Why I'm Vegan | Pilates Wellness

Hi and welcome back to Trifecta Pilates. My name is Beth. Today I'm stepping off the mat and into my kitchen to explain why I chose to adopt a vegan lifestyle. Before we get started I don't want you to get concerned that this is going to be a really judgmental or scary vlog and the reason why is I wasn't always a vegan so that would be hypocritical. The rest of my family they are not vegans by any means and I really just want to explain for my health, for my happiness even, why I chose to adopt this lifestyle. Pilates as well is not only when we come to the mat, the movements that we do on the mat, but it's about a holistic lifestyle and so we want to start having other areas of our life aligned with all the work that we do on the mat to support our healthy and happy lifestyle. The first time I experimented and tried to become vegan I only lasted a week and I had read a book. It was a scare tactics book. I'm not saying it wasn't accurate information but it was about animal rights and so I just said I'm not doing this anymore but it that wasn't sustainable to me. It only lasted less than the week and I was right back to eating the way that I was before I read the book. Then fast forward a few years and this was now a few years ago and I read another book and it was during this time that I read the book that things just kind of fell in place. I was also at this point in time grieving the loss of my father. He had passed away a few years prior and I'm sure you can relate if you've ever lost someone. Grieving sometimes can extend for a very long period of time and sometimes you reconnect into that grief. I was reconnecting into that grief and into that loss because my kids were growing older and as they were getting older and starting now to become more vocal and saying all these cute adorable things that kids say I really miss out on my dad experiencing that and he was such an awesome grandpa and the fact that they never even really got a chance to know him. I was looking at my family and thinking how much I wanted to continue to be there for my family and since I've had cancer some of you may be following me on my 20 years ago today cancer vlog that I'm doing. I always had the thought if I get cancer again I'm going to adopt a vegan lifestyle because you hear or I've read such great stories about people who when they get cancer they go vegan and then they have really great results from cancers that maybe are more challenging to recover from than mine was and it was all these things coming together the fact that I kept saying if I get cancer again so I was grieving my father I wanted to be here for my family and be here in my family where I can engage with them in a way where I was pain-free and also from reading the book The China Study I thought this is so silly why am I going to wait for another cancer diagnosis before I make more dietary changes because since my cancer diagnosis I've made subtle shifts in the way that I chose to eat and I just thought this is it I need to do this I need to step into this fully for me this is my next step to ensure I am there for my family in the way that I want to be present where I can go hiking with them and not get tired where I can run around and play games with them outside and you're fully engaged where they don't have to worry about my health and wellness where I'm doing everything I can right now to set myself up for success years and years down the road and in the immediate this is why I come to the mat this is why I work out with Pilates but it's not just all about working out we need to balance that out with the healthy food options that we choose to make that makes sense for us and the reason why I say that makes sense for us is because right now what makes sense for me is to be a vegan in the past that wasn't the case a few things to keep in mind if you want to experiment with being a vegan or just adding more plant-based recipes into your everyday meal plan is that I never really realized until I went vegan how much I was relying on animal products for my protein and so I had to start coming up with new recipe variations I had to kind of shed what were my go-to meals and find just new options and some of these options worked really well from the first time and other options did not work at all and there's another category where it's like hmm this is a little bit different it's not the and so so many products that are vegan now say like chicken tenders or lunch meat or all this other like fake meat fake cheese I choose not to personally eat those one because they're pretty expensive two they're really really processed and I'm not even sure how healthy they are and three they never taste the same I don't care what a vegan tells you if that they taste exactly the same they won't they're lying to you or they don't remember what that food actually tastes like and it's not that the food that I eat is bad it actually is delicious let me tell you that but it's not exactly the same and so we set ourselves up for failure sometimes thinking that a vegan lasagna for instance is going to taste like the lasagna that has been in our family as a recipe for years and years and years and I can vouch for this because I used to make a lasagna layered with real cheese and ground beef and there's no way I can exactly replicate that lasagna is that a bad thing for me that's not personally a bad thing I'm willing to shed and detach from that so that I can try new recipes and also food is so ingrained into our celebrations and so for example with my children if I don't bake them their cake and maybe their dad bakes the cake instead and it's not vegan I'll have a small slice why because I want to celebrate them and I want them to know that I value their relationship more than I value being 100 percent vegan and totally strict lastly if you're a vegan like I am in a household full of non-vegans we need to loosen up a little bit and I say this with all the love and this is something I went through were being vegan in a family of non-vegans especially because my husband does a lot of the cooking sometimes it was putting a strain on our relationship like he was overwhelmed he didn't know what to cook and I kept asking like hey I love your chicken noodle soup can you make it without chicken and he was like no Beth if I make without chicken it's noodle soup and I'm not doing that and I went through this period of time where then I would have to begrudgingly go to my refrigerator and try to find an option when the rest of my family was having chicken noodle soup so where we've met in the middle is he has come up with more variations with my help of how when we're having tacos for instance I don't eat ground meat with the with tacos um I'll do more beans or I'll do another substitute like tempura or when he makes chicken noodle soup I just have the damn chicken noodle soup I just don't eat the chicken and even though I know that the chicken was in the soup and so there's it's like mixed in the broth and all that I just have to let it go because my relationship with my family my relationship with him is more important than for me being 100 strict all of these things is really just works for me right now and some of this may work for you right now and some of it may not work for you right now I would love to know if you're vegan or vegetarian or if you've been thinking about going to more of a plant-based diet if that's been successful for you what had perhaps been the struggles for you I would be happy to do another one of these brief videos talking about some other aspects of being vegan if that would be helpful because part of the Pilates lifestyle is not only about showing up for ourselves on the mat coming to the mat for those awesome workouts but showing up for ourselves off the mat as well and making sure that we're in alignment with what we do on the mat and off the mat beyond that I really hope this video was helpful for you I'm going to leave a link below for the book of the China study it was obviously a very transformational book for me and I'm going to leave the link below as well for Joseph Poite's book Return to Life that book is full of wonderful quotes wonderful insights even from 50 years ago about overall health and wellness let alone has all of the original Pilates mat exercises as well so that's kind of cool to see those archival pictures wherever you are from my home to yours I hope that you have a beautiful day don't forget to subscribe and turn on the bell notification and like share and leave me a comment