The First Day of Christmas... Know Thyself

As promised, it's December 13th and it's my First Day of Christmas as I prep for Veganuary - or going Green in the Eighteen. If you're just catching up, no worries, read on noble reader, I'll catch up you. If you are already up to speed, go on and jump ahead to the title of this post - Know Thyself - below.

CRIB NOTES:
January 2018 and in fact the whole of 2018 I'm predicting/crossing my fingers and praying will be a spectacular year for all of us. If your 2017 was anything like mine -- mine made 2016 {also known as the 9th rack of hell} look like a cake walk, then you'll want to believe that 2018 will be a turning point too. It was a hard year y'all. I've been feeling less than awesome. As blessed as I am to have work {so blessed I tell you} I am exhausted. 

So I wanted to do something that would change all that. My girl Emery has been spreading this loving message of healing our planet, stopping global warming by turning to local and sustainable ways of getting food and cooking for ourselves to heal what ails us and I got all inspired and shit. 

Ergo I have decided that one of the best ways to heal both myself and the planet was to "glitterally" {it's glitter and literally smushed together, thanks again Myla} put my money where my mouth is and GO VEGAN starting January 1st. 

{Confession, kinda already started y'all, but Ima get to that later} 

I knew that there was no way that I could take this on all by my onesie, so I enlisted help. I've signed up for VEGANUARY going vegan for January. You must go to this link, trust me they know everything, have answers for every question and they will support, encourage, inspire and help you feed yourself in an awesome plant-based way.

But I also know that if I am gonna be accountable, I gotta go public with my declaration otherwise I might will be prone to cheat. It worked for the 30-Day Method and years of Metamorphosis and Continuity. It worked for kicking sugar. So here I am, this is my public declaration - I shall not be responsible for any harm coming to any living animal on our planet. So, without further adieu...

KNOW THYSELF

Have you heard the latest catch phrase? "You do you?" It means be yourself. Do your own thing. Dance to the beat of your own drum. Forget about what everyone else thinks etc. etc. I'm kind of a fan of "you do you" as my number one Shamandment is to Be Shannon.

It's sometimes easier said than done, right? Especially when it comes to food choices. I'm currently sugar free and gluten free while He Who Shall Not Be Named is a Vegan. When we go out with certain friends, all they want to talk about is our "freaky" eating habits. Sometimes I think, maybe it would just be easier to have that cookie, cake, steak, croissant {well definitely not that last one as I have a serious gluten allergy} but you get the idea.

So on The First Day of Christmas, I thought it might be interesting to explore why we make the choices we do, or don't do as the case may be.

Why have so many of us have thought about veganism but have yet to take the plunge? And why I personally have had a bit of an aversion to "Vegans" in general, how they got a bad rep {in my head} and why that's now changing. 

You with me so far? Great, then let's do this.

I can't speak for you, but I can share my story. I turned to vegetarianism in my late teens/early 20's because I looked into the face of a cow. I saw those big beautiful brown eyes and those long eyelashes and I fell in love. Bossy could never be my dinner. 

And if I had enough love for Bossy, then that meant I couldn't eat Babe or Foghorn Leghorn (the Looney Tunes Chicken Hawk).

So I chose to give up "anything with parents or a face". But that didn't include milk, other dairy products or eggs. Like so many vegetarians I believed I was living a compassionate lifestyle. After all, nobody had to die for my dinner did they? So why the heck would anybody ever want to become Vegan? I'll get there. But first, let's stop saying the word vegan because it kind of still does have a bad image in my mind. Let's start saying Plant Based diet because that is what we're talking about here. Vegan was just a made up word. 

Why didn't I like most "vegans"? {The ones in my head, not the ones in real life., I am married to one don't you know.} Because they always kind of seemed like unhealthy granola munching weirdos -- geez I really can be mean sometimes. But it's how I felt.

And they always seemed to be trying to force the rest of the world to conform to their way of being, like the rest of us should feel guilty for our very existence on the planet for all the harm we were doing. 

I don't want to be that person, the one listing off statistics, screaming out at the top of my lungs that all meat-eaters are bad, that we're killing the planet, causing suffering, poisoning our bodies. I'm not writing about this transition to make you feel guilty or to try to force you into any change that you're not ready for. But I will appeal to your common sense and try to help you see and understand why I'm doing this and then maybe, just maybe, come January 1st, you might wanna give it a try too.

So how come we're not vegans yet? I bet I can give you a list of reasons among which you'll find at least one or two that you yourself may have used.

I'm not hurting anyone by eating eggs. My chickens are happy free range chickens.

I love cheese I could NEVER give it up and besides, I only buy organic grass-fed so the cows are happy.

I need meat, without it I feel so weak and tired.

I work out a lot, how in the world would I ever get enough protein?

There's no way I could afford all the supplements I'd need to take in order to live on only plants.

I don't like beans.

I'm anemic.

Eating a strictly plant based diet is just way too expensive.

Have I hit on anything yet? Every objection above is a myth. You want the true story? Go here and read everything on the page. You'll see, we're kind of just making excuses. These objections to going plant based are just a story we tell ourselves so that we never have to actually think about what our eating habits may be doing to our bodies, our planet and most of all the animals. {The animals are my raison d'etre btw, may as well just get that out there.}

But again, I'm not blaming us. I'm not even going to blame our parents or their parents for raising us up to think this way. No blame, no shame, remember? There is no point in dwelling on the past. Corporations have brainwashed us into thinking all of this stuff because if we continue to believe it, they get rich and we get sick, then they get richer because of all the meds they sell us to help us "feel better".

If I haven't driven you away yet then I'd like to ask two things of you. One -- keep reading, and two -- watch Vegucated. It's on Netflix, but it's also on YouTube. Or, for your convenience you can watch it right here. 

In short, it's a documentary about a New York Vegan who convinces three meat and dairy loving New Yorkers to go plant-based for six weeks. I learned so much watching this and there's some really important information in here that convinced me that going plant based isn't only the right thing to do, it's kinda the only thing to do. I think after watching this film, you'll not only want to "do you", you'll want to do you in a whole new way. You'll discover a you that you maybe weren't even convinced was inside of you. A warrior for peace. A protector of the innocent. A soldier of compassion. And a lover of veggies.

So let's see... we've covered off the multitude of reasons why we're not vegan right now and discovered that our reasons are pretty flimsy. I've talked about why I didn't really like vegans - always so pushy and making me feel all guilty and crap - but I didn't really tell you why that's changed.

Vegans ain't what they used to be. No longer are the herbivores simply Birkenstock wearing tree-huggers {Hey, nothing wrong with Birks or hugging trees - you do you, remember} today's vegans are compassionate, healthy thinkers. {I mean I suspect they always were but they just look different today} Today, a vegan is everything from a body builder to a talk show host, to a farmer, model, writer, comedian, to the person you share your life with. 

Did you know that Liam Hemsworth, Miley Cyrus, Peter Dinklage, Sia, Jenna Dewan Tatum, Mike Tyson? Seriously??, Woody Harleson, Jason Mraz, Toby Maguire, Carrie Underwood, Ariana Grande, the lovely Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain, Alicia Silverstone (whom I love), Stevie Wonder, and of course our fave -- Ellen are all vegans? Not a dummy among them. {and hopefully by the end of the month we'll be able to add our names to this amazing list}

I love Ellen that much more because she cares about the animals enough not to eat them, but the person who really convinced me without ever once saying: "You know, you really should become a vegan" was He Who Shall Not Be Named. That's right, my husband.

He elected to turn to a plant based diet in February of 2016 and hasn't looked back. I ate cheese and eggs in front of him relentlessly and he never gave in. I tempted him with gluten free sugar free banana bread - so what if it has an egg in it, you'll be fine. {Oh Lawd I hope I don't get sent to hell for that} I mean I guess I'd likely have lost most folks at gluten free sugar free but whateves. It's good shit, I promise you. We'd split a pizza (gluten free crust of course) and he'd have vegan cheese on his half and let me have my dairy cheese on mine without ever making me feel guilty.

Then one day - I was like dude, what the hell is so bad about dairy? Bossy the cow has a good life. I mean, my beloved was raised on a "mom and pop" free range happy cow dairy farm in England. He grew up milking cows. How does a guy like that give up cheese? His favorite food in the world?!? How?

And then he told me a story. Please please please don't stop reading. It's not violent or abusive or graphic. I want you to hear the story - and let me remind you, this is not the big agro business kind of farm. This was his great grandfather's farm, then his granddad's, then his dad's, and it was supposed to be his. Ahem, we live in Canada now so he is no longer a dairy farmer, but I digress.

It was that time of year, calving season. When all the pregnant cows {I'm not even going to tell you how they get pregnant, but I'm sure there's documentary for that. It's not nice and it isn't right} Anyhoo, all the "happy free-range, grass-fed" cows were about to give birth and they did, like every year. But one such pregnancy did not go so well and the calf was still-born. The mommy cow stood over her dead baby in the field and she cried. She yowled and mourned and no matter what they tried, there was no way she was leaving that field without her baby. So my husband's dad made him tie a rope around the dead baby and drag it across the field. It was the only way they could get her to come inside. She wept and wailed as she followed her dead baby across the field and he said that sound has haunted him all his life.

The reality is, that no matter what kind of farm you get your milk and cheese from, every single baby is taken away from its mother and every single mother cow weeps for the loss of her child. And you can bet your sweet cheese loving ass that every single baby cries for his or her mother. Some don't even get to go to a grass-fed lovely new home to await their fate of eventual slaughter when they grow up - some get... I can't even... they become veal and if you don't know the horrors they endure in their sweet innocent lives, you better go and look it up, because no one and I mean no one should ever eat veal. OMG, I'm becoming one of those vegans I hate.

Anyway, if you think I'm exaggerating - please watch this most beautiful reunion between mother and baby -- 

And for another happy ending, please watch this... it's important that we learn the truth about the loving bond between mother and baby so that we can understand why their milk is not for us. And when we look back and remember these happy reunions they'll help us say "no thanks" when the cheese tray gets passed around.

Last one, this is the best story and if this doesn't convince you that cows have feelings and can think for themselves and actively make choices, nothing will...

And now shit's about to get real. These videos with the happy endings are the rare exception and not the rule. Right now as I'm typing this there are millions of mothers crying over the loss of their stolen babies. And the hard truth is that they don't need to be. We can actually actively make a choice to stop it by choosing not to purchase these products. WE CAN DO IT! We can be part of the revolution that stops the insanity so that future generations can look back and say "Holy shit, can you believe that people actually used to eat animals? Sick and wrong." It will be the same way we look back at people who "used to be cannibals." People who "used to own slaves". We have the opportunity to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who lived during Nazi Germany and honestly look in the mirror and know that if we were them, we would have done something because we are "doing something" now by saying this behaviour isn't right and it's got to stop! And I'm going to be the one to stop it by turning to a plant based diet and by telling everyone who will listen that they can do it too and that it will not only be pleasant and painless, it will be delicious and we'll feel so much better for it.

I hope you're with me. Would love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a message the comments below.

Big hugs,

Shan

My Holiday Gift.

It's the most wonderful time of the year and I want to share it with you. For years, writing a blog was my inspiration, my salvation, my community, and my great joy. You guys helped me find my voice and I truly believe it's one of the reasons that I actually have a career as a writer today. {Somebody please pinch me because I still can't believe it isn't all a dream!}

I love to write, but what I love even more is to share knowledge, laughter, experiences, and girlie lady stuff with all of you and getting to hear back about your insights, tips, wisdom, trip-ups and foibles so I don't feel so alone in my madness.

I realize that once Continuity hit year 3, the "writing" was on the wall and I couldn't write about the Tracy Anderson Method any more because I didn't have much more to say that what had already been written in the four years blogging about it. I wasn't sure how everyone would take to me writing about other stuff so I stopped writing Mastering The Method and came here to write. The problem is, I haven't been so diligent at keeping up with it and my work life has been overwhelming.

Nevertheless, I have a hiatus and I want to use that time to build a new community here. Over the few years and even fewer posts that I've penned here, every once and a while, a reader pops in and says "hey, I remember you from the TAM days". Just yesterday in fact, Marion from all the way over in Germany took the time to say hello and it made my heart swell a thousand times over.

So I've come up with a plan. If you read this weekend's post, you'll have heard that it's my intention to turn to a plant based diet in January for the month of January {maybe longer, let's see how we do} and I've enlisted the help and support of Veganuary a group of greenies who have promised to send out recipes, tips and tricks to help me stay the course. I am also encouraging all of you to do this with me. Imagine it, all of us standing strong together - taking back our health, supporting our planet, squelching global warming and most of all - stopping animal cruelty! We can do it y'all. I've made us a slogan! 

Dunno why, but I just feel like 2018 needs to be called The EIGHTEEN - it's gonna be a big and very special year for all of us. It's a time of reckoning. Not only are women speaking out about violence and abuse and actually being heard, there are bigger movements afoot and we can choose to be at the fore and make history together! Who's with me?

Still need a little more convincing? Not ready to give up your bacon? Your stringy ooey gooey good cheese? Trust me, I hear you, but there are going to be so many other delicious things waiting for us and once we go through this, once we get WOKE - I promise you, you won't {and I won't} ever want those nasty foods again.

I don't plan to scare you into it. I'm not gonna tell you about all the diseases and shit. I'm not going to make you watch horribly graphic content showing animal torture, but it's out there and it's really happening. But I ain't gonna sugar coat it either and I encourage you not to turn away. Not to tighten the blinders you may have had put over your eyes since childhood. I don't want to place blame, shame or make anyone feel guilty for past choices.

But what I am going to do is share with you my thoughts, my feelings, my reviews of the documentaries that I listed in my last post, and new ways of approaching food, our habits and thoughts around food and I'll likely egg you out onto the skinny branches where it feels cold and scary, but I'll be right beside you, holding your hand the entire way.

Essentially Ima do a TWELVE DAYS of CHRISTMAS thing to get us in the mood to go green baby.

Now, the twelve days of Christmas also known as TWELVETIDE {which is the coolest name ever! It should be a rock band} is the festive Christmas season -- according to wiki -- wherein people celebrate the nativity of Jesus, with Christmas Day as the first day. It runs through to January 5th. I won't go into any more detail about the real 12 days of Christmas here - you can google it and find out more deets if you're curious.

Nah, for our intents and purposes, I'm gonna start the 12 Days of Christmas on December 13th. My Grandmother's birthday. The thirteenth will be our DAY 1 and will run consecutively up until Christmas Eve - with December 24 acting as our 12th DAY. 

Each day will have some kind of theme that will help each of us prepare for Going Green in The EIGHTEEN. I have some ideas to educate us, motivate us, and move us into making what for many of us will be radical choices, but this is FOR US - so I'm open to hearing your thoughts, tips, suggestions, and I'll even take requests. Is there something around this subject that you'd like to discuss? Hit me up in the comments section and lets talk about it.

And I'd also really love to hear your reasons for taking part {I sincerely hope you'll take part or that if you're on the fence, I can convince you to be brave enough to join me}.

As always,
Shan

The EIGHTEEN. Prepping for a New Year!

Hello? Is anybody out there? {insert the sound of crickets} 

If you are there... and you are reading this... I know I don't deserve you in my life, but I'm awfully glad to see you. I'm sorry  that I haven't posted since September 1st, gulp, but I finally have a bit of a hiatus from work so I wanted to dash straight over and catch up with you.

What's been going on for you? You still working out? How are you feeling? Reading any good books? There is soooooo much to tell you, where to start? Well for one, I'm reading DreadfulWater, A Mystery by the brilliant Thomas King. DreadfulWater is the name of the detective, and yes it's one word and yes the W is capitalized.

Okay so here's the cliff notes version of what's been going on over here.

I've "glitterally" {that'd be the word literally glammed up, it's a thing - thanks for that Myla} been working non-stop and unable to catch my breath. I'm in my third straight television show writer's room this year so I have been writing, just not on here. Finally found myself a legit doctor and turns out I am hypothyroid, but it's cool, she's got me on some meds and while I'm not a fan of pharma - thyroid hormone is something our super cool awesome bodies already make, so it's not as though I'm adding in a foreign thing that my lil bod doesn't know what to do with. And my heart is acting out. I have an arrhythmia of sorts, but rather than being a regularly irregular heart beat {which I think you can treat} I have some sort of irregularly irregular heart beat. Of course I do. Gasp. In any case, I'm working on sorting it out.

Still love love loving LEKfit. Gurl you know she makes me feel like a superfly yogi ballerina amazonian chick. So grateful. In fact, I may even treat myself to some real fancy type leggings in The EIGHTEEN. Yep, it's what I'm calling the new year. It makes it sound sorta terrific and fab dontcha think?

So what do YOU have planned for it? I will not let you allow The EIGHTEEN to simply "creep in like a creeping post-Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine and threatening New Year's doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe!" Totally ripped that off from the first line of Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel btdubs. If you've never read the book, get it, read it, love it and become a die-hard fan forevah!

Anyhoo, I won't won't won't let you ring in the new year without at least trying something new. Don't care what it is. You do you sister. But I do want to share with you what Ima do.

If you're anything like me, every time you tune into the news or click on the internet some bad shit is going down and it can make you feel hopeless and horrible. Like WTF is the point of even trying. Our environment is being destroyed via pipelines and the shrinking of national monuments, crazy fires and wildfires rage and wreak havoc, gun violence is so rampant it makes your soul ache, seemingly every man in any kind of position of power has abused that power by abusing the women below him - gawd! Make it all stop! It can be so overwhelming that you might think what can I as one person do? How can I make a change? How can I contribute to the end of suffering and up the compassion quota? How can I do my part to save our planet? Well love, I don't have THEE one and only answer that will solve our every problem, but I do have something that you could do to actively make a difference in a really big way - you can switch to a plant based diet. Don't gasp. Or do, your call. But please don't tune out or turn away. Hear me out. It doesn't have to be a forever thing, or a permanent thing, you can try it for one meal a day, or one day a week, or one week a month, or one month a year - hell who knows you might even feel so good you do decide to make it a forever thing. 

I can hear you now "whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses there crazy lady, I don't wanna give up my cheese, bacon, salmon, cheesecake... insert animal based product here." Believe me, I know it's hard. If it wasn't, we'd all be vegan by now. And trust me, I hear your list of reasons why it isn't a good idea for you - I need meat because I'm anemic, no really, I am. Where will I get my protein? I simply cannot live without my ice cream. Hey! If I can give up ice cream - which I did well over a year ago when I gave up sugar - then ANYONE can give up ice cream. It's not going to be easy, but starting in January, for at LEAST the month of January - I am going to go plant-based. You'll notice that I'm not going to try to tackle this during Christmas. I don't want to give up my Bailey's. I'm right there with you, but we can dooooooooooooooooo eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!! And the good news is we don't have to do it alone.

If you were with me back in the Mastering The Method days, you know I'm all about community support. We did the Method together -tackling Metamorphosis as a team. We can do this together too. It'll just be for a month, right? And it'll kinda be like old times! Me and you banding together swapping recipes, crying over spilled milk {as it's being poured down the drain}, celebrating being cruelty-free, counting the number of animals we've saved by not eating them, exchanging leads on cruelty-free clothes, cosmetics, cleaning supplies and all sorts of cool stuff. If that weren't enough, there's even a company who has made it their mission to support us by sending us tips, tricks and motivation to stay the course called VEGANUARY .

They've done this all before and have this shit down to a science y'all. Going vegan in January - Veganuary - kinda genius really. 

But first things first. We need motivation. One thing that really saved me when I decided to go sugar free, was really knowing why I was doing it. Like setting any goal, if you have a list of positive reasons for doing something, you can lean on those when the going gets tough and you just want to cave and take a nose dive into a giant vat of Ben & Jerry's. Watching That Sugar Film was an absolute game-changer. It allowed me to say, "so long sucker" for realz.

I want that same kind of inspiration for this next leg of the journey toward good health and a happy healthy planet, but I'm wary. I'm not one of these people that needs to be convinced that there is cruelty in the meat and dairy industry. I KNOW there is. I'm "the faint-of-heart" type who cannot see torture and whatnot. I don't need that to be convinced that I need to make a change, but if you do... then I'd recommend that you watch the film that made Ellen Degeneres switch to a plant based diet - Earthlings again, warnings this does contain graphic content.

BUT... If you're like me and you just need a bit of convincing that yes, this is the ethical choice, the health-based choice, the salvation of our planet-based choice, not the hardest choice in the world based choice - then here is a list of documentary films that I've compiled and plan to watch over the holidays and I'm told by the good folks in the googlesphere  -- do NOT contain a shit-ton of graphic footage but are more about information sharing. Knowledge is power people, never forget that.

So here's my list so far. If you have non-graphic titles to add - please do so in the comments below.
Live and Let Live
Vegan
Vegucated
Peaceable Kingdom
What the Health
Forks Over Knives

And who among us needs an excuse to purchase a new cookbook? I sure don't. And I didn't want to take this challenge completely unarmed. While I do own a couple of books by Kimberly Snyder --

Not to mention the lovely Ella Woodward 

I felt like I wanted to branch out into even simpler and more fun food recipes, so I have ordered a couple of new titles - 

Angela Liddon's 

And two books from the hilarious duo over at Thug Kitchen

And oh Lordy Lord help me if He Who Shall Not Be Named is reading this - that's Christmas ruined. My beloved went plant based nearly two years ago and one of these is for him, so Babe! If you're reading this, stoppit. You're ruining Christmas. I ordered him a special Vegan Advent Calendar for the holidays. It had to come from England and took six weeks to ship. The bastard ate the whole thing by December 7th!!!! Grrrr.

Alrighty then, I think this wraps up our New Year's prep episode, wouldn't you say? You gotta be tired of reading by now right? I'm getting kinda tired of writing, but more than that, my dog is looking at me with crossed paws and is doing is own puppy version of the pee pee dance so I best be getting on.

I've loved being here with you today and sharing the roll out plan for The EIGHTEEN. Hope you don't leave me hanging. Join in with me and leave your thoughts in the comments below. I adore hearing from you.

With respect,
Shan