Going Plant-Based | Why We Did It

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What Most People Do

The Standard American Diet is one that centers around the proverbial meat and potatoes and processed food.

When we think back to our childhoods we remember the dinner plates that centered around a piece of meat, the school lunches of greasy pizza and chocolate milk, the highly processed snack foods, fizzy sugary drinks, fast food burgers and fries, etc.

Sound familiar?

We never had much of a reason to question this way of eating. Why would we? We seemed healthy enough. No weight issues or health issues that we were aware of. No problem doing what we wanted to do in our daily lives.

We were embracing the Standard American Diet (notice how this can be abbreviated as “SAD”) and had no intention of changing our ways. We even remember saying that vegan and vegetarian people had to be malnourished… Where were they going to get their protein?!

The Wake Up Call

One fabled day in early 2013, Drew started to feel sick. He came home from work feeling super nauseous. After vomiting everything he had in his stomach and then some, he ended up in the Emergency Room with very low blood pressure and a very rapid heart beat and not able to keep any food or liquids in him.

To make a long story short, 3 days later he was discharged from the hospital and had a surgery scheduled to remove his gallbladder.

After the surgery, we found out that Drew’s gallbladder was coated in cholesterol. This is when our entire mindset about food started to shift. Drew was 26 years old and had a cholesterol-crusted gallbladder.

That shouldn’t happen in someone so young, we thought. But the fact was, it had happened, and the only conclusion for us was that all those Wendy’s Classic Triples with Biggie Fries had added up. So, we decided we needed to make a change.

Getting Educated About Food

Little by little we started researching healthier ways to eat. We were still adamant that vegetarians and vegans were crazy, but we did decide to ban French fries, fried chicken, and the like. We embraced more salads and “low fat” meals.

For the next couple of years, we learned more and more about ingredients commonly found in processed food. If we saw an ingredient on a food label that we didn’t recognize we would look into it. It usually ended up being something that was obviously not a good idea to put into our bodies, so we’d ban it from our diet.

Learning about food made us feel empowered, but we were also disgusted that we’d unwittingly been eating secretions from beaver bums (just look up castoreum …).

The Plant Based Paradigm Shift

You could say that we were primed for what happened next. A friend we hadn’t seen for a long time came to stay with us for a few days. This friend had always been a big meat eater, so we had prepared some pork chops for grilling to celebrate the reunion. Imagine our surprise when he told us that he had become mostly vegan!

During his stay, he showed us the documentary film “Forks Over Knives.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s a film about the incredibly healthful benefits of eating whole plant foods.

It claimed that a diet of whole plant foods can prevent and reverse diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. This made a big impression on us, and we decided to give it a try. What did we have to lose?

Giving It A Go… And Then Not… And Then Again…

So, cold turkey style, (see what we did there?) we stopped eating animal products. We didn’t really know what to eat instead, so we just ate vegetables, mostly salads. Surprise, surprise, all that happened was – we got hungry.

We kept it up for a couple of weeks, but we eventually felt like something was missing. (Hint… it was calories! duh!) So, we started eating animal products again, but were more inclusive of plants than we had been in the past. In essence, we became “reducitarians.”

We dabbled with some plant-based recipes here and there, but we weren’t quite ready to fully commit to being “vegan.” We would go through spells of motivation to eat healthfully, and spells of not caring what we ate, and going to Steak and Shake.

It was during this time period that we found out we were pregnant with August. All motivation to keep up the healthy eating went out the window when those pregnancy cravings hit!

After August was born we kept up the reducitarian thing. Little by little, we started to realize that the more plant-based we ate, the better we felt.

So, in March of 2017, we finally became fully committed, and we jumped into plant-based eating, 100%.

What Changed?

The difference this time was that we had learned a lot about how to go plant-based, the right way. It wasn’t just about not eating meat or cheese. It wasn’t just about eating vegetables.

The main reason we’d failed before was a calorie deficiency. Vegetables, as well as most whole plant foods, are pretty low in calories, and most people won’t eat enough of them to stay calorically satisfied.

We learned that we needed a well rounded diet of fruits, vegetables, legumes (beans), nuts and seeds. And if a normal sized plate of food didn’t fill us up, then we needed to eat more! It is pretty difficult to overeat if you’re only eating whole plant foods.

We found some very informative YouTube channels like Ellen Fisher, and Fully Raw Kristina. We read the book “Whole” by T. Collin Campbell. We fully embraced the whole food plant-based lifestyle and we haven’t looked back since.

But Where Was The Proof That Any Of This Was Working?

Well, it just so happens that Drew’s job requires him to have a fairly thorough physical exam every year. April can have a vital numbers screening through this as well. They do the normal height, weight, and blood pressure checks, but they also do a blood draw for checking cholesterol and glucose levels.

It was the blood test results that made us realize that this really does work! “Forks Over Knives” was right!

Here’s a look at some of our health markers. Although they are only a snapshot in time and don’t tell your full health story, we were pretty happy with the numbers!

These labs were taken about one year after our 100% plant based life began.

April’s Results

Total Cholesterol – 149 mg/dL
HDL – 55 mg/dL
LDL – NA

Her triglycerides were so low that the machine couldn’t even register her results. The nurse literally said, “Wow!”

Glucose – 77 mg/dL

Drew’s Results

Total Cholosterol – 158 mg/dL
HDL – 55 mg/dL
LDL – 92 mg/dL
Triglycerides – 56 mg/dL
Glucose – 79 mg/dL

Drew has had his labs taken a couple of times since the first checkup. Here are the results for his most recent physical, about 3 years after going plant based:

Total Cholosterol – 137 mg/dL
HDL – 53 mg/dL
LDL – 68 mg/dL
Triglycerides – 80 mg/dL
Glucose – 86 mg/dL

All of these markers are WAY under the marks where doctors start to say, “hmmm…”

These are the levels that doctors like to see

(Disclaimer – this is not medical advice!!):

Total Cholosterol – under 200 mg/dL
HDL – above about 50 mg/dL (depends on gender)
LDL – under 100 mg/dL
Triglycerides – under 150 mg/dL
Glucose – under 100 mg/dL

We don’t have our pre-plant based cholesterol readings to compare to where we’re at now unfortunately, but we can imagine they weren’t too pretty.

Conclusion

It’s been three years now since we took the plunge. We’ve learned so much more than we ever thought we’d care to know about food and nutrition. We feel better than we ever have before. The more we learned the more empowered we felt and the more convinced we became that we were doing the right thing.

We’ll be posting a lot more about what we eat these days along with kitchen gadgets and tips and tricks, so check back soon!

Keep it simple. Keep it real.

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