FOOD, COWS AND ME.

I lost 19 kgs in 6.5 months. And this is the long story behind it. It is not a solo story of weight loss, but is intertwined with another.

I begin this blog post with 2 main ingredients:

1)      Apologies: I should have written this a long time ago. I made a lot of my friends wait for this.

                    And sorry, this is going to be a very long post

2)   Disclaimer: I am not prescribing this for anyone. I could be very wrong. I’m only sharing my experience through this blog post. This post is all about what I did and what happened. I’m not a nutritionist, not even close. What worked for me need not necessarily work for anyone else.

(a)  Where was I:

So I was weighing 81 kgs. This was February 2017. I had put on 15 kgs in 1.5 yrs after wedding. I hadn’t exercised at all after August 2015 and I had slowly moved from ‘M’, ‘L’, ‘XL’ to ‘XXL’ clothes. I had to buy new clothes every few months because I kept growing out.

I happily binge ate every day. I cooked a lot daily, I was happy gorging on all that I cooked. From a large quantity of poha and curd in the mornings to rice in the afternoons and some heavy dinners. I was happily eating all the food that my friends and colleagues got to work.

My husband and I went out on a few times a week and we happily hogged on the famous cheese pav bhaji, cheese dosa, cheese tawa pulao and cheese vada pav of Mumbai. And a lot of Ferrero rocher milk shakes, ice creams, kulfi and malai from the roadside. I was a happy girl living life to the fullest and sadly health wasn’t a priority to me. I was in a state of euphoria over life.

And do you know what was worse? I had gotten too comfortable with my weight thinking ‘May be I’m meant to be fat and it’s fine’. Like Dawn French had quoted in her autobiography that I read many years ago, “I’ll always be a fat girl and I’m happy with that’.

Yes, you need to be comfortable with your body, but not at the risk of ruining your health. I was harming myself. I was forcing my body to take in all the food I pushed down. I was forcing my body to take so much food that my body didn’t need in the first place.

Everyone kept telling me about how I have put on a lot of weight. And I would be like ‘I know’. The security lady at a mall touched my big tummy while frisking and asked if I was having a baby. The neighbours were asking I had some ‘good news’. Everyone I met was giving me tips to lose weight. Do yoga, drink hot water, walking is the best exercise, and many more. My mother was getting strict with me and giving me targets to lose weight before my next trip home. I would tell her not to ruin my mood by talking about my weight.  I was annoyed and I chose to ignore them all. I was unhealthy and overweight. No, obese actually. At a BMI of 31.6, where 19-25 is the normal range.

(b)  Plot twist: What happened?

To describe what happened, I should start this story from December 2016. I have always been an animal lover, but I realized much later what it takes to be an animal lover with unconditional love for animals. I was introduced to veganism by the facebook posts of Anand Siva, an animal activist in Mumbai that I followed religiously. I had been oblivious to the concept and the rationale behind Veganism. And when I started learning more about it, I decided that I wanted to try this out. I wanted to be a vegan, for animals.

Vegan: A person who does not eat or use animal products.

Why? I didn’t want to contribute to animal cruelty or exploitation in any form.

Cruelty? How? I was always a vegetarian, so there was no question of eating meat. Not even eggs. But dairy? It’s full of cruelty.

Here’s what I didn’t know:

Ø  Did you know that humans are the only animals who drink the breastmilk of another animal?

Ø  70% of the world population is lactose-intolerant, if not extreme, with some after-effects of consuming dairy. The cow’s milk has enzymes that can be processed by the calves, not humans. In the last 15000 years, humans have evolved to process milk.

Ø  We have always been taught that cows ‘give’ us milk. No. We take from them, forcibly. Like all the other mammals in the world, cows lactate for the sole purpose of nourishing their babies.

Ø   Like humans, cows bear their babies for 9 months and you know what happens after that? All dairy calves are stolen from their mothers within hours of birth in order to maximize profit by consuming all the milk that the mother produces. 97% of newborn dairy calves are forcibly removed from their mothers within the first 24 hours. The rest are removed in a matter of days. In many developed countries, the male calves are shot dead or tossed in trash. In the so-called humane dairy farms, cows are often taken within the first hour of birth as separation of mother and calf is considered less stressful when they have not been allowed to bond. Following that callous separation, the mother will bellow and scream for days, wondering where her baby is. Can you imagine this happening to a human mother? Painful and shattering, right? It’s as painful for the cow mother.

Ø  The female calves join the milking herd. They typically spend the first 2 to 3 months of life confined in lonely hutches, fed a diet of milk replacer while humans drink the milk intended for them.

Ø  The male calves and surplus females are sold to be slaughtered for veal or cheap beef. Or they are chained all their life so that they can be sold for greater profits when they are big and heavy. The beef industry would not exist without the dairy industry. And India is the largest exporter of beef in the world.

Ø  To keep them lactating at maximum yields, cows are artificially and repeatedly and forcibly impregnated year after year. Do you really think cows naturally mate and breed? Let me tell you, the actual insemination happens with the dairy employee inserting a gloved hand through the cow’s rectum to inject the semen of the male and manipulate the uterus through the rectal wall. Yes, that’s how cows get pregnant. You can watch these videos on youtube. There are even videos from rural India, because there are no natural processes anymore. Funny, how we think this is rape when it happens to women, but not female cows.

Ø  Because of strong maternal bonds, the mother often stops lactating if the calf has died. Hence an effigy is made by stuffing hay into a dead calf to mimic the presence of calf, so that the mother can keep producing milk. I have seen this! Nauseating, right? That’s how cruel we humans can get.

Ø  And the constant cycle of forced pregnancy and birth year after year does damage to the cow, as it would do to a human mother. Her udder becomes so heavy that it makes her lame and she often develops an agonising infection called mastitis.

Ø  Trapped in a cycle of forced impregnation, perpetual lactation and near constant confinement, most dairy cows’ overworked bodies begin producing less milk at around 4 to 5 years of age, at which point they are slaughtered.  In natural conditions, cows can live up to 20 to 25 years.

Ø  Biological manipulation by hormone injections, abuse of the cows, there is so much more.

In short, the cow’s milk is full of grief. I realized that if I wouldn’t want this to happen to a human mother, I wouldn’t want it to happen to a cow mother either.

And as the vegan activist Shasvathi Siva rightly said, “I would put myself in the situation of the cow mother and it made me so sad to think that someone would forcefully impregnate me only to squeeze milk out of me”. (That too with machines?!)

So swinging back to the story, this is why I wanted to stop consuming dairy. Slowly, I cut off dairy from my coffee/tea, I cut down on curd, I cut down on ice-creams, and in mid-march 2017, I arrived at a complete vegan diet. I realized that an animal’s life is more important than my pizza.

No milk. No curd. No butter. No ghee. No cheese. No paneer. No gelatin. (No honey either)

No ice creams. No cakes. No chocolates. No pizza. No biscuits, mayonnaise, store-bought snacks, or even home-made murukku-thattai. They all had milk solids, or butter or some form of dairy. I would look into the label and read the ingredients and watch out for ‘milk solids'.

Oh, yes, no diwali sweets. I didn’t have any sweet because they mostly have ghee or milk in them.

I quit them all. I put the life of animals before my greedy needs and I turned a complete vegan.

Well, I keep telling people that being a vegan is not just diet. I can’t cheat or just have non-vegan food for just a day. It’s a lifestyle. It is the way I chose to live my life, in a cruelty-free way, which doesn’t stop with the food I eat. I started using cosmetics of brands that are not tested on animals. I stopped encouraging leather - Leather products are made from the skins of cattle and calves, also made from the skins of horses, sheep, lambs, goats, pigs, alligators, even kangaroos. Haven’t you seen how the cattle in India are treated when they are transported and killed for leather? I have convinced my mother not to buy silk sarees anymore.

So, when I made this switch in diet, I started dropping weight. I lost 10 kgs in 2 months. Not just because I cut off dairy, but because I realized that I had been eating unhealthy all along, I realized that I had been hurting my body in the recent years and I started eating very healthy.

(c)  What made the difference?

Ø  I started eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, legumes and other healthy stuff. I started including a lot of vegetables in all the meals I cooked.

Ø  I reduced the quantity of food that I was eating, because it was definitely way more than what my body wanted. I reduced the quantity of my meals for ‘need’ from ‘greed’.

Ø  I started eating in intervals. I ate a healthy small snack/meal every 2 hours.

Ø  I cut down on my junk food and snacks.

Ø  I ate food that was easy for my body to process.

Ø  And the best part, I learnt to say NO to temptation.

Ø  Nothing safer and healthier than freshly cooked home food. I stopped eating food from outside. Almost to zero. On rare unavoidable situations where I had to go out, I would have a fresh juice or a noodle/pasta variety with plain vegetables.

Ø  I took the stairs ALWAYS instead of elevators/escalators.

(d)  What and how I ate:

Ø  Black coffee in the mornings. And gradually in a couple of months I lost the habit, so I don’t drink even black tea or black coffee now. No warm drink in the morning.

Ø  Loads of fruits. Like a kiwi/strawberry in the morning. Then a small box of papaya at 10am. Pomegranate at 11 am. Boiled channa/corn/sprouts at 12 noon. 1 or 2 chappathis with a lot of vegetables for lunch at 1.30pm. A small box of grapes/apple at 3pm. An orange at 5 pm. I distributed my fruit consumption throughout the day. Dates, dried fruits and nuts to munch during the day, in the place of oily snacks.

Ø  Sprouts/legumes – a lot! Every day!

Ø  Noodles/pasta with vegetables during the weekends.

Ø  A bowl of Poha/bread upma/oats upma/wheat upma with a lot of vegetables (6-10 veggies) for dinner

Ø  Millet coconut rice/millet rasam rice/millet sambar rice

Ø  Chapathis/paranthas/plain toasted whole wheat bread

Ø  Rice/pulao without ghee or butter or paneer

Ø  Idiappam/ragi-wheat dosa instead of rice dosas

Ø  Ragi/Multi grain/millet kanji with soy milk

Ø  Dal with spinach and a loooooot of vegetables

Ø  I experimented with vegetables and combinations of them and I increased the quantity of vegetables equal to rice/millet or more than what was required for the rotis I ate.

Ø  I included a raw vegetable salad in my meal.

Ø  In the place of junk food, I would eat apple with dried fruits/nuts or a carrot.

(e)  Walk + jog: 
     
     Around mid-April I began walking 4 kms every day, for 45 mins, about 2 hours after dinner, mostly late nights around 11.30pm, because that’s when I had some time for myself. I couldn’t jog at all. I was heavy and had very low stamina when I began. I would pause my jog every few seconds and walk. It got easier with time. I sometimes tried walking back home from work, which was 6 kms. Yes, in Mumbai traffic. I did this for a month or two. After moving to Bangalore in June, I continued walk & jog in the mornings. I would walk anywhere between 2-4 kms, enjoying the morning sun. Slowly my pace increased. Now I can run 5 km without a break.

(f)  What I can still eat: All vegetarian foods minus the dairy.

Idli, dosa, rice, sambar, rasam, vatha kuzhambu, varieties of kozhambu, keerai, dal varieties, all vegetables, paranthas, poha, pasta, noodles, pizza, just anything -I can eat it without dairy included

(g) My current diet:

Ø  One fresh mosambi/orange juice.

Ø  Fruits spread across the day (Minimum 3 fruits a day)

Ø  Ragi/multi-grain/millet kanji with soy milk

Ø  Sprouts and legumes.

Ø  Chapathis or millet for lunch with vegetables

Ø  A lot of dry fruits and nuts, yes, everyday!

Ø  Vegetables for dinner – sautéed/steamed/stir fried. With quinoa. Sometimes, I add mildly-roasted tofu cubes to the vegetables. I use olive oil or sometimes coconut oil for these. A colourful platter. Not bragging, but you would know how colourful my dinner bowls are if you are following me on instagram/facebook.

Ø  A variety of south indian recipes, especially tam-brahm cuisine.

Ø  I DO NOT EAT INSTANT NOODLES. They are vegan, but not healthy.

(h) Nutrients:

Sources of protein: Peanuts, lentils and bean varieties, all nuts, flaxseed, oats, tofu, green peas, whole wheat, soy beans, broccoli, spinach, non-dairy milk, potato, mushrooms, cauliflower, capsicum and cabbage, quinoa, avocado, tomatoes, almost all fruits, and I eat almost all of them every single day more than enough to suffice my daily requirement of protein.

The amount and variety of vegetables I eat everyday, I make sure I get plenty of vitamins!

(i)Vegan replacements:

Vegan milk options: Soy milk, almond milk, coconut milk, hemp milk, oat milk, peanut milk, rice milk, quinoa milk, etc. I use soy milk for an occasional cup of coffee/tea, for oats, for ragi/millet kanji. I even make payasam/kheer with soy milk.  Soy milk is easily available in every super market.

Vegan curd: Soy curd, peanut curd, coconut curd. I get soy curd and peanut curd here in Bangalore. I have used soy curd for some amazing tadka curd rice, I swear you would never find the difference. Also, soy buttermilk is yummy!

Vegan Cheese: I have had Cowvathi vegan cheese, it’s delicious and I could even add it to my home-made pizza. I could use it as spread for sandwiches and much more. There are options of vegan cheese sold by select vegan chefs here in Bangalore. I make creamy cheese with onions, carrots and potatoes with spices, which goes very well for pasta.

Vegan ice cream: Yes, we do have vegan ice cream brands made out of coconut milk/cashew milk. And they are as yum as the ones made out of cow’s milk, in case you are worried about the taste.

Vegan chocolates: Chocolates that do not contain dairy. I eat all dark chocolates that have no milk.

Vegan butter: It’s easy to make at home, with coconut oil. I haven’t tried it yet, because I have been getting supplies of Salted Coconut butter from ‘Carrots’ Restaurant here in Bangalore.

So, here’s what I get from ‘Carrots’ vegan restaurant in Bangalore (yes, they deliver home):

A variety of indian snacks, mousse/tiramisu/cheesecake/cake/cupcakes and even muffins/brownies/donuts/tarts, cookies, sugar free sweets including traditional Indian sweets like gajar ka halwa, besan laddoos, kaju barfi, gulab jamuns, rasamalai, a variety of dips and spreads like -flavoured hummus, mayo, sauces,  vegan breads/pizza/bruschetta and just everything prepared in a cruelty-free and guilt-free way.

Nope, I’m not missing on anything and in fact this has opened up new horizons for my taste-buds.

(j)   Fitness/gym:

I had already lost 19 kilos (Yes, I weigh 62 kgs now) before I joined the gym. I might have lost weight, but that doesn’t mean I’m fit. Fitness is very different from being slim and healthy. So that’s how I decided to join a gym for workouts. I’m lucky to have found an amazing gym! It was mid-september 2017 (just 1.5 months ago) that I joined Whitefield Total Fitness and I must say I’m seeing the results already.

Best thing about the gym: My BMI, muscle strength, endurance, flexibility and many other factors are tested every few weeks and my workouts are changed based on these. I am blessed with an excellent trainer Mr.Sajeesh and he is definitely inspiring. He motivates me to push harder and he makes sure he gives me interesting set of combos (cardio, crossfit, weights, functional training) every day, and he ensures I’m doing better at it than the previous day. I might have just started and I definitely have a very long way to go, but I love this journey.

(k) Things that I am tired of hearing in the last 7 months:

Where do you get your protein from? Everything that I eat. Chicken and milk are not the only sources of protein, honestly.

Plants have feelings too. Haha, I have heard this too many times now that I could snort with laughter. So my meat-eating friends turn hard core plant-loving botanical scientists and tell me how plants can feel the pain. And my response: plants are not sentient beings, animals are. Animals have the same central nervous system that we humans have.

Don’t you feel tired? No. I feel much lighter than before. I am much energized than ever before. I feel like I don’t have to waste all my energy on digestion and I don’t ever feel tired. I’m not starving, I’m eating healthy food. There are vegan body builders and even those who have climbed Mt.Everest.

Don’t you get tempted? No. This is not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. I’m doing this for a cause, something I believe in so strongly. And this is forever. I am not tempted towards food that contain cruelty in any form.

What do you even eat? Everything that is cruelty-free.

You will have deficiencies. I have a well-planned diet and I make sure I balance all my essential nutrients and I don’t know many people eating as many fruits and vegetables as I do.

Don’t call yourself a foodie. Foodie doesn’t mean I have to eat pizza or KFC wings. I eat a lot of varieties of the food I like. In fact, the definition of foodie is ‘A person with a particular interest in food’. I fall very much in this category.

(l)   Also, health benefits of being vegan:

A plant-based vegan diet can reduce the risk of mortality from conditions such as:

Type 2 diabetes

Cardiovascular disease

Ischemic heart disease

Hypertension

Stroke

Obesity

Some cancers including prostate and colon cancer

Vegan diets can be healthy for anyone of any age, including children, pregnant and lactating women, and the elderly.

I know a lot of people who have switched to vegan diets for health reasons, a lot of them have become healthier and got rid of sufferings of some chronic diseases, like arthritis. It improves kidney function, reduces the risk of PCOD, and a variety of other health benefits.

Oh, wait, you know I haven’t had common cold since I changed my lifestyle, from falling sick with cold/flu twice a month.

(m)   Conclusion:

Well, this is almost the end of story. I conclude this by telling you this ‘I have never been healthier’.

I feel healthy and happy and I am glad I made these choices. 

I am not into shaming of meat-eaters or showing hatred towards anyone who has different opinions, but if I could make a change, I would do it with love and a lot of healthy discussions. Someday, I hope to inspire some of you, because I know it makes a difference to this world 😊