Welcome & Introductions
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Hi!! I’m Laurie. Vegan for 8 years. I’m in California and looking to lose about 40-ish pounds. So glad to see an active vegan group!!4
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Welcome in the group Laurie
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I'm so glad to have found this group. I've been a lacto-ovo vegetarian since 1981 or 82 and have done vegan occasionally, I've done it for weeks at a time, but just always fall back to eating cheese.
I'm making a commitment to start in January to go 100% vegan at home and as vegan as I can when out. I'm also going to cut out the processed food - it might be giving me a lot of protein, but it's also giving me a lot of sodium, sugar and preservatives. So 2024 is my year to truly go Whole Food, Plants Only!
I'm in another group here on MFP - Eating to Live (Whole Foods Plant Based), but since I'm committing to 100% vegan the extra support from another group can only help.
I also have to commit to a regular gym routine - it's been pretty inconsistent since mid-September and I need my workouts back!
I agree with what so many others here have posted - a vegetarian diet is not necessarily a weight loss diet. You still have to put the work into eating healthy food and portion control.
Looking forward to a healthy and happy 2024 with this new group!
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Welcome @SparkSpringtime69 - it will be good to have more active members here! We all have pretty similar goals, whether vegan or vegetarian…
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Welcome @SparkSpringtime69 1
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Hi Everyone! I'm Denee...I gotta tell you it was like going down the rabbit hole trying to find this group but so glad I kept looking for a vegan group! I have been vegan for about 3 years but have fallen off the wagon a bunch of times. I lost 80lbs about 15 years ago and was running half marathons. I had an injury that caused me to have to stop running (well more like wogging for me lol) and over the years here came the pounds roaring back. I am now at the point of hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. When I found that out I hit the books, so to speak, to find out about how I could get my healthy self back WITHOUT big pharma. I just refuse to take pills if there's even the slightest chance I can do this naturally. Low fat plant based was the only diet I found that can actually get rid of these diseases and actually has research to back it up so I went all in. Within 30 days of following Dr Neal Bernard's 21 day kickstart I went to the doctor and my blood pressure was perfect. I know this works. I just have to stick to it this time.
I have two large rescue pups who are my entire family. Garin is 9 and half German Shepherd/half Greyhound. Ritter is 4 and a Golden Retriever/Bernese Mountain dog mix. Movement is not a problem for me...we do about 3 miles a day hiking. We actually did 5 miles today. For me the real challenge is not having any wine and sticking to the low fat vegan plan. Having others who live this lifestyle will be very helpful! Thank you for starting the group!6 -
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Hi Denee !
Great results on your blood pressure, well done
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Hi @DawnDenee welcome to the group! I was vegetarian for decades and the PCRM 21-Day Kickstart was my first try at vegan. I loved it, but I do still fall back to eating some non-vegan things.
We all do what works best for us and our health. This year I'm committing to very close to 100% (may go to vegetarian when eating out).
Good to hear your BP is normal 1 -
So happy to find this group! My name is Sandy and I'm looking for vegan friends here ☺️ please add me if you like, I find the accountability so motivating 😊4
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Welcome Sandy! Will send a friend request!2
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I became aware of this group from a post that @AnnPT77 made elsewhere. It sounded interesting, so here I am!
I was a vegetarian for 30 years. It started in seventh grade when I read an article in Consumer Reports that said people could get all the protein they needed without eating meat. I decided to forego red meat for 30 days, just as an experiment, and well, things just went from there.
Over those three decades, I would waiver back and forth about eating dairy or eggs. From time to time I slid into a pescatarian approach. During that time, my family also started moving towards a healthier way of eating. My mother was a big fan of Diet for a Small Planet. My uncle and aunt's family was doing Pritikin. We ate well. I learned good lessons on how to cook, and that has served me well throughout my life.
I don't remember when, but I became an omnivore. One reason was to make it easier for people to plan river trips. I do multi-day self-supported river trips every year, and everyone shares meal planning and cooking. In order to make it easier for my fellow travelers to plan, my ex and I just decided that we would not impose any restrictions on meal planning. The exception is my ex said that, "Dinner can't just be a steak - there has to be vegetables." Kind of interesting because some of the people I boat with HAVE to have meat at almost every meal.
Currently I really don't eat much meat at all In general I avoid eating poultry because of the way most domestic fowl live and die. Actually, even when I was not eating meat, I would eat wild game, and I still will. I am an angler. I am also a SCUBA diver, and sometimes I collect Dungeness crabs while diving.
I love to cook. I also love to eat. Enter MyFitnessPal! Back before about 2017, I realized it was time to make some changes. I didn't want to subscribe to a commercial service, so I was using the USDA "SuperTracker" website. It was for sure klunkier than MFP, but it was not run by a business. Well, they decided to roll up their operation, and I poked around at a couple different other options and settled on MFP. Next month marks six years. I log every day, although sometimes it's from a wild estimate. I like to go on multi-day river trips, so I have a "recipe" called "Rafter's Rations" that's just a huge number of calories made up of fat, carbohydrate, and protein. I just log that for every day I'm gone and call it good. I still try to pay attention when on these trips or otherwise away. You can't manage what you don't measure, so I pretty much always show up. It works. I lost the weight I needed to lose in the first year, and I have <mostly> maintained with some gains that started around the time we were dealing with COVID. I've been up and down since then, and it's all OK. Well mostly. Sometimes I get frustrated. Who doesn't? But mostly I accept that I'm going to bounce around, and I will not go back to where I was before 2017.
I hope I'm welcome to stick around even though my way of eating does include honey, eggs, dairy, yeast and every now and then parts of animals. Yeast is actually more closely related to animals than plants. I do eat lots of plants. I grow lots of fruits and often have a vegetable garden. I like whole grains and legumes, and I love roasting vegetables.
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@mtaratoot of course you're welcome to stay! Thanks to @AnnPT77 for mentioning us. This group is still small, but I started it with everyone who likes to eat vegetables and plant based foods in mind. I should do a better job promoting the group, but can't seem to find the time.
@takinitalloff also eats meat, but many vegetarian and vegan options. Probably best to not post meat on the food photo thread though, although we don't have rules and definitely no rules against milk products on there.
Thanks for sharing your story - I never thought about yeast and mushrooms not being plants (although I had that knowledge stashed away somewhere )...I do eat both too, I sometimes also eat a bit of honey.
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Hi! I’m Phyllis. I’ve been vegan for 7 years. I’ve been in and out of MFP over the years.2
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Hi Phyllis !
Welcome
What is your objective ?1 -
Hi everyone--I'm Barb. I found this group from a link that @henridw2095 put out in another group. I was vegetarian for a time in college, then a meat-eater again. I'm finding myself wanting something better for both my heart and body. I currently still eat meat/fish, but on a limited basis. I will aim to do even less this month. I would love to have some new vegetarian/vegan recipes to try! And since I'll be hiking quite a bit this year, I think it would be cool to be able to take vegetarian and/or vegan meals with me on my camping/hiking trips. Thanks for having me!2
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Welcome!
I'm pretty new here too. It's a friendly bunch!
If you have a food dehydrator, you can make your own backpacking meals. Friends do this for self-support multi-day kayak trips where we carry everything we need for a week or more in our whitewater kayaks or canoes. That includes clothes, food, water bottles and filtration system, tent, sleeping system, toilet system, stove, and everything we need.
What you can do is when you make a meal, make a double-batch. Eat half. Weigh the other half, then put it in the dehydrator until it's really super dry. Weigh it again. The difference in weight is how much water to add back since a gram is a CC, and an ounce is an ounce. Vacuum seal or use zip-seal bags. Write how much water is needed on every bag. You can keep the in the freezer until you're ready to go.
When you get to camp, add the amount of water indicated, and then let it sit for a little while. It doesn't take long. Then heat gently on your backpack stove. Boom! Home cooked meal!
For pasta, cook it first and then dehydrate it. It sounds counterintuitive, but do it. Avoid very oily things.4 -
Hi Barb, glad you made it!! Welcome!!1
