Incentives in Dieting

It's been a week since Mr. Jenjo went back to sea. One down, 5 to go.

The day before he left, I  suggested an incentive program to keep me active. As we both know, I am sometimes prone to cataclysmic levels of sloth and apathy when he goes away. I don't do it on purpose, it just happens, and without his presence here to "WOOT WOOT!!" me out of it, I comfortably stay that way. I won't lie: there have been nights in the past where I had a can of corn niblets for supper. Not hot, or seasoned. Just cold, sad corn, right out of the can. So, my idea for my incentive program was to get me off my ass and cooking new foods, grocery shopping for produce regularly, and exercising (my goal for the 6 weeks he is gone is to lose 10-15lbs from the day he left, in a good way, not a corn-diet way) instead of reading the comments sections on Facebook posts. Like a good husband, he said he would put some thought into it and let me know what my reward would be for forcing myself off the furniture.

That night, we went out for a meal at one of our favourite pizza places to check out their veg-friendly selections. While we were waiting to be seated, he said he had come up with an idea. Trusting my honesty, and willingness to succeed, he said if I managed to lose 10-15lbs in a safe, healthy way in the 6 weeks he was absent, he would put an end to my cursing on my Black & Decker blender and buy a new Ninja kitchen system. Let's be honest here, I was thinking he'd take me out for a nice dinner upon his return, or let me finally get to pick out a red car when the lease is up on our Sonata. But a Ninja blender/food processor for the kitchen?! This is SO MUCH BETTER! And I may eventually win on the red car next April (because I am tenacious like that), and still get a dinner date.

So, as proof that I have indeed been eating like a human being (albeit a plant-eating one), I present to you my food pictures because I have become that kind of person now. I am just steering into the skid.

 

Hummus, grilled mushroom & onion, Daiya shreds on English muffin w/ sweet kale salad. 

Homemade pesto, 4 grain penne, cherry tomatoes & corn topped with fresh pepper

Ginger garlic tofu and udon noodle stir fry.

One-pot Chickpea Biryani

See! I made food! And I started wearing my fitness tracker again, and even turned on the movement alert so if I have been stationary too long, it shames me into getting up and doing something. Netflix asking me if I am still watching has had no effect, but this thing vibrating on my wrist and telling me I am a lazy piece of shit works like a charm. 

Fitness trackers never sleep...

As for progress, I have lost 2.4 pounds since Kevin set sail last week (for an overall total of 15 pounds in the past 5 weeks), but this is PMS week coming up now so I may puff back up a pound before the weekend. I am hopeful it stops at that. In the meantime, I have some Facebook comment sections to read till my wrist yells at me again.

Food for thought

So, it has been just shy of 1 month that I originally watched What The Health and changed my lifestyle in what can only be described as a complete 180 degree turn. I still have a freezer overstuffed with meat products that I don't know what to do with, and I have had zero desire to eat them. I have had very little dairy (there is still Parmesan cheese etc in the fridge to be used up), but I am quite happy with the foods we have been eating, and I feel amazing. My stomach issues have been negligible, and my energy levels have skyrocketed. I am holding steady at 13 lbs lost because I have throttled my weight loss efforts due to having to stand in a wedding on Saturday and needing the dress to fit. But come Sunday, buddy, watch out! I will be hitting the gym like a motherfucker!

Despite already feeling like this lifestyle is 100% sustainable for me, I decided a little more education was in order, so this morning I watched Vegucated on Netflix. The documentary highlighted 3 random omnivorous people who were interviewed on the streets of NYC and challenged with eating vegan for a few weeks to become more aware of how the change would impact their health, as well as their outlook on the meat and dairy industries. At the end of their challenge, they could either stay vegan, or go back to their old ways. Each accepted the challenge (many others declined, of course, because people are wimps). It was pretty great to see people of different backgrounds face different challenges at home when it came to making such a dramatic change to their eating habits.

People seem to think that being educated on vegetarianism or veganism is going to complicate their lives, and I will admit that more frequent grocery shopping is required to eat fresh, plant-based meals every day. It also requires wanting to change. If you have no desire to learn where your food comes from because change is hard, that is a shame. Of course change is hard. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. But the meals themselves take little to no effort to make if you have a food processor & immersion blender, so blaming not wanting to become a vegetarian or vegan on how hard it would be to prepare the meals? That is a lame, bullshit excuse.

People also seem to think that being a vegetarian or vegan is going to be more expensive than eating meat and dairy. Granted, if you need meat and cheese substitutes for every meal, that shit gets expensive. But highly processed foods are overpriced garbage, meat or no meat. Making things from scratch, on the other hand, is cheap as hell! And the taste is so much better! I feel like I have been eating better this past month than I have in my entire life. The flavours have been incredible, and the dishes have been filling. What more could you want?

Oh, right.
Meat. Well...

There is no easy segue into this next part, but I witnessed a juvenile pig get shot with a stun gun, then strung up by one hind leg while semi-conscious to have its throat slit this morning, and that was one of the quicker, less gruesome scenes scattered throughout this documentary. I fast forwarded through  some of them. Several scenes included details on how the dairy industry works, how steers bred for meat are castrated without anesthetic, and how newborn calves are taken away from their mothers the instant they are born to either become meat (male), or dairy cows like their mother (female). How chickens are sorted by male and female and tossed into a funnel system that separates them to either go be egg layers or to go be caged for meat, or ground into "chicken by-products" or "chicken meal". Fluffy little yellow chicks, that we all think are adorable, ground alive because fuck it, they're male.

The disconnect between our brains and our stomachs is astounding. Somehow this is all okay because "they're just animals"... nope, sorry. Fuck all of that noise. It is NOT okay. If someone stole the newborn of a human mother, or even a goddamned dog, that mother would be inconsolable and broken; it is no different for cows. Those mother cows, despite being chained up their entire lives, forcibly impregnated by humans, and stripped of their freedom to walk around, and mother their calves, they scream out for their lost baby to be returned. But they have become nothing more than a milk machine, so fuck their anguish. And let's be clear: I have ZERO maternal instinct. I am not some woman in hysterics because of babies. I am an outraged human being who thinks that the system we have created for ourselves is broken... can you imagine if a doctor wanted to remove a man's scrotum without anesthetic like these meat farmers do to bulls? The world would fucking end! There would be rioting! That doctor would be eviscerated, a bullseye painted on his back for such barbaric practices, but it's okay somehow for us to do it to another living creature because, somehow, we got the ludicrous notion that we are above them. HA! We all eat, shit and fuck just the same as them, but we're better? Whatever helps you feel good about yourself.

I wish the willfully ignorant could be forced to think critically for five seconds after witnessing something horrible like the plight of food-farmed animals. Any person who can see or read these things and still feel nothing, or thinks it is okay that this system is so broken, is dead inside.

Human beings are a fucking disgrace, and a blight on this planet. Did you know that if the entire world consumed on the same level as the USA every day, we would need 3-5 more planets like this one to sustain it? Think about it.

Or don't. Seems to be working out great for us so far.