Squishyplum

All plants. All the time.

The Great Paleo vs Vegan Debate

Boxing Girl

Proponents of the Paleo Diet are often at odds with vegans, duking it out over who has the better diet, each claiming their own moral high ground and often dismissing the other’s choices outright. Hailing from the plant-based camp myself, I’m obviously biased towards a diet that is good for the environment, the animals, and my health. That being said, I’m always curious to hear about the merits of other people’s choices and what drives them to eat that way.

And I’m fascinated by the vehemence with which some people defend their choices, to the complete preclusion of any other way of eating. Vegans and Paleos are the worst of the bunch, I’ve found: staunch advocates who abide by strict rules, with no wiggle room for real life, no grey areas. In reality, Paleo and WFPB (whole-food plant-based) diets overlap in several areas, such as the avoidance of processed foods and elimination of dairy from the diet. Dr. Mark Hyman even coined the term Pegan, or Paleo-Vegan!

Becoming Vegan book by Brenda DavisIf you’re interested in diving into the topic of Paleo and/or plant-based eating, I invite you to join me on Friday, May 26th for dietitian Brenda Davis’ talk: Decontructing the Paleo Diet from a Plant-based Perspective. Davis is an award-winning author and internationally-respected speaker on evidence-based insights into the diets of our ancestors.

The event is being presented by Meatless Meetup, a Meetup group for vegetarian, vegan, and veg-curious folks in the Greater Vancouver area.  Details about the event can be found on the Meatless Meetup page. Come join us! Registration is required but all are welcome.

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Cancer on a bun

Sausages on BBQ

As we head into BBQ season, I’d just like to ask everyone to hit pause and give some thought as to whether that hotdog or steak is really the best choice for your body. Some of you may like to throw caution to the wind — the ol’ “we-have-to-die-from-something” refrain — but I urge you to consider the implications of your choices. I hate to be the voice of doom (and I know scare tactics are less effective at eliciting change) but I just want to point out that lifestyle-related diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, may seem like things that happen way down the road—but your lifestyle can catch up with you in what seems like the blink of an eye.

An Oktoberfest sausage at the neighbour’s BBQ. A chargrilled steak at the cottage. A red hot at the ballpark. Just a typical summer. But did you know that processed meat (e.g. bacon, hot dogs, sausage, luncheon meat, ham) was declared Grade 1 carcinogenic by the World Health Organization (WHO)? They have blatantly stated that processed meat causes cancer. Not might cause cancer or probably causes cancer. It definitively causes cancer. You know what else is Grade 1 carcinogenic? Asbestos. Tobacco. Not great company to be keeping.

WHO’s recommendation? Avoid processed meat. Don’t eat it. Ever. There is no safe amount for consumption. Red meat is only slightly better, earning Grade 2 carcinogenic status, meaning it probably causes cancer.

Although there are multiple factors that contribute to developing disease, and the WHO classification does not focus on the percentage of increased risk associated with processed meat consumption, I urge you to think twice before you tuck into that bacon-wrapped filet mignon. Your body, especially your colon, will thank you for it.

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Stress: That Sneaky Culprit

So Delicious Cashew Milk Salted Caramel Cluster Frozen DessertSo it happened. I wondered if it would. And it did. The stress finally caught up to me: the stress of finishing a big work project while packing to move; moving day, accompanied by the worry of how I am going to afford to buy furniture (I have virtually none); being on my own, alone, in my own place, with everything I own piled up in boxes around me, for the first time since the late 90s. I thought I was handling it. I really did. But last night I snapped and ate a whole carton of ice cream.

The entire concept of my whole-foods mission went out the window. Highly-processed with Iots of sugar and fat, you say? Bring it on. Yep, I scarfed back a full tub of So Delicious Dairy-free Cashew-milk Salted Caramel Cluster. Not all in one sitting, mind you. But all in one evening. Because that’s so much more dignified. Oh, and I quaffed a bottle of rootbeer. Artisanal, family-owned, small-batch brewed, of course—nothing but the most pretentious of rootbeers for me when I’m self-medicating with food. But I’m not fooling anyone; we all know it’s still just pop. Might as well be mainlining sugar. Sigh.

So what’s a girl to do? I thought I had the answer. My first class of Beginner’s Yoga that I had signed up for at my new community centre was the next morning. Perfect. Mitigate the damage with some soul-soothing yoga. Good plan. I hit the snooze button a few too many times but managed to finally drag my ass out of bed and get organized. Not a moment to spare. Then I looked up my registration receipt and noticed that I had the time wrong; there was no hope of making it to the class on time. Arghhh. Best laid plans. “Well, I’m up and all dressed in workout gear,” I thought. “I’ll go for a walk.” But first lemme just lay back down for a few minutes. I’ll just close my eyes for half an hour and then head out. Right. I’ve heard that one before. Finally rolled out of bed at 2pm. Yep, mid-afternoon.

So how does one rescue a shitty day? With cupcakes, of course! I spent what was left of the afternoon exploring my new neighbourhood and stumbled upon a fabulous vegan cupcake bakery. Lemon cupcake? Yes, please. Oh, and a chocolate-vanilla one too. The only saving grace is said bakery is 16 blocks from my house. So there was some walking involved.

Thankfully there is a happy ending to my story. After gobbling up the aforementioned cupcakes, I jolted my body back to a whole-foods plant-based (WFPB) reality with a big kale salad and some quinoa & black bean salad. This is the only strategy that actually works to get me back on the healthy path. Recalibrate. Pressing the reset button. Whatever you want to call it, my body is reminded of what real food tastes like. Because I never feel great after I eat highly-processed foods—whether it’s cupcakes, ice cream, fried foods, donuts, whatever my poison of choice—I’m always tired and lethargic with a slightly off-kilter digestive system afterwards.

Putting suboptimal foods in my body not only stresses my physical body but it messes with my mental and emotional health too. I sleep too much, either sleeping in or napping a lot. Negative thoughts about my body run rampant in my head. Stresses and worries are disproportionately heightened. Obstacles suddenly seem insurmountable. So it’s critical to shake the processed-food blues as soon as possible or I start spinning down a scary vortex. And the secret is a hit of WFPB foods. Kale and black beans to the rescue. Give it a try and see if you can wake up from that processed-food coma.

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Gramma Funk to the rescue

Woman's feet wearing pink running shoes

“I see you, baby…shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass.” Shakespeare it is not but Gramma Funk and Groove Armada got me out the door this afternoon. And that’s exactly what I needed.

For some reason, even though I am a freelancer who works on my own schedule, Mondays still bum me out. I don’t know if it’s a residual malaise lingering from the days I worked the Monday-Friday grind—a feeling of palpable dread used to start building while I was still lying in bed Sunday mornings—but it’s very real. And it can throw my whole week off.

I’ve been enjoying three weeks of yummy whole-food plant-based eating since I kicked off Project Squishyplum 2.0—but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. It’s imperative that I move my body on a regular basis. Nothing crazy but I’ve gotta put one foot in front of the other or partake of some Downward Dog action. If I don’t,  a melancholy starts to set in. And it’s like a snowball rolling down the hill, growing larger and larger until all I want to do is lie on the couch watching NetFlix and scarfing cupcakes. I can’t tell you how often that scenario has played out in the past. It ain’t pretty.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to Gramma Funk for reminding that I need to shake my ass.

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This is not a weight loss blog.

Woman with loose pants at the waist

I was determined from the outset that my blog would not be about weight loss. Nope, no diet talk here. You see, I am not a calorie counter. Never have been. I am not one of those women who know the number of calories in every morsel of food that passes their lips; I know some who can tell you exactly how many calories are in three bites of a McDonald’s cheeseburger, or a handful of jelly beans, or two-thirds of a bag of Doritos. Craziness.

I’ve always been a Big Picture kinda gal, more interested in the powerful impact of diet on chronic disease, like cancer and heart disease and diabetes. And how our food choices as a population are slowly killing us—which is what led me to pursue my Masters in Nutrition. But I digress.

Let calorie obsession be the domain of the myopic dieting crowd. Because with a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) lifestyle, there’s no need to count calories. Instead, if I want to flex my arithmetic muscles, I can count how many pieces of fruit I enjoyed today, or how many Elaine Benes Big Salads I gobbled up this week, or the shrinking number of my pant size.

Now granted, it’s hard for a blog about WFPB eating not to be about weight loss in some way. Let’s face it: if you are overweight, which I am, you will lose weight eating this way. It’s unavoidable. And I’m not complaining. A woman who is barely 5’5″ should not weigh more than her 6’1″ partner. It disrupts the balance of the universe.

But I promise not to dwell on my weight loss. Maybe a little happy dance when I can fit into my size 12 jeans again. And an ever-so-tiny fist pump when I cross that 200lb threshold on my way back down to a healthy weight. But mostly, let’s explore all the other fabulous benefits of the WFPB lifestyle: more energy, glowing skin, better sleep, reduced joint pain, lower blood pressure, decreased risk (and in some cases, reversal) of various chronic diseases, better sex life—the list goes on ad infinitum. I say, bring it on!

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