What Does the Blood Say After 6 Months of Being Vegan?
And what I’ve been eating
The Results
A while back, about five months ago to be exact, I posted What Does the Blood Say After 30 Days of Going Vegan? I figured I was due for a follow up and so I got another blood test. It is good news all around. My overall, and “bad,” cholesterol continued to plummet while my HDL, good cholesterol, continued to rise. This of course means my Cholesterol to HDL ratio has also improved. My body fat was another big change here. I burned off 5% of my body fat in 5 months! I can see my abs now and I plan to continue to work towards getting more defined with weight lifting and HIIT training. I don’t put too much emphasis on BMI weight, but I am in optimal range now as I write this at 157.6 lbs. I’d also like to put on more muscle which would move above the BMI in a healthy way.
The rest of my numbers are still optimal and I feel spectacular! The diet combined with the knowledge that I am reducing suffering and having a positive environmental impact, however small, on the planet has increased my joy in my day to day life.
What did I really eat?
As we get into more of a rhythm with our meals we strive to use more whole food ingredients. After months of tracking every meal in Chronometer that gave a good sense of the macro and micro nutrients that I do get and I know what I am trying to get. The guide I use most is Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen.
Morning Shake
I do a vegan chocolate Shakeology. I started with just the shake in filtered water, but now I add spirulina, turmeric, tiny bit of pepper, cup of chickpeas, hemp or cashew milk that I make, hemp protein, frozen banana, Four Sigmatic cordyceps coffee pack, and flax seeds. I run it through a Vitamix and drink it while I get ready to work out. Ya I know it’s getting out of hand.
Breakfast
I make granola every weekend that I use for three of us every morning with strawberries, blueberries and banana. I add ground flax to it as well and homemade hemp or cashew milk (I started with unsweetened Silk Almond milk before I started making my own). It’s Grain Free Granola, but I add 1/2 cup of Rolled Oats . I try to get a couple of Brazil nuts in the mornings as well to get that selenium in. We keep ours in the freezer as they tend to mold fast.
On weekends I’ll sometimes have pancakes with all the fruits. I use this recipe.
Smoothies I try to consume a few days a week in the afternoons. It has kale, baby spinach, frozen bananas, some sort of frozen fruit like mangos or mixed berries or peaches, flax seeds (this can be the full seeds as they get pulverized in the Vitamix), pumpkin seeds and turmeric that I don’t end up tasting really, but is good to consume.
I bring fruit to work like apples, nectarines, peaches, bananas, dates, etc. Combined with the morning I get at least five servings of fruit in before lunch. Anyone who says that if you’re trying to lose weight fruit is bad because of the sugar DOES NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT! Fruit is the BEST way to lose weight! As long as you’re eating the entire fruit.
Lunches
I like to keep it simple. I’ll make a batch of quinoa or brown rice for the week then in the mornings I grab a glass food container, add some black beans or bean medley and hot salsa which I microwave at the office for a perfect hearty lunch. Sometimes I add kimchi for some probiotics kick. Pro tip: I add this to the container quickly because this can stink up the kitchen fast which is not wife-friendly first thing in the morning.
Alternatively, I love burrito salad bowls, or just a burrito, with black and navy beans and guacamole. There’s a burrito place near my office so it’s an easy solution.
There’s also a sushi place near the office where I can get them to make a couple of fresh avocado sushi rolls. Get some great iodine in seaweed and a clean protein hit in the edamame. Plus I like to get in avocados a few times a week.
Another go to for us is a pita with hummus, sunflower seeds and stuffed with spinach. I’ll sometimes add tempeh in there as well. It’s a whole food, protein packed and since it’s fermented adds some probiotics to the mix.
Dinners
One-bowls are great with a sweet potato, beans, quinoa, sautéed kale or broccoli, and add a sauce like cashew cheese sauce (http://simpleveganblog.com/vegan-cheese/) or green tahini sauce (my fav http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/spiced-green-tahini-sauce) or a raw peanut sauce with sriracha.
There’s a great new assortment of pastas made from red lentils, edamame, black beans and more. These are great and tasty ways of getting a sweet protein hit with some pesto or an arrabiata sauce with a bunch of veggies. Where we used to use a tofu based ground ‘beef’ we have now replaced with a bunch of chopped veggies like broccoli, mushrooms, and peppers.
Stir fries, fajitas, chilli, nachos with the above healthy not-cheese sauce, tempeh or tofu on bbq with bbq sauce, big salads with lots of seeds and veggies.
I have kept on a whole food plant-based diet and slowly eliminating some of the “transition foods” like vegan burgers and ground “beef”, but I still do enjoy a specific brand of tofu dog that I enjoy with sprouted Ezekiel bread with sauerkraut and banana peppers for the probiotics. I’ve also managed to minimize things like fries and chips replacing them with baked sweet potato fries, “healthier” tortilla chips options and rice cake which I use with hummus or peanut butter treats.
Supplements
I have reduced almost all the supplements striving instead to get my nutrients from whole foods where possible. I no longer believe in the benefits of any dietary supplements since my most recent readings (see Whole by T. Colin Campbell, nutrionfacts.org, and plain common sense. I have kept only two which are not from anything missing in my food. One is sunlight and the other bacteria. I live in Canada so I take vitamin D (1000–2000 IU) every day. I also take B12 (2500 mg)once a week just in case. Again, B12 is a microbe that is from the soil that we no longer get naturally and I my B12 was low as a meat eater because it doesn’t come from meat or plants.
Deliciousness
When my wife and I made this transition we were worried that we would be missing out on the foods we loved relegated to bland, unexciting meals. We couldn’t have been more wrong. We shifted the way we were thinking and dove into discovering new amazing foods and also learned that if you were willing to have fun and experiment you could come up with an upgraded, healthy version of your favourite foods! I bread tempeh, bake in an airfryer, add Frank’s Red Hot for my wing fix. My wife makes a cashew based sour cream and voila! Wing Night! The best part of this is I don’t feel crappy after. I am now experimenting with making my own sugar out of dates to replace regular sugar in cookies and so far it’s fantastic.
