Hitting my stride?

It seems as though it is becoming easier for me to find vegan foods, find hidden ingredients in non-vegan foods, and find good food to eat. I think that as I get more used to what to check for, it will be easier to eat better. Although I am still checking labels because I'm getting store-bought foods, for the most part, I have moved to getting veggies and fruit every week, eating all of them (yes, much like the clean plate club!) and rinding new ways to make good, nutritious meals fairly quickly. I had thought that cooking my meals would help hone some knife skills, but I have found that a kitchen shears does wonders dicing or mincing peppers, green onions, broccoli, and spinach. I still cut up the veggies, but the more involved prep is done with shears. Works great and pretty quick, too.

A couple of weeks ago I got to make a trip to Whole Foods that didn't involve dashing in to pick up a few things. This trip, I got to check all the areas of the store that have what I'd want and I came away with a good sense of what's available for me to make that I'll enjoy and my family may try, too. It was very exciting to have that first trip under my belt and I look forward to finding more treasures next time. Now, if I could only figure out what to do with the tempeh I bought!

Pitfalls and hidden traps trying to become vegan

Recently, my friend Gordon posted on his new blog A Vegan in the South a rather surprising and shocking piece of information for those of us who thought that they were keeping vegan by eating certain brands of “veggie burgers.” Reading Gordon’s post actually depressed me briefly, as I had been using Morningstar burgers as a primary means of getting some protein into my diet without using tofu, seitan, or tempeh (which I use, but I haven’t used enough to be really comfortable using all the time yet). I think I will ultimately be much better off not eating Morningstar burgers and I have found actual vegan burgers (Gardenburger brand) since I read Gordon’s post, but his warning opened my eyes to how much I don’t know about what I should and shouldn’t eat and how so very important carefully reading those labels is to making sure that what I’m eating is indeed vegan and not some weird marketing hybrid of ingredients.

Slight shift in focus

This blog was intended to be a chronicle of my life as I went through a difficult time for me. I made it through that time and decided to keep the blog going, updating it infrequently while hoping to post more often. Rather than set an expectation that may or may not be met, I'm going to shift the focus of this blog slightly and post when I feel I have something interesting to say. Now, honestly, I would really like to post in a more timely manner, and the focus shift may help get me to be more regular with my posts.

So here's the focus shift: I've changed a large and important part of my lifestyle drastically in the last five months (although I started these changes last July) and I have seen my weight drop from 226 lbs. in July of 2009 to 192.5 lbs. as of last week. I'm still running and training for races, so the change isn't getting more exercise. The other way to lose weight is by changing how and/or what you eat. Portion control, calorie or carb counting, special diets, etc. all can drop weight, albeit temporarily unless you stick with the program or book you're following. Lifestyle and habit changes, however, last longer (hopefully for the rest of your life) and are easier, in my opinion.

I have made lifestyle and eating habit changes and since at least late March, I became a vegetarian with hopes of becoming vegan. I am almost there. I say almost, because I can't 100% guarantee that food I eat that I did not make myself is vegan. I try very hard to make sure and experience and learning will get me to the point I feel comfortable saying I'm vegan.

But why? Well, right now, I have 33.5 reasons why. I've lost weight without feeling weak, tired, or hungry for foods I used to eat (and eat a lot!). I don't miss meat or dairy products and as I learn more about what I should eat and what I can eat to be vegan, I find that I actually like most of the foods people think vegans eat. Yes, that means tofu, hummus, veggies, fruit, soy milk, almond milk, but I already liked these foods. I didn't have to make a huge adjustment. I'm re-learning how to cook and re-learning that cooking everything on high is not necessary or even a good idea! Now, as time goes on, I may embrace the other aspects of a vegan lifestyle, but right now, I know that I can eat well, lose weight, and feel good about myself. And that's just fine with me.

So, how does this change affect this blog? Well, the posts may be more oriented toward my journey to a full vegan lifestyle (or not), but I wanted to give context to why you may see posts that talk about good vegan recipes, creative ways to make tofu, or what seitan is and why I eat it (once I try it).

Odds and Ends - briefly

Again time passes and this blog sits lonely, feeling forlorn. It's not, of course, just not top-of-mind right now. All of the great ideas I get for posts here get lost before I can write them. I even carry a small notebook to jot ideas down, but I forget to do that. Sad, really, but I will rectify that starting with this post. I may not write a lot each time, but I will write more often. I started this blog to post about my life in general when I was not in the best of places emotional and personally. I'm much better now - much, much better. We'll just have to see if I'm more timely.

Not forgotten

I've not forgotten this blog, I just tend to write more at The Mouse and More instead. Since last August, I trained for the 2010 Walt Disney World Marathon, which I ran in the coldest weather Orlando had seen in over 30 years; I celebrated my one year anniversary at my current job; and generally enjoyed life. I had thought I would use this blog as a general, catch-all for non-Disney related thoughts, but I haven't found the time I'd like to have to do more meaningful posts than simple updates. I still intend to try to post more often, because I feel like I have things to say. Hopefully I will be much better about updating more often. I mean, really, I don't think I could get worse, could I?

Twitter twittering, pt. 2

One thing I have noticed about using the Twitter apps on the iPhone is that they are somewhat interchangeable in function. Rather obvious observation, but what distinguishes one app from another? There are a few basic things I like to do when I'm using Twitter each time I open an app: check updates, direct messages, and respond to any follow requests. All four of the apps I have do these things in a very similar way. The differences are small, but may make the difference in choosing one app over another. For example, TwitBird Pro (formerly iTwitter) shows the most recent update so that you have to scroll down to find the last unread tweet. I have tried to find a way in the settings to switch this option, but I haven't yet. If I don't check for awhile, when I update I have to scroll down to find the last unread tweet. TwitBird Pro does allow for easy marking of read tweets, although the only option is to mark all read. I have been using TweetDeck more and more lately because of the groups option, whihc allows you to create groups for easier following of your Twitter friends. I also like the interface with TweetDeck more than the other three apps I have. The experiment will continue as I try to determine why I like one app more than another.

Twitter twitterings

Today, Twitter went down and revived itself before I even knew about it. I saw a news story online and then saw a flood of stories about how Armageddon had almost arrived. I was expecting the Four Horsemen of the Internet to have descended upon the fragile intertwinings of the new darling of social media. People were literally all atwitter about the lack of Twitter. I like Twitter, I use it, although in a more passive/lurker mode than as an active and frequent twitter tweeter. I follow friends and podcasts, folks who have similar interests that I may know from forums I read (and lurk in). I have posted 220 tweets (as of today) and I joined Twitter over a year ago. I have also sent about 60 direct messages (most to the same person – it seems quicker than email or texting for some reason). I’m not a super-user by any stretch of the imagination, but had I known that Twitter had big issues today, I probably would have checked every few minutes to see if it was back up and working. I like seeing what my tweeps are doing, what interesting pictures they're sharing, or what links they have posted. I do feel connected to these folks and I would not have enjoyed being out of touch.

How I would have checked Twitter's status brings me to this point: I can’t have Twitter open on my work laptop (nor should I, really), but I can check the various apps on my iPhone that allow users to tweet, post picture via Twitpic (or yfrog, flic.kr, etc.), send direct messages, follow, unfollow, well, you get the idea. The apps allow a person to follow Twitter, even when they can’t get to a computer. There are many apps around that do this. I have 4 right now, Twitterific, TweetDeck, TwitterFon, and iTwitter. What I’d like to try to do over the next few posts (which I hope are more frequent than my more recent posts), is review, in an unscientific way, these apps, how they work for me, which one I use most and why.