My husband came home two weeks ago, and sometime in the six minutes between him walking through the door and falling asleep, he announced that he wanted us to eliminate meat and dairy from our diet.
Ok, let me give you a little background. My husband is English... and American. Born in Scotland and raised here in the US, his tastes have defiantly been influenced by one thing - MEAT. Our table revolves around it. When I choose a menu, it is entirely chosen based on what type of meat we will be having. On top of that, he drinks at least a gallon of milk a week. I never thought I would hear my husband say we should cut meat out of our diet.
Ok, I am making our diet sound terrible. All things considered, I thought we ate pretty well. I prepared at least 80 percent of our diet from non processed foods and was very carful to make sure we ate whole grains, low sugar, and fruits and vegetables. I've even had people look at me like I was extreme for serving low sugar, whole grain carrot cake cupcakes for my kid's birthdays.
Yet, in the time it took my husband to fall asleep, I was already on board. Truthfully I think I jumped on bored mostly because I was bored with my menus and looked forward to the challenge of something new. I also wasn't expecting it to last more than a week. I mean... give up dairy, eggs and meat? Really? My husband wouldn't last a week... so I thought.
It has been two weeks now, and we have had lots of time to talk it over, think about it and really decide what is best for our family. No, we are not vegan. We are not eliminating all animal products. I don't refuse to eat honey because some poor bee had to work up a sweat to make it. Instead we are choosing to embrace a whole food, plant based diet. That means that the majority of our nutrition comes from plant sources, and preferably in their whole form. Our goal is to drastically reduce the amount of animal products we consume, but not eliminate them entirely (we don't want to be the one's at the party where we can't eat anything, but rather were are choosing to just not consume it at home as often). To eat in a way that we love what we eat and don't feel like we are missing anything. Because we all know that if we feel like we are missing anything then that would be a diet... and we all know how long those last.
So what does this look like? I'll let you know when I figure it out. Ha! Let's be real. This is a huge process, that is going to take years for me to work through as I completely revamp my entire recipe repertoire (A very extensive one). To make the whole thing a bit more complicated, I have three children under the ages of 5 that I have to somehow feed. Oh, I can't wait for my one year old to get some molars... that will make everything a bit easier.
So, as I figure it out, practice and succeed (sometimes) my hope is to share what I have learned along the way.
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