After a long holiday season of delicious IPAs, homemade Mac and cheese, and cookies shaped like Christmas trees, I was beginning to be shaped like a Christmas tree. In other words, I was fat. My journey there was delicious, don’t get me wrong, but come New Year’s Eve, dresses were not fitting as they should, and it was no longer fun. I decided to enjoy the rest of the holiday, and cliche cliche, start my diet on the first of the year.
Earlier that summer in Barcelona I had gotten into juicing, on the advice of my lovely hippie Mama, making green drinks and fruit juices on those hot mornings in my sixth-floor walk up. I fell in love with the kindness of a raw vegan guru named Dan McDonald and his LifeRegenerator youtube channel. Every morning began with a quick blaze as I watched his videos. He stood in his kitchen and juiced his produce, preaching the benefits of a plant based diet, and exposing the processed foods as the glues and cancers they are. Maybe I was high, but it made sense. Alive, real food = good. Dead, fake food = bad. And so I ordered a juicer from Amazon, (yes they have Prime in BCN), and set out to learn the art of cold pressed juices.
Do you know how hard it is to find kale in Barcelona? Very. But sometimes I did, as well as bunch of other chards, cabbages, fennels, and fruits. Shopping in the beautiful Boquería was never a chore, and so everyday I diligently made my live juice. Sometimes green, sometimes orange, sometimes with friends. I watched Dan the Man and really began to buy in to his philosophy as I saw the results. The green drink really did begin to feel like a drug to me. It was a hit of live nutrients straight into my bloodstream. I would wake up, have more energy, and since I was getting so many vitamins and nutrients through the juices, my cravings for other stuff went down. Like every summer in Barcelona, I lost weight, so it is hard to tell how much was from the lunchtime green drink, and how much was from walking 10 miles a day in the heat.
So on January 1, when I woke up, fat, and worse yet, pale, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I fired up Dan the Man’s youtube channel, and listened to him as I emptied my fridge and pantry of anything processed. I restocked it with things mostly found in the produce department. For the juices: kale, spinach, romaine, lemons, ginger, oranges, apples, cucumber. For dinner: lettuces, greens, peppers, spaghetti squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchinis, carrots, chicken, fish, steak, clean beef, and cheeses.
The rest of the month I ate this way. Alive, or close to it. Nothing processed. No sodas, noodles, chips, beer, alcohol, candy, nothing fake. Basically nothing with more than 1 thing on the ingredient list. I had a green drink or (sometimes) a fruit juice in place of lunch. I did not exercise. I lost 11 pounds in January. I was motivated. Looking back, I like to call this month the lean in. I wasn’t ready to be raw, but I was ready to shock my body. I was ready to get off caffeine and processed sugar. I was ready for a drastic change after that fattening December.
Real quick, I want to mention this because it was interesting to me as I grow and learn more about my body- every other time when I have lost weight, it has been because of working out. The weight I have lost since going towards this plant-based lifestyle has been different. I have lost the weight differently, and in the best way possible. Normally I would lose it all off my hips and ass first, while my problem zone (stomach), would not go away. This time the weight came off my stomach, sides, and face. My hips, booty, and breasts stayed, and my hourglass figure began to show through. It was so motivating. I had never lost weight so easily before in my entire life. I was eating good. And delicious. My body was happy, and rewarding me with beautiful curves.
February, as we know, is the shortest month, and so if one were to hypothetically say, challenge themselves to do something difficult for a month, February would be the best month because it has the least amount of days. I challenged myself to be a raw vegan for the entire month of February. Nothing cooked, nothing processed, only fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and some oils for the entire month of February. I was glad I had leaned in, because I’m not gonna lie, it was hard. But it was worth it. A green drink for lunch, a salad of some sort for dinner, fresh fruits for snacks. OKAY! Sometimes I cheated with a cooked veggie soup or black beans. But 99% of everything I ate was raw vegan. I lost another 13 pounds. By this point my body was really beginning to change and people were noticing. Other side bonuses included my skin cleared up, my hair stopped falling out, and my mood! Oh my mood. After a year of back to back breakups, (thanks 2016!), I was slightly disillusioned with lots of things. Love, politics, social media, processed foods… I cut it all out. I deleted Facebook. I deleted Tinder. I turned off CNN.
I felt simpler. Happier. More focused.
The following months I gradually added in cooked vegetables, beans, the occasional steak or fish, and yes, a small piece of dark, real chocolate every night. I eat mostly fruits and vegetables, and still try and get my daily juice in. If I drink, it’s white wine or the rare vodka soda. The last three months I have lost another 21 pounds, bringing the total up to 45. Aside from the occasional hike with my golden doodle, I haven’t worked out. My body is the best it has looked since college. My curves have got the DMs full. My skin glows. This diet has become my lifestyle.
If you are interested, I suggest you begin like I did, with Dan the Man on Youtube. Buy a juicer, and begin making a juice every day for lunch. I have a recipe here. Eat more veggies with dinner. And every month after, up the ante. Eat a little closer to raw vegan. Look at recipes I've pinned on my "Get Right" Pinterest board. And then, one month, GO FOR IT. You can do anything for one month. Watch your body change, watch your mood elevate, watch you begin to talk about how great it is being a raw vegan. You know how the joke goes, “don’t worry if they’re vegan, they’ll tell you!”? Well this is because when you are eating clean and alive foods, your body really does feel so good you want to tell the world. “How can people continue to eat McDonald’s? Don’t they know how bad it is making them feel?”, is something I think daily. The thought of a Big Mac makes my stomach turn. The thought of fresh, ripe cherries, in season, cuz you know it’s June, now THAT... YUM.
Everyone’s body is different, and everyone’s story is different. This is mine, and this is what works for me. Here’s to living well and eating green :)
