Giving Something Up to Gain
In Honor of Heart Month we are reading the book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease - the Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure ” by: Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr. and posting about it on GoodReads. Drs. Donna & Eric will be sharing here a daily Lenten journey, where we are fasting from oil in our foods in order to practice some of what is written about in the book.
The first task for us was to get a handle on how to do this well? We noticed our regular “healthy favorites” such as tortillas and hummus were full of added oils…so off to the store we went to obtain some substitutes without oil. It takes a lot of studying the labels to find foods free from oils. It would be easier to buy only things without a label!
It is worth asking, as one of our non-vegan friends did, “Why” do we want to do this? First, because the evidence will fully support to cut out the oil from your diet to cut the formation and progression of atherogenic plaques and prevent bad cardiovascular effects. Second, because it is something we essentially did at the beginning of COVID (mostly out of practicality), and we felt way better back then. We thought maybe the “run-down feelings” we are having lately are just a by-product of 3 years of struggle?!?! Then it occurred to us as we read again this book that; “no, we were eating better at start of all the pandemic and we FELT BETTER”! Just being plant-based is not enough, you have to do it correctly. We had been plant-based for years, but when we ate really cleanly at beginning of COVID we felt different.
When pandemic hit, our “going out to shop” was curtailed and we started not only growing MOST of our own food, but also joined a CSA and were getting a vegetable delivery service. We even made our own breads, tortillas, and everything from scratch…very little to no oil was in our diets for >three months. Our kids still had some processed foods as we got groceries from “traditional stores” occasionally (and one child was not even fully plant-based with us, so she got some animal products at the time). It was a shift in our eating to be sure and daresay one of the bright spots of pandemic. Our non-vegan child actually started to shift food preferences away from processed and animal-based foods to also going all plant-based. The beauty was this happened naturally just through the exposure to what the rest of us ate!
So in making our minds up about a “Lenten” offering for forty days of fasting/prayer, while we were simultaneously (by chance) re-reading this book, we chose to return to the no oil eating that we had done before when we actually felt better! We will chronicle here some of the struggles and tips for this in case you or someone you know would like to tackle this too. It is our plan that we STAY oil-free this time, and “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” for our family for good!
Cannot thank Dr. and Ann Esselstyn (and their kids) enough for the positive example and information. We really owe it all to them…as it was the “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” book that got Dr. Eric to become a Vegan back in 2009. Later it was Plantstrong cooking online with Ann and Jane that really interested our reluctant little Vegan (she was challenged to “keep up” with Ann and she took such pride in creating the delicious dishes she did not even realize how her preference changed). One such new favorite of ours to make shown below from the Mother-Daughter duo’s new “Be a Plant Based Woman Warrior” cookbook, Checkin’ Nuggets (no oil;-) which are simple and tasty!
If you are interested to follow us on this journey, or maybe even start one alongside us, join us here and on GoodReads & the beauty of this is you have nothing to lose (except maybe weight), but your health to gain!
