Hey everyone :). I hope that this blog finds you in good health. Chuck & I are doing awesome! We have both had a lot of weight loss since we started making healthier choices. I've lost 10.6lbs and he has lost about 20lbs. The weight is just dropping off :). I fit into a size L scrub pants (I usually wear XL) that I had in my closet for awhile. I'm really happy that we have been making these changes, aside from losing weight we both just feel better all around. Some people probably think this is just a phase we are going through, but really it's not. We made a choice to live in good health and eating like crap is not the way to do that. I have no cravings for soda, candy, fast food or junk food. I like the food we are eating now a lot better than the food we were eating. It tastes better, looks better and is better for us. My mom got us a vegan cookbook & we made apple pie out of it and it was really good. I'm looking forward to making more things out of it. Well, just wanted to do a quick update. Check the recipes tab!

Making good progress.

Hello to anyone that might be reading this. Hopefully I will be getting some followers/feedback here soon. Anyway, things have been going good! I'm down 7lbs thus far and Chuck has lost 8lbs. That's a lot of weight in just a short amount of time. I know it's all water weight but it's still satisfying to see the number go down :).

In the past I've tried exercising, which was giving me results, but the gym is expensive and going to work and then working out at the gym was like suicide. I didn't have the energy, and honestly, I don't like the gym atmosphere. The one thing that I never really changed, even while exercising, was the way that I was eating. I guess that me being uneducated I thought that as long as I put in the time at the gym, I could eat however I wanted. I do take responsibility, but I also think that the media could take some of the blame as well. Turn on your tv and I'm sure that you'll see at least one infomercial about diet pills or a workout machine and you'll also see a BK, mcdonalds, pizza, candy, soda ad. It's like we are subconsciously told that it's okay to eat all that junk as long as we buy the newest diet pill and buy a workout machine that probably won't see the light of day very long. We haven't been exercising so far, other than being on our feet 8 hours a day working as CNA's and walking around college.

We've been drinking at least a gallon of water a day and that in itself has made us feel so much better. For work we've been packing our own food. We take fresh fruit with us & we bought a nice organic spring mix to use for salads and we toss in things like cranberries, chopped bell pepper, green onion, mushrooms, etc. and for dressing we use balsamic vinaigrette. For meals at home, we have discovered veggie burgers, chicken patties, hot dogs and bologna. We use Arnold whole wheat bread/buns. Here they are inexpensive and they have no HFCS and no milk ingredient and they have a good flavor. For a butter substitute we use Earth Balance, it's healthy and decently priced. We have also made our own chili using 2 cans of chili beans, 1 can of rinsed black beans (we used reduced sodium ones), half of a yellow bell pepper, 1 cup frozen whole kernel corn, can of fire roasted organic tomatoes, 1lb of meatless ground found at wal-mart by the tofu, handful of chopped green onion. Spices used: crushed red pepper, garlic powder, sea salt, black pepper, chili powder. It was tasty and it had a nice kick to it.

This is just the beginning of things, but I know the one thing I've learned through this so far is that food should be a creation. It shouldn't be a packaged tv dinner you pick up from the freezer section or in a fast food drive thru. The food is much more enjoyable if you spend time planning out the meal, buying what you need to make it and then preparing it. I've also realized how much my body depended on caffeine & I never want to go back to that. I have been getting a few headaches, but they are tolerable now. When I get up for the day I take a women's multivitamin, niacin, b12 and vitamin c with a bottle of water and an apple or banana.

I'm very excited about for what is to come. I really want to get a cookbook, some recipe cards, a juicer, a food processor and some other items that will help us get the most out of this.

-Amber

Milk & cancer

Do you drink milk, eat cheese or other dairy products? Watch this video!

First post.

Well, I am staring this blog to track my progress (along with my husband's) following a plant-based "diet". I really don't want to call it a diet, because only 2 days into it I consider it a lifestyle change. My husband, Chuck, and I watched a documentary on Netflix called Forks Over Knives. It really was an eye opener about how bad the food we ate in the past really is. We have committed to no more soda, no more fast food, no more junk food and little meat and dairy. Sometime soon we are going to make write out a menu, but the past couple of days we have done good with just going to the store and finding something to make a meal. We had some veggie burgers with veggie cheese and whole wheat buns. They were surprisingly very good and so were the veggie hot dogs that we had. We plan on making chili with meatless ground, I'm really looking forward to that later today. My husband was a bit skeptical of all of this at first, but he's said a couple of times already that he thinks we can really do this. I never had any doubts in the first place. In the past I wasn't 100% into changing my eating habits, but now I am. I don't want any more mechanically separated meat, high fructose corn syrup, candy, soda, etc. That stuff made me feel like absolute crap and fatigued. I've been drinking a lot of water and 100% juice and I feel so much better already. And, according to the scale I'm losing a good amount of water weight already. I wish I would have started this sooner, but there's no looking back now.

-Amber