Every once in awhile, I believe God allows things to happen to direct me to what I need to do/hear. Last night was one of those times. I was driving from a friend’s house to go home (actually, I was … Continue reading
I’ve almost been vegan for a year. Can you believe it? Time has gone by so quickly, and I don’t regret a second of it! So I thought I’d fill you in on my progress, and something that switched mentally along the way.
When I first went vegan, in the end of June/beginning of July 2015, I went through a week of major withdrawal; not from animal products, but from cheese! My husband ate nachos almost daily, and the smell of melted cheese would be ever so tempting. So how did I combat it? By having a piece of fruit in my hand and shoving it in my mouth… lol. You do what you have to do.
From there, it got easier. However, since I was so excited about this vegan world, I started looking for everything vegan in the grocery stores. I subscribed to a local Organic Box delivery which was the greatest thing because then I was able to select organic produce to be delivered weekly so that I always had fruit and veggies available. But as the fall came, things changed.
In the colder weather, I wanted cooked foods all the time. No problem, really. You can easily be a cooked food vegan. But, with a few complications in starting up my next school year, I started grabbing denser calorie, fast food. This meant hitting much too much of the shelves and freezers in the grocery stores. Not only was I excited that so many things were vegan, but I was able to try so many vegan products. Let’s just say, I was not paying attention to the macronutrient breakdown in any of them. My diet was very high in fat.
Now, I was already mentally transitioning from a person who had heavily counted calories, starved myself to lose weight, and pretty much obsessed with being thin to someone who was just concerned about being healthier for myself and doing what I felt God was calling me to do. That didn’t make it any easier when I found my weight still climbing. I was eating all that I cared for, reaching a state of being full but not being stuffed. I felt pretty well, but I knew the weight gain was not what I wanted. However, I continued on because it was easy to do.
Christmas came, and I was so excited to travel to the states to try some new vegan restaurants. They were AMAZING. But it hit me when my mother-in-law had to ask my husband if she should even bother asking me if I wanted to sort through some clothes of hers before she donated them. That told me right away everyone noticed my weight gain. I started to feel pretty bad.
The following two months presented me with some of the greatest stress I have had in quite awhile. My husband left for school in the states, I moved our entire apartment myself, making appointments to sell items along the way. As soon as things were finally moved, I had to prepare report cards. As soon as that was over, I had to prepare for parent-teacher interviews. Needless to say, I got really sick after that. I literally did not have a single break, and as happy as I was to be leaving our old place, I hit the point of nostalgia as it was emptied and I was doing it alone. Emotional ups and downs, zero rest, and not eating was a recipe for disaster, and a time to hit my highest weight. I knew things had to change.
I was not giving up veganism, that was not an issue. Veganism had made me feel better about pretty much everything. In fact, when I was not reminded about my weight gain, I actually felt amazing. But I knew I could do better.
With my husband in school, and I taking on all of our bills, the money was cinched tight. I had/have a very small budget which meant all those vegan junk foods were few and far between. I actually had to start cooking again! And you know what? I felt even better than before. I found out that my greatest eating pattern is eating raw throughout the day (mostly fruit) and eating a cooked meal in the evening. The cooked meal ranges from pasta to potatoes to veggies and vegan proteins, to vegan sushi, to cream of wheat, to sandwiches. They are not complicated at all, and are whole-food based. I feel vibrant and amazing and have even found a 6-day pattern of attending the gym again. And that’s when it happened: I started caring less about my weight gain.
I knew I was bigger than I wanted to be, but I chose to trust the system. People have been through this before; I’m not the only one. God’s original diet for us was the fruits of the earth, and I was closer than ever to following that diet. I began to pray for God to not only bless my food before I ate it, but to bless my efforts in trying to eat the way He designed for us, and for my results to show to others that this is His design as well. I began to pray before workouts for the same thing. And then I continued to eat when I was hungry and stop when I was full, except this time, it was whole plant foods from home.
You know what? In less than two months, I am down 14 pounds from my heaviest. Did I cut calories at all? No. In fact, I have been logging my food everyday just to see how much I’m eating. Some days, I’m not very hungry and I only eat around 1500 calories. I don’t like to go lower than this, so that does involve an some extra food I probably wouldn’t have otherwise eaten. Some days, I’m super hungry and can eat over 3000 calories. I’m not starving my body anymore. I’m giving it the healthy nutrition it needs, and it’s working.
I’ve always worked out which you’ll see if you have followed this blog for quite awhile, so that has not changed. I’m currently doing 3 full-body circuits a week with 3 cardio sessions between and 1 rest day. I’m getting stronger, and my endurance is better. I absolutely love it.
So I’m continuing on my vegan journey, in love with it greatly. My father has started his own fitness journey and to my surprise, displayed a picture of a blender with raw vegan protein powder. He’s been making banana/protein smoothies. It’s a huge step! My mother has been trying to cut down on the animal consumption within the house, and a coworker of mine has just begun her own vegan journey as well. More and more I’m realizing that people are waking up to the reality of how great a vegan diet is, for health reasons, beliefs, ethical and environmental reasons. It is truly the greatest. And though weight loss is awesome, it beats nothing to knowing your body is healthy and going to last you a little longer. When you eat healthy, the body releases the fat that is not good. It’s a slow process, and already within the two months, I’ve had over a week of being stalled on the exact same weight. But I continued nonetheless, and it paid off with a lower weight break in the end. So take courage. If I can do this, you can too. Start researching and be awakened to the world of truth that is out there. It’s truly amazing how deceiving the world is. Get to the nitty gritty and find out for yourself; the only regret you’ll have is that you didn’t do it sooner.
Sometimes in life, there are things we don’t know how to approach. There are people we want to say things to to, but for some reason can’t find the right words. Sometimes, they can be missed opportunities that are missed out of fear. Sometimes, they are missed because we keep waiting for something or someone else to bring up the topic so that we have an opportunity to put in our heartfelt words that we need to say. Some people unfortunately underestimate the amount of time that is available for some things to be said.
For years I have been trying to get enough courage or find the right moment to talk to my father about God; about my views on God and trying to find out exactly where he’s at. My father believes in God, absolutely. But after learning about how awesome it is to be a child of God, that you can openly talk to God as a friend and call him Father, Papa, or even Daddy if you’d like, it left me in a state of uneasiness seeing my dad only ever refer to Him as things like “The Man Upstairs”. I didn’t get a sense of owning God, of realizing that God loved Him. But how do I bring up such a sensitive topic with my own father? I know, I know. Some of you would say that I should love my father enough to bring it up regardless, but just pause for a moment. This is my father. I care about him more than the average person I would meet and talk about God with. I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t want him to ask questions I don’t know the answer to. If I want to talk about it, I want to do it right, and there were not enough rehearsals to ever make me feel prepared.
But God changed that this summer.
Now, I think part of the reason is I had to tell my family I had turned vegan. They were used to me being vegetarian before, so in reality, vegan wasn’t much more of a step. They took the news a lot better this time than they did originally when I turned vegetarian, so I’m assuming I had them “warmed-up” for the big change.
Because I had to tell my family I was vegan, Dad asked me why I made the switch this time. I loved this question! I had the opportunity to tell my dad about the health benefits of being vegan and how much better it is. I didn’t go into incredible details of the effects on animals because my dad wasn’t there yet. But what did surprise me was one of the responses he did give me, which was simply this: “I could probably live without meat. But I guess my thing is I don’t want to. I love my steak.”
Now I know, there are definitely some people in the vegan community who would start criticizing my dad right away. I have heard and seen all the criticisms that could be used against his statement. But just hold on a second, after all, I know my dad better than you.
His statement was honest. He didn’t lie about it, he didn’t make excuses, he told the truth. He even admitted (for the first time ever) that he could probably live without meat! How big of a reality is that! This, coming from a man who literally grew up on the vegetables his mother grew in the garden, and the meat his father hunted in the woods. Even to this day, the family gets together to share moose meat if someone wins their moose license. It’s a way for them to save money and stock up the food supplies for the winter. Remember, New Brunswick’s economy is not huge by any means. And, if you think of it that way, he didn’t even go off listing a whole bunch of meats he couldn’t live without, he said one – steak. Now, I don’t support the killing of animals, I really don’t. But if he could even stop eating all other meats and only have steak once in awhile, that still saves lives! There is room for progress! So anyways, you can feel my excitement and hopefully understand it over that reply.
So I don’t know if it was because he was already asking me why I eat the way I eat or what, but he then asked me a question I have been waiting YEARS to answer, and that was about my faith. Now he didn’t ask an open-ended question such as what I believe, but he kind of asked in a weird way how my beliefs were compared to Catholicism. Now I can’t claim that he was questioning Catholicism, but I can say that he NEVER would have asked me this before. In fact, when I was baptized Seventh-day Adventist, my grandparents (his parents) told me I was playing with religions and that you should stick to the one you were born into. They are very set in following traditions which is also what the Catholic church holds onto, so I always saw my father having the same mindset.
Regardless, he opened up.
I asked him to clarify a little, and he basically asked if my beliefs had Saints like the Catholic church does, or if we pray to Mary, or those kinds of things. Now, imagine my heart bursting wide open at this point. Again, he may not be questioning things about the Catholic church that I don’t believe in, but it almost sounds like he is! So I just say no, and explain that everything we believe comes straight out of the Bible, and that we did have a “prophet” within the last century who passed all the tests as provided by the Bible as to how to recognize a true prophet or not, and though we don’t worship her or praise her, we do use her inspired teachings/writings as a deeper way to understand some of the confusing things in the Bible. After all, the Bible was written by God-inspired people. So it does make sense that somebody could have been chosen to be inspired by God again, which is why they conducted the Bible’s prophet tests on her to make sure she was truly being led by God. And I continued to explain to him that of course the Bible comes first, that we always pray to God, and that we do also believe in the Trinity: God (Father), Jesus (Son), and the Holy Spirit. But I told him (to emphasize the point) that everything we (or at least I) try to believe has to be based in the Bible, as tricky as that can be sometimes.
I’m not sure how my dad took all of that. It definitely wasn’t everything I wanted to say, but it was enough for the situation we were in. I wish I could say my dad said we’d continue the conversation later, but he didn’t. Mind you, we were in a busy situation, but I’m holding onto the fact that I’m praying God used that moment to plant seeds in my dad’s heart and mind. I’m praying that my dad will realize the greater relationship he could have with God than I think he does. I want that so bad for my dad, but as many of us know, if you push things, the person will usually retract. So for now, I’m being thankful God gave me that opportunity after so many years and will continue to pray that maybe Dad will ask me about things again so I can dive a little more into the personal relationship side of things. I’m still in awe that God did this for me, even though it has taken 10 or so years. God does answer prayer, that’s a fact.
So to end on a little extra happy note, my step mother and I have never talked about religion. I don’t really know her religious background… it’s just not usually a subject that is brought up. But even when I was driving around with her doing errands, she brought it up. And our conversation focussed more on whether the school I taught at accepted students of all walks of life, or if they could only be of our religion. We talked about how students from all walks of life do come to my school, but we don’t bend our beliefs based on theirs because they are choosing to pay and come to our school for some reason. She was curious how I taught my Bible classes, and I told her that I do respect the feelings and beliefs of all of my students, but that I’m not going to tell them to be sheep. I don’t just want them to believe things because I tell them to, because at one point, we all question what we believe. I want them to know why they believe what they believe with evidence, straight out of the Bible in black and white. I also told her that if they end up asking me a question about something I don’t know, I don’t ignore it. I either search out the answer myself, or we study it together as a class.
For example, this year my students were not into studying the life of Christ, something they’ve more or less covered since attending church as infants, but they wanted to know about the end times, about the dragon of Revelation, about what to expect. So you know what I did? Tossed my plans, and we started studying Revelation together. It was the most rewarding decision I could have made. Yes, there is some scary stuff in that book, but my students came from that book knowing so much better what to expect, what is going on in our lives, and how God is fighting for them every step of the way, wanting to protect them from every evil that is here and will come. They knew that things might get difficult for them, but that they shouldn’t fear as long as they put God first because ultimately, God is victorious and he is holding them in His hands the whole time.
I mentioned this in another blog, but it still blows my mind that two of my students who do not attend a church and do not come from religious families wrote to me at the end of the study, one saying that he had listened more than he ever thought he would, taking notes more than he ever had before, and the other saying how he’s not baptized (with a sad face) but knowing that he can do anything through the power of Christ and knowing that he can have a personal relationship with God was such good news to him. I mean, how much more powerful does it get than that! The students had questions, and God provided me the opportunity to learn and study with them. What an awesome way to be used by God!
So anyways, I guess if I can sum this up I would say, don’t be impatient. God’s timing is so much better than ours could ever be. And don’t give up. I mean, 10 years was a long time to wait for my opportunity to talk with my dad, but it came from his curiosity and not me preaching at him – 10 years, and God answered my prayer. So know that God does answer prayers. It may not be in the time you want, it may not be quite the answer you want, but God is always listening, and He will answer you.
Calm in Christ and Fitness 