"It's not fair!"

So, she cooked her wonderful chicken, mushroom and rice casserole. I ate a veggie southwest burger and broccoli.

My 5-year old daughter complained: "That's not fair! How come you get to eat what you want, and we all have to eat the same?"

I wanted to tell her "Oh, my dear child. What I want is what you are eating!" But instead I went into a rather convoluted explanation about how I was eating special food so I could get healthier. I quickly realized she was not interested and was busy digging into her rice.

Technorati

To register with technoraty, the site is asking me to post "qj32zb8thg" on my page. Hopefully I can delete this post later :-)

Denial

This is strangely easy.

I had planned to go to boot camp this morning, but I couldn't get up at 5 am (it starts at 5:30), so I went running instead. Ran about 3 miles and took the dog with me.

After running I got on the scale and was at 216. I knew I was going to score low: sweat. But I was surprised that I wasn't back on the 220's.

• Breakfast: Oatmeal with soy milk (I'm really digging this), a handful of blueberries, some strawberries.

• Lunch: Veggie combo at my usual sushi spot.

The sushi experience was another tough one. I love sushi. It's probably my favorite food on earth. I come to this sushi place at least once a week and order their lunch special: four pieces of nigiri, four pieces of roll and a handroll. The fish changes each day of the week.

When I got to the restaurant I thought I was going to order my usual. However, I noticed the Veggie combo and ordered it. Futo Maki, cucumber roll and avocado roll, with a salad.

I wish I could say it was horrible, that I felt unfulfilled... but I hate to admit it: It was good!

It felt like the right amount of food.

I also made a discovery: what I crave about the sushi is not so much the fish, but the flavor of the wasabi and soy sauce. I was happy.

We'll see about dinner tonight. My wife read the blog today and, by messenger, commented:

Wife: you're giving up dairy and chicken this week?

Me: yup

Wife: already cheese and meat

Me: yup

Wife: what the hell am I going to cook for dinner???

Which brings up an interesting point. Breakfast and lunch are easy. At my house, everybody is on their own. Dinner is different. Dinner brings the family together.

To me, sharing the same food and conversation every day is the most important glue that keeps a family strong and together forever.

Also, I don't want to impose my new weird approach to eating on the rest of them. So, I'll have to find a way to dance around it. I told my wife not to worry about me, that I would figure something out.

So far switchihng my eating habits so dramatically has been easy. Too easy. And I don't usually have too much will power when it comes to food.

So, I must be in denial. My knees and my will may buckle the first time I'm in front of a juicy steak and plump fries.

But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. In the meantime, denial is bliss.

First Monday

Today is the first Monday in my skinny bastard life.

I usually hop on the scale on Mondays, and today I had the lowest reading I've had in a long time: 117 pounds. Last week I was at 224.

You'll credit the Skinny Bastard diet. I blame the fact that my body doesn't like what I'm doing.

I've spent most of the last 24 hours in the smallest room of my house. The silver lining: finally went through a pile of magazines that had been sitting on my side table.

I feel oddly out of balance, as if something is off internally. Not pain-and-sickness off, but weird-feeling off.

I'd love to think that my body is getting rid of all the toxins, undigested animals and useless stuff. But it probably is that tofu doesn't agree with me.

Sunday was bad. Too much wine with dinner, and a bunch of chips and salsa. At least my meals were ok:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal with Soy Milk

• Lunch: salad with some soy-made chicken lookalike called Chick'n.

• Dinner: Grilled tilapia with veggies

The chick'n was really something. It looked a lot like a chicken breast, but more rubbery. The best part: according to the package, you can grill it! We shall see.

I didn't exercise today, but at least I'm back on the wagon eating-wise.

• Breakfast: Strawberries and a nectarine - not completely fulfilling, but left me with a strange "clean" feeling.

• Lunch: a "Veggie Loaf" I found at a restaurant by my office. Some sort of meatloaf-looking brick made with black beans, carrots and God knows what else. Not bad, but made me thing about some bizarre food from the future.

• Dinner: Burrito de Vegetal, a veggie burrito at my favorite Mexican restaurant. This was a toughie. I've been eating at that restaurant nearly every week for about 10 years. I always order one of three dishes... but for the first time in years I looked at the menu. It was quite good.

In all, I survived another day of temptation.

Homo Vegetus?

One of the most intriguing aspects of the "Skinny Bastard" book was how it shows that physiologically humans are more like other herbivore species than carnivore species.

I always thought we were omnivores, and that has been my usual counterargument against vegetarian or vegan lifestyles. But come to think about it, I never took the time to research biological aspects that may prove that point.

After a few minutes in Google I came across two very interesting articles about how humans are really more like herbivores:

• The Comparative Anatomy of Eating, by Milton R. Mills, M.D.
  At the end of this article there's a wildly interesting comparison table between herbivore, carnivore omnivore species, and humans.

• Eating meat is not natural, by Michael Bluejay.
  This article tackles the common counterarguments against vegetarian eating. I'm guilty of having used most of them. After reading this article, I agree with most, if not all the points that Mr. Bluejay makes.

I'm really thinking about this...

Soy improved something. Weird.

Comediant Jim Gaffigan has a really funny bit about bacon. His point: bacon is such an amazing food, that anything will actually be improved by wrapping bacon around it.

Shrimp? Good. Bacon-wrapped shrimp? F-ing awesome.

In the universal scale of things, bacon is at one extreme. The bad, hedonistic extreme. The other is, of course, shared by bacon, tofu and brocoli. So, I was surprised this morning when Soy milk actually improved something.

Today was my first day using Silk soy milk for my coffee and instant oatmeal. The coffee was ok. It's hard to break a life-long habit of using skimmed milk in the morning. Now, the oatmeal was a different story.

Since the crazy high cholesterol reading I've been trying to eat oatmeal for breakfast everyday. The "lower sugar" instant oatmeal by Quaker is actually good. But until now I had made it with water and added some soy powder to add protein to it. The end result: so so.

This morning I made it with Soy milk and, wow. Creamier, tastier and better.

Bizare experience when something good for you tastes good.

About tofu and dying

There's an 8% chance that I'll have a heart attack in 10 years. That's 1 in 12.

Let's put it this way: my odds of having a heart attack are TWICE the odds of getting hemorrhoids.

And I thought that carrying a blow up ring was bad.

A couple of weeks ago I got the results of my physical. My cholesterol is through the roof, the bad one is in the basement, my liver lipids are out of whack, I had too much sugar in my blood and my weight is 30 pounds north of where it should be.

My doctor, usually a light-hearted guy who wears cowboy boots every day, sounded ominous when he left me a voice mail with the results.

He needed to put me on cholesterol medication, was worried about heart disease, liver malfunction and diabetes, and wanted to run some additional tests.

In plain English, he scared the shit out of me.

So, I did what we all do. Started running (again), eating less fat and carbs (again), eating more "lean" protein (again)...

Exactly the same things I've been trying for 20 years, with no results.

A few weeks after starting my new "regime" I went on a week-long business trip to Austin and New York and predictably, I didn’t exercise all week and ate a shitload of crap.

Fell off the wagon (again).

But unlike before, that thing about dying before my oldest daughter finished high school was still bothering me.

While waiting for my flight out of La Guardia I saw the “Skinny Bastard” book. I had heard about “Skinny Bitch,” and after flipping through a couple of pages, I thought it was funny. Oh, and the two bitches on the back cover were hot. So, I bought a copy.

Little did I know that destiny wanted me to read the whole book that day: my airplane got stuck on the tarmac for 5 hours because of a storm.

I’ve read many dieting books in my life. From Scarsdale to The Zone to Eat to Win. And I was never so riveted by the facts thrown at my face.

I’ve always been a meat-eating guy. I always thought that vegetarians were annoying and vegans were an insane hog-hugging bunch (calling them tree-huggers seems inappropriate).

I thought tofu was for sissies and that not eating animals was simply wrong. After all, we’re on top of the chain. We can eat anybody. Right?

I was truly shocked by the book.

It was a kick in the ass.

By the time I landed in Houston I had a very different view of the things I needed to eat.

It was (and still is) a weird feeling. Suddenly realizing that what I’ve thought my entire life was wrong.

The next day I went with my two daughters to Whole Foods Market and bought a few things. A carton of soy milk, organic whole grain bagels and, God help me, some veggie “burgers," “meats,” and “cheese.”

The girls wanted chocolate milk, so I got them chocolate soy milk with a panda on the carton. They didn’t notice the difference.

So, how far will I go? How realistic it is that I will become vegetarian, then vegan?

I don’t know. Probably unlikely.

But there are three things I do know.

First, I’ll do my best to change my eating habits for good.

It’s literally a matter of life and dead. I have future projects, want to see my girls grow, want to retire in a few years and enjoy life with my wife. Am I willing to give all that up for a slice of bacon?

Second, I want to go slow.

I’m planning to gradually move to healthier choices. When the cholesterol results came in, I gave up red meat and cheese immediately. This week, I’m planning to give up dairy and chicken. The following week, who knows…

The only way to climb a mountain: one step at the time.

And third, I’m NOT going to tell anybody outside my closest loved ones.

When I told my wife about my shopping trip to Whole Foods, her attitude was “oh-kay…” She’s seen me get excited about crazy things in the past, like that one time when I wanted to start my own country (long story). But she was surprised.

I don’t know what shocked her more: my new commitment to eat healthier foods, or the fact that for the first time in my life I used the word “tofurkey” and I was not making a joke.

In any case, I don’t want to become a weird animal rights activist. Nothing against them. I think it’s great that they’re willing to go to town and be vocal for the things they believe in.

I think it’s great when they go out and write a book, like the skinny bitches did.

I just don’t want to be annoying.

Is it bad caring about what other people think? Absolutely. But I don’t care about what you think about me caring about what other people think.

At restaurants, there are always healthy dishes I can pick discretely. At friend’s houses I can always navigate around the available choices. I don’t want to proclaim my cleanliness and try to make other people feel bad about their carnivore lives.

And that’s the reason behind this blog. While I don't want to say anything about this, I NEED to tell someone.

In a strange way, this should give me accountability. I know it’s a bunch of strangers, but hey.

So, we’ll see where this takes me. Go, Tofurkey, go!