Super-veggie me!

Really, one of the things I never thought I'd do. I don't like to use the word "never" because it's just too easy to be wrong. But going vegan, and giving up eating meat and anything that comes from an animal - I would have said never.

Why would I do this? Welllll... you remember that sheep post, right? And I'm a scientist. That pretty much sealed my fate.

Plus, I've already given up Coke, so how hard could giving up meat be?

K and I watched "Forks over Knives". I also read RawFoodSOS blog that reviewed and critiqued the science. And that was a long, long critique. FoK features two docs that advocate a plant based diet (aka vegan and low fat vegan at that) as a way of "eliminating heart disease, diabetes and most forms of cancer." Ok, that sounds pretty darn good. They offered a lot of evidence in the forms of correlations, and some specific studies that they spun somewhat (IMHO) to reinforce their hypothesis. They also have numerous patients on their diets and seemingly lots of evidence that their low fat (10% of cals) vegan diet works.

The scientist in me says:

• That doesn't mean that the vegan diet is the ONLY diet that works.
• When you go vegan, it can mean that you cut out nearly all processed foods along with the meat, eggs, and dairy.  -You are eating a whole-foods diet. 
• and, of course, correlations in the movie do not equal causation. So, maybe the mainly plant based diet of the rural Chinese results in better health because they don't have access to licorice (or other processed foods, lots of sugar, preservatives, name your poison), whereas on the coasts where trade is good and the economy is quite a bit more worldly, they eat more meat, but also more junk food. Anyway. I intend to get the China study book, and read it myself to sort this out and think about it more clearly.

But meanwhile, I'm a sheep. And a scientist.

K wants to try this.

And the movie made me very curious - the narrator undertook the diet and had a dramatic decrease in the bad cholesterol, increase in the good, decreased triglycerides, decreased BP, etc. etc.

Ok, so here we go. My total cholesterol is always (for the last 5 years and last tested this fall) between 203 and 210. HDL = 64-80, LDL = 101-103, triglycerides = 99. Of those, my total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides are higher than I'd like, but still healthy considering my HDL is nice and high. BP is 115 over 68. I weigh 118-121. I don't eat a lot of junk, but typically eat meat as the center of both lunch and dinner, and have an egg for breakfast 1-4 times a week. I don't shy away from having chips, cookies, ice cream, bbq, hamburgers occasionally. I cook most of what I eat - 19/21 meals a week. Spinach salads, tacos (beef or chicken), chili, quinoa, rice, pasta with bottled sauce, grilled chicken or fish, steamed veggies - these are staples.

I'm already pretty healthy. I exercise probably more than 10 hours a week. What will a vegan diet do for me in the short term? Let's try this for 6-8 weeks and find out. No meat, dairy or eggs (I haven't been strict about this, but will be now - otherwise it won't be meaningful.) I'll continue to take my multivitamin when I remember - that ends up being ~ 5x per week usually. I'll add in the supplements the docs recommend - omega-3s (vegan) and B12 as much as I can remember. I won't change anything else. And after the 6-8 weeks, I'll do a blood test to see what, if anything, happened to me.
I guess I'll log what I'm eating too. (This part sounds like more work and less fun. But I said I was a scientist...) As a fun thing, I should benchmark a 5 or 10K now, and do it after 6-8 weeks to compare... but my hip is bugging me. Maybe I'll use my 2.5 mile handicap time instead. Unfortunately for this comparison, I'm planning on ramping up my training, so any gains/losses there may be explained by factors other than diet.

Once I complete that, I'm considering taking on the next extreme step of Vegan + no processed stuff whatsoever. No flour. No sugar. No diet soda. No gum. Whole foods only. This seems hard to me - hardly like living! No chocolate! No bread! We'll see when I make it through March and what the blood test shows. If I have fun with this, maybe then I'll go Paleo for 6-8 weeks and see the difference there. But for now, Super-Veggie me!

I know this isn't really scientifically meaningful, a sample size of one. But come on! Should be fun!