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Considering a Vegan Lifestyle
Wash
Sweet ChristmasRegistered User regular
Sweet ChristmasRegistered User regular
Recently I found out from my doctor that I'm in a precarious position health-wise - I'm pre-diabetic and also on the verge of gout - and that a sharp dietary change may prevent my situation from worsening. The pre-diabetic thing didn't come as much of a surprise - I'm the heaviest I've ever been, sitting at 300 lbs, and I don't live a very active life. I'm working on that last part, but as far as diet goes, I feel like now is the time to make a really big and permanent change in how I approach food.
The problem for me isn't giving up certain foods, it's that I can't really cook. I can do pasta, but I've already cut grain from my diet, and even if I hadn't I can't really do meatballs since I've cut red meat as well. The other thing is that money is tight, and I understand that a vegan lifestyle can be more expensive than just going vegetarian. I feel like going vegan is the nuclear approach to getting my body right, but at this point I feel like the nuclear option is necessary.
I'm making this thread because I'm looking for help and advice when it comes to starting this kind of lifestyle change, as well as any advice for people in my current health position. Any resources you could link me to, personal anecdotes or recipes, would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to half-ass this; I'm on the verge of some lifelong conditions that will wreck my body, I'm also just super tired of feeling gross, and I require guidance.
The problem for me isn't giving up certain foods, it's that I can't really cook. I can do pasta, but I've already cut grain from my diet, and even if I hadn't I can't really do meatballs since I've cut red meat as well. The other thing is that money is tight, and I understand that a vegan lifestyle can be more expensive than just going vegetarian. I feel like going vegan is the nuclear approach to getting my body right, but at this point I feel like the nuclear option is necessary.
I'm making this thread because I'm looking for help and advice when it comes to starting this kind of lifestyle change, as well as any advice for people in my current health position. Any resources you could link me to, personal anecdotes or recipes, would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to half-ass this; I'm on the verge of some lifelong conditions that will wreck my body, I'm also just super tired of feeling gross, and I require guidance.
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some things you need to keep in mind:
1) Vitamin supplements will become more important, as getting all of your needed nutrition becomes more difficult based on what's available in your area.
2) Dairy is fucking EVERYWHERE. It's on our FRUIT. You need to decide if this bothers you, or if the incidental exposure is okay.
3) Going out with friends is going to change. Everyone's going to Chili's? You probably won't be able to order much off the menu. People may question your decision constantly. People WILL try to tell you how it is (even if they're wrong).
4) You're gonna have to learn to cook to make some of your new staple foods more palatable if you don't already like them.
This is just a short list, and far from comprehensive - these are just the four major points I could think of based on my own research. I remember reading a document called the Vegan Manifesto, you might want to google it.
One thing going vegan WONT do is take sugar off the table. A lot of sugary drinks are vegan friendly. You should NOT be drinking these sorts of things with your current health. Sugar is pretty much the devil in your case (and mine), and if you're anything like me that's going to be the hardest battle to win.
I would not recommend going Vegan as a response to diabetes. Maybe for gout, but not for diabetes. Because a lot of vegan/vegetarian food options are carb-heavy, it's going to be difficult balancing the appropriate carb load that you need for daily meals so that your blood sugar doesn't elevate. Chicken and cheese are staple low/no-carb foods, and without those, you are going to have a difficult time coming up with meal plans. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not what I would recommend.
For diabetics, some safe "going out to dinner" options:
* Salad, with no croutons and either a Blue Cheese or Caesar dressing. While you get some carbs from the veggies and tomatoes and the like, it is usually WAY less than a single slice of bread.
* Many burger joints now accommodate low-carb lettuce wraps on their burgers. It's often "Lettuce Wrap" or "Protein Style". You may have cut red meat out of your diet, but there are other alternatives (chicken sandwiches, for examples) that you can get in a similar manner. Carl's Jr/Hardee's does this, so you can even get fast food done this way so it doesn't affect your blood sugar.
Chips are terrible for diabetics. But you can "make" chips by deep frying some soy yuba, cutting it into wedges and deep frying for about 1 minute. They bubble up and turn crispy. Leave them on a paper towel to drain the oil, and salt them. Tortilla chips can be made by getting high fiber low-carb tortilla wraps, brushing them with a little oil, salting them, then shoving them in a toaster oven and press "Toast" (probably easier to acquire than Yuba).
And with those two specific conditions it really sounds like getting a referral to a nutritionist would be a safer idea than picking a popular diet and asking the Internet to help you out with it.
Vegan and vegetarian also don't equal instant skinny or instant healthy, either.
I host a podcast about movies.
I have a strange feeling they will tell you you'd be better off halving your current portion sizes, cutting out soda from your diet, and taking up swimming laps for an hour 6 days/week.
Dropping 70 lbs by walking, eating less, and eating healthier. I still enjoy sodas and burgers (lord, do I), I just enjoy them less. I haven't had a flareup in almost a year.
your mileage may vary, but it'll be a good start.
gout SUCKS.
ease yourself into it and good luck to you!
What you eat is based on habit and availability, and habits are fucking hard to change, so the more you can do at the front end while shopping position yourself to eat healthy later, the better. Don't ever grocery shop while you're hungry, or buy based on cravings: use your actual brain to assess food that you should be buying. Buy fresh produce (not dried) to force yourself to eat it instead of processed snacks. If you want a sweet, eat an apple. If you want chips, eat baby carrots. The more water and fiber you're snacking on, the more you aren't snacking on fat, salt, empty carbs, and sugar.
Generally speaking, you want to be eating food that tastes good by virtue of preparation method and actual flavorings, i.e. herbs & spices, it contains. Processed food usually abandons both of those things in favor of salt, fat, and sugar, and simply are not a good bet. If you need to keep buying processed food, every time you buy it, look at the label: what is the health value of the food? Is this really something that is good to eat? Then every time you eat, look at the label again: what is the serving size? Because that's how much you will be eating, and more than likely, for tasty food, you won't be able to eat much. At all.
You don't need to cut out meat or dairy, but those things (plus bread and pasta) should be taking up a small portion of your diet vs. plant matter. When you eat a meal, your sides shouldn't be an afterthought that you neglect for the main; you should be filling up on plentiful vegetable-based sides and savoring a small portion of the meaty, cheesy, carb-y, salt-y, delicious main.
You don't need to "learn to cook" necessarily, but you probably won't get healthy on processed food. The best approach to integrate healthy food into your lifestyle is to find a selection of simple, healthful recipes you can execute, preferably ones you can make on a weekend that stay good through the week, because cooking after work fucking sucks.
Basically, here are some good, easy, minimal-actual-cooking foods you should have it in your arsenal (just google them to get an actual set of specific directions to follow):
-stir fry: just shitload of any vegetable you feel like eating + a smaller portion of chicken or tofu. if you're using a pre-made sauce on, look at the label and measure out a serving based on what it specifies the serving size is.
-roast vegetables: cut up any vegetable (broccoli is my favorite but almost anything works, and you can do a bunch at once), put it on a tray, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on salt and pepper. heat the oven to 400f and throw it in. listen to a podcast or watch Netflix on your tablet in the kitchen until you smell good smells, then take it out and eat it. on a lazy night when I'm beat from work, I just keep broccoli in the fridge and eat a huge plate of this for dinner, and feel completely satisfied.
-steel cut oats: basically boil a shitload of plain steel cut oats and leave them to soak overnight. you now have a week's worth of breakfast, just add a little milk + stevia/honey/fresh fruit and microwave.
-soup: inherently a comfort food, even when it's healthy and shit. I'm guessing if you google "healthy easy soup," you can find some simple recipes that are veggie-heavy and light on meat and pasta. make sure you look at the labels on pre-made stock to find the healthiest one, since that's gonna be a major component
-seafood, if you like it: clams, crab, oysters, and even fish all require minimal fucking around to make delicious. (clams: add garlic, water, and boil. crab: add a little salt and boil, or buy pre-cooked at the seafood counter. oysters: watch a video on how to shuck, and slurp. fish: olive oil + salt + a little lemon and/or garlic and heat in a pan until its done through.) plus, anything with a shell, while potentially a pain in the ass, slows down your eating and gives you both more time to savor the food, and time for your stomach to register that it isn't hungry anymore.
-banana ice cream: cut up banana, freeze banana, blend banana. now if you want something sweet, you have this.
Also, no meatballs? Fucking chicken meatballs, my friend. Make sure they have thyme in them and you're golden. My favorite ones are from this soup, which is tasty as fuck and just so easy and satisfying and lasts all week and hnnngh. If you have a bowl of that soup with two of the meatballs, plus a big side of roast vegetables, that is a real tasty dinner.
Anyway uh I dunno if any of this rambling is helpful at all, but if nothing else, make that soup. It's so good.
The best tip I can give you is to learn to cook like a vegan - this book is great for that (although it's a vegetarian as opposed to vegan cookbook). Having to follow a recipe every time you want to eat is a bummer - learning how to cook without recipes is much better.
If, however, you also want some recipes, here is a spreadsheet of vegan recipes. Not all of them are cheap and not all of them are easy, but most of them are cheap and easy.
A really great cookbook for a beginner vegan is Alternative Vegan by Dino Sarma Weierman. The vast majority of the recipes in there are very cheap and pretty easy to make. It's also a fairly good cookbook in terms of teaching you how to cook, like that Low Budget Vegetarian cookbook I linked above.
Being a vegan won't automatically make you healthier. If you're going vegan in order to be healthier, check with your doctor first.
Whether or not you go vegan, your best bet is to learn to cook, period, and to make sure you only buy ingredients, as opposed to prepared food. If you know what is going into your food, you can make sure you only eat healthy food, you can make things taste the way you want them to taste, you can control your portion sizes, and you save a fuckton of money.
This has nothing to do with health, but if you end up going vegan diet-wise, you might decide that you might as well go vegan more completely, as in, cut out animal products not just for health reasons but also because animals are treated like shit to make much of our food. If that happens, check Barnivore for a list of vegan beer and wine. (Yes, some beer and wine isn't vegan. You'd be surprised at the places fish bladders end up...)
With two diet influenced diseases, get your doctor to recommend a diet.
Cooking is no big deal. At first you will suck but after a month or so you will be starting to develop some healthy favorites. This website is great. I use their recipes even though I don't eat healthy.
http://www.eatingwell.com/healthy_cooking
yes and no
No big deal in that you can learn to make some basic dishes that taste pretty good fairly easily
But committing to cooking, as in taking control of what you eat, that's kind of a bigger deal. It's easy to backslide. I will freely admit to 3 occasions this year when, after coming off a late shift, being dog tired, and coming back to the house to find a god damb mess, I straight up trolololed to the local chinese takeaway and brought home a bagful of the dirtiest, lowest kind of "chinese" food and comfort-binged the lot.
But
I can get away with that because apart from two upscale hamburger meals and a vegetarian dish at a lebanese place in town, every other dinner I've eaten this calendar year has been home cooked. I know what sugar I'm eating, I know what salt I'm eating, I know what fats I'm eating.
I also learned a lot of chef-style knife work (how to really slice and cut things without going making a mess of it) from alton brown
videos online.
Edit: the other things I tell people who want to get in much better shape are
1) Measure. Spend 1-2 weeks just carefully logging everything you eat and how many calories are in it. Myfitnesspal is a great phone ap for this. Get a real weight and body composition if you can afford to - there's something called a dexapod that is usually about 50 bucks to use once and will give you much more accurate numbers than a home scale or even a doctor with calipers could
2)sleep. Find a way to sleep. Insomnia and weight are a downward spiral, particularly for males, who get it a little worse due to being slightly more prone to obstructive sleep apnea. Measure at least the hours you sleep, the depth if possible (this usually means buying a thing and isn't always practical). If you have any chronic throat or snoring problems, see a a doctor about sleep testing - and if a gp blows it off, consider a consult with an ENT. If they say you have sleep apnea, they make you use this fairly annoying sleep mask thing, but if you need it, you need it, and you may find your energy and activity level shoot up.
3) You can't outrun your fork. Activity is good for your cardiovascular system and it meets diet maybe 1/3rd of the way, but you aren't going to outrun your fork, not at first. Unless you're a freakshow. Muscle helps, lifting weights helps a lot. Not just because it expends calories in the act, but because the "burn" weightlifters are always talking about, the healing phase of lifting, is a calorie sink. It also increase testosterone, lowers stress hormones etc.
4) find activities you like as well as ones you make yourself do. A simple walk - 15 minutes each way - every day will help you tremendously. Almost as much as running the same distance, where weight loss alone is concerned.
Edit2
the interwebs are full of sites that show 100 calories on a plate like this
Also, if you are careful, you still have fast food options - wendys has good salads, so does subway.
The trick is not to just boost them back up to sandwich level by putting a bunch of goopy dressing and fried chicken breast on them.
If you want to really help dieting, vegan or no, learn to *make your own sauces and dressings* because believe it or not, that's where a lot of trouble comes in.
Also, learn to bake squashes and beets. I HATED the boiled veggies I grew up on until I got out of the house and started roasting everything in the oven. A beet sliced thin, touched with a little olive oil, with salt and pepper to taste, roasted at 350 for 45 minutes, will actively make you no longer want a potato chip. And they're cheap as shit, and you can use the greens in other stuff, and you can use the beet-red olive oil left on your aluminum foil as dressing by adding just a little sherry vinegar.
I host a podcast about movies.
Yeah, cutting out red meat (and turkey) and dark soda will do you wonders itself for gout.
@Wash , for your pre-diabetes, consider cutting processed grains from your diet like cereal, bread, and all sweets.
If you can't catch it or pick it, don't eat it.
You're also going to want to start working out, every day of the week. You don't have to lift weights but diabetes is often linked to a sedentary lifestyle. That means going for a walk for an hour a day. An hour a day might help prevent you from being on pills or losing limbs and being on dialysis. A very small price to pay.
Buy a food scale. Measure out food portions precisely, learn what's in a healthy portion and stick to it. Every day. If it's easier cook for the whole week, make the weeks worth of food and put it in containers and warm it up. It's really not super difficult to cook.
Things like chicken are fairly easy to cook. Grab some boneless/skinless (always skinless for you) chicken breast, and parboil/poach it for roughly 15 minutes. Obviously use a meat thermometer to read it at 165 if you're still unsure of doneness. There you just cooked yourself some food.
Obviously because of your gout, you're pretty limited in the types of meats you can prepare, so you'll want to stick to white meats like pork and chicken, and maybe consider haddock, salmon, or tuna as well. Fresh tuna, don't buy canned shit.
This is going to be a major lifestyle change itself, without going full vegan, because the food is healthy and not loaded with sugars, fats, and carbs.
As for what to eat with your chicken, grab yourself some salads (without dressing) from the grocery store, or, make your own. Once you're feeling adventurous, learn how to steam vegetables (avoid asparagus with gout).
If you don't have any of the tools, look into things like a food scale, grill pans, vegetable steamers, a relatively good quality chef's knife, some cutting boards (get at least 4), and maybe a slow cooker.
Once you start going and experimenting, you learn really quick. Hey if you mess up, so what, you mess up, you tried though!
Remember the biggest way to lose weight is portion control. So use that scale, start with something basic (like seasoned and poached chicken with steamed broccoli), and get yourself healthy bro.
Edit:spelling fixes
If you're a big fella and unfit (like me!), walking is a good way to get started. Swimming is brilliant though, because it's zero impact and very good cardio, and you don't sweat your brains out as bad as you do going hiking.
As far as exercise goes, I'm extremely insecure about my body so swimming is out, but I've got a bowflex treadclimber set up in my room now. Right now I can barely go 8 minutes on the thing without feeling exhausted, so I'll be walking every morning starting at 30 minutes and gradually working my way up.
For one, it's a drastic change in diet that might be harder to stick to than an equivilant diet that includes small amounts of lean fish or poultry. You're flat out more likely to backslide on the vegan diet and this is your health we're talking about. Sure, I'd love it if you went vegan, but for the right reasons. Maybe you start to care more about animal welfare and the environmental impact of the meat and dairy industry. But not because you want the biggest 180 diet you can find.
Being vegan, as others have pointed out, isn't necessarily healthy. Dude, tonight I'm making tacos with meatless chorizo, dairy-free sour cream, a little vegan cheese, ghost pepper salsa, and all the guacamole I can find. That's not to say it can't be healthy.My usual lunch is a giant salad with no dressing and 2 or 3 plain baked potatoes.
So yeah. Go vegan when you're in a more stable place health wise. It's good for you and better for the planet. But for now, alter your current diet. Smaller portions is KEY. A couple years back I started halving all my portions (and never finishing a meal at a restaurant) and it helped so much. It doesn't take a lot of food to feel full, but it does take a little time before that sated feeling kicks in, which is why a lot of people keep eating until they feel like they're going to pop.
Also, listen to others who said to speak with your doctor about specific types of food that are best for your condition. If need be, contact a nutrionist who specializes in it to get a consult. Lots of them will do a consultation and meal plan via email or Skype.
And if you're ever in NJ and on your cheat day, drop by my bakery for a vegan cupcake.
I suggest learning to make vegetable and bean stews. easy, cheap, and healthy. since both are loaded with fiber portion control is very easy. I did it because stews are about the only way I will eat vegetables and while I don't have any health problems it's still something I should do.
I think the OP will just get pain from this as he is very overweight and has gout. I'd advise he gets over his bashfulness and does non-weight bearing exercise in a pool. OP, no-one in the pool is going to judge you, and if they do, screw them. I see plenty of overweight people at my gym and I don't care.
If your insurance will cover it, I would not just see your doctor, but have him recommend a physical therapist. Having a lot of extra weight on you can put a huge strain on things, and you want to exercise in a way that wont cause injury, especially to your spine. My partner is working out of a lot of lower back pain, it can really hinder your progress to hurt yourself while you are trying to loose weight.
If you consider swimming, join a 24hour gym and scope it out. Ask the people at the desk what the slowest times are. Usually by the time we go to the gym (8pm) its after the afterwork crowd, and the pool is empty. I imagine that its like that if you can get in early enough to beat the before work crowd, or midday (though that maybe soccer moms and old people.) I just dislike being in busy/crowded places, so I enjoy going to the gym when its slow anyway. I would try to avoid a place that's going to sell you stupid crap (golds), We joined a 24 hour fitness because they didn't ask for our phone number/fitness goals/try to sit us down for 20minutes of bullshit before joining.
As a dude of gravity that eventually became a dude much of less gravity, here are some tips:
Being vegan is rad. All the baby animals will love you for not eating them.
Beans are an amazing source of protein, love those beans. All the beans man you can't go wrong.
Raw sandpaper kale that makes you declare the death of god is the best source of iron. Eat tons of it, it'll keep you from going anemic AND drastically reduce your chances of getting colon cancer. If it feels like agony with every bite then you're doing it right.
Don't drink any soda! None! Zero! Zilch! Sugar water is the key to girth - it is your enemy.
Keep a diet journal - you're only accountable to yourself, so if you dont write down every goddamn thing you eat and then really face facts when you review the journal at the end of the day then you're not going to cheat anyone but yourself.
Get yourself some gummy multi-vitamins, and make sure you're getting a source of omega-3's somewhere. Whether getting a daily serving of avacado or getting it in one of your vitamins, you need this.
Hit up a store that sells this stuff in bulk and sprinkle it on stuff like you would parmasean cheese - "LARGE FLAKE NUTRITIONAL YEAST" yum yum cowboy, that's b12. eat that or you'll get all sorts of weird problems.
No eating past 7 pm. Nope. Don't do it dawg. Go brush your teeth at 7 pm. If you get hungry, good! That's your body chowin down on your fat cells. Keep that up. Drink cinammon tea or tea that has something spicy in it - this is a really good appetite supression method.
Still hungry after 7? Drink water. More. Keep drinking it. Do it. KEEP DRINKING.
Walking is great man keep it up, get 10,000 steps in.
Learn how to do squats. Do like 10 squats right now. Yeah you heard me, do 10 squats right now. Squats use so many muscles and burn so many calories it's like nature's perfect workout. Get them squats in, you can do it!
If you wanna rap more about how to not eat twigs and grass and be a happy vegan hit me up anytime.
@Wash What do you normally eat for breakfast and lunch? In a lot of ways these are the most critical meals to get control of because they tend to be the ones where people are under time constraints; so the quick "slab of garbage" from the drive thru has extra appeal. What do you normally drink during the day? How do you take your coffee?
Purines are not found exclusively in red meat or turkey or tuna or what have you. Ancient people associated gout with red meat and royalty because they ate tons of mature game meats and organ meats, which are basically the worst. Purines are also high in some vegan staples, like lentils, so you really, really have to track individual foods and your response to them. Alcohol irritates gout and so can the metabolism of large amounts of fructose. Which is not to say don't eat fruit, more like don't drink 5 pieces of citrus fruit as a morning smoothie every day for a month.
the BEST thing you can do to lower your number of gout outbreaks is to improve your physical condition generally by being less sedentary. again, just walking would help tons. if you can get to the point you just walk a half mile from your house and back every day, that's going to help a shit-ton.
Lowering your overall calories will also lower your overall purine levels. If you are eating 4000 calories a day and getting infrequent gout flare ups, consistently reducing that to 2600 calories a day might reduce or eliminate it all on its own.
Not to employ scare tactics, but you want to get on this shit right now.
Imagine how bad your toe hurts and burns and understand that could be in your hips and spine if it keeps getting worse.
I host a podcast about movies.
@tinwhiskers
I've been doing a banana with some peanut butter for breakfast, a cup of coffee with a splash of milk and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Following the advice I've received, I haven't cut meats entirely out, so twice a day I've been having a small piece of fish or chicken accompanied by steamed vegetables - usually a medley of green beans and carrots, or squash, or broccoli, and when I'm feeling snacky I have a piece of fruit like an orange, some baby carrots with humus, or a handful of almonds.
Besides the coffee, the only other drink I've consumed since I started this thread has been water. So far so good, I just need to work out more of a routine, and get my hands on some vitamins. At the moment I don't have insurance so things like physical therapy will have to wait, but doing squats sounds like a good idea.
Thank you all for your replies! I feel like a lot of what I need to get things going has been laid out for me here and I truly appreciate it.
Also, I have this thing. Which is like skynet married a crockpot.
It is a bit pricey, but pretty amazeballs. It compacts about 8 kitchen gizmos into one, and it can seriously steam fresh veggies with not much more time or effort than microwaving canned. It is the shit. You can even get an extra liner for it so you can throw one in the washer and keep cooking if the washer isn't full.
I host a podcast about movies.
Amazon even sells them in packs of two for $540 dollars!
Which is only four times the cost of buying one!
I actually got mine in a gold box deal or whatever for like $80. Best appliance purchase ever, for reals.
Dude. It does not eff around. Steamed veggies for six in the time it would take to make a hot pocket? Yes, please. Brown something right in the crockpot before I slow cook it? Yes please. I seriously was not really alive before I got an instantpot, aka benevolent kitchen robot overlord.
I host a podcast about movies.
As a person who has lost 51 pounds this year - you can do it. Set your daily caloric limit and stick to it. Don't really start to work out a lot until your body gets used to an adjusted diet, or you'll end up having weird hunger and energy spikes. The idea is to normalize both. Your body will crave what you used to eat constantly (sweets usually) and if you don't divulge yourself about once a week, it's really hard to feel like you're getting anything done. Start to cut your cheat days down to every two weeks and then to once a month, and eventually you may not even want them any more. My last cheat day I was going to order a pizza and found myself on the Papa Johns website just...not wanting it. If I can do it, you can, too!