Confessions of a Junk Food Vegetarian

Me and my husband in Oaxaca, Mexico

Sometimes it just takes one person to skyrocket you into another direction. I’ve been dubbed as health conscious throughout my 20 years as a vegetarian, but for the first 10 years of my journey I was blindly over-indulging in non-meat but junk food products. Vegetarian foods that might not so quickly come to mind, like potato chips, fries, chocolate chip cookies, candy bars, and sodas were apart of my regular diet.  I was satisfied with this unhealthy food regimen until I befriended a South American native, in Philadelphia, and not only was he from a different culture but his conversations were absolutely strange.

He would offer me a bite to eat and would explain the food's nutritional ingredients. When eating carrots or mango he would say, “caroteen is good for the eyes.”  I thought, “really, how does he know about what’s in carrots and mangos?” At times, I would hear him tell people, “all the necessary proteins you need you can get from a vegetarian diet.” Conversations with him about food were always entangled with nutrition, and I started slowly transitioning to foods with more nutritional value. However, my drug was junk and like a person addicted to drugs, I would crave biting into yet another chocolate and caramel coated candy bar, or I simply missed the bubbly feel or maybe just the sugary taste of sodas. And holidays were the worst of times, especially Halloween, because I would eat all the left-over candy which most times would include digging in multiple bags of candy.

Eventually, with so many conversations about nutrition surfacing, I voluntarily retreated from junk foods. So instead of eating candy bars, I sparingly eat cacao nibs in smoothies, which is pure chocolate made from crushed cacao beans and is classified as a superfood. Instead of eating chocolate chip cookies, I make my own bars made from dates, seeds, and nuts. Instead of craving the sugar in sodas, I started juicing and now I indulge in natural sugars. Taking these basic steps has helped me to take even bigger steps, eventually moving to a vegan whole food diet, and I must admit, this food regime combined with regular exercise, I've never felt healthier and sexier in all my adult life. Then came my biggest move, marrying this man who exposed me to the intersectionality of foods, nutrition, and optimal health, and permanently moving these types of conversations from the bizarre realm of the unknown into an existence of total normalcy.  

So where are you on your food journey and are there any bad habits you're willing to change? Make your comment below and let's talk!