"This new girl is gonna guac my world"

When Stephanie told me about "Feed Me Bitch", I was caught by surprise, and not because of the name. The truth was, even though I'm probably the most dedicated (re: stalker-ish...I love blogs and have been reading our girl for years upon years!) Stephanie reader out there, I did not know she had this blog! Needless to say, I was stoked to have more content to read, and even more stoked--dare I say, double stoked?!-- to be asked to contribute.

So, of course, since I am female and living in America and also aware of stereotypes, I have a history with food. As in, I LOVE to eat. I love all sorts of treats, carby things, veggies, meats, the whole deal...save for bananas. We all have something, I guess. I was vegetarian for a few years in college but obviously lacked the conviction to follow through once my ex-boyfriend's mother shoved a pepperoni pizza in front of me at a family dinner. Lacking the elegance to gracefully find a salad or potato, I bit into that greasy slice, loved it, and reverted back to my meat loving ways.

My body paid for it. I didn't jump back on the vegetarian bandwagon--I ate bad food after bad food with reckless abandon! I ended up gaining 50 lbs, had acne, and felt tired and unmotivated. My pleasures continued to be confined to an 8-inch plate, or a 5-inch bowl of heaping ice cream. Yum in my tum. That's right.

Eventually I was asked to participate in a weight-loss pool at one of my office jobs. I had found a motivator--money! Imagine that. I lost all of the weight on Weight Watchers, which I still heartily advocate. The program is healthy, not extreme, and makes sense if you just stay on board with it! Not to brag, but I totally won. I felt amazing fitting into a size six again.

Alas, life changed, my mother passed away, and I stressed the heck out, eating crap. I gained some of the weight back, which is where I'm at now. It's been three years since. My husband and I stick to a fairly healthy diet. I mean that, if you compare it to the rest of America. We don't typically eat fast food, save for every few months when I must have a Western Bacon Cheeseburger from Carl's Junior (look, it's only when I'm riding the crimson wave. He usually gets something less horrible.). We eat a lot of fish, veggies, and whole grain pastas. We occasionally have red meat, but it's when we go out. We eat pretty well. But like all things, including Jennifer Aniston, we could do better.

So, what's going on right this very second? I read Alicia Silverstone's book "The Kind Diet (I'm a child of the '90's and in my private world, she and I are best friends) last week and it's got my head spinning. Ms. Cutie Face makes a very convincing arguement for at the very least trying some new foods. I'm completely loving the idea of taking care of my body, animals, and the earth at the same time. It really speaks to the multi-tasker, faux-Virgo, Filofax-carrying part of me.

Here's the scoop on "The Kind Diet". It's a vegan/macrobiotic plan. It explains the danger of having meat products in your system and the toll it takes on the environment, as well as the crazy stuff sugars and processed foods do to you. I'm 30 now, so I am starting to be very aware of how my body is changing and is affected by my environment. I want to be responsible and conscious. I have absolutely no reason not to. And to contrast the elimination of easy-to-find-in-vending-machine foods, the book is loaded with vegan'macrobiotic recipes that acutally look awesome. I'm talking peanut butter cup awesome.

I'll be documenting my vegan experiments on "Feed Me Bitch", and on my own blog, "Trois Mois". It's about to get all soy up in here. For the time being, I'm just finding recipes on-line and in books. I hope to get so adept with my new vegan ingredients that eventually I'll be concocting my own recipes from scratch.

Here's to a new adventure! If any of you are vegan, what resources do you use and do you have any tip for someone just trying it out?