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I’ve been inspired by a few different books to slowly begin making changes to what I was eating.  The way I eat now was a long process with lots of experimentation and time to help me adapt and make peace with each new step.  I definitely did not become vegan overnight and I don’t recommend anyone else do anything that drastic either.  It’s a very personal journey with each person facing their own unique challenges along the way.  I did want to recommend the four most influential books that informed me and inspired me along my own personal journey.

I believe the order of these books is as important as the information they hold:

The China Study

The China Study is a huge review of the scientific studies backing the ideas of the whole foods lifestyle.  As a scientific minded person, I wouldn’t have done any of this without science backing it up.  And I’m talking the science that is not skewed by the financial and lobbying influence of the US Dairy and Meat lobbies.  This one opened my mind a bit after it had been hardened by so many years of the heavy advertising and misinformation that has plagued the study of nutrition.  This book is cited throughout.

Skinny Bitch

Skinny Bitch is a little bit firey.  They say things like “Stop eating crap” etc, so if you don’t want tough love this one’s not for you.  It’s funny and it talks about everyday choices that we make like artificial sweetners etc.  The chapter on slaughter houses left me in tears mid bookstore and cemented the end of my meat eating career.  Even if you’re not interested in vegetarianism, being informedof where that meat comes from and whats really involved could prompt you to start purchasing more free-range organic meat.  Anything at all helps!  Even one day without meat or one meal without meat or once a week that you eat free-range meat! This book has citations throughout.

Clean

The Clean Diet (Different from The Eat Clean Diet) was a book that I found at the library while looking for books on detoxing.  My cousin had mentioned how awesome she had felt while doing this detox and I wanted to try it too.  The premise behind the detox is removing all foods that are common potential allergens for three weeks.  Then you slowly add the foods back in and see if any of them cause any reactions.  This was how I found out that milk was causing my acne!!  A huge and awesome realization!  Since then I have spread the word and my friends have also found a connection between their milk consumption and their acne.  Very cool.  This book also showed me how purely awesomely healthy I felt when eating mostly vegan.  And when I went back to my normal diet, how terrible it had been making me feel without even realizing it.  Nick also found out some interesting things about how specific foods effected him while doing this detox.  My biggest tip if you decide to do the actual detox:  The first week is hard, the second and third weeks you will feel better and healthier than you even realized was possible.  It’s worth it to make it to the end.  And the recipes are delicious!

The 80/10/10 Diet

The 80/10/10 Diet I just recently picked up.  I was inspired to read this because of two people that I follow online, Freelee andDurianRider.  It is an absolutely AWeSoME book.  I got it in the mail and read almost all the way through it the first night.  It has some intriguing ideas about the connection between fat and sugar and fat and the insulin response and I will be experimenting with this new take on raw food veganism starting yesterday (1/12).  It has some really eye opening passages in it about the evolution of humans and how long it would take for our digestive tracts to adapt to this new way that we have been eating (high meat, high processing, high salt, high fat, high sugar, etc) Humans have only been able to eat this way, affluent enough to eat this way, for the last few hundred years and we A) haven’t properly adapted to it and B) aren’t completely aware of the consequences yet.  But with statistics like 1 in 3 people will develop diabetes at some point in their life*, it doesn’t seem that this standard american diet is the right direction for us to be going in to me.  I mean look around your immediate family, I have more than three people in mine, which one would you wish diabetes on?

-T-

*http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/AAG/ddt.htm