A question came into me today from a friend regarding my choice of diet/mealplan. For those who don't know I switched over to a plant-based diet back in November 2020. And also for those who know me, this would be a big shock I would imagine. Most of my adult life has been firmly encamped in the carnivore camp, the beer camp, the sweets camp. You should get the picture. Dieting and weightloss has also been a ever present routine also. I always been a big person, height-wise and then probably around when I was twelve was when I started to get more "huskier" you could say.
This coincided with a period where my mother was unemployed, which in Cleveland during the early 80's was not a phenomenon as the city was going through an economic upheaval from the closing of steel and auto plants. I remember the nightly news reports of where some business would announce something like 30 new jobs, and 3000 people would show up, lines going for blocks to apply. Also during this time the other lines I remember were for cheese, good old government cheese. The government was giving this out along with butter free to the unemployment. So my diet consisted of lots of macaroni and cheese, and grilled cheese sandwiches, anything with cheese. Not being involved in any outside activities and being a bookworm meant in a year I easily passed by the 100 pound threshold. I remember being proud of myself. Seemed like an adult thing to be.
So long story short, food has been definitely a comfort for me. Dieting has always been a struggle also. I'm smart and well informed so I am well aware of all the health risks involved, and experience a few, but changing my baseline dieting has always been a challenge. I could lose a lot, with over 80 pounds being my pinnacle, and I would revert back to old patterns and the weight would come back. For the last 20 years, I have been a member at a lot of gyms, have virtually supported the personal training industry, but it doesn't last. I would quit thinking the habit was ingrained, and think I could start working out on my own, but I didn't. Working out, is exactly that, working. I rarely found the motion, and the sweating to be ideal usage of my time.
So there I was in November. 8 months into the Covid pandemic, sitting on my ass all day, sequestered in the apartment all day, so of course I had gained weight and wasn't working out any. The weird thing for me though was hearing all this accounts from friends and colleagues about how fit they were getting and how much weight they had lost. What? Shouldn't everyone had put on a Covid-19 pounds or 30 like I probably had. Damn overachievers. Makes you want to despise them, but I decided to use them as motivation instead.
Some of this added motivation came about in a movie recommendation on Netflix from a friend Cory, called the Game Changers. It was a very eye opening film about a variety of athletes who had moved to a plan=based diet, and did not notice a drop off in performance. Actually, quite the opposite. They experienced a range of improvements. After viewing it I was pretty stoked. My fried Cory who has been a vegan for a long time now along with his wife Erika, and it is almost spooky how much younger they look since college. I joke with them they must bathe in the blood of babies during some satanic ritual, but he swears the devil has nothing to do with it.
Another documentary has sent him on his path to veganism and that was a film, Forks Over Knives, I instantly searched for it on the services and found it on Gaia on watched it, and everything that the Game Changers said, it confirmed but earlier. Lowered risks for heart disease, high cholesterol, blood pressure, and diabetes, and probably the kicker for most men, an increased sexual libido and manhood. Sign me up, the Rolling Stones didn't need to tell me.
I will leave it at this point. This story needs a part two, but food is calling me now.