I've been golden these last two-plus months and it hasn't been just the V pledge. No animal products, sure, but also no sugar or caffeine, lots of fruits and vegetables, and an unprecedented foray into protein substitutes like this astonishingly delicious Italian sausage.
The result was a revelation: I felt awful. Getting off the sugar and the coffee left me sleepwalking till bedtime. I just never woke up. The coffee went because the milk went. That wreaked havoc with my morning Gibraltar, known among aficionados as the fool's cappucino.
I loved sitting at the bar in my coffee house slugging back my 4.5 ounce glass of brew. I particularly liked walking to the car with my glass in hand as if it were a badge of belonging. I wasn't just a swill-drinking, cup-wasting transient. I was a regular, trusted to return the glass. The coffee went and my status suffered. I started drinking tea. I spit on tea.
I gave up sugar because my naturopath scared the shit out of me re:my binging. Results from repeated food intolerance tests indicated that my sensitivity to the sweet stuff was getting worse year after year. In other words, like the majority of my fellow Americans, I was flirting with a blood sugar disaster. This was not news.
So, yeah, golden. And as you'd imagine, I eventually felt great. My moods evened out. My concentration grew sharper. Even my Spanish teacher Alvaro Torres-Crespo noticed; our morning language lessons rocked. My late-night binges were over because there was nothing left to binge on (or should I say, nothing that promised to cure what ailed me since I wasn't ailing). I stopped focusing on what would come after a meal and pretty much savored the damn meal.
Which brings us to last night and the Crime Against Ketzel. I'd been plotting it for days. Last night I skipped the meal altogether and that doesn't mean I didn't eat. Instead, I slowly, steadily, chip-by-chip worked my way through one-half pound of so-called unsweetened carob chips. What a crock. In fact they're sweetened with barley malt and go down just as well as peanut M&M's without being a political crime. People I confess to laugh at the idea of carob chip abuse. "I figured your bed would be littered with candy wrappers!" said my roommate when I told her I'd been binging. "Levine, you're such a lightweight." That's from Eric, my vegan friend.
I've said it many times before and even made note if it in my Vegan Myths post. I know very few V's who are in it for health. For me, it's all about avoiding animal suffering.
Would that I were such an animal.
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