Dead week

Tuesday, March 8

I overate for dinner: had a lot of lentil puree, among other stuff like squash and mushrooms. It made me feel sleepy the whole night, gain 1 kg compared to last night, and fart a lot. My stomach was obviously very flexible – it suddenly became HUGE. However, I still felt better this time than last time when I had the two big full plates of Thai vegetable curry. I concluded that too much starch/protein is better than too much fat.

I canceled the bet with Lisa, because I decided to fast for the next day to recover my stomach, and this violates the eat-every-meal rule of the bet. I was sure I would win the bet, but I hated the restrictions that the bet set on me. I wanted freedom, so I canceled the bet.


Wednesday, March 9

I was woken up by alarm that morning – the first time for a while. It showed that I needed more sleep due to overeating. I fasted for one day, and it was easier than the first time I fasted (although the first time was easy too). This time I was not as thirsty and hungry as last time. It was probably because 1) from morning to 3pm I was totally focusing on the humbio final paper due that afternoon, 2) last time I starting fasting from lunch, but this time I started fasting from dinner, so maybe it was less intense of a fast this time, or 3) the second time is just easier than the first time.

I was also more energetic: I didn't feel sleepy in the 3:15-4:30pm class at all! I broke the fast with two apples at probably around 5:15pm. At around 6:10pm I had some green salad and broccoli. At around 7pm I had three slices of watermelon. Wow that’s a lot of break-fast compared to just two apples last time!


Thursday, March 10

It was awful that I overate again. I had slightly less than normal amount for dinner, then I when into the Flomo kitchen to talk to the staff there for a while. After a short while, I felt like some bread, so I went downstairs to get some. I saw one girl pass by, eating Oroweat 100% whole wheat English muffin. I was curious so I checked the muffin out. It looked healthy, so I had one slice (half of one English muffin). It was soooo delicious, and it was instantly ranked as my favorite bread. To compare with the normal Oroweat 100% whole wheat bread, I ate a piece of the normal bread too (the crust part that I love). The normal one still tasted good, but the English muffin tasted softer and a little bit oilier, like cakes. So I had another English muffin (composed of two slices). Then I regretted, because I overate again. But this time it was much better than the previous two overeating that made me feel imperative to fast.


Friday, March 11

Although I felt ok when I went to bed last night, I felt very full this morning. But I still had one apple around 9am. At around 10am I had the big mushroom burger from Axe & Palm (I took it back home the previous day). I didn’t have time for lunch because I had a final paper due at 1:15pm. After submitting the paper, I ate 1.5 English muffin and a piece of leftover mushroom on the lawn. I had a small dinner. My stomach does not feel great that day. Overeat-fast-overeat in three days hurt my stomach, and my diet today was also irregular. I should protect my stomach more. Take good care of it.

When I was talking to my parents at night, my parents forced/begged me to eat meat. I was sad and extremely frustrated that I needed to give up my belief just to make my parents happy, so I wrote a long email to them, hoping that they understand why I chose to become a vegan. As a result, I went to bed at around 2am. It was the first time that I went to bed after midnight since the Viennese Ball on February 11.


Saturday, March 12

I naturally woke up at around 7am. I intentionally canceled my alarm last night, expecting to sleep more this morning. But I woke up early by myself as usual, although not as early as 5:40am. Not getting enough sleep, my complexion did not look good today.

During lunch, I had a talk with the manager friend at Wilbur Dining. She told me about how she loved her children by letting them make their own decisions. She’s a wise woman who practices meditation. She said this was a good chance for me to educate my parents, so I decided not to compromise my belief for my parents. They need to understand what I think, who I truly am, what’s most important to me, and what makes me happy. So at round 4pm I started to write a letter to them. I sent the email out at around 11pm and went to bed at around 11:40pm.

I didn’t feel energetic today, although definitely didn’t feel sleepy either, until after I sent out the email to my parents. I yawned after shower. Wow I suddenly realized that I hadn’t yawned for a looong time!

My stomach still felt weird sometimes, but much better than yesterday. Today I practiced good diet and my stomach is recovering.

This morning I discovered that “Food for Life Wheat & Gluten Free Brown Rice Bread” is also soft and oily, so Food for Life’s Brown Rice Bread trumped Oroweat English Muffin as my favorite bread.


Sunday, March 13, 2011

Today I got up at 7am again. It’s interesting that that’s roughly 1.5 hours later than 5:40am. I just learned the 90-minute sleep cycle last week and it looks like it applies here! I used to believe in a smaller sleep cycle of 40 minutes (my dad told me this and it works).

Lisa just got up around 10am. I always know I went to bed at around the same time but got up way earlier than her every day. However, today is the first time I consciously calculated: 10-7 = 3 hours! Before going vegetarian, we used to have the same demand for sleep. Am I really saving 3 hours every day nowadays? I’ll try keeping track of our sleep time next week.

Wait … that why! I just realized that because of the day-light saving time, we just lost an hour today. So if today were still yesterday, Lisa got up around 9am and I slept only 2 hours less than her. (The time I got up, 7am, was shown on my alarm, which did not automatically adjust for day-light saving time)

This morning, I had one slice of Udi’s Gluten Free Whole Grain Bread, one slice of Food for Life Brown Rice Bread, one slice of Ezekiel, and one slice of Udi’s again. They are all very good, with totally different tastes. I almost wanted to rank Udi’s Gluten Free Whole Grain as my new favorite, but I just discovered that it has egg whites in it. Egg’s only a minor ingredient here, so I think it’s ok to eat Udi’s once in a while, but I don’t want to make it my favorite. I compared nutrition facts and figured that the best is still definitely Ezekiel. Food for Life Brown Rice, Udi’s and Oroweat Whole Grain all leg behind. I think I won’t rank among breads, but I do think bread has become one of my favorite foods. I’ll use Ezekiel as my staple, and eat other breads once in a while.

Lunch I had half a plate of green salad and half a plate of squash and roots. I didn’t think that was too much squash and roots, but apparently that was. My stomach didn’t feel good after the lunch, although overall I didn’t eat that much. I recalled that actually I never felt very comfortable after eating a lot of squash or roots. Probably they are just difficult for my stomach to digest, so in the future I should only take very small amount of such food each time. I finished lunch at 12:45pm and had pineapple at around 2:50pm. My stomach was noticeably uncomfortable at around 3:50pm, so I went to bed at around 4pm.

Dinner I had green salad, boy choy, broccoli, and three slices of breads: Ezekiel, Oroweat whole wheat, and Oroweat whole wheat English muffin. Oroweat English muffin didn’t taste THAT great to me anymore. I actually enjoyed the Oroweat whole wheat the most today. It’s weird that, for dinner again, I felt full after meal even I don’t think that I had that much. There are a few possible reasons for that: 1) I took a 1.5 hour nap right before dinner, so I didn’t feel like eating before dinner. 2) I suspect that boy choy in the US contains too much fiber or is too huge and thus it fills me up easily. 3) I guess that I should not eat both Ezekiel and normal bread at the same time, because Ezekiel is a complete protein and leaner on carb. Mixing Ezekiel and normal bread is a bit like a starch-protein combination. 4) Three slices of bread is just about right for breakfast, but for dinner, since you also consume so much fiber from other sources, three slices of bread may be too much? About two hours after dinner I also farted a little bit. I guess farting is directly correlated with how stuffed you are after each meal. You may also fart if you violate food combination, e.g. having starch and protein at the same meal, but I’m not sure on this point.

Trying fasting

I had two big full plates of extremely delicious Thai vegetable curry for lunch yesterday, and I felt bloated and didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day. I certainly still felt stuffed when I went to bed yesterday, and when I got up this morning my stomach was still not emptied. I would like to give my stomach a rest, so I decided not to eat anything today. Naturally I began to wonder if fasting was healthy, so I searched online. This led me to a whole day’s reading about fasting (except from 1 to 5pm when I hung out with friends). What I was surprised and happy to find was that fasting seems a lot like practicing vegan. They both make you healthier and more spiritual. They are both radical changes to my life and require a leap of faith. Two articles into reading about fasting, I had already decided to take the challenge and practice fasting to explore myself.

Yesterday I ended my curry feast at around 1:30pm and hadn’t eaten anything besides warm water until 5:55pm today. It was my first fasting experience, and it was not painful at all. I didn’t suffer from unbearable hunger or any unusual symptoms, except that 1) My breath and body odor were a little bit unpleasant this evening, 2) I drank a LOT of water today. Today is probably my highest-water-consumption day of my life so far. I was not really thirsty, but I just WANTED to drink this much, partially because it made me feel more filled. I ate two apples on 5:55pm, because I read that fasting for one or two days does not get you to the extremely beneficial deep cleaning stage yet, but it breaks down your muscles. Although it looks like I water-fasted for 28 hours this time, I don’t think the 28 hours fully counts, because even this morning I still felt a little bit something in my stomach. So I thought eating apples at dinner time today could stop my muscle breakdown right in time and also satisfy my stomach when it routinely secreted digestive juice. After further reading, I now tend to believe that fasting for 24 hours does not really hurt muscles, but I’m not 100% sure. Need more research. But at least I’m now ok with fasting for one or two days without being too concerned about losing muscles.

Longer fasting is definitely disproportionally more effective than shorter fasting, so I’ve decided to do a 10-day water fasting during spring break from March 18 to March 28. There will be only 10 days between my graduation on June 12 and the start of my full-time job on June 22, and I’ll work in banking for two years, so I see this spring break the only chance I can do a longer fasting in the near future. The trick is that extended water fasting is better not conducted during periods of stress and heavy workload, so I won’t do it during school year or on the job. I’ve been vegetarian for more than one month and vegan for more than three weeks, so I’ve already started the right preparation for longer fasting. However, since water fasting is an intensive experience for newbies, I think I should do more preparation in the next three weeks by 1) eat mostly raw foods, 2) eat little greasy food, and 3) NEVER feel full. I’m pretty confident that I will easily obey these three fasting prep rules, because I feel a strong belief and commitment in fasting, just like how I believed in my commitment to vegetarian and vegan when I first started them.

Two things are still uncertain. First, since finals are approaching, I don’t know whether I should gradually adapt to fasting by doing one to three days of water/juice/fruit fasting every week in the next three weeks. Second, since today all I had were two apples, I’m actually still on a fruit fasting. So if I continue to eat only fruit tomorrow, I’ll continue the fasting I started yesterday, which will give me a more intense first fasting experience. With regard to these two uncertainties, I think I’ll just listen to my body when I need to make a decision.

Finally, I’ve been not using facial cleansers (except during shower times) since I made the decision of not using them 5 days ago. My skin didn’t change much. Maybe it became a little bit worse, but it could be the skin’s adaptation to the change or the symptom before menstrual cycle. Anyhow, today I’ve decided to go back to using facial cleansers once a day, because when your body actively releases toxins, you want to clean the pores to assist the removal of toxins; I believe in the stage of transitioning to a healthier diet, which is what I’ve been doing recently and will do for the next few weeks, the body releases toxins at a faster rate than usual.

Trying not to use facial cleansers

Strictly speaking, only use facial cleansers when I wash my hair.

Starting Vege Joy

I started this blog Vege Joy on Valentine’s Day 2011, because it’s an easy day to remember. Going vegetarian and then vegan has been an exhilarating self-exploration experience to me, so I would like to keep a diary of the joy of my Vege Journey here on Vege Joy. I intend this blog to be more of a record of what I did and what happened than an educational website about vegetarianism. In fact, what I like most about Vege Joy is that it is not only about the joy of my Vege Journey. It is also about the joy of my life. By life I mean life, unrelated to study and work. I find reflecting on life, designing my life, experimenting a new way of life, and making a change to life a lot of joy.

I created this post on the day I started this blog, but I didn’t write any content. Today, Monday, February 21, 2011, Presidents’ Day, one week after I started Vege Joy and one month after the start of my Vege Journey (btw, I totally didn’t realize that today is such an important day until I was writing the previous sentence), I’m coming back to record what happened in the first three weeks of this exciting journey.


Friday, January 21, 2011 Dinner with Mr. Fauver

I met Mr. Fauver through a class offered by the School of Medicine. I had dinner with him on this Friday night at Wilbur Dining. It was a life-changing dinner. Everything suddenly got connected, I realized that I was actually very spiritual in nature, and I became more peaceful and care-free.

I decided to learn about and start practicing meditation, so the next day I began to read about meditation online. Somehow I learned that a vegetarian diet helps people become more spiritual. I was curious and intrigued, so I began to read about vegetarianism. Then I learned how horribly the food industry treats animals and how a plant-based diet helps protect the environment. A feeling of compassion and love for nature made me want to go vegetarian. After further research, I concluded that a vegetarian diet was even healthier than an omnivore diet. At that time, I knew that I had become a vegetarian.


Sunday, January 23, 2011 Becoming a Vegetarian

I officially became a vegetarian.

I used to be a gluttonous carnivore. I LOVED sea food, dairy and eggs. All-you-care-to-eat dining halls in college were evil accomplices, which made more than 90% of the food on my plates meat. Fortunately I was not fat, so I kept on eating like that, until last year when a friend pointed out to me that not eating vegetables might be the reason why I had acne. This is so duh, but how come I didn’t realize it earlier?! So I began to eat more vegetables, but still not enough. It was not until December 8 last year, when I bet my roommate that I could lose 6 kg in one quarter by neither starving myself nor exercising, that I began to eat probably more vegetables than meat at most meals. Three weeks later, I fell in love with vegetables when eating a big plate of salad in Las Vegas. From then on, I began to be able to crave for vegetables. Coming back to school, I would sometimes even eat solely vegetables for meal out of my free will (not because of the bet at all).

Therefore, going vegetarian was a smooth transition to me. It was so natural that, except for one day when I really wanted the curry catfish at Wilbur Dining, I have never craved for meat at all since I became a vegetarian. Why did I really want the catfish? Well, a few days after going vegetarian, I saw chicken curry at Wilbur Dining and really wanted some curry. So I took some vegetables and curry sauce from the chicken curry. It turned out to be the worst vegetable ever. It had the taste of animal flesh, which instantaneously turned me off. I was surprised to discover that I began to dislike the taste of meat. However, I could not imagine that I would ever dislike the taste of fish, so two days later, when I saw the curry catfish, I decided to try it out to see if I still liked fish. Sure enough, I was still in love with fish. Even after finishing the one piece of curry catfish, I still could not stop thinking about it. So I took another two pieces, telling myself it was the last fish I would ever eat. And so far I was right.

Being a vegetarian definitely made me more sensitive to tastes, not only the tastes of animals, but also those of vegetables. I used to think all vegetables were equally plain tasting, but now I can taste each vegetable’s unique flavor. I was pretty sure that, after 21 years of eating, I had tasted almost all tastes out there, but during the first week of being vegetarian, I suddenly discovered an explosion of new naturally fantastic tastes of vegetables. It was quite a thrilling experience. It was the first time in my life that I loved every single meal I had.

Better taste is not the only unexpected experience I got from a vegetarian diet. Roughly one week after going vegetarian, I also experienced boost of energy, less sleep, and better skin. There’s a 20 degree hill leading to my dorm. I used to hate the hill and I always walked my bike every time I had to climb up the hill. However, one day, I could suddenly bike up the hill without much effort. I also easily acquired the ability to naturally wake up early in the morning (6-7am) and stay energetic all day. I used to sleep more than 9 hours every day, but now I almost never sleep more than 8 hours a day. I didn’t have acne when I went vegetarian, so I didn’t get to witness the direct effect of a vegetarian diet on acne. However, in general, a vegetarian diet is good for skin. Except the week of February 7-11, when I had breakout because of midterm stress, I haven’t had any acne on my face since going vegetarian.

Now move on to the bet I had with my roommate. I entered “safe zone” on the morning of January 27, 4 days after I became a vegetarian, and it was a huge relief. Safe zone means that as long as I hit the upper bound of the safe zone at one point, I could never lose the bet any more, but if I want to win the bet, I have to hit the lower bound by losing another 2 kg. I hated the bet, so hitting the safe zone was like the end of the bet to me. I could finally break the chain and eat freely now (although under the restriction of vegetarian). I didn’t want to become thinner, I didn’t expect to lose more weight, and I didn’t think about losing weight at all, but to my surprise, I lost 1 kg one month into the vegetarian diet. I believe that it’s not losing weight per se. Instead, I’m just getting closer to my natural state of being.

I also became happier and more peaceful. However, it’s hard to separate the effect of a vegetarian diet from other factors. This quarter is definitely much less stressful than my previous quarter, when I was doing recruiting. I also go out more this quarter. Last quarter, three of the four classes that I took had videos online, so I was mostly staying in my room preparing for recruiting. By contrast, this quarter, I began to cram a master’s program into my four years of undergrad study. Plus I am also auditing another three classes. Therefore, I have a lot of classes to attend and I bike around on campus a lot. But one thing is certain: eating only vegetables makes me feel more close to nature and my true self.


Thursday, February 3, 2011 Becoming a Vegan

I didn’t mention earlier that when I first went vegetarian, I decided that it didn’t have to be very strict. In fact, I broke the vegetarian rule twice when I was a vegetarian. First time was in the Integrative Medicine class, which offered students sandwiches for lunch. There was no vegetarian sandwich that day, and I didn’t want to starve myself, so I ate a tuna sandwich. The second time was the catfish incident described earlier. My philosophy was that, as long as I whole heartedly wanted to be a vegetarian, it didn’t matter if I broke the rule in extraneous circumstances. I didn’t like being too intentional and pedantic. I liked being natural and easy-going. I wanted to practice vegetarian out of my free will, not rules. I even briefly considered getting a small amount of fish back to my diet, because of its omega-3 fatty acid (not because I missed fish).

Then how did I suddenly become a strict vegan? First, I learned that cows and chickens are also treated horribly even when they are raised not to be eaten, but to produce milk and eggs. Second, the idea of going completely vegan made me feel more natural and spiritual. Third, being a vegetarian had been a mind-blowing experience, so I was confident to take a step further and discover more about myself. Note February 3, 2011 is the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year. It was certainly a good start. It’s interesting that I turned from a carnivore to herbivore as the Chinese lunar year turned from Tiger to Rabbit.


Sunday, February 6, 2011 Becoming a Food Combinator

I bumped into the Food Combination (FC) theory while studying digestion time of different foods. FC was something completely new while making complete sense to me. In short, FC refers to the combination of foods which are compatible with each other in terms of digestive chemistry. It is a basic component of optimal nutrition because it allows the body to digest and utilize the nutrients in our foods to their full extent. With gazillions of rules, FC first looked extremely complicated, which discouraged me from studying it. But I gradually began to understand the whole theory and finally mastered all the rules.

It suddenly made sense why sometimes my stomach felt weird after I went vegetarian. It was because I ate too much delicious grain (starch) and yummy legume (protein) at the same meal, while according to FC, starches and proteins should not be taken at the same meal. I had a good amount of knowledge about healthy living/eating and I found FC a very sense-making theory, so I started to follow FC alongside a vegan diet. In the spirit of the post I wrote on February 15, 2011, I now call myself a Food Combinator. When first following FC, I messed up the combination rules quite frequently and I felt bad. But now I’m pretty familiar with all the rules and I feel good about my digestion. One proof that better digestion is probably not my wishful thinking is that since I went FC (and vegan at almost the same time), I have almost never had those farts with bad odor anymore. As we know, the amount you fart is one of the best indicators of how well you are digesting your food. Farts that produce bad odor is a sign of toxin formation occurring inside your gut from rotting of incompletely digested food.