And for Dinner? Veg Pizza!

Veg Pizza for Dinner!

Several days ago when I wrote It Happens in Three's, I mentioned that our meat defrosting was a different story.  The rest of that story is this...

Two weeks ago we implemented a decision to make a permanent dietary change in our household.  We have several reasons, but the main reason was our health both in the now, and our health in the future.  We previously ate a typical American diet, I cooked most of our meals at home, but these meals were rich in carbohydrates and loaded with cheese and fats.  A staple ingredient in a lot of my cooking was butter.  I was cutting down on the butter usage, but had learned a long time ago it was better to use butter than a synthetic butter in baking.  I made fresh bread almost daily, and though we enjoyed vegetables and fruits, I do not feel like we ate as much of them as we should.  We also enjoyed the occasional meal out about once a week sometimes less, and delicious fresh baked treats.  We used a lot of flour, sugar, butter, and dairy.  I really felt that we needed to eat healthier.  Yes most of our foods were made from scratch and made at home, but I felt like it could be a lot more healthy.  My family balked at the thought of it!  We like rich, delicious food!!!

I started learning about baking with whole wheat flour, and substituting things like applesauce for butter or sugar in the recipes.  It wasn't well received the lack of sugar or butter part.  However, watching a documentary one day about eating a plant based diet really resonated with me.  I discussed it with my husband who watched the documentary with me again, and he agreed that it was a good idea for the health of our family.  We decided though it would be difficult, we would probably have a mutiny from the children, we would change our diet and adhere as closely as we could to a plant based diet, this involved eliminating dairy and meats..... yikes!  We had just packed our meat order into our deep freeze about two weeks previous to this lol.  We decided that we would eat meat on occasion, just not in our every day meals.  We donated all the food in our pantry that did not follow our new dietary plan so we wouldn't be tempted as this is a hard switch, and replaced it with only whole grains and healthy foods.  We were already eating whole grain bread and using whole grain pasta, but now we were watching the amount of salt and sugar that was in our pasta and any other product.  That was a little over two weeks ago and we are still going strong.  When the meat defrosted a bit my husband joked that it was a good thing we just went vegan!  A part truth but still a nice comic relief in the situation.  We do eat basically a vegan diet which is a plant based diet during the times we aren't eating meat.  We have eliminated as much salt and sugar from our diet as possible as well.  Previously I made meat based meals several times a week but we also had several non meat meals as well.  When I did cook with meat I used it sparingly.  It has been quite a transition but we are making it and most importantly we are seeing a steady improvement in how we feel.  I have much more energy for one and that is worth a lot!  I am slowly but surely feeling better and not so sluggish.  A very welcome change.  Yes, we are both loosing some weight but the real benefit is our health.  If I changed my diet for the loosing weight benefit I think I would be disappointed.  I would most likely have stopped eating a "vegan" diet and went back to our old diet style.  However, it is the way my body has improved and the feeling of health that we both have that has kept us going full steam ahead.  This positive feeling along with slow and steady moderate weight loss due to a healthier diet has been a bonus.  I am so thankful that we changed our diet!

I am not going to go into the fine details of why we transitioned, why we decided to give up meat and dairy in our day to day meals, and all the benefits of our diet change, but if you would like to know more or watch the documentary that helped us decide to change, all the science and information about our dietary change, I highly recommend the documentary I watched called Fork over Knife.  It is available on Netflix for those that have this program.  There is also a book and cookbook by the same name.  So now you know the story about the meat in the freezer :)