Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Fat Vegan

So I was wandering through Trader Joe's yesterday buying a smorgasbord of items for a presenter gift for my Medical Exploring Post presenter last night. Thank you Dr. Abramo from Vanderbilt University Medical Center!

I like to do these great gift wrapped packages of a little healthy, a little sweet, a little savory and a nice bottle of sparkling flavored water or something like it. I think they really like it and it is a very inexpensive awesome gift to receive!

I thought it would be nice to seek out some vegan options at the same time so I asked the employee holding that god awful huge sign in his hand if they had vegan cookies. yeah... cookies... just wait.
He showed me one kind and then ran off to find me the big list of all vegan items. They are ridiculously helpful at Trader Joe's... most of the time.

I stroll down the aisle of sauces and dressings etc. in search of regular vegan mayonaise. We have some vegan dijonaise at the house, but i wanted regular. So i ask another guy with a clipboard.. do you have veganaise? He says yes... but we are out of stock. (snarky sharon: "so the actual answer would be NO not yes)

so then the guy says.... looking up from his clipboard to eyeball me.... "YOU'RE vegan??"

Sharon: "Gee, you sound so surprised" (knowing exactly why he'd said it like that... so much emphasis on the YOU'RE and the big questioning high pitched ending to the word vegan.)

Clipboard Guy: "well, most vegans I know are skinny"

Sharon: turning to make eye contact and just look at him... you know... in order to make him really think about what he just said.

Clipboard Guy: "uh... i mean... like.... uh... the vegans I know are like... uh... REALLY skinny... like they look so unhealthy"

Sharon: "mmm hmmm... yeah... I see"

Clipboard Guy: scooting further away from me down the aisle looking at his clipboard intently checking something off with his pencil.

oh, and did i mention that he was quite a round specimen of a man?

so.. it got me to thinking.. yup. i'm a fat vegan.
It's true. I've been married for a year and 4 months and the moment the wedding dress came off, i have eaten without mindfulness and exercising practically never.
I have gained a significant amount of weight and I am very unhappy with myself and my body right now.

I have realized only recently that i am a yo-yo er to the max. I regularly allow myself to move between a healthy weight and 30 - 40 pounds more than that every few years.
I'm not at my heaviest ever right now, but i'm getting there and I do admit that the vegan move was heavily connected to hoping that in becoming vegan and healthier on the inside that the outside would reflect it.

It hasn't yet, but I haven't been fully vegan and I realized that I have also done a lot of embracing of some very high fat foods in my recipes lately.

So, I returned last night to my amazon.com page and looked at the pending order for
The 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart... and changed my order from the stupid soft cover which probably won't be out for another year or so (why don't they tell you that or NOT make it orderable!) and changed it to the hard cover. It should arrive tomorrow.

In order to turn to a more plant based diet, I need to rely a lot less on pre-packaged items... even Trader Joe's and more on GREENS GREENS and more GREENS!

I'll let you know what the book is like when I get the nerve up to open the first page.

1 comment:

  1. This post made me think of a weird statistic. When people located in a certain demographic (as in Nashville), the majority will all tend to have the same health habits. In theory, people will act like the people around them, so health insurance companies even tend to base risks on people in the same zip code/city etc.

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