self proclaimed vegan

It took awhile for my sweet husband to declare me a "vegan", but with the help of Nick chiming "mom is a gluten-free, vegan, pescitarian"; Kevin finally accepted that this "phase" was not going away! The journey began back in November, and as I am approaching the year mark I must admit that I like how I feel. Although it is always a little scary to utter the word remission (I feel like I need to knock on every piece of wood in my house) my symptoms have completely disappeared. It wasn't an over night sensation, as a matter of fact, I went through a period of feeling pretty badly months after I started this restrictive way of eating. Just when I thought that my disease was going to take me to a low place--boom I started feeling good and then great. We took a trip this early summer to Belize. It was hot, humid and of course amazing. I expected that the heat would bring on some of my symptoms, it never happened. I stuck to my diet by soaking huge pots of black beans, throwing in a lot of belizan spices and marie sharps incase it wasn't already spicy enough, pairing it with rice and fresh avacado. Aside from plantain chips this is what I ate, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Surprisingly, Belize did not have fresh greens of any sort. Kevin and I would walk to the market just down the street, run by Elvis, his wife Lilly and their two young children, the youngest daughter was placed on a changing table in the open doorway of the market where the breeze would lift her black chinese baby hair straight up. For a market run by a Chinese family, I was surprised that I couldn't find fresh veggies, later in the week we drove down to the larger town of Placencia and went into another Chinese run market--much bigger than Elvis' and was amazed to find no fresh fruits or veggies. Salsa comes from a jar out of Texas and no lemons anywhere in the country. For some reason I pictured, cilantro, tomatoes, peppers, onion in abundance...well I happily settled for good old beans and rice and by the grace of God, fresh avacado.

Wednesday January 4th, 2012

am: water and probiotic supplement
green smoothie

* a note on the green smoothie. I have been playing around with recipes and find that today I like:

green lettuce
spinach
2 stalks of celery
1/2 cup or so of cilantro
juice of 1/2 lime
1 ripe banana
2 large apples

noon: large green salad with sprouts, cucumbers, red onions, 1 tbs of ground flaxseed, shredded green cabbage
dressing: cilantro, lime juice, ginger, olive oil.

Going Vegan

It's not always easy drastically changing a diet, but I am giving it a shot. I have completely eliminated all dairy, meat, eggs and general fat. It has been 5 weeks now, and I am feeling pretty good. I am eating this way for my health and hoping to find more energy. I was diagnosed September, 2010 with MS and after a year of processing that devastating news I have decided to try to take a proactive approach with my diet. The Dr's and researchers suggest that diet doesn't make a difference and that taking MS medications is the way to go. I am not sure that I buy that. Drug companies have huge funding benefits in promoting their drugs and there simply isn't a huge financial incentive for changing a person's eating habits.

Les Frites is my daily journal in this process.