losing weight as a vegan

Purple coneflower or Echinacea Copyright (c) 2000 Wendee Holtcamp

This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118:24

I had all this stuff to blog about and I literally completely forgot... what can I say?! Generally, things are good, and I've been feeling SO much better, and am very grateful for that. I was going to give an update on my vegan eating, so I'll stick to that for now. Ive lost 5 pounds in like 30 days! Besides just eating vegan (ie no dairy) for a month, the key things I've changed are:

• I greatly reduced sugar consumption - to almost nothing. This means using unsweetened soy or almond milk rather than sweetened, and no processed foods with added sugar. I use Stevia to sweeten my tea. If I'm craving something sweet, I either have a cup of tea or grab a "raw ball" from the freezer (see recipe here). These have maple syrup in them, but maple syrup has a lower glycemic index than sucrose (aka table sugar) or high fructose corn syrup. And the weird thing is I tend to crave savory stuff now more than sweet stuff whereas it used to be the opposite. And I will just eat one raw ball and be totally satisfied, whereas before (Christmas time, pre-vegan) I would eat like 6 at a time! On the healthy living Yahoogroup I started recently, I just posted a link to this New York Times article "Is Sugar Toxic?" that I reread recently - wow - scary stuff!
  
  
• I put lemon juice in my first water of the day - supposed to crank digestion.
  
  
• I try not to eat solid food before noon. This is from Crazy Sexy diet. I drink green juice or tea. Not every day, but almost.
  
  
• I've been drinking green tea rather than coffee. Green tea is supposed to help weight loss and it also has threanine which helps depression! I started the vegan thing the last week in December, and since then I have had coffee maybe 5 or 6 times total, whereas before it was twice a day every day. And most of those coffees were in the past 2 weeks when I was coming out of my stricter cleanse. I'm looking to create a healthy diet/lifestyle rather than being on a "Diet" so need to be able to be flexible without returning to totally bad habits! I adore coffee but now it's really a "sweet treat" to me rather than something I need every day. Oh and when I drink coffee, I drink decaf, though I do still get some caffeine from my green tea.
  
  
• Using apple cider vinegar and lime/lemon juice as salad dressing (before I used a low-fat Newman's own vinaigrette and I used it once or twice since I started). However apple cider vinegar is also supposed to help weight loss!
  
  
• During this time, I've had 2 juice fast days which means green juice, tea, or smoothies all day. I actually consider my fast until the sun goes down. After that, I don't gorge but have had something small to eat that’s solid on both the times. I don’t know why I cant just go all day with no solids, cuz ive done all juice (lemonade) cleanses for up to 15 days, but I'm trying to not be too extreme. (Crazy sexy diet - or at least her 21-day crazy sexy cleanse - encourages it once a week).

Well I have a busy day tomorrow, so I better sign off... more later. Cheerio!