The Plant-Based Way Out
I was 16 years old the first time. Wandering around the grocery store that was a few blocks from my house was a hobby, and I memorized the aisles as my best friend and I talked about everything and nothing. There were all sorts of weird ingredients in stores, if you looked beyond the eye-level shelves of beige foods like cookies, bread, and chips in their colorfully printed packaging. Foods like organic produce (a novelty at the time), chai tea, quinoa, and other things I couldn’t pronounce. These exotic ingredients seduced me, I became obsessed with trying something new each week.
This was an age where I sought validation from the opposite sex, and my 5 foot, 4 inch frame was a little more padded around the edges than was fashionable. There was no healthy template for me — my mother had a conflicted relationship with her body, and low-fat fads were still a very real thing. Never a fan of meat, I read an influential novel (Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael) and decided I was done with animal products. I dove in wholeheartedly, weaving in the new foods I found (couscous? vegan hot dogs? carob chips?) and drastically cutting my calories. My weight dropped, I secured a boyfriend, and life seemed like it was pretty all right for a while.
Over the course of that year, I lost 80 lbs. This was largely due to my unhealthy restrictions and calorie allowance, and an obsession with working out. But the discipline felt good, and was positively received, propelling me into anorexia and subsequent gallbladder issues that resulted in its removal in late 2004. I woke up from surgery in pain, alone, and afraid of food. From this place of fear, I began to eat dairy and meat again and self-soothed with food through my first major breakup, college applications and acceptance, the death of my grandmother, and my parents moving halfway across the country (and refusing to co-sign my college loans — which left me both homeless and without a way to pursue an education). After a few months, I found stability again, and my body reacted by packing on weight.
It was around this time that I stumbled into a popular diet program that encouraged hyper-awareness of everything I ate. I couldn’t breath in the scent of food without tracking it, it seemed. But I was back to a normal weight and could curb my discomfort with my body (which was now internally linked to the loss of love and safety). This program had some weird ways of logging foods, encouraging things like microwaved popcorn with artificial butter or fat-free cookies over fruit. It didn’t sit well with me, but it was working so I stuck with it.
Fast forward a few years to 2011, and I found the paleo diet — something that aligned with my desire to eat real, whole, naturally-occurring foods. I adopted it immediately on New Year’s Day 2012, and my soon-to-be husband and I felt incredible and continued to lose weight. We got into a really great rhythm with cooking and selecting food. This healthy diet fueled me to find a career path I really loved, and paired with my passion for herbs and natural medicine, it was a really great fertility booster.
And then I got pregnant, and meat was absolutely repugnant. My diet largely consisted of meats and vegetables, and I could tolerate neither. Everyone is keto-obsessed these days, but let me tell you…coming out of ketosis was a nightmare. I lost significant weight in the first two trimesters, and had to drink a calorie-dense chocolate shake marketed towards the elderly in order to maintain a healthy pregnancy weight. It felt like a cruel joke from the Universe — a lifetime of trying to lose weight, and then the one time I was supposed to grow, I failed.
The tables turned quickly post-partum. I lost the baby weight, but post-traumatic stress disorder, post-partum depression, and terminating my relationship with my parents created a perfect storm and my weight skyrocketed. And it hasn’t budged since.
I’ve tried the weight loss program that worked so well for me before. I’ve tried paleo but can’t suffer through the food aversions. I’ve tried obsessively working out and consuming nothing but blended superfood shakes. Not only have they resulted in minimal progress, but they’re also modeling the wrong things to my son — that weight is more important than physical health. This isn’t a path I want him to pursue. So I’m trying something different.
On a whim, my husband mentioned a desire for a vegan diet. Our son already has a sensitivity to dairy and an aversion to meat, so it seems like a natural fit. But in digging into product availability (which has exploded since the early 2000s, I must say!), I could see us easily slipping into a routine of pasta and cookies. I wanted something more wholesome. And that’s what led me to the plant-based diet.
The plant-based diet isn’t anything new or revolutionary. In fact, it mirrors paleo in that it incorporates an ancient way of eating — seasonal produce, healthy oils, and (unlike paleo) the addition of dense grains…it’s exactly what my body is craving. It’s not such a radical change that we’ll go through a carb flu (seriously, fuck the carb flu) and it’s similar enough to the Standard American Diet that my son can still eat a treat or a few chicken nuggets without his body freaking out (I endured a year of gallstones — I wish it on no one).
Will the plant-based diet be an end to my weight obsession? Definitely not. I’ve found a good therapist and have a lot of self-work to do there. But it is a way out of the cycle of diet culture that I seem to get caught up in each day. By focusing on whole, high-quality foods, I can nurture my family and myself and create beautiful dishes that we’ll really enjoy.
