and I’m going to need all the help I can get so if you have any tips, recipes, words of wisdom or advice to share, please drop me a note as I would greatly appreciate the support.  And if you are going through a similar journey, let’s do it together and create our own support group. 

Let the journey begin….