I switched to a plant-based diet in August of 2013, just three months after my boyfriend (now husband) Dan and I moved in together.
It’s funny how quickly forming new habits becomes the norm, and how trying to recall my old diet is difficult now.
What I do know is my dad loved cooking, and showed love for us with homemade meals. He made chicken stir-fry, pork chops, turkey chili, lasagna, eggplant Parmesan, and more. Dinner was served with a glass of milk and followed with ice cream for dessert as long as we cleared our plates. He genuinely thought the food he made was healthy and “well-rounded” but we essentially ate more or less like average Americans.
Dan also grew up with hearty, home-cooked meals and when I met him, he was very much a red meat guy. He ordered blue-cheeseburgers with extra blue cheese on the side, and made bacon mac & cheese and ‘pizza bread’ using jalapeno cheesy bread, pepperoni, and cheddar. In Southern California, one of our favorite places to eat was a dive restaurant serving child-sized breakfast burritos with potatoes, cheddar cheese, and whole breakfast sausages.
I’m sharing all of this to show you that I’m not special; I loved, and still, love food just as much as the next person, and it amazes me to stop and consider where I am now compared to then. I wasn’t ever battling my weight and once I left home I might have even been called ‘health-conscious’ – fish and chicken, green leafy vegetables with meals, calorie counting when I carried a few extra pounds – but my diet wasn’t what I would now consider healthy.
My point is: Transitioning to plant-based eating is something anyone can do. Anyone. It just takes sifting through the noise, getting to the science rather than rhetoric or word-of-mouth, and committing to understanding that information to push you over the edge.
Moving in with Dan altered how we ate because it was about ‘feeding us’ rather than ‘feeding me.’ We’d cooked for each other countless times before, but living together prompted food conversations that forced us to decide what to cook as a couple. Oddly enough, though, the key to our diet exploration was getting a kitten.
You’ll learn throughout this blog that I have a love for A) food, B) research, C) accuracy, and most importantly D) cats. When we brought home our first kitten, Feta – which, as Dan and I had always joked, was picked out, paid for, and let loose before the boxes were unpacked – I took to my computer to make sure we were doing it right – TLC, food, and everything in between.
We had both owned cats before and fed them kibble – meat-flavored cereal – and agreed there had to be something better. In our search, we found a veterinarian’s website recommending a raw food diet. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning their bodies are made to process meat and meat alone, but if you read through the ingredient list of most cat foods you’ll find the first is a grain, followed by all manner of vegetables. These filler foods pass through your pet and come out the other end wasted, no nutrients absorbed, all while taxing your little companion. It’s no wonder people hate litter boxes and no surprise more and more pets are suffering from the same ailments as people.
We got informed, figured out where to buy the ingredients, and started feeding our kitten the new diet (Note: we do not follow the veterinarian’s recipe exactly, but have instead taken her recommendations and combined them with our own understanding of food and nutrition). Her coat got shiny and super soft, she never got sick, her breath never smelled, cleaning the litter box was a breeze, and we never looked back. With our adorable little kitty now happy and healthy, we had to wonder: If there’s a perfect diet for cats, shouldn’t there be one for people, too?
With that, Dan took to the internet this time to find the answer.
Our search started us in all the typical places: high protein, low-carb, calorie counting, Ketogenic, Paleo, Atkins. There was a lot of information, and it was confusing and conflicting. Dan was initially more driven than I was (he was also cooking for us at the time) so I just followed along with each new idea. We both suffered through boring meals with meat, green veggies, and not much else…and I was miserable. This played a major part in why a plant-based diet initially appealed to me; I wanted CARBS!
After a few months, Dan came home one day, told me to sit down, watch three videos, and promise to form no opinions until I’d finished them (John McDougall – The Food We Were Born to Eat, Neal Barnard – Tackling Diabetes with a Bold New Dietary Approach, & Christina Warinner – Debunking the Paleo Diet). He then shared that eating carbs was not only allowed but encouraged?? I was sold. No calorie counting, no portion controlling, and tons of opportunity for variety.
I lost 10 pounds in the first month. Dan lost 20. The longer we stuck with it, the more passionate and informed we became about its basis in science; he came home day after day with videos to watch, articles to read, and facts to share, which continued to drive the point home and dismantle everything we’d believed about our diets beforehand.
Here I am, years later, healthier than I’ve ever been with no plans to go back. Having the information in front of me, it’s become so clear. It’s not just a diet anymore, but a lifestyle that has become a part of me, of who I am in the world on a daily basis. It’s something I continue to bond with Dan over and challenge myself with, and something I have the opportunity to share with others; to make a real impact in people’s lives.
Now, asking myself why I decided to take on zero waste requires quite a bit of introspection. Wasn’t eating plant-based enough?
I’d known about it for years since I first read an article about Zero Waste Home, a family living a zero waste life here in California since 2008. I thought it was inspiring at the time and was amazed by the dedication it took, but making any kind of commitment to it myself conflicted with who I was back then: a teenager addicted to Hot Cheetos and Starbucks, more focused on my friends, my dating life, and my short-sighted future than how my existence impacted others or the world.
I quickly forgot about it, and life moved on. I went to college, graduated, and moved in with Dan. I focused on developing my career and switched to a plant-based diet. Then in late 2015 a friend of mine posted a video on Facebook about Trash is for Tossers, a young woman in her 20s living a zero waste life in NYC who had produced only a mason jar’s worth of trash in three years!
I was re-inspired. I found Zero Waste Home again, bought the book, and took to it, curious to see if I could make the same kind of commitment.
I honestly think the reason I was ready to try it myself in February of 2016, rather than years earlier, was because of my experience in plant-based eating. Since changing my diet, there was a slow but consistent transition in how I thought about things. Eating plant-based has all these benefits – short and long term health, sustainable weight loss, budget and finances, consumerism, environmental impact – and when I started cooking food at home and thinking about what went into my food, and how what I was eating affected my body, the environment, and my wallet, it made me more conscious of the day-to-day, moment-to-moment decisions I made. I turn down free pastries or free cookies at work not because I’m on a diet, but because I understand the bigger picture. I eat at home rather than going out because putting in the effort feels so much more rewarding and is way better than my body’s reaction to eating fast, junk, processed, or oily food.
Zero waste is the exact same mindset, just focused in a different direction. Passing on free pastries or cookies is like turning down plastic bags at the grocery store, and cooking at home versus eating out is like using dry beans you’ve cooked yourself versus using beans out of a can. Plus, an awesome bonus of the zero waste kitchen is that the food you invest the time to make yourself rather than buying from the store is cheaper and tastes WAY better than pre-made foods and condiments.
Admittedly, since I began zero waste back in 2016 I have wavered on my level of commitment to the lifestyle. I’ve learned that while working to incorporate zero waste options in the day-to-day, the demands of life can impact your ability to be as good about it as you’d like. For example, Dan and I bought a house in 2018 and spent 8 months cooking with a single plug-in burner and microwave with no other functioning appliances, while working full-time jobs, living in construction, and doing physical labor ourselves on the weekends. We were too exhausted sometimes to do things the zero waste way rather than the convenient way.
I truly love the two changes I’ve made because they challenge me, they reward me, and I get to see on a daily basis what I’m capable of. This perspective makes it fun rather than a chore. When life gets challenging, though, or when I might find myself feeling overwhelmed with the rabbit hole I’ve jumped down – twice – I remind myself that the attitude does not have to be a take it or leave it; you can take some, take all, or take just a little bit. The point is that you’re interested and you’re attempting; trial and error is part of the process.
So above all else, have an open mind and take it on as life allows, and I promise you’ll feel rewarded for your efforts.
