Changes

Wesley Chapel, Florida

Sunday was another “fun” day in the life of a full timer.

We went to pick my brother up from his two nights at the hospital.  He will not be able to drive for who knows how long. His lifestyle choices are affecting our  lifestyle now.  Not only do we have to take care of my Mother, we have to take care of him.   We are not happy campers.  These issues that we need to deal with, will for the time being, keep us pretty tied to to Tampa.   grrrrr   I guess it could be worse.  Mom could live in Nebraska.

So, on to other things.  We have decided since we’re stuck here, we’re going to join a local fitness center again.  We enjoyed it when we did it last winter, and since we’re changed our diets,  we think this is a good time to start an exercise program.   We aren’t as dedicated as Sherry to get outside in this humidity and run or even to much walking. 

We have been eating the vegetarian/vegan diet for 9  days now.  Vegetarians eat no meat, but still eat eggs and dairy.  Vegans eat no meat, dairy, or eggs.   There are some very good benefits to stay away from dairy.  There is a lot of information in the video Forks Over Knives.   I had a free link on a previous post. 

The vegan diet started as an experiment.  We decided to give it a try and see what happened, and take it one day at a time.

We discovered that with a little thought, we could eat anything we wanted, providing we modified it a little.

Tacos…yes.   Cake, yes.   Pizza, yes.   Sloppy Joes, yes.  Of course these are all modified to be made without meat, dairy or eggs.

I discovered I got an energy boost from this way of eating and lose weight in the process. 

We have been eating some really tasty foods.  Hummus and lentils might be our new best friends.

I have lost 4.0 pounds, and Al  (who didn’t get a starting weight right away) has lost at least 4.0.   We have done this by eating all we wanted and as often as we want.  We have not craved anything at all.  That was a big surprise to me because in the past when I’ve tried weight loss diets, I immediately started craving things.  I have very rarely been hungry, in fact most of the time I have a full feeling.  I get full much faster.  That’s a shock for me because I have always had a very good appetite and it took a lot of food to fill me up.  Al still seems able to put away a good amount of food, and that’s okay too because it’s all healthy food with very little fat or cholesterol.

We do not consider this a diet, but a new way of eating.  We try very hard to make sure we do not feel deprived and have all the crunchy, salty snacks we want.  Neither of has really had a craving for something sweet,  yet.

It’s been surprisingly easy.

After the first few days and we started to see that we could do it long term, we started purging some things from the refrigerator.

Yesterday, I brought my mom some “treasures” from our refrigerator.  I wasn’t sure how Al would feel about the following item.  I approached the subject very carefully….

Can you part with this ?  Should we give this to Mom?

Surprisingly, he said yes.  He even had a smile on his face.  That’s a bad picture of Al….he really looks much better.

Stouffer’s frozen French bread pizzas were one of the staples of our diet.  We could always grab one of them when we were too tired or lazy to cook.   I was not a meal planner.   This new way of eating has forced me to plan better.  I have been afraid if Al got hungry, all hell would break loose! 

In the beginning we were afraid to leave the house without a snack.  We were afraid if we did a Pizza Hut, or Zaxby’s would start calling our name.  That has not been an issue so far, but we do try to bring some nuts, dried fruit, peanut brittle, or soy nuts with us.

We’ve both agreed that we want to stick with this new way of eating, and we’re both committed to it.  Will we have turkey at Thanksgiving?   Maybe.  If we want it, we will have it.  We still have some nice fish and lobster in the freezer.   We will eat them one day.  We will have ice cream if we want it. 

I made a vegan pizza the other night and it turned out very good.    We used no peperoni or cheese.  I found a good tasting vegan mozzarella cheese substitute,  and we loaded it with veggies.

We made lentil sloppy joes last night.  Al liked them, I didn’t.  I will find another way to make them in the future.

 

We got the truck topped put on the truck the other day.  We sure do like our new truck.  I believe the parts are all in for the driveshaft disconnect and the tow brackets.  No hurry to get them installed now!

Our dry pattern of weather has ended.  We had some beautiful cloud formations the other night, so I snapped a few pictures.

Baxter being cute.

Catherine, JoBeth and Grace moved in one space down from us yesterday.  We got a tour of their beautiful new Tiffin.   She’s quite a beauty.

Unfortunately, because we were napping, we missed their rather eventful arrival.  Check here to read all about it.   Darn, I missed some great video for my blog. 

Here is a sign I just had to photograph.

 

The end