Wow, and here I thought no one I didn’t know in person read my blog, and I just woke up to seven entire comments. Seven! That’s about five more than usual. And Rustin, you read this! I really like your writing, I’m flattered.

So first off I want to thank everyone who commented, but especially the vegans and vegetarians, because the last time I talked about how I didn’t think I could do this, I lost half my subscribers almost overnight. I really appreciate the response this time, one of encouragement and hope, rather than YOU JUST ATE LAMB, KTHX GBYE.

I will attempt to keep writing. This might be the most important part to write about when you really think about it. If it gets emotionally too hard, I might have to pause for awhile, but I will try to keep plugging away in some capacity.

I want to go through the suggestions one by one and respond to them, since I think that’s a kind of dialogue that a lot of people never really have. I think by the time someone gets frustrated with something enough to consider quitting (or hugely modifying) whatever they’re doing, they’re a little too worn out to really feel like justifying every last thing to people who don’t know them. And yet, in this whole back and forth debate about not only what we should be eating ethically, but also nutritionally, that’s the one thing I rarely see; someone attempting to respond to everything that comes their way.

Aren’t you guys glad I don’t have a full time job? HA HA! You’re wrong! Angsting over food is my full time job! So here we go:

Just read a good vegan nutrition book! Read some vegan cookbooks! You aren’t reading enough, so you’re just not aware of all that you could be doing.

Here are the books that I’ve read in the last 20 years (most in the last 10, and probably 1/3rd in the last 5), about going raw, vegan or vegetarian. I own most of them, they lay around my house like motivational speeches that I read on a near-daily basis. I READ VEGAN COOKBOOKS IN THE BATHROOM. There, I said it. Who said a vegan diet helps your bowels? They were totally right!

I’m not kidding though, these are the books I take to bed with me, into the bath, to waiting rooms, on vacation. I took Eat to Live on a cruise. I’ve devoted hours and hours to figuring out how to do this.

1. No More Bull – The author’s (Howard Lyman, the Mad Cowboy) wife  is a good friend of one of my family members, and I’ve met them several times.
2. The Idiot’s Guide to Vegan Cooking – given to me by the Mad Cowboy himself, when I went over to their house a couple years ago to ask if I could talk about how I kept failing at staying vegan. One of the main things they suggested was soy, which I’ve found I can’t tolerate.
3. Becoming Vegetarian - Bought this one years ago, part of my early self-conditioning to go veg.
4. Becoming Vegan – Bought this one at the local natural foods market when we lived in Hillsboro. I love this book.
5. Vegan With a Vengeance - purchased a few years ago when we lived in Ellensburg. Really yummy blueberry scones.
6. Veganomicon – Lots of great recipes in here. I like the bean patties that look like fillets.
7. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World – never made anything from this, but it sure looks yummy.
8. Herbivore – not a book, a magazine, which I subscribed to for the first year it was published.
9. Vegetarian Times – I’m subscribed to.
10. Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life – just got this last month and read it on my Kindle. Great book, although his Vega tastes a little GARK.
11. Alkalize or Die – I picked this up a couple weeks ago at PCC. Veggies are alkaline and good, meat is acidic and bad. THERE! I just saved you like 12 bucks.
12. Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen – made one yummy soup from this.
13. The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook – YUMMY nacho cheese sauce that I like better than the real thing.
14. 12 Steps to Raw Foods – There are some great recipes in here. I used the one for their “candy” a lot, which is just almonds and some dried fruit rolled up together in little balls.
15. Green Smoothie Revolution – Green smoothies for the win! This book got me started.
16. The Raw Food Detox Diet – Oh, I love this author too, she’s just the epitome of the vegan waif. So pretty, and so very very vegan! I wish I could be like that. Her Green Lemonade recipe is one I still have several times a month.
17. Juicing for Life – Got this yeeeeeaaaaars ago, when I bought my first Juiceman juicer.
18. The Raw 50
19. Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker – There’s a lentil recipe in here that we love.
20. Recipes for Longer Life
21. Sproutman’s Kitchen Garden Cookbook – I’ve sprouted a couple of times, but then I’m really clumsy with the recipes and they never come out right. Haven’t sprouted in over a year.
22. The Cleanse Cookbook
23. The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics - not totally vegetarian, but she advocates going as veg as possible, and I LOVE this author. She’s incredibly warm and friendly, and her directions for brown rice are the only ones that never fail on me.
24. Easy Beans – Great great GREAT basic recipes that a lot of other books lack.
25. Raw Food Cleanse – just arrived last week.
26. The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program – just arrived a couple weeks ago via paperbackswap.com, haven’t read it all yet.
27. The Kind Diet - Came last month. Still working out of it. The tofu was good, but didn’t agree with me. Never did get the barley to work right, but haven’t tried again after your suggestions.
28. 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains - yummy recipe in here for putting black beans and goat cheese in phyllo wrappers.
29. How It All Vegan – Delightful, but a lot of carbs, muffins, and white flour. I gave this one away.
30. La Dolce Vegan – Not sure where this one went.
31. Vive le Vegan – I loved the layout and the spirit, but I couldn’t find a lot of the hemp ingredients, and the two things I made out of here were really gross (the apple pancakes were especially bad).
32. Vegan Planet – Nice book!
33. Asian Vegan Cooking – haven’t made anything out of here yet.
34. Vegan Vittles – put out the by The Farm Sanctuary, I love that place.
35. The China Study – The big vegan tome of righteous awesomeness. I’m reading some criticisms of it that are interesting, but overall it’s the one everyone seems to point to.
36. Skinny Bitch – Lots of advice toward the convenience foods and fake meat. I gave this one away.
37. The Skinny Bitch in the Kitch – Can’t remember why I didn’t like this one, I just remember going through it and not being able to find anything that sounded good. Gave it away.
38. 1000 Vegan Recipes – This was one of my early favorites.
39. The Moosewood Cookbook – Her samosas still rock my world.
40. Vegan Lunch Box – Great for kids! Some fake meat, but overall a wonderful book.
41. The Spectrum – Ornish’s new plan. I like it, but it’s trying to please everyone.
42. The Garden of Vegan – I liked this one the best of the three I think.
43. Eating Animals – my recent read that turned me into a vegetarian.
44. The Complete Book of Raw Food – I tried a couple recipes, but they didn’t turn out so well.
45. Raw Family Signature Dishes - GREAT photos of how to make raw dishes, but of course most of them are with ingredients I don’t like that much. I did really enjoy making Igor’s crackers, but the flax flavor is so strong it’s hard to eat that many, and they never seem to get crisp.
46. Eating Without Heating - The Boutenko kids wrote a book!
47. Eating in the Raw – Haven’t made anything out of here yet.
48. Raw Food Real World – Everything in here is so pretty, but hoy crap, takes days to prepare. I did make the candied pumpkin seeds, and they were very good.
49. Better Than Peanut Butter & Jelly: Quick Vegetarian Meals Your Kids Will Love - haven’t made much from this yet, but I plan to.
50. Simply Vegan – gave away
51. The Urban Vegan – just got for Christmas, thanks Jona and Eric!
52. The Raw Food Revolution Diet – The authors are in their 50’s but look like they’re in their 30’s! This is a great book, I really like it a lot. I haven’t made anything out of it yet, I just got it a couple months ago, but it’s in my kitchen and I pour over it with loooove.
53. Enchanted Broccoli Forest – Haven’t had this one in years, but I made a lot of things in my early 20’s.
54. Eat More, Weigh Less – Great book, but the recipes were pretty boring for me, and I had a lot of trouble sticking to the diet.
55. Eat to Live - I love this book, he makes it all sound so easy!
56. Eat For Health: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, Look Younger, Live Longer – Fuhrman’s 2-volume diet that’s built on Eat to Live, but just goes into everything a lot more.
57. That fire engine one – the one about the guys in the firehouse who all go vegan. It’s on my Kindle. I thought it was inspiring.
58. Raw Emotions (Angela Stokes e-book) – I loved this book. I think Angela is pretty cool.
59. Raw Reform Recipes (Angela Stokes e-book)
60. Raw Reform (Matt Monarch e-book) – so many factual inaccuracies I admit I stopped about halfway through.
61. Revealing the Physical Changes (Angela Stokes e-book)
62. A Juice Feasters Handbook (Angela Stokes e-book) – I’d still love to try a juice feast sometime.
63. (and 64.) All the McDougall books (both of them – are there more than that? I’ve read two of his – one is the diet book, and one is the cookbook, which had a ton of recipes involving tomatoes or salsa, all of which give me really bad heartburn).

Those are just the ones I could remember, find in my house, my Kindle, and on my LibraryThing. I can think of at least two more I got in High School that I can remember the covers of, but not the titles. The photos I posted are just the ones in tiny little kitchen, the rest are spread out in the bedroom and downstairs in Jason’s office. There’s also one more from Wigmore (her first book, I think), that I have here in the house but can’t find. I think Beth, my five-year-old, took it (she likes to pretend she’s reading things she knows I’m into).

Are you guys now convinced that I’m doing my research? I’ve been doing my research since I was 15 years old, ya’ll.

Don’t read books that are pro-meat or anti-vegetarian.

I really disagree with this, sorry. Do you see that list above? That’s a lot of pro-vegan reading over the course of many years. Want to know what I’ve read against the idea of being vegan?

1. I read Atkins once (it cracked me up)
2. Protein Power (much more interesting)
3. A book about paleo nutrition, by a guy named Cordain.

That’s it. That’s THREE BOOKS. Out of 67 book, total. That’s hardly making sweet love to a member of the Beef Council while slathered in piglet blood, know what I’m saying?

I don’t think it’s wise to just generally avoid reading about something you’re in opposition to. The book I’m reading now is written by a passionate, thoughtful woman who was vegan for twenty years. She isn’t taking the eating of meat lightly, and neither have I over the last few days.

Get more magnesium

Good idea! I will try more supplements. This is what I take right now:

• Calcium (because it helps the Vitamin D)
• Vitamin D (doctor said two of these a day because my blood level was a sad, sad little 12 instead of 75-85)
• An actual prescription for Vitamin D (that’s 50,000 IU per pill, BAYBEE)
• B-50 Complex (because vegans have a hard time getting B12)

Rotate your vegan protein sources so you have more variety

This is a great suggestion too, but limited by my body’s tolerance for vegan protein sources:

• Beans: Good, generally speaking. I like beans, they taste good. I realize there are a variety of beans, but they really all taste mostly the same to me. I do get bored. However, boredom isn’t enough for me to eat meat.
• Tofu dogs, tofu, tempeh, fake meat, tofurky, soy ice cream: Makes me sick. I am not kidding. I’ve written about it here several times. I’ve tried it over and over, and the same thing always happens; cramping, and a really weird “brain buzz”, where my head just feels wrong. I’m sorry, that isn’t something I’ve ever “gotten used to” or adjusted to, and it’s not something that’s gotten better with more exposure. This might be one of those things where someone says, “You just have to eat this thing that makes you feel sick, a little bit every day for a few weeks, and you’ll feel better, to which I can only say emphatically, NO. I don’t think something that makes you feel both sick, crampy, and like your NEURAL FUNCTIONING is going awry is something you should be sucking down every day to get used to. Two or three times, sure, but I’ve been eating this stuff over and over, and it never gets easier or makes me feel remotely good.
• Seitan: This is the one big protein source I haven’t tried yet, mostly because I’m being told not to eat a lot of wheat since the endometriosis is supposedly exacerbated by wheat.

So that leaves, well: BEANS. Which, like I said, is great except that even eating cups and cups of beans a day, supposedly enough for my protein needs, I’m still not feeling good. It’s not just a shade of difference; I’m not pale yellow when I could be sunshine. I mean I’m having trouble living my life because of headaches and low energy and horrible sleep.

When I add just a piddly amount of meat, all of that goes away. What does that say? That I’m just doing it wrong? I used to believe that, but now I’m not so sure.

Get more protein from dark leafy greens

Here’s one where I’d think I’d just kick butt. KALE! Kale, people, kale! How many of you have come over and had me shove a kale smoothie in your face? How many of you are sick of me telling you to drink kale smoothies every time you have any kind of ailment whatsoever? I’m like the Dad on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who put Windex on every cut or bruise. Kale smoothies fixes everything!

Well, yeah. Except they don’t have that much protein.

One cup of raw kale has 2 grams of protein. At bare minimum, if I was going to skip beans one day and just get some kale, I’d need about 30 cups of kale just to get by. That’s maybe, gosh, about 3-5 quarts of green smoothie if I really piled it in, and didn’t put in much fruit. Yeah, I could have both beans and green smoothies every day, but that’s……already basically what I’m doing. And I still feel pretty awful.

More suggestions coming soon!

That’s not all the suggestions I got, and from what I can tell of my email queue, they’re still rolling in, so keep ‘em coming!

I’m worn out, I’ve been writing the last two hours, and Beth wants her Mommy to play with. I’m going to go put on some music and make some kale chips with her. I’ve started making them again, but this time about twice a month, instead of twice a week. YUM.

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So it’s been over two months since I went veg. I sailed through the first 4 weeks. By week 5, I wasn’t feeling super great, but didn’t connect it to my diet. By week 6, I was noticing I really wasn’t feeling very good. Mostly I felt run down, and I wasn’t sleeping well. In week 7, I began not sleeping well on a regular basis, and waking up in the middle of every night, with my heart pounding and racing. I thought I was having panic attacks, and sometimes the episodes would kick off an attack, but often I woke up with no anxiety at all.

This has been going on for the last couple weeks, and let me tell you, I am EXHAUSTED. I got really sick a few days ago, and Greg and I are both convinced it’s because I haven’t been getting any sleep.

I reached my two month vegetarian anniversary (monthiversary?) feeling impressed with myself for having come this far so easily, but forced to admit I felt like, well, crap.

So then I ate some meat.

Jason was making some pasta with beef, and it smelled awful. I’ve noticed this lately, that meat smells really bad to me. Repellent. But here he was, asking me to taste some pasta and telling me, “I made a non-meat version for you to try,” and out of my mouth come the words, “Just give me a bit of what you have.” So  he gives me a dubious look, and hands me the fork. And I ate a bite. And it tasted both wrong, and OH SO RIGHT. So then I ate the entire bowl.

And then I found out it was lamb. LAMB, PEOPLE. Not beef, not a cow, but a lamb. A LAMB. I REALLY CANNOT EXPRESS THE ANGST HERE.

Jason felt bad, because I know he doesn’t eat beef, so what did I think he was eating? And he was right, he’s never eaten beef, I should have known any ground “beef” he was making would be something else, but I just didn’t get it. So then I felt like crying, both because I’d just eaten a baby animal ground to bits, and because I felt, okay let’s just admit it: so….much…..better. I really did. Suddenly it was like my head just cleared, mental fog gone.

And then I went to bed, and I slept better than I had in two weeks.

So then I ate some more meat.

The next day, I woke up, and I still felt awful. The book I’d read, Eating Animals, was coming back to me, all the images of the factory farms. I felt sick. But I didn’t want another day trying to stuff myself full of beans (see below), and I was really curious to see what would happen if I ate some more meat. So I did. I had both chicken AND eggs, devouring the whole question entirely.

That night, I slept through the night, like a rock.

So now I don’t know what to do.

I’m in a quandary at this point, and quite honestly very close to giving up this blog completely, because writhing around in this fashion is bad enough, but doing it publicly is doubly painful. I’ve spend the last 20 years of my life, since I was 15 years old, pining to be a vegan. I’ve tried so many times, and failed so many times, and I really thought this was it, I was on my way. TWO MONTHS! That’s so long for me! I’ve never gone two months with any eating plan, let alone one that asked me to give up bacon.

The real pain in the ass is that I didn’t just manage it, it was easy, and you know why? Because of that whole internal shift, where I realized how I just had to move forward and live my values, that I didn’t want to keeping living as if everything that came out of (and went into) my mouth didn’t matter.

And that shift? That one that made being a vegetarian so easy? Well it stinks. Because it hasn’t gone anywhere, and now I feel horrible about having eaten chicken, and the lamb, and yet at the same time, it’s so nice to sleep! It’s so nice to be able to think during the day! It’s so nice to have energy!

So what am I supposed to do here? I’ve spent the last year and a half writing a blog about becoming vegan, and after a year and a half it actually looked like I was finally going to get somewhere, and now, well…….

I know it has to do with protein.

I’m pretty sure that a big problem with all this is protein.  I know, I know, a lot of you vegans out there are rolling your eyes, but bear with me. The protein in vegetables is quite small, and you need to eat a LOT of them to reach the protein needs of moi. How do I put this lightly? HAHA? I am heavy. I am not petite. Even when I was a “normal” weight for my height, I was so rock-solid heavy that buff dudes would try to pick me up and then DROP ME. I’ve heard a lot of rock jokes, jokes about my density, etc. Despite my many prayers to God, I am not a hollow-boned waif. I have bulk.

To even start to meet my protein needs, I need about 4 cups of cooked beans a day, which is fine, except I don’t feel very good when I eat 4 cups of beans a day. It’s not farting – that trick about draining the soak water really does work. It’s just a feeling of being run down, incomplete, tired.

Tofu makes me feel worse. Remember that tofu dish I made? I had cramps after that for two hours. Tempeh did the same thing. Something in processed soy really makes me sick. I can have a little miso soup and feel fine, but that’s about it. The only thing with soy that I really seem to tolerate well is whatever they put in Spirutein shakes.

So I’ve been living on beans and Spirutein shakes, mixed veggies, green smoothies, soups, and as many whole-grains as I can find. This sounds like a pretty healthy diet, doesn’t it? I thought so. Overall I thought I was doing pretty well, leagues better than the old days when I’d stop eating meat, eat cheese pizza every day, and call myself a healthy vegetarian.

In the last few days, I’ve been doing all the above except taking away the beans and adding in 4-5 ounces of lean meat. The difference is incredible. Ethically, I feel pretty awful. Physically, I feel about a hundred times better.

SO WHAT NOW?

I’ve no idea. I really don’t know if I want to keep writing. It feels like I’m giving my audience whiplash, and frankly it’s become such a deeply personal issue that I don’t know if I feel comfortable letting people keep watching whatever transition period I seem to be in. It’s something I need to think about.

I can tell you what I’m doing now:

• I’m reading The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
• I’m digging around for better information about vegetarian protein sources.
• I’m digging around for information on local sources of animal products.
• I’m taking one day at a time.

That’s it, at this point.

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